Investigating a tone language involves careful transcription of tone on words and phrases. This is challenging when the phonological categories--the tones or melodies--have not been identified. Effects such as coarticulation, sandhi, and phrase-level prosody appear as obstacles to early elicitation and classification of tone. This article presents…

In this paper I argue for a property-driven approach to phonological typology. Rather than seeking to classify or label languages, the central goal of phonological typology is to determine how different languages systematize the phonetic substance available to all languages. The paper focuses on a very murky area in phonological typology,…

Describes the phonological history of modern Cantonese. Part one includes phonotactic conditions, tonal developments, and initial changes. (EKN)

This article summarizes the development of the Tanacross practical orthography, highlighting the crucial differences between practical and technical orthography used in some linguistic publications. Three stages of Tanacross orthography are exemplified in research from the 1980s. A fourth stage is a hybrid of the second and third stages,…