Last update:
9 February 2010
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Spanish Phonology and MorphologyExperimental and quantitative perspectives
2004. xvi, 198 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound
– In stock
978 90 272 1562 8 / EUR 105.00 978 1 58811 612 3 / USD 158.00
e-Book
– Available from e-book platforms
Unlike most monographs on Spanish phonology and morphology that approach these topics from a structuralist or generativist framework, this volume is written from a less traditional point of view. More specifically, it emphasizes quantitative evidence from sources such as usage-based studies, psycholinguistic experiments, corpus data, and computer simulations. Arguments are presented to demonstrate that these kinds of evidence are crucial for establishing theories of language that relate to the psychological mechanisms involved in producing and comprehending speech, in contrast to theories about abstract linguistic structure. A range of topics is covered including morphological parsing, nominalization, stress, syllable structure, diphthongization, gender, morphophonemic alternations, and epenthesis. An appendix is included that serves as a primer on quantitative linguistic research. It discusses how some of the cited experiments were carried out, provides an introduction to statistical analysis, and discusses tools that are available for conducting quantitative research on the Spanish language.
Table of contents
“Eddington's book provides for Hispanic Linguistics a compelling invitation to explore the new experimental and modelling techniques that are transforming current thinking about language. It makes a wonderful guide to the new theory and method that will be useful to students as well as more advanced researchers.”
Joan Bybee, University of New Mexico
“This volume does a very thorough job of laying the philosophical and methodological groundwork for serious empirical testing of current theoretical models of Spanish phonology and morphology. It will be a very useful complement to advanced courses in linguistic theory and experimental approaches to phonology.”
“This book is both a valuable contribution to the debate over the psychological reality of linguistic analyses, and a helpful resource for those who wish to explore what experimental and quantitative methodology can reveal about language structure and processing, pointing them to more extensive resources that may provide a solid foundation for experimental design and empirical investigation.”
“This important contribution to Spanish phonology and morphology is likely to have a profound impact on the field.”
Subject classification |
Linguistics