B. Elan Dresher
List of John Benjamins publications in which B. Elan Dresher is involved.
2025 Diachronic phonology with Contrastive Hierarchy Theory Historical Linguistics 2022: Selected papers from the 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oxford, 1–5 August 2022, Kennard, Holly, Emily Lindsay-Smith, Aditi Lahiri and Martin Maiden (eds.), pp. 20–34 | Chapter
I argue that Contrastive Hierarchy Theory (CHT) makes it possible to implement Roman Jakobson’s 1931 program for diachronic phonology. CHT computes segmental contrasts by language-particular feature hierarchies and incorporates the Contrastivist Hypothesis, which holds that only contrastive… read more
2024 Contrastive feature hierarchies and Germanic phonology: Jørgen Rischel’s analysis of the Scandinavian runic transformation NOWELE 77:2, pp. 145–167 | Article
I discuss an analysis of changes in the Scandinavian runic alphabet, or futhark, by Jørgen Rischel (1966). Rischel’s article accounts for some puzzling changes in the futhark by employing contrastive feature hierarchies represented as branching trees. Feature hierarchies can be traced back to… read more
2022 Chapter 2. The foot in the history of English: Challenges to metrical coherence English Historical Linguistics: Change in structure and meaning, Los, Bettelou, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone and Graeme Trousdale (eds.), pp. 41–60 | Chapter
Dresher & Lahiri (1991) propose that Old English displays ‘metrical coherence’: different phonological processes are sensitive to the same metrical structure. We consider how English has dealt with challenges to metrical coherence. We show that the resolved moraic trochee, assumed to… read more
2015 The motivation for contrastive feature hierarchies in phonology Linguistic Variation 15:1, pp. 1–40 | Article
The notion that phonological features are organized into contrastive hierarchies has been entertained at different times in the history of linguistics. My main focus will be on the motivation for such hierarchies: what principles govern the ordering of the features? I will show that they have been… read more
2005 Main Stress Left in Early Middle English Historical Linguistics 2003: Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003, Fortescue, Michael, Eva Skafte Jensen, Jens Erik Mogensen and Lene Schøsler (eds.), pp. 75–85 | Article
2003 Contrast and asymmetries in inventories Asymmetry in Grammar: Volume 2: Morphology, phonology, acquisition, Di Sciullo, Anna Maria (ed.), pp. 239–257 | Article
1990 On the unity of the Mercian Second Fronting Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Adamson, Sylvia M., Vivien A. Law, Nigel Vincent and Susan Wright (eds.), pp. 141–164 | Article