Dependency Phonology

AbstractThis chapter outlines the development of the theory of phonological representation known as Dependency Phonology. Starting with a brief sketch of how the dependency formalism was originally used to account for syntactic structure, the chapter deals first with how dependency has accounted for syllable and larger suprasegmental structures. Next it discusses the development of unary segmental atoms, including their organization in hierarchical gestures, and how, combined with dependency such atoms, it can account for the internal structure of segments. As a theory of representation on both paradigmatic and syntagmatic structure, dependency phonology is placed in the historical context of metrical phonology, autosegmental phonology and feature geometry. The chapter concludes with a discussion of theoretical proposals which have adopted and extended, typically more radically, ideas and elements of Dependency Phonology, in particular such which have developed and rigidly defined the structural analogy between phonology and syntax.