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  • The phonology of Portuguese by Maria Helena Mateus, Ernesto D’Andrade
  • Mark J. Elson
The phonology of Portuguese. By Maria Helena Mateus and Ernesto D’Andrade. (The phonology of the world’s languages.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x, 162. Cloth $80.00.

The aim of each volume in this series is to ‘offer an extensive treatment of the phonology of one language within a modern theoretical perspective’ (ii). The authors of this volume have chosen nonlinear (i.e. auto segmental and metrical) phonology as their theoretical perspective and standard European Portuguese as it is spoken in Lisbon and Coimbra as the source of data, although they do not ignore Brazilian Portuguese. There are seven chapters: ‘Introduction’ (1–9), ‘The phonological system of Portuguese’ (10–37), ‘Syllable structure’ (38–64), ‘Portuguese morphology: Inflection’ (65–87), ‘Portuguese morphology: Derivation’ (88–108), ‘Word stress in Portuguese’ (109–28), and ‘Phonological processes’ (129–48). These are followed by a reference list (149–57), name index (159–60), and subject index (161–62). The analytic chapters, that is, all but the ‘Introduction’, present the relevant data and associated observations and then incorporate the latter into nonlinear descriptive statements accompanied by explanatory discussion.

Thematically, the seven chapters divide into three parts: an introduction providing background; Chs. 4 and 5 on phonological processes relating specifically to the inflection and derivation of nouns, adjectives, and verbs; and the remaining chapters on general phonological processes, that is, processes operative regardless of part of speech. The introduction includes useful, but too brief, information on the external history of Portuguese, its attestation, and previous studies devoted to its structure. The larger of the other parts, treating general phonological processes, establishes the units of contrast and their auto segmental feature specifications (Ch. 2), presents and exemplifies syllable structure (Ch. 3), and reviews the implementation of stress assignment (Ch. 6) as well as the phonological processes relating to nasalization, unstressed vowels, and consonants in coda position (Ch. 7). The chapters in question include clear, adequately detailed discussion and are readily accessible without extensive theoretical or factual preparation.

The chapters in the part devoted to phonological processes relevant to inflection (Ch. 4) and derivation (Ch. 5) are a bit less accessible as a result, perhaps, of their brevity vis-à-vis the complexity of their subject matter. In the treatment of inflection, the discussion of verbal forms may, at times, be too terse for ready comprehension without prior knowledge. In addition, the authors devote little space to their decisions regarding the identification of verbal constituents, which are less evident than nominal. Finally, so-called irregular verbs (e.g. fazer ‘make’, perder ‘lose’), that is, verbs with allomorphy in the lexical constituent, receive no more than a mention (86–87). The treatments of nominal inflection and of derivational morphology are less compressed, the latter providing a useful list of the relevant suffixes subcategorized according to the type of base they select—root, stem, or word—and followed by an informative discussion of the issues associated with lexical representations.

The authors have fit a remarkably large amount of data and elucidating interpretation into relatively few pages. They are to be commended for the high quality of their contribution, the value of which lies not only in its usefulness as a comprehensive description of Portuguese phonology within a contemporary framework, but also in the extent to which it considers alternative analyses thereby raising questions of [End Page 811] potential theoretical relevance. This book will be important to all whose research interest is Romance phonology. At present, there is no other description in English of the phonology of Portuguese which competes with it in scope or depth.

Mark J. Elson
University of Virginia
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