This collection offers a fairly exhaustive presentation of current day approaches to the phonotactics or syllabic organization of words as well as a rich display of the syllabic organization of some 20 languages. with respect to the views we find adherents of onset-rhyme models, using the approach of government phonology or "X-bar" models, and mora models.

All contributors adopt a constraint-based approach, either in the context of models that appeal to language-specific constraints ranking (such as in Optimality Theory) or models that use inviolable constraints, i.e. Firthian-declarative phonology and government-based analyses. Issues of syllabification, language games and phonetic implementation are also addressed. The facts of 20 languages - Danish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Irish, Gaelic, Vedic, Latin, Romansch, Spanish, Polish, Hungarian, Finnish, Luganda, Kihehe, Dschang, Koromfe, Hindi, Chinese,Arabic - are accessibly described and analyzed in terms of these approaches.