This paper investigates the phonetic specification of contour tones through a case study of the Mandarin rising tone. The patterns of variation in the realisation of the rising tone as a function of speech rate indicate that its specifications include targets pertaining to both the pitch movement and its end points: the slope of the F0 rise, the magnitude of the rise, and the alignment of the onset and offset of the rise. This analysis implies that the rising tone is overspecified, in that any one of the target properties can be derived from the other three (e.g. slope is predictable from the magnitude and timing of the rise). As a result, the targets conflict, and cannot all be realised. The conflict between tone targets is resolved by a compromise between them, a pattern that is analysed quantitatively by formulating the targets as weighted, violable constraints.

This paper examines the role of weight in stress assignment in the Portuguese lexicon, and proposes a probabilistic approach to stress. I show that weight effects are gradient, and weaken monotonically as we move away from the right edge of the word. Such effects depend on the position of a syllable in the word, as well as on the number of segments the syllable contains. The probabilistic model proposed in this paper is based on a single predictor, namely weight, and yields more accurate results than a categorical analysis, where weight is treated as binary. Finally, I discuss implications for the grammar of Portuguese.

Templatic morphology involves the appearance of a fixed shape on a morpheme in a specific morphological context. This paper makes two claims: the morphological context of a template is syntactically cyclic, resulting in recursive prosodic word structure, and the shape of a template results from prosodic well-formedness conditions on the internal prosodic word. Templatic morphology in Chukchansi Yokuts illustrates these claims: affixes that trigger templates transfer the root to the phonology before other material is transferred, so that the root forms a prosodic word which is internal to the whole word. Roots with one underlying vowel are augmented to meet a disyllabic minimality requirement on prosodic words; the resulting disyllable forms a light–heavy iamb, to optimally satisfy Chukchansi parsing requirements. Templatic morphology falls out from the predictable interaction of the syntax–phonology interface and general phonological properties of a language, and needs no special apparatus or diacritics.

‘Phonologisation’ is a process whereby a phonetic phenomenon enters the phonological grammar and becomes conceptualised as the result of categorical manipulation of phonological symbols. I analyse the phonologisation of a predictable phonological pattern in Welsh, with particular attention to identifying criteria for whether phonologisation has occurred. I argue for a model where phonologisation experiences bottom-up and top-down biases. From the bottom up, there is pressure to phonologise phenomena with a categorical distribution; from the top down, there exist formal constraints on featural specification. I focus on the requirement for featural specifications to obey the Contrastivist Hypothesis, which denies that redundant features can be involved in phonological computation, in the context of a framework with emergent features. I suggest that the Contrastivist Hypothesis provides a useful boundary condition for emergent-feature theories, whilst independent phonologisation criteria provide contrastivist approaches with a more solid conceptual underpinning.

This paper describes and analyses the vowel-harmony system of the Kordofanian language Moro. Moro has a cross-height dominant-recessive raising harmony system in which high vowels and a central mid vowel trigger harmony, while peripheral mid vowels and a central low vowel are harmony targets. Schwas can co-occur with any of the vowels, appearing inert to harmony. Yet when schwas occur alone in a morpheme, some trigger harmony and some do not. We suggest that an original ATR-harmony system shifted to a height system via merger and centralisation, producing two distinct central vowels, rather than a single schwa. One vowel patterns with the higher vowels in triggering harmony, and the other patterns with the lower vowels. We also propose that a particle-based representation offers the best characterisation of the groupings of target and trigger vowels in the language.