Reviewed by Christopher R. Green, Indiana University

Strength relations in phonology is a volume of selected works developed from presentations given at a workshop of the same name in September 2006. The papers in this volume draw upon a wide variety of languages and encompass a number of different theoretical persuasions in defining and characterizing positions and structures that mark phonological strength. The volume has two sections, the first containing six papers on segmental strength, and the second containing five works addressing strength relations at higher prosodic levels.

Among the works on segmental strength is a paper by John Harris (9–45) that argues against the popular idea that obstruent devoicing is a strengthening process by examining its patterning and showing its parallels to weakening in the same position. Harris’s analysis largely supports what he describes as a ‘modulated-carrier model of strength’ in which weakening processes, like final devoicing, decrease modulation of the carrier signal by feature deletion. The editors themselves (47–77) continue the discussion of segmental strength by considering the relationship between melodic and prosodic headedness. They determine that elements with a melodic head play into the overall melodic strength of the domain, as well as the prosodic strength and perceptibility of the entire expression. A further element-based approach from Bert Botma (79–111) determines that the specification of nasality at a given level of representation, whether underlying, syllabic, or sub-syllabic, must come into play to account for different types of nasal harmony found crosslinguistically. Daniel A. Dinnsen and Ashley Farris-Trimble (114–48) detail a proposed shift in phonological prominence from coda to onset position during first language (L1) learners’ acquisition of English. Eirimi Sanoudaki (149–81) also discusses L1 acquisition and matters of segmental complexity in CVCV theory by considering historical and synchronic aspects of diglossia in Greek. The offering by Hidetoshi Shiraishi (183–218) motivates an account of a typologically-unpredicted process of initial weakening that the author attributes to contrast generation and perceptibility.

The works on prosodic strength begin with Colin J. Ewen and Bert Botma’s reassessment (221–50) of English rhymal adjuncts, in which they step away from earlier government phonology analyses favoring the assignment of these constituents to their own node. Nancy C. Kula and Lutz Marten (251–84) explore the application of Strict CV to languages lacking initial clusters by referring to the ability of an initial CV unit to be governed. A formal relationship between constituents in syllable margins, supported by data on L1 acquisition and synchronic and diachronic data from several languages, is offered by Karen Baertsch and Stuart Davis (283–316). Ben Hermans (317–71) discusses tone licensing and mora headedness in his study of the two tonal accents in Limburg. The volume closes with Yuko Yoshida’s government-based analysis of lexical accent (374–89) in Japanese dialects supported by the vocalic properties of the two language varieties.