<OT> New Posting: ROA-977

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 977-0608

Noniterativity is an Emergent Property of Grammar

Aaron Kaplan <afkaplan at ucsc.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=977


Abstract:
Many rule-based theories of phonology include an iterativity
parameter so that rules can either be stipulated to apply
as many times as possible or restricted to a single application.
Optimality Theory cannot replicate this simple device: Constraint
s that produce iterativity (Agree, Align, Spread, Parse...)
do not produce noniterativity with a simple parameter switch.
Furthermore, OT's architecture prevents the generation of
true noniterativity: In order to determine whether or not
a feature has spread just once, for example, the markedness
constraint that imposes noniterativity must know the input
configuration. But markedness constraints are not allowed
to access the input. OT, then, is more restrictive than
rule-based phonology on this point and predicts that truly
noniterative phenomena -- processes defined in part by a
noniterativity requirement -- should not exist.

This dissertation evaluates whether OT is too restrictive
in this prediction by examining five seemingly noniterative
phenomena in detail: vowel harmony in Lango, umlaut in Chamorro,
tone spread in Chichewa, tone shift in Kikuyu, and postlexical
spreading in various languages. The noniterative nature
of these phenomena is argued to be a byproduct of a confluence
of factors that are not concerned with noniterativity specificall
y. For example, in Lango and Chamorro, spreading from affixes
to the root is noniterative not because a parameter stipulates
this kind of spreading, but because a constraint motivates
spreading to the root. Once the root (which is adjacent
to the affix) is reached, further spreading is unmotivated.
Other factors that can lead to noniterativity are identified.
The conclusion is that no noniterative phenomenon requires
an analysis that explicitly calls for noniterativity, and
thus rule-based phonology is wrong to adopt an iterativity
parameter. The implication of this result is that phonological
grammars are, as OT asserts, concerned with representations
and not the processes that give rise to these representations.
The absence of true noniterativity lends support for OT
in an area that at first glance presents a strong challenge
to the theory.

Comments: 
Keywords: iterativity, noniterativity, positional licensing, vowel harmony, tone spread, tone shift, optionality, umlaut, Lango, Chamorro, Chichewa, Kikuyu
Areas: Phonology
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=977