<b>A course in phonology.</b> By Iggy Roca and Wyn Johnson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Pp. xxi, 725.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Reviewed by: A course in phonology by Iggy Roca, Wyn Johnson Jeffrey Steele A course in phonology. By Iggy Roca and Wyn Johnson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Pp. xxi, 725. Written in a clear and engaging style, Iggy Roca and Wyn Johnson’s book presents the essentials of nonlinear phonology, including an introduction to Optimality Theory. While examples are taken from English for the most part, some phenomena are exemplified with data from other languages (e.g. Turkish vowel harmony, Japanese pitch accent). The book is organized into three principal sections. Part 1, ‘Phonetics and phonology’, consists of a general introduction to articulatory phonetics and segmental phonology. Chs. 1–4 deal with the articulatory description of consonants. Using assimilation as a starting point, these chapters present the concepts of rules, derivations, distinctive features, natural classes, and autosegmental representation. In Chs. 5–7, R&J shift their focus to vowels. Beginning with a discussion of the vowel space, the learner is shown how the same types of distinctive features and autosegmental representations used for consonants can be applied to vowels. An examination of English vowels and dialectal variation constitutes the core of Ch. 7. Part 1 concludes with an introduction to the timing tier, including its role in the representation of complex segments and its potential as a mechanism for explaining the Great Vowel Shift. The discussion of the timing tier provides a good segue to Part 2, which examines suprasegmental phonology. Chs. 9 and 10 investigate syllable theory; the [End Page 589] concepts of sonority and constituency are presented and illustrated with examples from English. Cross-linguistic syllable typology is also discussed. Chs. 11 and 12 examine metrical phonology using grid theory. Ch. 13 integrates material encountered in the four preceding chapters through a discussion of syllable weight and its role in stress systems. Ch. 14 concludes Part 2 with an investigation of tonal phonology. Intonation, tonal and pitch accent languages, and the concepts of autosegmental association and floating tones are examined. Part 3, ‘Advanced theory’, investigates other topics in nonlinear phonology. Ch. 15 focuses on cyclic vs. noncyclic rules, primarily through a discussion of metrical grid construction in English. Ch. 16 investigates the concept of domain and its role in rule application; lexical phonology is introduced. In Ch. 17, R&J further investigate the lexicon through a discussion of lexical representation, markedness, and underspecification theory. Whereas Ch. 18 provides more study of rules and derivation, Ch. 19 introduces the concept of constraints and constraint interaction in Optimality Theory. Ch. 20 concludes with a summary. This book has many strengths. First, it presents the core of generative phonological theory using readily accessible examples. Second, it is clear and well-organized: The chapters follow logically, and summaries and margin notes highlight important concepts. Finally, much effort is made to guide the novice phonologist through the processes of hypothesis construction and evaluation. The book also has some weaknesses. In general, there is a lack of examples drawn from languages other than English. Second, some of the problem sets could be better constructed. Third, the chapter on Optimality Theory could be better integrated into the book as a whole. Finally, the ‘interactive’ grey boxes, intended to facilitate the reader’s understanding, are excessive in number and interrupt the flow of the text. However, all in all, this is indeed a very sound textbook. Jeffrey Steele McGill University Copyright © 2002 Linguistic Society of America
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.151 | 0.108 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".