<OT> New Posting: ROA-652

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ROA 652-0404

The Independence of Phonology and Morphology: The Celtic Mutations

Antony Dubach Green <green at ling.uni-potsdam.de>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=652


Abstract:
One of the most important insights of Optimality Theory
(Prince and Smolensky 1993) is that phonological processes
can be reduced to the interaction between faithfulness and
universal markedness principles. In the most constrained
version of the theory, all phonological processes should
be thus reducible. This hypothesis is tested by alternations
that appear to be phonological but in which universal markedness
principles appear to play no role. If we are to pursue the
claim that all phonological processes depend on the interaction
of faithfulness and markedness, then processes that are
not dependent on markedness must lie outside phonology.
In this paper I will examine a group of such processes,
the initial consonant mutations of the Celtic languages,
and argue that they belong entirely to the morphology of
the languages, not the phonology.

Comments: appears in ZAS Papers in Linguistics 32 (Dec. 2003): 47-86
Keywords: Celtic, Irish, Welsh, Manx, initial consonant mutation
Areas: Phonology,Morphology
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=652