This paper gives a moraic analysis of gemination and laryngeal alternations associated with consonant gradation in North Saami. Gradation gives rise to a surface three-way length distinction in consonants, which is essential to understanding length in vowels and diphthongs. It is explained by a system of prosodic rules applying to underlying representations containing only a two-way contrast between geminate and singleton consonants, plus a floating mora present in certain suffixes, which results in surface alternations between extra-long and long or between long and short consonants. An enlightening explanation of quantity alternations is available if one exploits the possibility implicit in moraic theory that the relationship between segments and moras can be surface-contrastive, and we show that recourse to trimoraic syllables is unnecessary, despite the surface three-way length difference. These prosodic alternations also result in shifts in the timing of preaspiration and preglottalisation, as well as loss of these laryngeal specifications.

According to the OT error-driven ranking model of language acquisition, the learner performs a sequence of slight re-rankings triggered by mistakes on the incoming stream of data, until it converges to a ranking that makes no more mistakes. Two classical examples are Tesar & Smolensky's (1998) Error-Driven Constraint Demotion (EDCD) and Boersma's (1998) Gradual Learning Algorithm (GLA). Yet EDCD only performs constraint demotion, and is thus shown to predict a ranking dynamics which is too simple from a modelling perspective. The GLA performs constraint promotion too, but has been shown not to converge. This paper develops a complete theory of convergence of error-driven ranking algorithms that perform both constraint demotion and promotion. In particular, it shows that convergent constraint promotion can be achieved (with an error-bound that compares well to that of EDCD) through a proper calibration of the amount by which constraints are promoted.

This paper reports on a study of Polish stress, the only uncontested example of a bidirectional system with internal lapses (Kager 2001, McCarthy 2003). The results indicate that Polish stress is non-iterative, a finding that seriously calls into question the existence of this particular stress type. An analysis of the acoustic prominence of syllables traditionally associated with different stress levels suggests that Polish simple words exhibit only one (penultimate) prominence. The stress pattern in compounds is less uniform; they can carry one or two (penultimate) stresses, depending on their prosodic structure. I analyse the distribution of stresses in compounds as governed by clash avoidance. Specifically, compound stems are parsed into separate PWds and assigned separate stresses only if the emergent trochees are non-adjacent. Hence, four-syllable compounds like /tsuʤɔ-ˈʑεmʲεts/ ‘foreigner’ have one stress, while compounds like /banaˈnɔvɔ-arbuˈzɔvɨ/ ‘banana-watermelon’ have two. I ascribe this pattern to the undominated ranking of the *FtFt constraint.