Editing Autosegmental phonology (section)

{{Short description|Phonological theory based on connecting segments}}
{{no footnotes|date=March 2013}}
'''Autosegmental phonology''' is a framework of phonological analysis proposed by [[John Goldsmith (linguist)|John Goldsmith]] in his [[PhD thesis]] in 1976 at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] 
(MIT).

As a theory of phonological representation, autosegmental [[phonology]] developed a formal account of ideas that had been sketched in earlier work by several linguists, notably [[Bernard Bloch (linguist)|Bernard Bloch]] (1948), [[Charles Hockett]] (1955) and [[J. R. Firth]] (1948). According to such a view, phonological representations consist of more than one linear sequence of [[segment (linguistics)|segments]]; each linear sequence constitutes a separate tier. The co-registration of elements (or ''autosegments'') on one tier with those on another is represented by association lines. There is a close relationship between analysis of segments into [[distinctive feature]]s and an autosegmental analysis; each feature in a language appears on exactly one tier.

The working hypothesis of autosegmental analysis is that a large part of phonological generalizations can be interpreted as a restructuring or reorganization of the autosegments in a representation. Clear examples of the usefulness of autosegmental analysis came in early work from the detailed study of African [[tone languages|tonal languages]], as well as the study of vowel and nasal harmony systems. A few years later, [[John McCarthy (linguist)|John McCarthy]] proposed an important development by showing that the derivation of words from [[Semitic root|consonantal roots]] in [[Arabic language|Arabic]] could be analyzed autosegmentally.

In the first decade of the development of the theory, [[Nick Clements|G. N. Clements]] developed a number of influential aspects of the theory involving harmonic processes, especially [[vowel harmony]] and nasal harmony, and John McCarthy generalized the theory to deal with the conjugational system of [[classical Arabic]], on the basis of an autosegmental account of vowel and consonant slots on a central timing tier (see also [[nonconcatenative morphology]]).