This chapter outlines the linguistic properties of Welsh and its historical and sociolinguistic context. It sketches the main features of Welsh phonology, including vowel, diphthong and consonant phoneme inventories, focusing on issues involving vowel length, the complex set of diphthongs, and voiceless nasal consonants, including major dialect differences. Mutation, changes in word-initial consonants triggered by morphosyntactic features, is a characteristic of Welsh that has drawn considerable attention, and both phonological and morphosyntactic aspects of the phenomenon are discussed. In morphology, topics of interest include extensive regular vowel alternation and the formation of the singular–plural distinction. Mildly synthetic verbal morphology sits alongside another typologically significant property, inflection of prepositions for person and number. Major features of Welsh syntax include head-initial and VSO word order, restrictions on finite verbs in complement clauses, an elaborate system of clause-initial particles, and marking of predicate adjectives and nominals with a dedicated predicative particle. A final section looks at current sociolinguistic issues, including changes in the traditional diglossic relationship between literary and spoken Welsh, and changes that are often attributed to language contact and revitalisation.

This chapter deals with phonological and morpho-lexical phenomena in Romance that are conditioned by prominence or – more generally speaking – metrical structure. Relevant in this respect are synchronic phonological effects on surface forms, in other words, systematic alternations, as well as diachronic effects on underlying representations, that is, on linguistic inventories and systems. Among the phonological effects of prominence treated here are lengthening, well-attested in Italian, and diphthongization of stressed vowels – found in most Romance languages. Of equal interest are effects of non-prominence, such as vowel aphaeresis, apocope and syncope, and vowel reduction. As to phenomena conditioned by constraints on metrical well-formedness, considered here as effects of stress, the chapter deals with the Italo-Romance type of consonant gemination, as well as compensatory lengthening more generally. Adjacent stresses may be subject to clash resolution, a phenomenon that has been described for some, but not all, Romance languages. In the realm of morphophonology, alternations of the verb root often depend on the position of stress, which is particularly evident for diphthongization. The chapter ends with a discussion of how metrical structure shapes the form of words, imposing requirements on the minimal size of lexical entries.

The chapter begins with an overview of current Hausa phonology. It then provides a picture of what existed in ‘Old Hausa’ and the subsequent changes that took place, many due to regular sound laws such as Klingenheben’s Law, the Law of Codas in Reduplication, loss of word-final nasals, and the change of non-initial /r/ into /y/. Although sporadic, historical metathesis was much more common than one usually finds in diachronic change. Glottal stop and /h/ are newly introduced phonemes, resulting from the addition of onsets to vowel-initial words. The high frequency glottalized semivowel /’y/ is also a new phoneme resulting from the fusion of /?/ + /y/. Gemination was originally absent but appeared later and became common through phonological and morphological means. Vowels developed from a skewed 2-3-5 (initial-medial-final) system, with vowel length only distinctive medially, into a system with five vowels, all of which now occur long and short. Starting with two level tones, Hausa later developed Falling and Rising contours, the latter having simplified to High. The loss of vowels resulted in the existence of lexical floating tones not underlyingly attached to segments.