"The Companion to Phonology" will be the major reference work of the field, drawing together nearly 150 contributions from almost all of the globally recognized, leading scholars in an estimated five-volume set. The international editorial team represents a diverse range of approaches and methodologies to the field, with the objective of creating a truly theoretically balanced work that will be of use to all phonologists and linguists. Different from all handbooks and other reference works for phonology which are available at present, the focus will be on empirical facts, rather than on theoretical insights. The Companion will function as a touchstone for future phonological theories: whenever somebody wants to propose a new theory for some phenomenon, she will be able to find all the relevant facts and insights which need to be accounted for in this work. The work will be organized thematically, and by volume: I. The Segment and Below II. The Segment and Above III. Changes and Processes IV. Interfaces V. Methodologies. In terms of competition, there is no other work currently available with this scope. There are large encyclopedic works covering the field of linguistics, such as "The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics", second edition, edited by Keith Brown (Elsevier, 2005); the approach and scope of this sort of work is clearly distinct from the proposed Companion, which is comprised of essays of 8,000- 10,000 words each to allow a fuller exploration of each topic. The Companion is not intended to be encyclopedic, but to offer an overview of the field as it currently stands. Shorter reference works such as the "Blackwell Handbook of Phonological Theory" (edited by John Goldsmith, 1996), or the "Cambridge Handbook of Phonology" (edited by Paul DeLacy, CUP, 2007) differ most obviously in their scope: "Goldsmith's Handbook" has 32 articles in it; DeLacy's has 25; a larger work allows more depth, nuance, and information. The Companion is also theoretically positioned as a work primarily for researchers.

Blackwell Companion to Phonology

Diachronic changes in the order of affixes occur commonly in one situation: when inflectional affixes are trapped in an internal position as the result of the grammaticalization and affixation of an uninflected element, they are commonly externalized. A number of instances of this type of change are discussed, and some constraints obeyed by such changes are formulated.

The diachronic externalization of inflection

Ambivalent segments are speech sounds whose cross-linguistic patterning is especially variable, creating contradictions for theories of universal distinctive features. This paper examines lateral liquids, whose [continuant] specification has been the subject of controversy because of their ability to pattern both with continuants and with non-continuants, and because phonetically they are situated in the contested ground between two different articulatory definitions for the feature [continuant]. Evidence from a survey of sound patterns in 561 languages shows that lateral liquids, like nasals, pattern with continuants about as often as with non-continuants. Ambivalent phonological behaviour is argued to be natural and expected for phonetically ambiguous segments in a theory of emergent distinctive features where features are the result of sound patterns, rather than the other way around.

Ambivalence and ambiguity in laterals and nasals

Language and Society in South Asia

In intuitive terms to be sharpened below, the micromorphology hypothesis is the hypothesis that an affix can itself be morphologically complex. This is a widespread assumption in descriptive accounts of the morphology of individual languages; yet, with only the rarest exceptions (e.g., the proposals of Bauer 1988; Bochner 1992 and Luis & Spencer 2005), morphological theory has tended to reject this hypothesis, most often tacitly. My objective here is therefore threefold. I begin by characterizing the micromorphology hypothesis in more precise terms, exemplifying it with the analysis of nominal inflection in Noon (Niger Congo/Atlantic; Senegal) presented by Soukka (2000) and showing that in a rule-based conception of morphology, this hypothesis entails an operation of rule conflation similar (though not identical) to the operation of function composition in mathematics. I propose an inferential realizational morphological theory that implements the micromorphology hypothesis by incorporating the notion of ...

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Sudhibhushan Bhattacharya

Papers

The Pengo language: Grammar, texts, and vocabulary,