Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Complexity in Polish Phonotactics

On Features, Weights, Rankings and Preferences

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Paula Orzechowska

    1. Collegium Heliodori Święcicki, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Offers a dynamic, exploratory, feature-based approach to phonotactics and morphonotactics
  • Discovers the subsegmental motivation for the phonological structure of consonant clusters
  • Develops the concept of (positional) feature weight
  • Proposes heretofore unidentified rankings of phonotactic preferences
  • Uses online processing and casual speech data as sources of external evidence

Part of the book series: Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics (PRPHPH)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Sources of Phonotactic Complexity in Polish

    • Paula Orzechowska
    Pages 1-57

  3. Theoretical Approaches to Phonotactic Complexity of Polish

    • Paula Orzechowska
    Pages 59-94

  4. Statistical Modelling of Phonotactic Constraints and Preferences

    • Paula Orzechowska
    Pages 95-163

  5. Sonority and Place Constraints in Phonotactics: Evidence from Reaction Time Experiments

    • Paula Orzechowska
    Pages 165-215

  6. Phonological Processes in Phonotactics: Evidence from Casual Speech

    • Paula Orzechowska
    Pages 217-265

  7. Quo Vadimus? Towards an Elementary Particle in Phonology

    • Paula Orzechowska
    Pages 267-280

  8. Conclusions

    • Paula Orzechowska
    Pages 281-282

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 283-325
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book provides a refreshing perspective on the description, study and representation of consonant clusters in Polish. What are the sources of phonotactic complexity? What properties or principles motivate the phonological structure of initial and final consonant clusters? In answering these questions, a necessary turning point consists in investigating sequences of consonants at their most basic level, namely in terms of phonological features. The analysis is exploratory: it leads to discovering prevalent feature patterns in clusters from which new phonotactic generalizations are derived.



A recurring theme in the book is that phonological features vary in weight depending on (1) their distribution in a cluster, (2) their position in a word, and (3) language domain. Positional feature weight reflects the relative importance of place, manner and voice features (e.g. coronal, dorsal, strident, continuant) in constructing cluster inventories, minimizing cognitive effort, facilitating production and triggering specific casual speech processes. Feature weights give rise to previously unidentified positional preferences. Rankings of features and preferences are a testing ground for principles of sonority, contrast, clarity of perception and ease of articulation.


This volume addresses practitioners in the field seeking new methods of phonotactic modelling and approaches to complexity, as well as students interested in an overview of current research directions in the study of consonant clusters. Sequences of consonants in Polish are certainly among the most remarkable ones that readers will ever encounter in their linguistic explorations. In this volume, they will come to realise that hundreds of unusually long, odd-looking, sonority-violating, morphologically complex and infrequent clusters are in fact well-motivated and structured according to well-defined tactic patterns of features.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Collegium Heliodori Święcicki, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

    Paula Orzechowska

About the author

​Paula Orzechowska, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of English (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland). In 2011, she was employed in projects at the Institute of German Linguistics (University of Marburg, Germany), and acted as full professor at the Department of English and American Studies (University of Potsdam, Germany) from 2011 to 2013. Dr Orzechowska collaborates with English, German and linguistic institutes and research centres in Germany, Austria and France, working in international projects and completing short-term grants. Since 2016, she has been head of the project The Role of Phonological Features in Phonotactics: A Study on Structure and Learnability of Consonant Clusters in Slavic and Germanic Languages financed by the National Science Centre (Poland). Her main research interests are in phonetics and phonology, morphonology, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. She has previously worked on prosody, particularly on (mor)phonotacticsand word stress of Germanic, Slavic and selected Afro-Asiatic systems. Her most recent theoretical and experimental contributions were published in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology, Language Cognition and Neuroscience, and Folia Linguistica.

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation