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Doing Phonology
Journ al of Phonetics ( 1992) 20, 167-171
Reviews Doing Phonology By J. Kelly and J. Local Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989. 286 pp.' £25.
Janet Grijzenhout and Wim Zonneveld Department of English Language and Literature, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Unmistakeably , phonology has become increasingly phonetic over the past decade or so. For example, in one of the classical early papers of "autosegmental" (non-linear) phonology , Goldsmith (1976) discusses the failure of what he calls the "Absolute Slicing Hypothesis", by which, as in Chomsky & Halle 's Sound Pattern of English (1968), the phonological representation of the English word bin is taken to be one close to (1) below: (1)
+ conson - nasal + labial - coronal
+syll -nasal -labial - coronal
+conson + nasal - labial + coronal
As long as we consider only the phonological features in (1) (features pertaining to the lips, the tongue and the velum), Absolute Slicing is largely correct. However, as soon as we try to add the activity of the larynx that gives rise to pitch, something much closer to the " orchestral score" in (2) is needed:
(2)
lips: tongue: velum: larynx:
.. close up ... open .. . .. . . . ....... . .. . .. high and front . .. . . .. touch the palate . raise ... . ... lower . . ....... . .... .. .. . .. high pitch ... low pitch . .. . .. ....... .
As Goldsmith notes : the "pitch specifications are .. . not the result of specification of any of the segments in (1) . . . The falling pitch of this utterance is not part of the phonological segments in the same sense that the other commands are . .. (those for the lips, the tongue , or the velum) ... In this sense, then , the Absolute Slicing Hypothesis fails; the slicing is not absolute or complete, but rather may exclude some parts of the linguistic signal" (p. 25) . He then goes on to show that representations such as those in (3) (for, respectively, tone in Lomongo and
Book reviews
168
nasalization in Guarani) are much nearer to the mark: (3)
* * lomb+ a+ lomb+ V Do + ro + Dupl + i
I
H
L
N
I I N N
Autosegmental phonology is a direct reaction to some of the less satisfactory characteristics of SPE, in which Chomsky and Halle say for instance the following (p. ix): "[W)e have omitted from our discussion many topics about which we have not been able to learn enough, though they may very well be of considerable importance. For example, we have omitted pitch from consideration because we have nothing to add to the study of the phonetics of intonation and have not yet attempted to deal with the still quite open question of the systematic role of pitch contours or levels within the framework of syntactic and phonological theory as we so far understand it. .. As far as we have been able to determine, the various omissions and gaps have no serious bearings on the questions that we have dealt with, although, clearly, one must keep an open mind on this matter". In view of the current status of non-linear phonology in the field (for the state of affairs relevant to the phonetics-phonology interface see e.g. Clements , 1985), the final sentence of this quote is a serious understatement. Against this background, Kelly & Local's Doing Phonology is both welcome and sensible on the one hand, and excessively cautious and outmoded on the other. Given the book's title, the reader may be lured into thinking that this is the long-awaited problem book in current phonology. It is not. It is about basics, but they are not those of the classroom; they are the basics of the study of sounds. It is elementary to the point where the distinction between phonetics and phonology is not so much blurred but rather, at that stage, largely irrelevant; and from there, elementary in the sense of guiding the reader into some preliminary and cautious phonological analyses of often first-hand material. Doing Phonology has a Preface and five parts. The preface is, curiously , written in the form of an apologia, and we will return to this below. Part 1, "Preliminaries", contains some common-sense remarks on the notion of language as such, and advice on how to fruitfully execute linguistic fieldwork: be unprejudiced, respect your informant, use live sessions tape-recorded in their entirety, strive toward an adequate observational written record, and so on. Part 2, "Observing", argues that the use of the products of phonetic investigation lies in phonology, but the needs of the theoretically inclined phonologist may change over time; therefore, "it is not possible to have too much phonetic detail". Thus, fieldwork notes will have to comprise the auditory aspects of speech, but speech may be perceived by kinesthetic means as well, so organic movements must be studied as well. The observed bits of speech must be analysed according to analytic auditory and movement parameters, although the observer must avoid relying on preordained phonetic categories. It may be difficult to say what motivates a deviation from established categories, but both more appropriate phonetic and subsequent phonological analysis may lead to such a move. Part 3, "Recording", does not prominently feature microphone and tape, but rather the most adequate character set for setting speech on paper. The authors discuss six such sets, beginning with Robertson's vox vivenda from the first half of
Book reviews
169
the seventeenth century, and including Bell's visible speech. The sixth is, not unexpectedly, the IPA alphabet, on which they base their own recording system. This only so, however, after a long discussion of its drawbacks: it is unsystematic, has gaps, its letter-symbols are incorrectly suggestive, and although principally phonetic, it is also based on phonological considerations with regard to universally contrasting (or non-contrasting) "features". Nevertheless, it is flexible, relatively easily adapted and extended, and "a fortunate blend of the physiological and the auditory". The authors then continue to make adaptations and extensions, in keeping with the aim of their book which "is not simply one of trying to achieve accuracy; rather, it is to have as many impressions as possible recorded together in some fashion, however ad hoc". They devise diacritics for pitch, tempo, resonance, co-occurrence, variability and so on. Part 4, easily the longest of the book, is about "Interpreting" records of speech. Interpreting is dependent on one's aims, it will be different when one is preparing a writing system for a literacy program as opposed to a teaching or reference grammar, and different yet again when making a description forming the basis of a theoretical-linguistic approach. It discusses, first of all, the problem of how to recognize words and morphemes. But the interesting parts of this chapter deal with "stretches" and "phasing". The former concern interpretations "beyond the segment" where we find "dynamism" and "continuity" in phonological features which have "long-domain" relevance; the latter concern the "synchronisation" of the concurrent articulatory components of utterances. Material is provided from a wealth of languages, including Bakosi, Chisenga, Sinhalese, Limburg Dutch, Polish, Tyneside English, Scots Gaelic, Malayalam, Mexican Spanish and many, many others. The authors show that close attention to phonetic detail can reveal features of theoretical importance by analysing three cases: putative (but not actual) homophony in child speech, neutralization involving English nasal assimilation, and American English "dental flapping". And they suggest that if phonetic detail is examined carefully, received phonological analyses require revision or at least critical examination . One example is Welsh mutation, which is classically considered a phonological rule affecting initial consonants in certain morphosyntactic contexts, and manipulating manner of articulation and voicing. They suggest, however, on close inspection of the actual phonetic properties of the data, that mutation is not segmental but syllabic, and that typically it involves secondary articulatory resonances, over and above manner and voicing. Part 5, finally, contains five "Case Studies" in the vein of part 4: a description of "aberrant" speech of a child of five years two months; an analysis of dialect material from Wright's English Dialect Grammar of 1905; a comparison of resonance characteristics of monosyllabic words for four native speakers from widely different dialects of English, including the creole of Georgetown, Guyana; a longitudinal analysis of a child from five years four months to five years eleven months; and a description of the function of intonation in conversational talk. There are several ways of viewing this book; as an introduction into phonological fieldwork, as a plea for the close study of phonetic detail in phonological analysis, or as a repudiation of the phoneme or phonological segment (i.e. of the "Absolute Slicing Hypothesis"). It is far too well and cleverly written to be called a hotchpotch, but in places the going is rough, and the reader cannot always be sure which of these several personas to be guided by. Curiously, one finds oneself in the
170
Book reviews
company of the authors in making this observation, and nowhere more so than in their preface. The authors say this is not a text book. They acknowledge a debt to the "prosodic analysis" of 1. R . Firth, but claim to refrain from discussing any phonological theory (although they promise that in the degree of detail of their discussion they "spare readers nothing ... , since the phonological analyses we adumbrate are based on the fine structure of this detail") . They admonish hypothetical unbelieving readers who "are unwilling to accept that things can be attended to and notated in the kind of detail we present in this book" by pointing out that an unnamed post-graduate student supplied some of the material of part 4. They attribute to unnamed people the view that " phonology has now all been done" in order to state they do not believe this. The Preface is densely populated with such strawmen. The authors attribute to other (or perhaps the same) unnamed people the "schizophrenic" position that " attention to fine detail is a phonetic indulgence and apt, indeed certain, to vitiate the clean lines of the final analysis", in order to contrast their own allegedly "heretical" view that "phonetic records of spoken language material are the only serious starting point for phonological analysis and that they should be as detailed and accurate as possible". They foresee that, again for people remaining anonymous, "what we do here will probably not amount to 'phonology' at all", and "[ w]e may be accused of subjectivity, of errant impressionism and hair-splitting, perhaps even of fantasy " ; and so on . This is nonsense, intended possibly to disguise the authors' lack of a coherent concept of the book, but ultimately detracting from its strong points. What are these? Although we cannot recall having encountered in this book the word "fieldwork" a significant number of times, half of its text is a useful and sensible introduction to this important aspect of phonetics-phonology. On the other hand, this strong point is diminished by the authors' mistaken belief that their readers need extensive exact copies of the scrawls and scribbles from their notepads, when one or two examples would suffice. (When my colleague-next-door tells me he has found that some syllables are pronounced with much more resonance than commonly thought, he will not be more credible if he shows me the way he has jotted down his data. And does the same the next day, and the next day, and the next.) The space would have been better given to a discussion of the role of video and digital storage of infrequent or otherwise precious phonetic material , but references are lacking. If the other half of Doing Phonology is a plea for the role of phonetic detail in phonological analysis, the authors can only be congratulated on their skill and knowledge in this realm. However, this strength is again diminished by dogma. The view that phonetic records are the only serious starting point for phonological analysis is not so much heretic as exotic. When, in analysing Dutch stress, one observes that ravot and marmot are rhyme-pairs, but that neither of these makes a rhyme-pair with robot (a fact abundantly confirmed by native speaker intuitions elicited under any circumstances), one does not need phonetic detail to proceed with the analysis, even if "stress" is only a preliminary cover-term for "does or does not rhyme with". Given similar observations from different languages, one might even go on to draw theoretical inferences, and given investigation of older literary texts (in particular of poetry) one may even be able to draw historical conclusions. On the other hand, when this polemic is discounted, the authors do show intelligently and cleverly that phonetic investigations can be interesting and rewarding even if one has exclusively in mind to ultimately use their products as material and arguments in
Book reviews
171
phonological analysis. If, as they show here, the syllable is the domain of Welsh mutation, this is useful (perhaps even critical) information for phonologists , particularly autosegmental phonologists. But Doing Phonology has, if we may, a "third half", which also contains much of merit. A large part of its text is an elaborate argument against the Absolute Slicing Hypothesis, and even if we leave out anything on fieldwork, and simply forget whether attention to phonetic detail is a heresy or schizophrenic or neither, there are potential contributions of this book in the discussions of "stretches" and " phasing", which connect immediately to much that is going on in current theoretical, autosegmental phonology. Emphasizing this theme might have provided an explicit organizational strand, which now has to be discovered by the reader. Unfortunately, one cannot help suspecting that the reason the authors do not provide this organization (and maintain that they are involved in the un- or pre-theoretical study of sounds) is simply that they are not very well versed in phological developments of the past few decades. Throughout the text phoneme theory is chided for having " nothing interesting to offer" , and the reader is called upon "to emancipate oneself from a too strict adherence to a segment-by-segment model". The authors do admit that " [s]orne of the work carried out within metrical phonology in particular seems to us to have thrown light in a cogent way on the workings of complex phonological systems"; but they pick the wrong branch of the non-linear tree, intending to refer to "autosegmental phonology"; and they fail to substantiate this remark, with references even to such highly accessible works as Goldsmith (1976). Clearly, it is not the case (pace the authors' fears and suggestions) that current theoretically inclined phonology has a strong non- or even anti-phonetic bias. However, phonological issues can be decided on various types of evidence, among which phonetic evidence is increasingly welcome and relevant. Phoneticians may thus be encouraged to contribute to the field. Phonologists may find confirmed in a book such as this one that the lines set out by the non-linear approach are fertile, and that more and more sustaining evidence may come from the phonetic realm. And specialists may find interesting material in especially parts 4 and 5. Doing Phonology contains a number of misprints, or mistakes of presentation. For instance , references to absent examples meaning "night" and "beard" make almost unintelligible a potentially interesting discussion of Fang (Bantu) on pp. 150ft. Similarly, understanding the exposition of neutralization in child language on pp. 154ft is hampered by references to examples 1-4, which are given pairwise but unnumbered in the text. There are no exercises in this book; neither is there an index, nor a bibliography. References Clements, G. N. (1985) The geometry of phonological features . Phonology yearbook 2. Cambridge University Press . Chomsky, N. and Halle , M. (1968) The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row. Goldsmith, J . (1976) An overview of autosegmental phonology, Linguistic Analysis, 2(1) , 23-68.
Reviews Doing Phonology By J. Kelly and J. Local Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989. 286 pp.' £25.
Janet Grijzenhout and Wim Zonneveld Department of English Language and Literature, Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Unmistakeably , phonology has become increasingly phonetic over the past decade or so. For example, in one of the classical early papers of "autosegmental" (non-linear) phonology , Goldsmith (1976) discusses the failure of what he calls the "Absolute Slicing Hypothesis", by which, as in Chomsky & Halle 's Sound Pattern of English (1968), the phonological representation of the English word bin is taken to be one close to (1) below: (1)
+ conson - nasal + labial - coronal
+syll -nasal -labial - coronal
+conson + nasal - labial + coronal
As long as we consider only the phonological features in (1) (features pertaining to the lips, the tongue and the velum), Absolute Slicing is largely correct. However, as soon as we try to add the activity of the larynx that gives rise to pitch, something much closer to the " orchestral score" in (2) is needed:
(2)
lips: tongue: velum: larynx:
.. close up ... open .. . .. . . . ....... . .. . .. high and front . .. . . .. touch the palate . raise ... . ... lower . . ....... . .... .. .. . .. high pitch ... low pitch . .. . .. ....... .
As Goldsmith notes : the "pitch specifications are .. . not the result of specification of any of the segments in (1) . . . The falling pitch of this utterance is not part of the phonological segments in the same sense that the other commands are . .. (those for the lips, the tongue , or the velum) ... In this sense, then , the Absolute Slicing Hypothesis fails; the slicing is not absolute or complete, but rather may exclude some parts of the linguistic signal" (p. 25) . He then goes on to show that representations such as those in (3) (for, respectively, tone in Lomongo and
Book reviews
168
nasalization in Guarani) are much nearer to the mark: (3)
* * lomb+ a+ lomb+ V Do + ro + Dupl + i
I
H
L
N
I I N N
Autosegmental phonology is a direct reaction to some of the less satisfactory characteristics of SPE, in which Chomsky and Halle say for instance the following (p. ix): "[W)e have omitted from our discussion many topics about which we have not been able to learn enough, though they may very well be of considerable importance. For example, we have omitted pitch from consideration because we have nothing to add to the study of the phonetics of intonation and have not yet attempted to deal with the still quite open question of the systematic role of pitch contours or levels within the framework of syntactic and phonological theory as we so far understand it. .. As far as we have been able to determine, the various omissions and gaps have no serious bearings on the questions that we have dealt with, although, clearly, one must keep an open mind on this matter". In view of the current status of non-linear phonology in the field (for the state of affairs relevant to the phonetics-phonology interface see e.g. Clements , 1985), the final sentence of this quote is a serious understatement. Against this background, Kelly & Local's Doing Phonology is both welcome and sensible on the one hand, and excessively cautious and outmoded on the other. Given the book's title, the reader may be lured into thinking that this is the long-awaited problem book in current phonology. It is not. It is about basics, but they are not those of the classroom; they are the basics of the study of sounds. It is elementary to the point where the distinction between phonetics and phonology is not so much blurred but rather, at that stage, largely irrelevant; and from there, elementary in the sense of guiding the reader into some preliminary and cautious phonological analyses of often first-hand material. Doing Phonology has a Preface and five parts. The preface is, curiously , written in the form of an apologia, and we will return to this below. Part 1, "Preliminaries", contains some common-sense remarks on the notion of language as such, and advice on how to fruitfully execute linguistic fieldwork: be unprejudiced, respect your informant, use live sessions tape-recorded in their entirety, strive toward an adequate observational written record, and so on. Part 2, "Observing", argues that the use of the products of phonetic investigation lies in phonology, but the needs of the theoretically inclined phonologist may change over time; therefore, "it is not possible to have too much phonetic detail". Thus, fieldwork notes will have to comprise the auditory aspects of speech, but speech may be perceived by kinesthetic means as well, so organic movements must be studied as well. The observed bits of speech must be analysed according to analytic auditory and movement parameters, although the observer must avoid relying on preordained phonetic categories. It may be difficult to say what motivates a deviation from established categories, but both more appropriate phonetic and subsequent phonological analysis may lead to such a move. Part 3, "Recording", does not prominently feature microphone and tape, but rather the most adequate character set for setting speech on paper. The authors discuss six such sets, beginning with Robertson's vox vivenda from the first half of
Book reviews
169
the seventeenth century, and including Bell's visible speech. The sixth is, not unexpectedly, the IPA alphabet, on which they base their own recording system. This only so, however, after a long discussion of its drawbacks: it is unsystematic, has gaps, its letter-symbols are incorrectly suggestive, and although principally phonetic, it is also based on phonological considerations with regard to universally contrasting (or non-contrasting) "features". Nevertheless, it is flexible, relatively easily adapted and extended, and "a fortunate blend of the physiological and the auditory". The authors then continue to make adaptations and extensions, in keeping with the aim of their book which "is not simply one of trying to achieve accuracy; rather, it is to have as many impressions as possible recorded together in some fashion, however ad hoc". They devise diacritics for pitch, tempo, resonance, co-occurrence, variability and so on. Part 4, easily the longest of the book, is about "Interpreting" records of speech. Interpreting is dependent on one's aims, it will be different when one is preparing a writing system for a literacy program as opposed to a teaching or reference grammar, and different yet again when making a description forming the basis of a theoretical-linguistic approach. It discusses, first of all, the problem of how to recognize words and morphemes. But the interesting parts of this chapter deal with "stretches" and "phasing". The former concern interpretations "beyond the segment" where we find "dynamism" and "continuity" in phonological features which have "long-domain" relevance; the latter concern the "synchronisation" of the concurrent articulatory components of utterances. Material is provided from a wealth of languages, including Bakosi, Chisenga, Sinhalese, Limburg Dutch, Polish, Tyneside English, Scots Gaelic, Malayalam, Mexican Spanish and many, many others. The authors show that close attention to phonetic detail can reveal features of theoretical importance by analysing three cases: putative (but not actual) homophony in child speech, neutralization involving English nasal assimilation, and American English "dental flapping". And they suggest that if phonetic detail is examined carefully, received phonological analyses require revision or at least critical examination . One example is Welsh mutation, which is classically considered a phonological rule affecting initial consonants in certain morphosyntactic contexts, and manipulating manner of articulation and voicing. They suggest, however, on close inspection of the actual phonetic properties of the data, that mutation is not segmental but syllabic, and that typically it involves secondary articulatory resonances, over and above manner and voicing. Part 5, finally, contains five "Case Studies" in the vein of part 4: a description of "aberrant" speech of a child of five years two months; an analysis of dialect material from Wright's English Dialect Grammar of 1905; a comparison of resonance characteristics of monosyllabic words for four native speakers from widely different dialects of English, including the creole of Georgetown, Guyana; a longitudinal analysis of a child from five years four months to five years eleven months; and a description of the function of intonation in conversational talk. There are several ways of viewing this book; as an introduction into phonological fieldwork, as a plea for the close study of phonetic detail in phonological analysis, or as a repudiation of the phoneme or phonological segment (i.e. of the "Absolute Slicing Hypothesis"). It is far too well and cleverly written to be called a hotchpotch, but in places the going is rough, and the reader cannot always be sure which of these several personas to be guided by. Curiously, one finds oneself in the
170
Book reviews
company of the authors in making this observation, and nowhere more so than in their preface. The authors say this is not a text book. They acknowledge a debt to the "prosodic analysis" of 1. R . Firth, but claim to refrain from discussing any phonological theory (although they promise that in the degree of detail of their discussion they "spare readers nothing ... , since the phonological analyses we adumbrate are based on the fine structure of this detail") . They admonish hypothetical unbelieving readers who "are unwilling to accept that things can be attended to and notated in the kind of detail we present in this book" by pointing out that an unnamed post-graduate student supplied some of the material of part 4. They attribute to unnamed people the view that " phonology has now all been done" in order to state they do not believe this. The Preface is densely populated with such strawmen. The authors attribute to other (or perhaps the same) unnamed people the "schizophrenic" position that " attention to fine detail is a phonetic indulgence and apt, indeed certain, to vitiate the clean lines of the final analysis", in order to contrast their own allegedly "heretical" view that "phonetic records of spoken language material are the only serious starting point for phonological analysis and that they should be as detailed and accurate as possible". They foresee that, again for people remaining anonymous, "what we do here will probably not amount to 'phonology' at all", and "[ w]e may be accused of subjectivity, of errant impressionism and hair-splitting, perhaps even of fantasy " ; and so on . This is nonsense, intended possibly to disguise the authors' lack of a coherent concept of the book, but ultimately detracting from its strong points. What are these? Although we cannot recall having encountered in this book the word "fieldwork" a significant number of times, half of its text is a useful and sensible introduction to this important aspect of phonetics-phonology. On the other hand, this strong point is diminished by the authors' mistaken belief that their readers need extensive exact copies of the scrawls and scribbles from their notepads, when one or two examples would suffice. (When my colleague-next-door tells me he has found that some syllables are pronounced with much more resonance than commonly thought, he will not be more credible if he shows me the way he has jotted down his data. And does the same the next day, and the next day, and the next.) The space would have been better given to a discussion of the role of video and digital storage of infrequent or otherwise precious phonetic material , but references are lacking. If the other half of Doing Phonology is a plea for the role of phonetic detail in phonological analysis, the authors can only be congratulated on their skill and knowledge in this realm. However, this strength is again diminished by dogma. The view that phonetic records are the only serious starting point for phonological analysis is not so much heretic as exotic. When, in analysing Dutch stress, one observes that ravot and marmot are rhyme-pairs, but that neither of these makes a rhyme-pair with robot (a fact abundantly confirmed by native speaker intuitions elicited under any circumstances), one does not need phonetic detail to proceed with the analysis, even if "stress" is only a preliminary cover-term for "does or does not rhyme with". Given similar observations from different languages, one might even go on to draw theoretical inferences, and given investigation of older literary texts (in particular of poetry) one may even be able to draw historical conclusions. On the other hand, when this polemic is discounted, the authors do show intelligently and cleverly that phonetic investigations can be interesting and rewarding even if one has exclusively in mind to ultimately use their products as material and arguments in
Book reviews
171
phonological analysis. If, as they show here, the syllable is the domain of Welsh mutation, this is useful (perhaps even critical) information for phonologists , particularly autosegmental phonologists. But Doing Phonology has, if we may, a "third half", which also contains much of merit. A large part of its text is an elaborate argument against the Absolute Slicing Hypothesis, and even if we leave out anything on fieldwork, and simply forget whether attention to phonetic detail is a heresy or schizophrenic or neither, there are potential contributions of this book in the discussions of "stretches" and " phasing", which connect immediately to much that is going on in current theoretical, autosegmental phonology. Emphasizing this theme might have provided an explicit organizational strand, which now has to be discovered by the reader. Unfortunately, one cannot help suspecting that the reason the authors do not provide this organization (and maintain that they are involved in the un- or pre-theoretical study of sounds) is simply that they are not very well versed in phological developments of the past few decades. Throughout the text phoneme theory is chided for having " nothing interesting to offer" , and the reader is called upon "to emancipate oneself from a too strict adherence to a segment-by-segment model". The authors do admit that " [s]orne of the work carried out within metrical phonology in particular seems to us to have thrown light in a cogent way on the workings of complex phonological systems"; but they pick the wrong branch of the non-linear tree, intending to refer to "autosegmental phonology"; and they fail to substantiate this remark, with references even to such highly accessible works as Goldsmith (1976). Clearly, it is not the case (pace the authors' fears and suggestions) that current theoretically inclined phonology has a strong non- or even anti-phonetic bias. However, phonological issues can be decided on various types of evidence, among which phonetic evidence is increasingly welcome and relevant. Phoneticians may thus be encouraged to contribute to the field. Phonologists may find confirmed in a book such as this one that the lines set out by the non-linear approach are fertile, and that more and more sustaining evidence may come from the phonetic realm. And specialists may find interesting material in especially parts 4 and 5. Doing Phonology contains a number of misprints, or mistakes of presentation. For instance , references to absent examples meaning "night" and "beard" make almost unintelligible a potentially interesting discussion of Fang (Bantu) on pp. 150ft. Similarly, understanding the exposition of neutralization in child language on pp. 154ft is hampered by references to examples 1-4, which are given pairwise but unnumbered in the text. There are no exercises in this book; neither is there an index, nor a bibliography. References Clements, G. N. (1985) The geometry of phonological features . Phonology yearbook 2. Cambridge University Press . Chomsky, N. and Halle , M. (1968) The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row. Goldsmith, J . (1976) An overview of autosegmental phonology, Linguistic Analysis, 2(1) , 23-68.