Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that palatal consonants are specified for the primary features. It presents phonetic evidence illustrating that palatal consonants are produced with the front, as opposed to the tip or blade, of the tongue raised. The book develops the specific theoretical claims in the work drawing on evidence from a wide range of languages. It focuses on the phonetic properties of coronal sounds, both consonants and vowels. The book concentrates on the feature specification of coronal consonants and vowels as motivated by a range of phonological phenomena. It presents the feature theory and nonlinear model of feature organization assumed in the work. The book deals in considerable detail with the many predictions made by the model with regards to rules of, for example, assimilation and dissimilation. It also presents a case study of one specific language, Maltese Arabic.