Syntactic juncture has been a topic of interest in phonological theory in recent years. One major issue addressed in the study of syntactic juncture is how to predict from syntactic structure the domains of phrase-level rules of the phonology, or prosodic structure. Many, including Selkirk (1978, 1984, 1986), Nespor & Vogel (1982) and Hayes (1984), propose that utterances are organised in a prosodic hierarchy, determined by but not isomorphic to syntactic structure. In work by these authors, algorithms for determining the relationship between syntactic structure and prosodic structure have been proposed, leading to a deeper understanding of prosodic phrasing.

Selkirk (1986) proposes that rules of the phrasal phonology apply to a structure called P-structure that is derived from, but not isomorphic to, syntactic structure. While Selkirk claims that most rules of external sandhi fall into the category of P-structure rules, there are three rules that she suggests may still require direct reference to syntactic structure. These are Mende Consonant Mutation (Conteh et al. 1986), Kimatuumbi Vowel Shortening (Odden this volume), and ‘perhaps even rules like English wanna contraction’ (Selkirk 1986: 374). Selkirk says that these rules ‘appear to be sensitive to a richer array of syntactic conditions than would be expressible via the translation of syntax into P-structure’.

The past twenty-five years have seen an enormous growth in research into World Englishes, reflecting a new recognition of the status of the many national English dialects. Canadian English has been no exception to this trend and we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of research into this variety. The stature it is now accorded as a separate dialect of English is reflected in the number of dictionaries, thesauruses, usage guides, and other reference works published since the late 1990s that were devoted specifically to Canadian English (e.g., Guide to Canadian English usage; Canadian Oxford dictionary; Oxford Canadian Dictionary; Collins essential Canadian English dictionary and thesaurus; Fitzhenry and Whiteside Canadian thesaurus) as well as audio-visual productions (e.g., Dialects of Canadian English; Talking Canadian).

Recent changes in Hare, an Athapaskan language of the lower Mackenzie River Valley, require that a rule of epenthesis be ordered in two places in the grammar. The original rule is ordered before a rule of vowel raising. In the innovative dialect of Hare, part of the environment for this epenthesis rule is revised and it must be ordered after the raising rule.

In recent work in feature geometry, the internal structure of the Place node has been the subject of attention. In the earliest work, the place features [anterior], [coronal], [high], [low], [back], and [round] proposed by Chomsky and Halle (1968) were arrayed under the Place node (Clements 1985). In later work it was argued that such an arrangement did not capture the classes required for operations involving place of articulation, and it was proposed that unary articulator features Labial, Coronal, and Dorsal be used, with [anterior], [high], [low], [back], and [round] being dependents of these major articulators (Sagey 1986; McCarthy 1988). This structure, which I will call the “flat structure”, is diagrammed in (1).