Local consonant–vowel (C–V) interaction is attested in many languages, both as a phonetic and as a phonological process. There can be a clear developmental relationship between the two, with phonologisation of phonetic interaction occurring quite commonly (Hyman 1976, Ohala 1981). Thus, a common (historical) context for nasal vowels is an adjacent nasal consonant. When consonants trigger non-local effects (i.e. when the domain of the consonantal feature extends beyond adjacent segments), typically both vowels and consonants are targeted. For example, in consonant-induced nasal or emphasis harmony all segments in the harmony domain usually take the consonantal feature. If some segments are neutral, targets still include both consonants and vowels.

The issue of vowel height harmony – relatively rare in the world's languages – is one that most serious theories of phonology have addressed at one time or another, particularly as concerns its realisation in Bantu (e.g. Clements 1991, Archangeli & Pulleyblank 1994, Beckman 1997). As is quite well known, the majority of an estimated 500 Bantu languages exhibit some variant of a progressive harmony process by which vowels lower when preceded by an appropriate (lower) trigger. (Ki)-Yaka, a Western Bantu language spoken in ex-Zaire, designated as H.31 by Guthrie (1967–71), has a height harmony system which has been analysed as having a similar left-to-right lowering process. In this paper I argue against the general analysis given for Yaka, showing that this language differs in a major way from the rest of Bantu. The goals of the paper are threefold. First, I present a comprehensive treatment of the unusual vowel harmony system in (ki-)Yaka. Second, I introduce the notion of the ‘prosodic trough’ (τ), a domain which is needed in order to state important phonological generalisations in Yaka and in Bantu in general. Finally, I show the relevance of the Yaka facts for the study of positional prominence in phonology. A (partial) analysis is offered within optimality- theoretic terms, particularly as developed by McCarthy & Prince (1995). Although superficially resembling the vowel height harmony found in most Bantu languages, the Yaka system will be shown to differ from these latter in major ways. The paper is organised as follows. In §2 I establish the general nature of the Yaka harmony system, reanalysing previous accounts in terms of ‘plateauing’. In §3 I turn to the process of ‘imbrication’, which introduces a second motivation for vowel harmony: the avoidance of the sequence [wi]. A third source of vowel harmony is presented in §4, which also introduces the notion of the ‘prosodic trough’. The study ends with a brief conclusion in §5 and an appendix that discusses outstanding problems.

Few phonological phenomena have so captured the attention of theorists and continued to baffle them as the phenomenon of tonal downstep. Downstep is the lowering of the tonal register that sometimes occurs between adjacent, otherwise identical tones. It is cumulative, and successive occurrences of the phenomenon result in ever lower settings of the tonal register. The present work reports on an instrumental study of downstep in Bimoba, a Gur language spoken in the Northern Region of Ghana. So far as I am aware, the present work is the only description in existence of tone in Bimoba.

Bimoba is a good candidate for a study of downstep, because it is a ‘three-tone’ language in which both Low tones (floating and non-floating) and Mid tones cause High tones to be downstepped. A number of phonological studies (based on auditory impressions only) of three-tone languages with downstep of High tone have claimed that the difference in pitch between a High and a following Mid is equivalent to that between a High and a following downstepped High. These include Supyire (Carlson 1983), Babanki (Hyman 1979), Moba (Russell 1986) and Kagoro (van de Kolk 1992). This issue is important to tone theorists because a number of proposals on the theory of downstep formally equate a downstepped High with one type of Mid tone. These include Clements (1983), Hyman (1986, 1993), Inkelas (1987) and Snider (1990). On the other hand, a number of other proposals account for downstep with phonetic implementation rules. These include Pierrehumbert (1980), Poser (1984), Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986) and Pierrehumbert & Beckman (1988). ‘If register shift is indeed a rule of phonetic implementation, there is no reason, a priori, for the interval of register shift to be equivalent to that found between two phonemic tones’ (Snider 1990: 470). So far as I am aware, no instrumental study has ever addressed this issue. The present study therefore undertakes to help fill this lacuna, and concludes that in Bimoba a Mid tone is phonetically indistinguishable from a downstepped High tone in comparable environments.

This volume impressively synthesises vast literatures from the fields of linguistics, bioacoustics, psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, ethology and anthropology, and in the process raises a number of provocative questions regarding the contentious issue of human language origins. Because the book is so far-reaching, both in terms of the breadth of communicative phenomena which it covers and the depth in which it discusses them, a short review such as the present one can only scratch the surface of the wealth of information and ideas which it contains.

This book was written to fill a perceived need for a text covering a wide range of issues in comparative communication, for which it is certainly well suited. Those interested in the production and perception of auditory and visual signals, as well as in issues as diverse as evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology, will find it an easily readable – or browseable – piece of work. As Hauser notes, he has ‘attempted to write a book that is aimed primarily at the expert while being useful to those wishing to pick out pieces...for undergraduate and graduate instruction’ (p. 14). The book is successful along both lines. It is extremely well organised and well indexed, making it easy to select case studies relevant to specific communicative phenomena (e.g. audition, vocalisation, acquisition, signed languages, etc.) or particular species (humans, monkeys, anurans, birds, etc.). Particularly useful are the large number of graphics and illustrations, as well as conceptual ‘boxes’ which succinctly summarise key concepts or theoretical perspectives which may be unfamiliar to some readers (e.g. statistical information theory, neural tuning curves, source-filter theory and sexual selection theory, to name just a few).

The participants at the Montréal Roundtable included Paul Kiparsky, Wolfgang U. Dressler and Joan Bybee, all of them major figures in recent morphological debates, as well as Alan Ford and Rajendra Singh, the authors of a theory of morphology which is less well known but equally ambitious. The bulk of this book consists of target articles on these four theoretical standpoints followed by comments by one or two commentators, replies by the protagonists, and transcripts of discussion. The commentators are Heather Goad, Richard Janda, K. P. Mohanan and Douglas C. Walker, and in general they do a good job. But the discussion sections are what you will turn to first if you have ever asked yourself questions such as ‘I wonder how Kiparsky (or Dressler) would respond to that argument of Bybee (or Ford & Singh)?’. Singh and Desrochers are to be congratulated on producing such a full report of a conference with such high-profile participants.

This is an unusual book. For one thing, it is huge: two volumes, over 1000 pages, with articles on fifty different languages or groups. For another, the list of contributors is quite diverse, including a few phonologists with specific language interests (Shmuel Bolozky, Robert D. Hoberman, Maria-Rosa Lloret and Joseph L. Malone), a few linguists who are better known for their work in areas other than phonology (Bernard Comrie, Jeffrey Heath, H. Craig Melchert and Johanna Nichols) and a group of distinguished experts on particular languages or families (including Giorgio Buccellati, Gene Gragg, Robert Hetzron, Wolf Leslau, Paul Newman and others).

The goals of this book are also a bit unusual. In his introduction, the editor says this:

The idea for this volume came about as I searched in vain for a book which would enable my students to gain a concrete familiarity of solid phonological work by subjecting them to the exposure of many of today's (hard-)working linguists who would concisely describe and comment on the phonological processes in and structures of languages which they have carefully scrutinized, both ancient or medieval and modern. (p. xvi)

This is an attractive concept; undergraduate and beginning graduate students would undoubtedly benefit from studying and perhaps attempting to reanalyse a carefully presented description of the phonemic system and morphophonemic processes of an unfamiliar language. More advanced graduate students or established scholars could also benefit from having access to compact descriptions that summarise potentially interesting phenomena and give references to consult for further research.

Ladd's Intonational phonology is a substantial addition to an area that has only recently ‘arrived’. Fortunately for the field of intonational phonology, the past two decades have seen a number of seminal contributions from phonologists, including Mark Liberman, Gösta Bruce, Janet Pierrehumbert and Ladd himself. Work on intonation, which has advanced in sync with modern linguistic theory, can also look back on quite a number of rather specific studies by phoneticians and rather general descriptive accounts by linguists and English teachers on this continent and in Europe.

The book's basic goal is to present the subject matter of intonational phonology to the non-specialist linguist. The material is not only summarised but also accompanied by critical comments. Ladd's goal of keeping the book accessible to the non-specialist may limit the depth of the presentation of the basic material and the definitiveness of the critical comments, but for many this will be a reasonable price to pay for breadth of coverage.