The subject matter of the book is the prosodic word. It bears on the organization of grammar and phonology, its interface with morphology and syntax, and the nature of phonological representations. Besides the reference to various other languages, including among many others,Italian, Dutch, German, and English, it primarily focuses on EuropeanPortuguese (EP).Observing in particular the phonology of one language with eyes informed by much of the knowledge already attained on the basis of other languages has allowed the author to contribute considerably to the understanding of yet not fully comprehended issues, such as (i) which morphosyntactic structures are mapped onto which prosodic domains, (ii) what is the exact information required for the construction of the prosodic word domain, (iii) what are the structural restrictions imposed on the architecture of prosodic trees, (iv) what are the sources and limits of crosslinguistic variation in the prosodization of morphosyntactic material, and (v) how are lexical and postlexical levels related.Specific topics addressed in "The Prosodic Word in European Portuguese" include a systematic detection of the phonological facts that constitute diagnostics for the prosodic word domain in EP, the identification of morphosyntactic objects that are prosodized within a prosodic word domain and in which ways, and the explanation of why such prosodic groupings obtain. The book also provides a detailed description and classification of each of the phonological phenomena referred throughout the work, an informative discussion on the affix/clitic status of pronominal clitics, which includes a new look on mesoclisis, and a solid investigation on the nature of reduction phenomena that are specific of clitic words.ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLSACKNOWLEDGMENTSCHAPTER 1 - THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDCHAPTER 2 - PREVIOUS STUDIES ON EUROPEAN PORTUGUESE WORD PHONOLOGYCHAPTER 3 - PHONOLOGICAL PHENOMENA: DESCRIPTION AND TYPOLOGYCHAPTER 4 - ON THE AFFIX/CLITIC STATUS OF STRESSLESS PRONOUNSCHAPTER 5 - THE PROSODIC WORDCHAPTER 6 - COMPOUND PROSODIC WORDSCHAPTER 7 - ON THE REDUCTION OF CLITICSCHAPTER 8 - CONCLUSION AND DIRECTIONS OF FUTURE RESEARCHAPPENDIX IAPPENDIX IINOTESREFERENCESINDEXINTERFACE EXPLORATIONSSeries Editors: Artemis Alexiadou and T. Alan HallThe series consists of collected volumes and monographs about specific issues dealing with interfaces among the subcomponents of linguistic structure: phonology-morphology, phonology-syntax, syntax-semantics, syntax-morphology and syntax-lexicon.Recent linguistic research has recognized that the subcomponents of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. What is currently under debate is the actual range of such interactions and their most appropriate representation in grammar, which is the focus of this series.Specifically, it aims to provide a general overview of various topics by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components. The books provide a state of the art report of research.