Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution

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The upshotis in addition to being connectedto each other,as in Fig. 5.2, syllabicstructure and metricalstructure each
have interfaces with other kinds of structures. Fig. 5.3 sketches the interactions observed here; each double-ended
arrowdesignates a setofinterface principles. Inturn, each oftheother structures ontheright-hand sideofFig. 5.3 has
its own formation rules and participates in other interfaces.^52


Fig. 5.3 Interfaces of metrical and syllabic structures with other subcomponents


THE PARALLEL ARCHITECTURE 117


(^52) I have not mentioned a further important tier of phonology, namely tone.This plays an important role in West African languages such as the hundreds of Bantu languages,
and in East Asian languages such as Vietnamese, Thai, and the varieties of Chinese. Tone phenomena were in fact the initial motivation for Goldsmith (1976) proposing
Autosegmental Phonology. See Odden (1995) and Yip (1995) for brief discussions of tone.

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