The Phonology of Romanian offers the first systematic descriptive analysis of the phonological system of Romanian, one of the less well studied Romance languages. The author proposes an account of some of the major phonological processes of modern standard Romanian, set in the framework of Optimality Theory and Correspondence Theory.Although the historical development of Romanian from Latin has been thoroughly studied by both Romanian and foreign linguists, accounts of the synchronic phonology of the language are harder to come by. The present book provides an overview of Romanian phonology: segment inventory, phonotactics, inflectional and derivational morphology. The main part of the study focuses on processes involving vocalic segments, which form the thread of the entire phonology of the language. These processes include glide-vowel and diphthong-vowel alternations, vowel harmony, palatalization. Acoustic phonetic data is used as supporting evidence for the phonological patterning of diphthongs and glide-vowel sequences.The major theoretical issues addressed include: feature theory, syllable structure, metrical structure and stress, the interaction between phonology and morphology. Interesting complexities of the system are pointed out and discussed, as they pose certain challenges to the theoretical model. The book contains a large amount of systematically organized data, which makes it a solid reference for students and scholars of general and Romance phonology, and a strong basis for further study.From the ContentsIntroductionOverview of Romanian phonology and morphologyThe stress systemHiatus resolutionHigh Vowel - glide alternationsPost-consonantal glides and palatalizationThe dipthongs ea, oa and mid-low vowel alternationsConclusions and issues for further research