Eric Baković

(Full Professor)

The bulk of my research is in phonological theory. Phonology is the study of linguistic speech sound patterns and structures, and the relation of these systems to other aspects of grammar.  Phonological theorists like myself are primarily concerned with the development and evaluation of formal devices that adequately describe phonological patterns and structures and that provide maximum explanatory value to particular phonological analyses. My own work is mainly concerned with how very general constraints on phonological forms can interact with each other in different ways to produce complex patterns of phonological behavior in different languages. I am particularly interested in probing very basic principles that are assumed to underlie phonological knowledge. Do these principles need to be stated directly, or do they follow from other, more basic principles?