Language

This volume develops and defends the hypothesis that the head of a syllable determines the prosodic structure of that syllable (the ‘headedness hypothesis’). Based largely on evidence from Dutch, French, and Norwegian, van Oostendorp argues for the evidence of what he calls ‘projection constraints’, which hold that ‘if a segment dominates a feature F, it should head a branching constituent of type T’ (3), and the converse, that ‘if a segment heads a branching constituent of type T, it should dominate a feature F’ (3). The study employs optimality theory, albeit a version divided into lexical and postlexical phonologies.

Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (1–27), discusses the headedness hypothesis, as well as the various theoretical assumptions made by O and the data used in the study. The contents of the remaining chapters are also outlined. Ch. 2, ‘Vowel quality and rhyme structure in Dutch’ (29–76), presents a detailed discussion of the Standard Dutch vowel system. O argues that it is largely based on the feature [lax], not on length, as many previous scholars have argued (although there are a few vowels that are ‘truly long’; discussion of these vowels is deferred until the next chapter). There is also a very useful summary of previous research on the Dutch vowel system.

Chapter 3, ‘Tilburg Dutch and Standard Dutch vowel length’ (77–129), first reviews some details of the Standard Dutch vowel system (e.g. the status of diphthongs and the question of ambisyllabicity) before turning to a discussion of Tilburg Dutch, a dialect with a ‘real’ length distinction. Issues discussed in this section include vowel lengthening and shortening in Tilburg Dutch. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the derivation of the Standard Dutch vowel system (from its underlying representation).

Ch. 4, ‘Derived schwa in Dutch’ (131–68), discusses what O calls ‘the most well-studied vowel of Modern Dutch’ (131). O argues that schwa has only one feature [-cons] and can therefore head only a very special (O uses the term ‘defective’) type of syllable. O suggests that there are actually three types of schwa in Dutch: R-schwa (which is reduced from a full vowel), E-schwa (epenthetic schwa), and U-schwa (underlying schwa, consisting of those schwas that do not fit into one of the other two categories). This chapter focuses on R-schwa and E-schwa. Ch. 5, ‘Dutch U-schwa’ (169–228), looks at underlying schwa. O discusses the properties of U-schwa (e.g. it can occur in an open syllable, but not word-initially, and so on), reviews previous analyses, and examines some remaining problems (e.g. umlaut). The chapter concludes with a table listing the properties of the different types of schwa. Ch. 6, ‘Schwa in French and Norwegian’ (229–72) discusses the role of schwa, including issues such as schwa deletion, schwa as an epenthetic vowel, and learnability.

Ch. 7, ‘A vowel-glide alternation in Rotterdam Dutch’ (273–320), looks at a vowel-glide alternation in a Dutch dialect that resembles Sievers’ Law, which is found in a number of Indo-European language families. Issues discussed here include cliticization, diminutives, and hiatus. Ch. 8, ‘The projection constraint family’ (321–39), reviews the constraints used [End Page 623] in this study and discusses their application at various levels of the phonology. The volume concludes with a series of appendices which list the various constraints used and discuss the arguments for their ranking.

This is an impressive, well-argued study. My major reservation concerns the editing of the volume; there is an astounding number of typographical errors and stylistic infelicities. Yet this cannot diminish the genuine value of this book.