Phonology, as it is practiced, is deeply computational. Phonological analysis is data-intensive and the resulting models are nothing other than specialized data structures and algorithms. In the past, phonological computation – managing data and developing analyses – was done manually with pencil and paper. Increasingly , with the proliferation of affordable computers, IPA fonts and drawing sof...

0. Speech and phonology As is well known the physical properties of speech are determined by a large number of factors. They vary depending on the language spoken, on the age, gender and identity of the speaker. They undergo stylistical modifications in innumerable ways owing to the interaction of physiological, cognitive, social and communicative factors. Linguistics deals with this problem by...

Phonology is usually thought of as the study of the ‘sound systems’ of languages. In this article I will make an attempt to explain what that means for me and why I refer to the approach that I favor as ‘cognitive’. Frankly, I have no idea how phonology could ever be anything but cognitive. However, there is a certain view that explanation in this domain must be crucially built upon our underst...

Phonology is the systematic study of the sounds used in language, their internal structure, and their composition into syllables, words and phrases. Computational phonology is the application of formal and computational techniques to the representation and processing of phonological information. This chapter will present the fundamentals of descriptive phonology along with a brief overview of c...

Most ‘phonetically-driven’ or functionalist theories of phonology propose that two of the fundamental forces shaping phonology are the need to minimize effort on the part of the speaker and the need to minimize the likelihood of confusion on the part of the listener. The goal of this paper is to explore the perceptual side of this story, investigating the general character of the constraints im...

Most ‘phonetically-driven’ or functionalist theories of phonology propose that two of the fundamental forces shaping phonology are the need to minimize effort on the part of the speaker and the need to minimize the likelihood of confusion on the part of the listener. The goal of this paper is to explore the perceptual side of this story, investigating the general character of the constraints im...

The paper aims to present approach to HPSG phonology which would account for underlying forms of phonemes. It shows some of the issues arising in monostratal analyses of phonology, and proposes a solution based on a notion of underlying representations. The approach presented, partly inspired by Optimality Theory, resolves cases of neutralisation and opacity by formulating constraints which eit...

We often think of intonational phonology in terms of discrete entities: accents which fall into just a few categories (Gussenhoven 1999; Ladd 1996; Beckman and Ayers Elam 1997). In this view, accents in intonation correspond to phonemes in segmental phonology (except that they cover a larger interval). They have a rough correspondence to the acoustic properties of the relevant region and they a...

Intact phonological processing is crucial for successful literacy acquisition. While individuals with difficulties in reading and spelling (i.e., developmental dyslexia) are known to experience deficient phoneme discrimination (i.e., segmental phonology), findings concerning their prosodic processing (i.e., suprasegmental phonology) are controversial. Because there are no behavior-independent s...