The Phonology of Danish

The book is the most comprehensive account of the phonology of Danish ever published in any language. It gives a clear analysis of the sound patterns of modern Danish and examines the relations between its speech sounds and grammar. The author develops new models for the analysis of phonology and morphology-phonology interactions, and shows how these may be applied to Danish and to other languages.

Danish has an unusually rich vowel system and exhibits radical reduction processes that make it difficult for foreigners to understand. The sound pattern is equally challenging for the analyst. Professor Basbøll develops a non-circular model for the sonority syllable and applies it to Danish phonotactics. He presents a radically new and insightful analysis of stød, a syllable accent which has a complex grammatical distribution and is unique among the world´ s languages. He also describes syllabic and word structures, and stress and intonation.

The book is fully referenced and indexed. It will be widely welcomed by phonologists and scholars of Danish, and is likely to become the standard account of Danish phonology.