Prosodic Features and Prosodic Structure : The Phonology of Suprasegmentals

This book is concerned with the linguistic analysis and description of the 'prosodic' features of speech, including length, accent and stress, tone, and intonation. After attempting to identify criteria for the definition of prosodic features, Anthony Fox examines in depth each of these features in turn from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including both earlier views and current models, especially those of a non-linear kind. The focus is, however, on the features themselves rather than on a specific theoretical framework. An important characteristic of the book is that it does not simply consider the prosodic features in isolation as independent systems; throughout, the emphasis is on the relationships and interdependencies between the different features and their place in the overall structure and organization of utterances. A final chapter considers the nature of prosodic structure itself, and the categories and concepts necessary for its description. Anthony Fox has written a work of great scholarship and learning which is expressed in a way that will be accessible to all linguists from advanced undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers. It will be of particular interest to phonologists, phoneticians, and researchers in related applied fields such as speech pathology and speech synthesis.