John J. McCarthy

Faithfulness and reduplicative identity

1 Workshop at which this work was first presented (Utrecht, June 22-24, 1994). For comments on this material, we are grateful to them and the other workshop participants, especially Austin have provided valuable feedback; and the comments, questions, and suggestions from the participants in the (eventually joint) UMass and Rutgers Correspondence Theory seminars were particularly important for the development of this work. For useful discussion of numerous points, we would like to thank

The Emergence of the Unmarked: Optimality in Prosodic Morphology

the University of Victoria, UMass, and Rutgers University, particularly to Nora Aion, Akin Akinlabi, Olga Babko-Malaya, Eric Bakovic, Jill Beckman, Jose Benki, Laura Benua, Barry Carlson, Megan Crowhurst, Merce Gonzalez, Sharon Inkelas, Zvi Gilbert, Amalia Gnanadesikan, Rene Kager, Ed Keer, John Kingston, Paul Kiparsky, Marc van Oostendorp, Jaye Padgett, Rossina Petrova, Ivan Sag, Vieri Samek-Lodovici, Lisa Selkirk, Yael Sharvit, Pat Shaw, Paul Smolensky, Rachel Thorburn, Suzanne Urbanczyk, Jennifer Yearley, Laura Walsh, and Arnold Zwicky, for their comments and questions. We owe a special debt to Junko Ito and Armin Mester, who reviewed a draft of the NELS handout and provided much useful feedback. T The Emergence of the Unmarked Optimality in Prosodic Morphology1

Feature Geometry and Dependency: A Review

A fundamental problem in phonological theory is the fact that processes often operate on consistent subsets of the distinctive features within a segment, like the features that characterize place of a

Foot and word in prosodic morphology: The Arabic broken plural

This article proposes a theory of prosodic domain circumscription, by means of which rules sensitive to morphological domain may be restricted to a prosodically characterized (sub-)domain in a word or stem. The theory is illustrated primarily by a comprehensive analysis of the Arabic broken plural; it is further supported by analysis of a number of processes from other languages, yielding a formal typology of domain-circumscription effects. The results obtained here depend on, and therefore confirm, two central principles of Prosodic Morphology: (1) the Prosodic Morphology Hypothesis, which requires that templates be expressed in prosodic, not segmental terms; and (2) the Template Satisfaction Condition, which requires that all elements in templates are satisfied obligatorily.

Sympathy and phonological opacity

A central idea in rule-based phonology is the serial derivation (Chomsky & Halle 1968). In a serial derivation, an underlying form passes through a number of intermediate representations on its way to the surface: [Scheme here] Implementational details can differ: the order of rules might be stipulated or it might be derived from universal principles; the steps might be called ‘rules’, ‘cycles’ or ‘levels’; the steps might involve applying rules or enforcing constraints. But, details aside, the defining characteristic of a serial derivation, in the sense I will employ here, is the pre-eminence of the chronological metaphor: the underlying form is transformed into a succession of distinct, accessible intermediate representations on its way to the surface. I will call any theory with this property ‘serialism’.

The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

This collection of articles and associated discussion papers focuses on a problem that has attracted increasing attention from linguists and psychologists throughout the world during the past several years. Reduced to essentials, the problem is that of discovering the character of the mental capacities that make it possible for human beings to attain knowledge of their language on the basis of fragmentary and haphazard early linguistic experience. A fundamental assumption running through all of these contributions is that people possess strong innate predispositions that are critical for success in this task.

Faithfulness and Identity in Prosodic Morphology

2. Correspondence Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2.1 The Role and Character of Correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2.2 Some Constraints on Correspondent Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.3 Correspondence Theory and the P ARSE/FILL Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

OT constraints are categorical

In Optimality Theory, constraints come in two types, which are distinguished by their mode of evaluation. Categorical constraints are either satisfied or not ; a categorical constraint assigns no more than one violation-mark, unless there are several violating structures in the form under evaluation. Gradient constraints evaluate extent of deviation ; they can assign multiple marks even when there is just a single instance of the non-conforming structure. This article proposes a restrictive definition of what an OT constraint is, from which it follows that all constraints must be categorical. The various gradient constraints that have been proposed are examined, and it is argued that none is necessary and many have undesirable consequences.

A Case of Surface Constraint Violation

The idea that constraints on well-formedness play a role in determining phonological alternations, which dates back at least to Kisseberth’s (1970) pioneering work, has by now achieved almost universal acceptance. A tacit assumption of this program, largely unquestioned even in recent research, is the notion that valid constraints must state true generalizations about surface structure or some other level of phonological representation. Anything different would seem antithetical to the very idea of a well-formedness constraint.

Reduplication with Fixed Segmentism

Fixed segmentism is the phenomenon whereby a reduplicative morpheme contains segments that are invariant rather than copied. We investigate it within Optimality Theory, arguing that it falls into two distinct types, phonological and morphological. Phonological fixed segmentism is analyzed under the OT rubric of emergence of the unmarked. It therefore has significant connections to markedness theory, sharing properties with other domains where markedness is relevant and showing context-dependence. In contrast, morphological fixed segmentism is a kind of affixation, and so it resembles affixing morphology generally. The two types are contrasted, and claims about impossible patterns of fixed segmentism are developed.