Structural Relations and Government in Phonology

This book aims to introduce the notion of bidirectional government into phonological theory. The importance of bidirectionality lies in the fact that a number of phonological generalisations so far unrelated become amenable to a single algorithm of governing relations. A parallel is drawn, for example, between vowel reduction, vowel-zero alternation, shortening and lengthening phenomena. Furthermore, new distri­butional criteria for different types of consonant clusters become available as a result of the analysis. The present book was primarily tailored to come to grips with the facts of English. However, with minor modifications it should also be applicable to other languages. This work is a slightly amended version of my PhD dissertation entitled Bi­directional Government in CV-Phonology: Farewell to strict directionality, defended at the Doctoral School in Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary.