Synopses & Reviews
World class editor and contributors address the phonetic, phonological, prosodic and morphological correlates of weakness, illustrated with historical and dialectal case studies.
About the Author
DONKA MINKOVA is Professor of English at University of California - Los Angeles, USA. She has published widely in the areas of English historical phonology, meter, dialectology, and syntax, most recently as co-editor of Empirical and Analytical Advances in the Study of English Language Changes (2008). She has held the Annual Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, the University of California Presidents Research Fellowship in the Humanities, The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and the Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professorship, University of Bristol. CHARLES JONES is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Western Ontario.
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors
Preface: D.Minkova
PART I: PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF WEAKNESS
Treatments of Weakness in Phonological Theory--K.R.Zuraw
Testing Consonant Weakness Phonetically--L.Lavoie
PART II: DIAGNOSING AND INTERPRETING ENGLISH SCHWA(S)
On Schwa: Synchronic Prelude and Historical Fugue--R.Lass
The Phonetics of Schwa Vowels--E.Flemming
PART III: HISTORICAL AND DIALECTAL CASE STUDIES
Perspectives on Weakness From English /r/--A.McMahon
Weak Segments in Irish English--R.Hickey
Word-Initial h- in Middle and Early Modern English--P.Crisma
Consonant or Vowel? A Diachronic Study of Initial h From Early Middle English to Nineteenth-Century English--J.Schlter
PART IV: PROSODIC AND MORPHOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF WEAKNESS
Weak Segments and Syllable Structure in Middle English--J.Schlter
Orthographic Indications of Weakness in Early Middle English--M.Laing
Morphological Syncope in the History of English--D.Minkova
Index