This is the first comprehensive account of the phonology of Hungarian to have been published in English. Hungarian is a Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language. It is unlike other European languages, and atypical among the members of the Uralic family. The lexicon reflects the country's history, with the earliest layers of loanwords coming from Iranian, various Turkic and Slavonic languages, and German. The book is divided into three parts. Part I introduces the general features of the language and its major dialects. Part II examines its vowel and consonant systems, and its phonotactics (syllable structure constraints, transsyllabic constraints, and morpheme structure constraints). In Part III the authors describe the phonological processes that vowels, consonants, and syllables undergo and/or trigger. They provide a new analysis of vowel harmony, as well as discussions of palatalization, voice assimilation, and processes targetting nasals and liquids. The final chapters of the work are devoted to processes conditioned by syllable structure, and to surface phenomena. The book concludes with a full list of references and a comprehensive index. The authors have framed their discussions within a rule-based, non-linear framework to achieve optimum accessibility and concision. Their authoritative account of the sound-system of this unique language will interest phonologists and their advanced students throughout the world.

Achieves its goal splendidly ... The book has the quality of being extremely clear: it has been well proof-read, the glosses are reliable, the symbols/fonts are used consistently throughout the text. I believe that the book will become the key reference for Hungarian phonology for many years * Gábor Turcsán, University of Szeged & University of Toulouse-Le Mirail, Journal of Linguistics *
Specialists in theoretical phonology will find much grist for their mills. And the "Preliminaries" chapter is the best concise general introduction to Hungarian in any language * Daniel Abondolo, Times Higher Education Supplement *
An important book. It makes its statements clearly * Daniel Abondolo, Times Higher Education Supplement *
The authors' emphasis on descriptive coverage, the reliability of their data, the well-foundedness of their analyses and the clarity of exposition will surely make it indispensable not only for phonology experts, but also for Hungarian language specialists and general linguists, as well as university undergraduates specialising in linguistics. I am convinced that it will be 'the Hungarian phonology' on the international scene for a long time to come * Phonology *
Congratulations to the authors for having written this excellent book, which, published in English, will make the so far largely inaccessible system of Hungarian phonology available to a large international public * Phonology *

Péter Siptár is Associate Professor of Theoretical Linguistics at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He is the author (with Jacques Durand) of Bevezetés a fonológiába [An Introduction to Phonology] (Osiris, 1997) and (with Katalin É. Kiss and Ferenc Kiefer) of Új magvar nyelvtan [A New Hungarian Grammar] (Osiris, 1998). He is currently Associate Editor of Acta Linguistica Hungarica (Kluwer/Akadémiai) and in 1998 won the (Hungarian) Academy Award in Linguistics. Miklós Törkenczy is Reader/Associate Professor in the English Linguistics Department and the Theoretical Linguistics Department at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He is the author of Hungarian Verbs and Essentials of Grammar: A practical guide to the mastery of Hungarian (Corvina/Passport Books, 1997).