Frontiers of Phonology is a collection of essays that present a
selective overview of trends in the linguistic analysis of sound
structure. The essays are written by specialists from Europe, Canada and
the USA and discuss issues from three broad areas of phonology: the
nature and representation of phonological features; the role and
structure of the skeletal tier and syllable structure; and the competing
claims of derivational and declarative approaches to phonology.
The book provides a forum for lively discussion of important theoretical
topics from various standpoints including metrical and autosegmental
phonology, dependency phonology and declarative phonology. The
contributors, who are protagonists of these different standpoints,
compare notes and show the merits of their different approaches. The
essays discussing derivational issues offer an excellent introduction to
the area of constraints based phonology, and by covering the phonology
of many languages the book provides an understanding of how human
languages in general use sound.