A Lateral Theory of Phonology . What is CVCV , and why should it be ?

On first encounter, the Lateral Theory of Phonology (LTP) presents itself as a daunting task for the reader and even more so for the reviewer. This is due to the size (854 pages from cover to cover), and the fact that on initial inspection this book looks very different from the majority of current phonological publications (no tableaux). However, the originality of the proposal itself, the incredible wealth of empirical material from an impressive number of unrelated languages, and the sheer amount of theoretically pertinent issues discussed in this book, should motivate the potential reader of all theoretical persuasions to make a worthwhile effort. Despite the initial forbidding impressions, the reading is pleasurable, informative and intellectually stimulating. Scheer offers a dramatically different outlook on what phonology is, how it works, and how it should be done. One possible difficulty might lie in the continual and frustrating promise of volume two (A Lateral Theory of Phonology vol. 2: On Locality, Morphology and Phonology in Phonology), in which a number of crucial theoretical points, which we may have already grown to accept, are to be more or less substantially revised, while some crucial answers are simply delayed till then. This, however, concerns only a fraction of Scheer’s theory, including such issues as the status of clusters of rising sonority (TRs), or a complete system of relationships between different types of nuclei and their varying role as licensers and governors. Due to the size of the work, some crude decisions had to be made for the purpose of this review. First of all, the focus is mainly theoretical. My aim is to show the internal logic of the theory and only the most important points of it. Regrettably, this is done at the cost of omitting the empirical coverage, which in turn is the main focus of Scheer’s book. For example, this review does not cover the discussion of the yer context and the arguments given to demonstrate that it is not a specific Slavic phenomenon. No mention will be made here of the intriguing discussion of syllabic and trapped consonants, or the novel take on the plight of sonorants in coda position. All these and more are available to the reader in the book itself. To best realize the scale of the project it is enough to note that we are provided first with an overview of the table of contents. This makes perfect sense, as the actual detailed table takes up 29 pages. It must be said that the author goes out of his way to make the task of reading his work as user friendly as possible, by, for example, writing a section called “How to use this book” in which a suggestion is made that the book should be used more like a dictionary than a textbook. Scheer provides useful cross-referencing and indices as well as an informed reference to a vast literature, including materials that he makes available for downloads from his web site. The book is thematically organized and the paragraphs are numbered to facilitate frequent cross-referencing for those who should indeed succumb to the author’s suggestion. However, the book is also perfectly readable in the traditional way. It evolves rather logically, starting with the basic tenets of LTP and its relation to its direct predecessor, that is, Government Phonology (GP), to which a short guide is provided in