Introduction

The introduction outlines the background of this collection and offers a summary of the articles in this volume, clarifying both the theme issues and how different authors use terminology. This volumes cover a range of typological and theoretical issues in the study of stress/accent. On the typological side, various authors are concerned with the array of word-prosodic types and their distinguishing phonetic properties. Of specific theoretical concern is the question of foot structure and how it is manifested in different ways in different systems. Also, several chapters explicitly discuss the role of morphological structure, as well as of lexical marking of accent. The 13 chapters collected here present a lively testimony of a field of inquiry that shows progress, while also identifying questions of ongoing concern.