The advent of Optimality Theory has revived the interest in articulatorily and perceptually driven markedness in phonological research. To some researchers, the cross-linguistic prevalence of such markedness relations is indication that synchronic phonological grammar should include phonetic details. However, there are at least two distinct ways in which phonetics can be incorporated in an optimality-theoretic grammar: traditional constraint domination and Flemming (2001) 's proposal that the costs of constraint violations should be weighted and summed. I argue that constraint weighting is unnecessary as an innovation in Optimality Theory. The arguments are twofold. First, using constraint families with intrinsic rankings, constraint domination formally predicts the same range of phonological realisations as constraint weighting. Second, with proper constraint definitions and rankings, both the additive effect and the locus effect predicted by constraint weighting can be replicated in constraint domination.

Kaisse (1985) presents a theory of syntax–phonology interaction whereby a rule may require one element in the environment of the rule to ccommand another element in the environment. A crucial notion in that theory, hereafter referred to as the c-command theory, is domain ccommand, which is defined as follows (Kaisse 1985: 159):

In the structure [xmax … α …], Xmax is defined as the domain of α. Then α c-commands any β in its domain.

This paper presents a Harmonic Serialism analysis of synchronic metathesis, and proposes to eliminate transposition as an atomic operation, instead analysing metathesis as a result of the sequential application of simpler operations. The analysis of phase alternations in Rotuman offers a unified account of metathesis, deletion and umlaut as all undergoing splitting followed by fusion. A non-transposition analysis of multiple metathesis in Kwara'ae shows that a prosodically motivated locality restriction on the splitting domain is crucial in deriving the attested patterns. CC metathesis in Balangao is analysed as fusion followed by splitting. Eliminating transposition has several benefits: (a) it simplifies the inventory of operations in Harmonic Serialism, (b) it correctly predicts the locality restrictions on metathesis patterns with smaller constraint sets and (c) it accounts for the differences observed in the segment types involved in CV(VC) vs. CC metathesis.

Paul Kiparsky's paper (1982) ‘From Cyclic to Lexical Phonology’ is the most interesting recent development in the line of research originated by Kiparsky (1973) and Mascaró (1976). The major task in this research is the investigation of the ways in which rules apply to phonological structures. Kiparsky (1973) makes the very pointed observation that some phonological rules apply exclusively in derived environments. An environment is derived if either (i) or (ii) is true:

(i) the structure which is relevant to the application of the rule arises at morpheme boundaries: the environment is thus derived morphologically;

(ii) the structure which is relevant to the application of the rule arises in the course of phonological derivation due to the application of an earlier phonological rule: the environment is thus derived phonologically.

In Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (OT-CC; McCarthy 2007), candidates are multi-step derivations, and precedence constraints, which regulate the order of derivational steps, can inspect entire candidate derivations. This means that OT-CC opens the door to certain kinds of ‘global rules’ – that is, effects in which the application or non-application of a process is decided with crucial reference to derivational history. This paper investigates what limits may exist on OT-CC's global rule powers, focusing on two forms of opacity which are possible under a theory where all rules apply simultaneously, but not under sequential rule application: mutual counterfeeding and mutual counterbleeding. It is shown that the original version of OT-CC allows none, but that each of them could be made possible with relatively simple revisions to the original theory. Possible examples of these forms of opacity are discussed.

In this work, we address structural, iconic and social dimensions of the emergence of phonological systems in two emerging sign languages. A comparative analysis is conducted of data from a village sign language (Central Taurus Sign Language; CTSL) and a community sign language (Nicaraguan Sign Language; NSL). Both languages are approximately 50 years old, but the sizes and social structures of their respective communities are quite different. We find important differences between the two languages’ handshape inventories. CTSL's handshape inventory has changed more slowly than NSL's across the same time period. In addition, while the inventories of the two languages are of similar size, handshape complexity is higher in NSL than in CTSL. This work provides an example of the unique and important perspective that emerging sign languages offer regarding longstanding questions about how phonological systems emerge.

In the last two years, two very interesting books about the interaction of phonology and syntax, Selkirk (1984a) and Kaisse (1985), have addressed the problem of characterising fast speech processes and made interesting proposals about the status of fast speech rules (FSRs) and their place in the grammar. Essentially, Kaisse's proposal is that fast speech rules belong to a separate subcomponent of the phonology, which is ordered after the sandhi rules subcomponent: while sandhi rules are sensitive to their syntactic environment, fast speech rules have only phonetic motivation. That is, they operate throughout a string, within as well as across words, independently of its structure (cf. also Rotenberg 1978; Hasegawa 1979).

Previous research has found that different syllabic (particularly simplex vs. complex onset) organisations have different temporal stability signatures in articulations – this observation is based entirely on articulatory measurements. In this article, we present the results of three production experiments which show that similar correlations between onset organisation and temporal stability metrics are observable in an analysis of acoustic measurements in American English and Jazani Arabic. The results that we present show stability across speakers and test items for both language groups, and highlight the possibility of using acoustic techniques to help to investigate the organisation of onsets in other languages.

This paper reassesses the hypothesis that early phonotactic learning of constraint-based grammars relies on the Identity Map – i.e. it uses observed surface forms as the inputs which cause errors and drive learning via constraint reranking. We argue that this approach's success is closely tied to Optimality Theory's fully parallel grammatical evaluation. In the constraint-based derivational framework of Harmonic Serialism (HS; McCarthy 2000, 2007b ), reliance on observed surface forms as inputs can block the discovery of ‘hidden rankings’ between markedness constraints, preventing the learner from discovering a restrictive grammar. This paper illustrates the problem, using a pattern of positional vowel restrictions in Punu (Kwenzi Mikala 1980), and considers the role of various learning assumptions. We conclude that hidden rankings are a fundamental obstacle to restrictive error-driven learning in any HS-like framework, and that learning in such frameworks inevitably requires consideration of some unattested surface forms as inputs, even at the earliest learning stages.

This paper reviews the recent experimental evidence bearing on the issue of the psychological reality of the phoneme, particularly its general CLASS character, the relative NON-DISCRIMINABILITY of its positional variants (allophones), and its status as a discrete SEGMENT. Evidence bearing on a few selected problems of English phonemics is also discussed. All of the experiments cited, however, seem to have been to some extent contaminated by orthographic effects; moreover, a host of other studies go so far as to suggest that knowledge of spelling may not only impinge critically on phonological judgements, but that the very ability to segment speech may be a by-product of learning an alphabetic orthography. But as the experiments to date have been largely restricted to overt judgements about a rather limited range of words, the possibility still remains open that a phonemic segmentation of speech may well occur at an unconscious, perceptual level even in the pre-literate period.

The theory of prosodic morphology (McCarthy & Prince 1986, 1990, 1993) maintains that various operations in morphology can refer to only a fixed set of prosodic categories. These operations include reduplication, infixation and various templatic systems. The prosodic categories are exhaustively listed in (1):

This is an extremely constrained theory, as it limits a wide variety of operations to just this list of eight types.

This study explores the role of paradigm uniformity bias in the acquisition of Korean verbal inflections. Paradigm uniformity bias has been proposed in a constraint-based phonological framework, but has rarely been supported by experimental data. This paper provides experimental evidence for paradigm uniformity bias from four- to seven-year-old Korean children learning their native language phonology. Experiment 1 demonstrates that children alter morphological structures in order to produce non-alternating verb forms. Experiment 2 shows that the tendency to adjust morphological structures is rooted in children's preference for uniform paradigms, not in their ignorance of alternations. The results suggest that paradigm uniformity bias plays a role in determining children's preferred production patterns, which favour non-alternating forms even after they have acquired adult-like knowledge of the patterns of alternations.

Choctaw verbs form intensives by a complex procedure of (apparent) infixation, gemination and accentuation. Verbs of all shapes have two distinct intensive forms, which Ulrich (1986) distinguishes as the y-grade (involving a geminate yy) and the g-grade (involving gemination of a stem consonant or a falling tone). Lombardi & McCarthy (1991) analyse Choctaw intensives in terms of the theory of prosodic circumscription (McCarthy & Prince 1990). Hammond (1993) gives an alternative analysis within the same theory. While insightful in certain respects, these analyses fail to account for the full range of Choctaw intensives, instead generating a single intensive for any verb. In the present paper, I propose a unified analysis of Choctaw intensives, with two, minimally different, procedures for generating the two intensives of any verb.

Steriade (1988) proposes a model of reduplication and templatic systems that includes a process of onset simplification. For example, in Tagalog, the first syllable of a root can undergo prefixal reduplication with onset simplification: ta-trabaho, bo-bloaut. Steriade cites a number of cases of onset simplification cooccurring with syllable-based templatic systems, but provides no examples of it with foot-based systems. Here we provide an example of onset simplification applying to a foot-based templatic system. This demonstration is important for two reasons. First, it shows that the onset simplification phenomenon is more general, applying to syllables and feet.

This paper investigates the syntax–prosody interface with respect to apposition in Shingazidja. We examine the syntactic properties of two types of apposition (restrictive and non-restrictive). While restrictive apposition appears to form a single constituent, the syntactic data for non-restrictives are ambiguous between a single constituent analysis and an analysis in which the appositive and its anchor are syntactically separate. Prosodic data confirm the single constituent analysis for restrictive apposition, and provide evidence that non-restrictive appositives are syntactically linked to their antecedent and prosodically embedded in their host clause. The phenomenon of final raising emerges as the principal indicator of intonational phrases in Shingazidja; tone shift signals phonological phrasing. Our analysis is formalised in Optimality Theory through a comparison of Align/Wrap theory and Match theory. A Match-theory account predicts the existence of recursive phonological phrasing, and we present evidence supporting this prediction.

An important question in phonology is to what degree the learner uses distributional information rather than substantive properties of speech sounds when learning phonological structure. This paper presents an algorithm that learns phonological classes from only distributional information: the contexts in which sounds occur. The input is a segmental corpus, and the output is a set of phonological classes. The algorithm is first tested on an artificial language, with both overlapping and nested classes reflected in the distribution, and retrieves the expected classes, performing well as distributional noise is added. It is then tested on four natural languages. It distinguishes between consonants and vowels in all cases, and finds more detailed, language-specific structure. These results improve on past approaches, and are encouraging, given the paucity of the input. More refined models may provide additional insight into which phonological classes are apparent from the distributions of sounds in natural languages.

Obstruents in Russian have been claimed to assimilate in voicing in clusters when a sonorant consonant intervenes, e.g. ot mgly [dmg] ‘from the haze’. This phenomenon (‘sonorant transparency to voice assimilation’) is controversial: it is claimed to be a phonological rule of fast speech by some linguists, while its existence is denied by others. Previous studies have shown that voicing in presonorant obstruents (C1) in Russian is consistent with that of prevocalic obstruents in slow speech; however, no research has examined whether voicing in presonorant obstruents changes either as a function of the voicing of the rightmost (C2) obstruent in a cluster or in faster speech. This paper presents experimental results supporting the claim that the voicing of C2 obstruents does not affect voicing in presonorant C1 obstruents in slow or fast speech. The results suggest that obstruents do not assimilate through a sonorant in obstruent–sonorant–obstruent clusters in Russian.