This book provides an overview of phonological typology: the study of how sounds are distributed across the languages of the world and why they display these distributions and patterns. Matthew Gordon analyses cross-linguistic data from a range of sources to gain insight into the driving forces behind a variety of phonological phenomena.

• 1.: Introduction


• 2: Theory and explanation in phonological typology


• 3: Phoneme inventories


• 4: Syllables


• 5: Segmental processes


• 6: Stress


• 7: Tone and intonation


• 8: Prosodic morphology


• 9: Conclusions

Matthew K. Gordon is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on phonological theory, typology, and the phonetic and phonological documentation of endangered languages. Much of his work deals with prosodic properties such as stress, syllable weight, and intonation. He is the author of Syllable Weight: Phonetics, Phonology, Typology (Routledge, 2006) and co-editor of Topic and Focus: Cross-linguistic Perspectives on Intonation and Meaning (Springer, 2007).