Reviewed by Marc Pierce, University of Texas at Austin

The first sentence of Cyran’s book clearly sets out the goal of the study: ‘to demonstrate that the basic principles of phonological organisation boil down to the interaction between the strength of nuclei as licensers of phonological structure and various non-rerankable scales of complexity occurring at different levels of phonological representation’ (v). The theoretical model employed here is a version of government phonology, relying largely on ‘element theory’: ‘elements’ are described as ‘[t]he smallest units of phonological representation in Government Phonology’ (2); and they ‘can be characterized as privative, cognitive units which enjoy a stand-alone phonetic interpretability’ (2). In C’s view, the use of element theory allows for a simpler analysis of many phonological phenomena. He contends, for instance, that element theory is better-suited to analyzing weakening processes than sonority-based approaches, as ‘the weakening of vowels…results in less and less sonorous objects’, but ‘the weakening of consonants…results in more and more sonorous ones’ (13–14). In his view, this paradox is avoided within element theory, as ‘all stages of vowel weakening and consonant lenition are of the same nature: depletion of melodic complexity’ (14).

The book is divided into three thematic chapters, and there is also a brief conclusion. Ch. 1, ‘Substantive complexity’ (1–73), first describes the principles of element theory and then uses the theory to analyze data from Irish and Welsh. C argues that ‘a number of phonological phenomena depend on the internal complexity of segments’ (71). In his treatment of vowel epenthesis in Irish, for instance, he contends that ‘Irish clusters with a complexity differential of three elements…are never broken up by an epenthetic vowel…[but] clusters in which the differential is two elements or less must be broken up by epenthesis’ (32–33). Ch. 2, ‘Formal complexity’ (75–185), attempts to show ‘how exactly substantive complexity is incorporated into the higher level of phonological organization’ (75), focusing largely on syllable structure. Much of the discussion in this chapter focuses on what C refers to as the complexity scales and licensing (CSL) model, which modifies earlier government phonology approaches to syllabification; it combines formal complexity with licensing. The CSL model is largely illustrated with thorough discussions of data from English and Polish. The final thematic chapter, ‘The phonological structure of words’ (187–288), progresses from syllables to words. The focus here is on liquid metathesis in the history of the Slavic languages and on permissible clusters at word edges (largely in Dutch and English).

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, C is clearly extremely well-versed in his subject, and his analyses are thought-provoking. The conclusion also points to a number of topics for possible future research within this theory (e.g. dialect variation and language acquisition). On the other hand, the discussion is rather dense; I often found myself having to go back and reread passages, and a few remained opaque even after several re-readings. The book is also not as accessible to phonologists not sharing C’s theoretical background as one might wish. The book certainly deserves to be read, but I do have to wonder just how widely read it will be.