UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2012) Towards a Canonical Typology of Prosodic Systems 1 Larry M. Hyman University of California, Berkeley To appear in Esther Herrera Zendejas (ed.), Tono, Acento y Estructuras Metricas en Lenguas Mexicanas, Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico Property-driven typology Some time ago, Lehiste (1970:1) wrote that “a certain degree of vagueness seems to characterize most discussions of prosodic features”. Unfortunately, such vagueness and confusion still reign in discussions of prosodic typology, e.g. concerning questions such as those in (1). What’s a “tone language”? What’s a “stress language”? Is there a third distinct prosodic type called “pitch-accent language”? Part of the problem may stem from a corresponding confusion about typology itself. Thus, there may be disagreement concerning the answers to questions such as those in (2). a. b. what are the goals of typology or typological comparison? what are the objects of typological comparison? languages or properties? With respect to (2b), does typology aim to provide “a principled way of classifying the languages of the world by the most significant properties which distinguish one from another” (Hagege 1992: 7) Or, is “typology... not so much about the classification of languages as about the distributions of individual traits—units, categories, constructions, rules of all kinds—across the linguistic universe; these distributions, not languages as such, are the primary objects of comparison” (Plank 2001: 1399). According to the first view, the goal of phonological typology would be “to classify languages according to the phonemes they contain.... typology is the study of structural features across languages. Phonological typology involves comparing languages according to the number or type of sounds they contain” (Vajda 2001). Indeed, much work in this area has consisted of establishing inventories of contrasting surface segments, e.g. the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (UPSID) (Maddieson & Precoda 1990). Such emphasis on surface contrasts and sounds should not conflate a useful distinction between phonological vs. phonetic typology. In Hyman (2009) I argued that goal of phonological typology is not to classify or taxonomize languages, but should instead be “property-driven”. Rather than comparing (surface) inventories, counting phonemes, etc., the goal is to characterize the same vs. different ways in An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society Meeting, Canberra, Dec. 2-4, 2011, the conference on Tono, Acento y Estructuras Metricas en Lenguas Mexicanas, at El Colegio de Mexico, February 21, 2012, and the London Phonology Seminar, University College London, on March 29, 2012. I am grateful to the three audiences for stimulating responses and questions.