I’ve made it no secret here that Kenstowicz & Kisseberth (1979) is my favorite phonology textbook of all time, and I would even go so far as to say that Chuck Kisseberth is my favorite phonologist of all time. That’s why I was very pleased to see this LINGUIST List announcement today, the title of which rather understatedly offers the table of contents for Language Sciences, Vol. 31, Nos. 2&3 (2009), a special issue edited by Kenstowicz in honor of Kisseberth. Here’s the editor’s preface:

Charles (Chuck) Kisseberth occupies a unique position in phonology (comparable to the late Ken Hale’s in syntax). He has conducted trailblazing research at both the theoretical and descriptive levels, treating the two as different aspects of the same grand enterprise. His many papers and books over his 40 year career are commonly regarded as masterpieces of phonological analysis with mountains of data to support each step of the argument. Many of the most intriguing data sets that have continued to occupy our field’s attention were either originally discovered by or brought to our general attention by Chuck: Yawelmani vowels and syllable structure, Klamath global rules, Tonkawa derivational constraints, Chimwini sentential phonology, Bantu migrating tones. His early work on rule ordering, conspiracies, and derivational constraints diagnosed serious problems with the strictly bottom-up, derivational model of classical generative phonology. This fundamental insight was given its proper due only some 25 years later with the development of Optimality Theory. Chuck has been an active contributor to the OT literature with his Optimal Domains model of autosegmental phonology (in collaboration with Jennifer Cole and Farida Cassimjee). Chuck has been equally successful as a teacher and mentor. He has directed over forty doctoral dissertations — many by native speaker linguists describing their languages for the first time. Our 1979 textbook Generative Phonology: Description and Theory was the table at which a whole generation of linguists were served their first taste of phonology. We hope that the studies presented here provide him some recompense for his inspiration, guidance, and friendship over the years.

The TOC is below the fold; if you have access, check out the issue itself here.

Data and Theory: Papers in Phonology in Celebration of Charles W. Kisseberth

1. Editor’s preface
Page 113
Michael J. Kenstowicz

2. Publications of Charles W. Kisseberth
Pages 114-116

3. Harmonic domains and synchronization in typically and atypically developing
Hebrew-speaking children
Pages 117-135
Outi Bat-El

4. Colloquial Hebrew imperatives revisited
Pages 136-143
Shmuel Bolozky

5. Emergent feature structures: harmony systems in exemplar models of phonology
Pages 144-160
Jennifer Cole

6. Tone and depression in Phuthi
Pages 161-178
Simon Donnelly

7. On pitch lowering not linked to voicing: Nguni and Shona group depressors
Pages 179-198
Laura J. Downing

8. Unstressed words in Spanish
Pages 199-212
José Ignacio Hualde

9. How (not) to do phonological typology: the case of pitch-accent
Pages 213-238
Larry M. Hyman

10. Tone and syntax in Rutooro, a toneless Bantu language of Western Uganda
Pages 239-247
Shigeki Kaji

11. Two notes on Kinande vowel harmony
Pages 248-270
Michael J. Kenstowicz

12. Size vis-à-vis frequency: minimality and maximality constraints in Swahili
Pages 271-284
Iwona Kraska-Szlenk

13. Conspiracy and sabotage in the acquisition of phonology: dense data
undermine existing theories, provide scaffolding for a new one
Pages 285-304
Lise Menn, Ellen Schmidt, Brent Nicholas

14. Tachoni verbal tonology
Pages 305-324
David Odden

15. Productive reduplication in a fundamentally monosyllabic language
Pages 325-342
Ronnie B. Wilbur