Rarities in phonetics and phonology: Structural, typological, evolutionary, and social dimensions

Abstract

Synopsis:

Rare phenomena play a key role in forming and challenging linguistic theory. This volume presents multi-faceted analyses of rarities in phonetics and phonology, from a wide variety of theoretical standpoints. Some contributions to the volume analyse language-specific rare features, placing them in a broader cross-linguistic context and looking at a sum of their phonological, phonetic, and evolutionary properties, at times also making connections to sociolinguistic factors. Others consider the same (or similar) phenomena from different analytical angles, with extensive cross-referencing, or take a broad analytical or typological stance towards rare phenomena and discuss what it means to be rare.

The volume provides a nuanced picture of phonetic and phonological rarities in genealogically diverse languages, mostly lesser-studied, from around the globe. Authors were encouraged to attempt to strike a middle ground between radical exoticisation of the rarities at hand (describing them in idiosyncratic terms) and radical normalisation (underplaying the rarity of the phenomena at hand). Highly theory-specific or technical terminology is avoided or explained carefully, in order to make the book maximally accessible for a wide typologically-minded audience.