<OT> New Posting: ROA-1018

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 1018-0309

Positional Faithfulness, Non-locality, and the Harmonic Serialism Solution

Karen Jesney <kjesney at linguist.umass.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1018


Abstract:
Pathologies arise in parallel OT when a positional faithfulness
constraint and a conflicting markedness constraint dominate
the constraints responsible for determining which segments,
if any, occupy the privileged position.  Under such rankings,
an underlying featural contrast can be displaced onto the
output prosodic structure.  (The possibility of such effects
was first noted in Beckman 1998:37fn.)  Here I show that
the problem is general one in parallel OT, and that the
resulting pathological patterns are opaque and can be highly
non-local.  The solution in Harmonic Serialism (McCarthy
2006, 2007, 2008) comes not from altering the ranking, but
from reinterpreting the basis upon which privilege is established
.  Rather than being based on the prosodification in the
output candidate, privilege is argued here to stem from
the prosodic structure associated with the input to the
current step in the derivation.  This approach allows the
desired effects of positional faithfulness to be seen, without
also predicting opaque and non-local patterns that fall
outside the range of what is attested in human language.

Comments: to appear in the proceedings of NELS 39
Keywords: positional faithfulness, Harmonic Serialism, opacity, locality
Areas: Phonology,Formal Analysis
Type: Conference Proceedings Chapter

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1018