The Special Status of Coronals

This volume is intended for phonologists, and general and psycho-linguistic specialists, as a tool to evaluate competing theories of markedness and segmental structure. It explores the modern answers to traditional questions, with a view to applying the results to historical linguistics, acquisition theories, and phonetics. Seven of the 10 papers concentrate on internal evidence (phonological arguments) and the other three are based on external evidence (normal and asphasic speech errors) and phonetics. This combination of internal and external evidence aims at settling numerous claims, often unsubstantiated or even contradictory, to the effect that the special status of coronals is reflected both in phonology proper and in connected domains.