This book addresses the fundamental question of how the relative prominence of word position influences vowel processes and distributions.

Rachel Walker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Nasalization, Neutral Segments and Opacity Effects (2000), and has contributed numerous articles to journals and books.

1. Introduction; 2. Preliminaries: functional grounding; 3. Generalized licensing; 4. Typological predictions; 5. Indirect licensing; 6. Identity licensing; 7. Direct licensing; 8. Maximal licensing; 9. Conclusion and final issues.