Introduction: between stress and tone

Abstract

In any study of empirical phenomena, the unusual holds particular attraction. The Bird of Paradise with its amazing feathers, the monolithic baobabs and the joint nursing of emperor penguins are phenomena that catch the imagination of the specialist and the interested lay person alike. The scientific study of ‘outliers’ holds particular promise, often revealing a system’s complexity that is not evident when studying simpler phenomena. The same holds in the study of word-level prosody. Some languages, like Thai and Vietnamese, are tone languages; others, like English, have a lexical stress system. What other typological patterns are there, are combinations of tone and stress possible and what can the study of the unusual phenomena tell us about the nature of speech prosody? More fundamentally, what are the principles underlying a typology of (word-) prosodic systems? These are a few of the questions focused on within the field of word-prosodic typology. There are two driving forces behind the development of prosodic typology as a field of research, and both are present in the set of papers offered here. First, and crucially, there are the phenomena themselves. We know more and more about the kinds of systems that are possible in human language, as a result of increasingly sophisticated research, much of which focuses on minority languages. The accumulation of data blindly sets an agenda, as the phenomena challenge us to construct a typological framework and phonological theories that can accommodate them. An ever-richer picture is emerging. This is evident from the comprehensive