The monograph contains two case studies dealing with the phonetics and phonology of affricates and laryngeals from a survey of 281 languages. The empirical findings go counter to a number of assumptions in the literature, e.g.: (1) affricates are exclusively stops from the perspective of phonology; (2) laryngeals are properties of the prosodic domains onset, nucleus, and coda; (3) phonetic strategies (affrication, laryngeal phasing) serve to make phonological specifications acoustically more salient. Theoretical discussions include questions of phonological representation (featural contours, prosodic licensing etc.) and the phonology-phonetics interface.

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Over the past few decades, the book series Linguistische Arbeiten [Linguistic Studies], comprising over 500 volumes, has made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic theory both in Germany and internationally. The series will continue to deliver new impulses for research and maintain the central insight of linguistics that progress can only be made in acquiring new knowledge about human languages both synchronically and diachronically by closely combining empirical and theoretical analyses. To this end, we invite submission of high-quality linguistic studies from all the central areas of general linguistics and the linguistics of individual languages which address topical questions, discuss new data and advance the development of linguistic theory.