ABSTRACT
Phonological inventories have been a topic of interest in phonology for some time. This chapter addresses some of the challenges in establishing inventories, and then focuses on consonant and vowel inventories across North America by examining commonalities in inventories and unusual characteristics of inventories from a typological perspective. In addition, changes in inventories from both language-internal and language-external perspectives are discussed, with the latter focusing on changes brought about through language contact. The chapter then tackles several issues of theoretical interest that arise in the study of inventories, with focus on positional inventories and morphology and on the relationship between phonetic and phonological activity. Finally, it briefly discusses the relationship between sounds and orthography, suggesting that an understanding of the phonology of a language is not in and of itself an adequate foundation for establishing an orthography for that language.
