This paper examines the distribution of the palatal fricative [ç] and the velar fricative [x] in Modern Standard German. The data are significant with respect to the theory of Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky 1982, 1985; Halle & Mohanan 1985; Mohanan 1986) because the rule of Fricative Assimilation (FA) which spreads the feature of backness from a vowel onto an immediately following tautomorphemic [ —voice, + high] fricative is a counterexample to Kiparsky's (1985) Structure Preservation hypothesis, according to which non-distinctive features must be introduced postlexically. It is also noteworthy that the present analysis produces both [x] and [ç] from a [— voice, + high] fricative which is unspecified for backness, contrary to the general tendency among previous researchers who have taken either /ç/ or /x/ to be the basic segment.

We have presented two different analyses of stress in Macedonian and Polish: one in terms of CGs and the other in terms of QS/ROB footing. Further, we showed how there were a number of problems with the CG account. We now consider those problems again in light of the latter analyses above.

The first problem was that the emergence of unmarked stress under suffixation did not find a uniform explanation in Macedonian and Polish. This is not true of the revised analyses. Both are couched in terms of accent and the reemergence of regular stress in both languages follows as a consequence of distribution of lexical accent. In fact, aside from the contribution of secondary stresses in Polish and their absence in Macedonian, the analyses differ minimally. Footing in Macedonian is QS; footing in Polish is ROB.

A second problem for the CG was that the reemergence of unmarked stress in Polish did not find a uniform explanation. Some cases were handled with lexical extrametricality, while others were handled with the special extrametricality rule.(44)

This is also not a problem for the revised analysis. Class I and class II now differ minimally in the placement of accent.

The third problem discussed above was the ad hoc character of the special extrametricality rule (44). This too is no longer a problem since this rule is no longer a part of the analysis. In fact, perhaps we can make the strong claim that rules of this type are to.be excluded in principle. An even stronger claim which might be supportable, though it would require we reconsider a number of analyses, is that lexical accent can never be marked with extrametricality. We leave this latter hypothesis open.

Summarising, the best analysis of Macedonian and Polish requires a theory that makes use of two different kinds of footing – quantity-sensitive (QS) and revised obligatory-branching (ROB) – and that marks accent in terms of a diacritic feature rather than in terms of grid marks without constituency. Only by adopting such a theory can we capture in a satisfying fashion the generalisation exhibited in Macedonian and Polish, that regular stress reemerges when a word with exceptional stress undergoes sufficient affixation.

The past decade or so has seen increasing interest in prosodic research, and remarkable progress has been made in the study of accent and intonation, both empirical and theoretical. Research in Japanese intonation is no exception in this respect, as evidenced by such works as Poser (1984) and Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986), among others, which have developed theoretical discussions on many interesting phonological issues on the basis of their own experimental evidence.

In this article I discuss some aspects of a model of segmental structure, in particular the representation of vowels. The central claim is that vowels can be represented in terms of three unary primitives, organised in a binary structure involving both DOMINANCE and DEPENDENCY relations.

My goal is to explore the consequences of this claim. Certain aspects of the proposal differ in matters of principle from the theory of segmental structure advanced in Chomsky & Halle (1968; henceforth SPE), and subsequent work in this tradition up to and including the ‘geometrical model’ as developed in Steriade (1982), Clements (1985), Sagey (1986), McCarthy (1988) and Halle (1988), even though it is argued in some of these works that certain features are unary, that they are organised hierarchically and that certain features enter into dependency relations.

In this essay I suggest that the conventional bifurcation of geometrically organised feature bundles into ‘Laryngeal’ and ‘Supralaryngeal’ categories, advocated most prominently in the provocative work of Clements (1985, 1987), Sagey (1986) and Archangeli & Pulleyblank (forthcoming), should be modified to eliminate the Supralaryngeal element altogether. Specifically, the proposal is that the category Place and the features of manner be removed from subordination under the Supralaryngeal node, as in the conventional configuration displayed in (1), and instead be subsumed directly under Root, as depicted in (2):1

In phonology, one of the generalisations that seems to hold true across most, if not all, languages is that the overall rhythmic pattern tends to be organised such that there is an alternation of strong and weak syllables (cf. among others, Hayes 1980, 1984; Prince 1983; Selkirk 1984). In other words, languages tend to avoid strings of adjacent strong syllables, as well as strings of adjacent weak syllables. These generalisations are expressed by clauses (a) and (b), respectively, of Selkirk's Principle of Rhythmic Alternation (PRA):

(1) Principle of Rhythmic Alternation (Selkirk 1984: 52)

a. Every strong position on a metrical level n should be followed by at least one weak position on that level

b. Any weak position on a metrical level n may be preceded by at most one weak position on that level

Of course, the underlying rhythmic patterns of a language are not always in conformity with the PRA.

One of the principal innovations of metrical stress theory is the claim that stress involves not merely a set of diacritics indicating the relative prominence of the syllables of a word but the construction of a constituent, the stress foot. As a constituent, the stress foot not only plays a role in the placement of stress but is also available to condition other phonological and morphological processes. Although the existence of the stress foot is now widely accepted and a variety of examples have been put forward showing the existence of such constituents and their role in processes other than stress placement, such examples are still not common, and languages in which the stress foot subserves a number of different processes are not well-attested.

While the use of categorical features seems to be the appropriate way to express sound patterns within languages, these features do not seem adequate to describe the sounds actually produced by speakers. Examination of the speech signal fails to reveal objective, discrete phonological segments. Similarly, segments are not directly observable in the flow of articulatory movements, and vary slightly according to an individual speaker's articulatory strategies. Because of the lack of a reliable relationship between segments and speech sounds, a plausible transition from feature representation to the actual acoustic signal has proven elusive. This paper utilises a theory of information processing, known as PARALLEL DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING (PDP) NETWORKS (also called neural networks), to propose a model which begins to express this transition: translating the feature bundles indicated in a broad phonetic transcription into continuous, potentially variable articulator behaviour.

This article is concerned with the internal structure of coronals. Although coronals are often considered the least marked consonants on the basis of frequency and acquisition, current models of feature geometry assign coronality no special status among places of articulation.1 In this paper, we argue that the structure of coronals differs from that of other consanats in that coronals lack a Place node altogether.

Recent work (Clements 1985; Sagey 1986) on the structure of distinctive features has analysed affricates and prenasalised stops as involving branching for the features [continuant] and [nasal] respectively. This analysis explains the edge effects associated with such segments, while simultaneously identifying them as single melodic elements that associate as units to prosodic templates. This paper will argue that some languages have contour tones that show parallel properties to those of affricates: they associate as units, but also exhibit edge effects. Such behaviour can be simply understood if tonal features hang off a tonal root node (Archangeli & Pulleyblank forthcoming), and this tonal root node is allowed to branch. A high rising contour tone will have the structure shown in (i), where [upper] is the tonal root node, and [raised] is free to branch.

Recent work by Clements (1985), Sagey (1986), Steriade (1987a) and others has shown clearly that distinctive features are hierarchically organised, and that the hierarchy includes a Place of Articulation constituent. Proposals differ, however, as to the organisation below this Place node. Clements (1985) suggests that there is a Secondary Place node dominating the vowel features, but that [anterior], [coronal] and [distributed] are directly dominated by the Place node itself. Sagey (1986) has argued that there are distinct Articulator nodes, Labial, Coronal and Dorsal, each of which dominates certain binary features, respectively [round]; [anterior] and [distributed]; and [high], [back] and [low]. Dorsal is thus present for both velar consonants and vowels. Steriade (1987a) modifies the Sagey model by adding a Velar node for velar consonants, distinct from the Dorsal node for vowels.