ROA: | 166 |
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Title: | The Emergence of the Faithful |
Authors: | Byung-Gun Lee |
Comment: | |
Length: | 32 |
Abstract: | Traditionally, phonological processes like compensatory lengthening (CL), metathesis, and coalescence have been regarded as diverse and dissimilar processes. In Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), in particular, in Correspondence Theory (McCarthy & Prince 1995), however, these processes, including some others, far from each being idiosyncratic or random, can be integrated into a single process, namely, they can be governed by specific instantiations of a single general ranking schema. Correspondence Theory thus provides a unified framework to capture the generalization that fundamentally a single ranking schema is at work for all of those processes. Significantly, Rotuman "incomplete phase" supplies compelling evidence that some of these processes are dealt with by one and the same ranking, which resolves into the general ranking schema. Ultimately, it will be demonstrated that the afore- mentioned processes are all the outcome of an endeavor to conserve to the utmost extent possible the numerical integrity of segments of a morpheme. This endeavor is formally expressed in the form of the general ranking schema, under which the faithfulness constraint MAXIO is satisfied at the cost of other faithfulness constraint(s), in the face of the irresistible satisfaction of crucially- dominating markedness constraint(s). Moreover, it will be shown that the phenomena of CL and those of tonal stability which give rise to conserving the numerical integrity of moras and tones respectively can also be incorporated into practically the same general ranking schema. |
Type: | Paper/tech report |
Area/Keywords: | |
Article: | Version 1 |