The Study of Word Stress and Accent: Theories, Methods and Data

Stress and accent are central, organizing features of grammar, but their precise nature continues to be a source of mystery and wonder. These issues come to the forefront in the phonetic manifestation of stress and accent, their cross-linguistic variation and the subtle and intricate laws they obey in individual languages. Understanding the nature of stress and accent systems informs all aspects of linguistic theory, methods, typology and especially the grammatical analysis of language data. These themes form the organizational backbone of this book. Bringing together a team of world-renowned phonologists, the volume covers a range of typological and theoretical issues in the study of stress and accent. It will appeal to researchers who value synergistic approaches to the study of stress and accent, careful attention to cross-linguistic variation, and detailed analyzes of both well-studied and understudied languages. The book is a lively testimony of a field of inquiry that shows progress, while also identifying questions for ongoing research.

Rob Goedemans is Information Manager in the Humanities Faculty of Universiteit Leiden. His research focusses on phonetics, phonology and typology of stress in the languages of the world in general, and the languages of Aboriginal Australia and Indonesia in particular. Together with Harry van der Hulst, he has worked on several publications based on the StressTyp database, with which he has been involved since its inception.

Jeffrey Heinz is Professor in the Department of Linguistics and the Institute of Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University. He conducts research at the intersection of theoretical linguistics, theoretical computer science, and computational learning theory. With Rob Goedemans and Harry van der Hulst, he helped develop the StressTyp2 database, which organizes and presents information on the stress and accent patterns in hundreds of languages around the world.

Harry van der Hulst is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut. He specializes in phonology, which is the study of the sounds systems of languages, as well as the visual aspects of sign languages. He has published 25 books and over 130 articles and has been Editor-in-Chief of the international linguistic journal The Linguistic Review since 1990. With Rob Goedemans and Jeff Heinz he helped develop the StressTyp2 database, which organizes and presents information on the stress and accent patterns in hundreds of languages around the world.