Word Prominence in Languages with Complex Morphologies

This volume focuses on the theoretical and analytical challenges that languages with complex morphologies pose for the theory and typology of word-level prosodic phenomena. The morphological complexity and phonological length that are characteristic of words in these languages make them a particularly fruitful ground for investigating the effects of both phonological and morphological factors in the assignment of prominence. The first three chapters in the volume explore general theoretical issues pertaining to word prominence in synthetic languages, including the issue of ’wordhood’ and the empirical, theoretical, and methodological issues with delineating word-level prominence and the higher-level prosodic phenomena in these languages. These are followed by a series of case studies on stress, accent, and tone in a geographically and genetically diverse set of languages with highly synthetic morphologies including languages of the Americas, Europe and Asia, and Australia. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, combining phonetic, phonological, and morphosyntactic insights. It will be of interest not only to phonologists and morphologists, but to all those interested in the typological and theoretical issues relating to polysynthetic languages.

Ksenia Bogomolets, Professional Teaching Fellow, School of Cultures, Languages, and Linguistics, University of Auckland, Harry van der Hulst, Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut

Ksenia Bogomolets is Professional Teaching Fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She specializes in phonology and morphology, with a particular focus on the phonology of stress in polysynthetic languages. She is especially interested in theoretical issues pertaining to morpho-phonology of Algonquian languages, but she has also investigated stress and its interactions with morphology in unrelated highly synthetic languages such as Nez Perce, Ichishkiin Sinwit, and Choguita Rarámuri. On the empirical side, she has a keen interest in documentation of understudied and endangered languages.

Harry van der Hulst is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. His research interests include stress, syllabic structure, segmental structure, sign language, gesture, language evolution, and phonological acquisition, and he is both Editor-in-Chief of The Linguistic Review and co-editor of Mouton de Gruyter’s series ’Studies in Generative Grammar’. His many books include Asymmetries in Vowel Harmony(OUP, 2018), Radical CV Phonology: A Theory of Segmental and Syllabic Structure (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and The Oxford History of Phonology (co-edited with B. Elan Dresher; OUP, 2022).