The phonology of Polish develops a Government Phonology account of Polish (Kaye Reference Kaye1990, Kaye et al. Reference Kaye, Jean and Jean-Roger1990). Various areas of Polish phonology and morphophonology are examined, including palatalisations, syllable structure, vowel alternations and voicing phenomena. The book contributes to the existing literature on Polish phonology, including Gussmann (Reference Gussmann1980), Rubach (Reference Rubach1984), Bethin (Reference Bethin1992) and Rowicka (Reference Rowicka1999).
The author separates morphophonology from phonology. Morphophonology refers to the interaction of word formation (morphology) and the sound system of language (phonology). The author proposes that morphophonological alternations belong to a different component of the grammar than phonological phenomena. This is different from generative approaches to morphophonology, such as Lexical Phonology (Rubach Reference Rubach1984) or Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky Reference Prince and Paul1993), but is in accordance with Government Phonology.
There are seven chapters. ‘Sounds, letters, and theories’ (Chapter 1) describes the sound inventory of Polish and discusses various approaches to morphophonology. Chapter 2, ‘Some theoretical hurdles’, discusses the central ideas of Government Phonology: the restricted nature of constituent structure, the independence of the syllabic constituent level from the melodic level of representation, empty categories, segments represented in terms of phonological primes called elements, and the divide between phonology and morphology. This lays the theoretical background for the subsequent discussion in the book.
Chapter 3, ‘Palatalizations and the vowel system’, describes palatalisations in Polish. The main observation is that palatalisations in Polish are both a phonological and a morphophonological phenomenon. It is shown that only some restricted cases of palatalisation (labials and velars) are due to live phonological processes. The remaining alternations involving palatals and palatalised consonants vs. plain consonants are non-phonological. They belong to morphophonology and must be described as morphophonological relations. Specifically, the author proposes that the positioning of an appropriate phonological expression (palatalised or non-palatalised consonant) in a given word in combination with other morphemes is the task of morphophonology. Phonology only ensures that all phonological constraints are satisfied. The main argument comes from the fact that the distribution of palatalised consonants in Polish cannot always be predicted by the environment. Thus, the author concludes that no adequate phonological account can be established (but see Rubach Reference Rubach1984). This chapter also examines the representation of vowels and consonants involved in phonological palatalisations and their distributional restrictions. A few constraints are adopted which govern the distribution of consonant-vowel combinations in Polish, such as Empty Heads and I-alignment.
The next chapter, ‘The morphophonology of Polish palatalizations’ (Chapter 4) further develops the morphophonological description of Polish palatalisations. To capture the alternations between palatals and palatalised consonants vs. plain consonants in Polish, the author formulates several ‘Morphophonological Replacement statements’. Morphophonological Replacement statements specify which segments are replaced by which segments in specified contexts. Segments that are involved in replacements are marked in the lexicon by a diacritic. The author also discusses a number of inflectional and derivational suffixes in Polish and their Morphophonological Replacement statements.
Chapter 5, ‘Structure of the syllable and the vowel presence’, examines Polish consonant clusters. The discussion begins with an examination of vowel–zero alternations in Polish and is further extended to other consonant clusters. The analysis of vowel–zero alternations gives evidence for two types of nuclei in Polish, empty nuclei and nuclei with a floating melody. Empty nuclei are always empty and represented only with a skeletal slot, while nuclei with a floating melody may or may not be empty, since they consist of a skeletal slot and a floating (unassigned) melody. The segments involved in the vowel–zero alternation in Polish contain a floating melody which is sometimes associated to the skeletal position and thus realised as a vowel. To capture vowel–zero alternations, the author formulates a morphophonological principle of Melody Association which attaches the floating melodies to the skeletal position in some contexts but not in others. In the rest of this chapter, the author further examines floating melodies and empty nuclei in Polish, and uses them together with Government Phonology principles for syllabic constituents to account for the existing consonant clusters. This chapter also proposes that lexical items are related by ‘Lexical Relatedness statements’ instead of by transformation or replacement of segments in specified contexts. The role of Lexical Relatedness statements is to reflect relatedness between words that cannot be stated as either phonological or morphophonological regularities.
Chapter 6, ‘Morphophonology of vowel alternations’, examines various vowel alternations in Polish. It is shown that vowel alternations are partly phonological, partly morphophonological and partly lexical. The author accounts for the different vowel alternations by a combination of Vowel Replacement processes (Chapter 4) and Lexical Relatedness statements (Chapter 5). Both mechanisms are encoded in the lexical representation of words. Relatedness statements relate vowels to one another and are signalled by diacritics attached to individual word forms. Replacement processes substitute one vowel for the other in specified contexts of lexically marked items.
Finally, Chapter 7, ‘Voice and voice-related phenomena’, discusses voicing alternations in Polish. This includes a discussion of final devoicing, regressive voice assimilation and progressive voice assimilation. Final devoicing is described as delinking of the low tone {L} (voicedness) before a domain-final empty nucleus. Voice assimilation is described as voice adjustment, whereby ‘the tonal specification of the last obstruent controls the laryngeal tier of the sequence’ (p. 291). Voice adjustment is also discussed in relation to intervening sonorants and morphological units. The presence or absence of voice assimilation is accounted for by positing various domains for the application of the process. The domains are motivated by the restrictions on the co-occurrence of empty elements in Polish. Finally, progressive voice assimilation that involves fricatives is seen as a case of voice adjustment where the fricatives are morphophonologically sonorants. They are realised as fricatives but remain sonorants syllabically.
This manuscript will be of interest to all scholars and advanced students of Polish and Slavic phonology. The book discusses a variety of topics in Polish phonology and morphophonology, and provides numerous examples for each topic. The examples are well presented and easily accessible to the reader, and are an invaluable source of data for future research on Polish.
This book contributes to research in Government Phonology. The author does not discuss Government Phonology in detail, and so readers may want to familiarise themselves with the framework before reading this book. One of the key arguments is that morphophonology is separate from phonology, and much of Polish belongs to the morphophonological component. This is significantly different from generative accounts of Polish. The author observes that there exist alternations in Polish that cannot be explained by phonological conditioning. Based on this, the author develops a model of morphophonology to mark exceptional patterns and irregular behaviour. The author does not focus on detailed theoretical discussions of the model presented or how it compares with alternatives.
In sum, this book makes an important contribution to the study of Polish. It covers a broad spectrum of topics in Polish phonology using the Government Phonology framework.
