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Markedness conflation in Optimality Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2005

Paul de Lacy
Paul de Lacy
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Abstract

Markedness distinctions can be ignored. For example, in some languages stress avoids central vowels, and falls on high peripheral vowels, yet in the Uralic language Nganasan central and high peripheral vowels are treated in the same way: stress avoids both types equally. Such ‘conflation’ of markedness categories is not only language-specific, but also phenomenon-specific. In contrast, dominance relations in markedness hierarchies are universal; e.g. stress never seeks out a central vowel when a high peripheral vowel is available. This article argues that both language-specific conflation and universal markedness relations can be expressed in Optimality Theory. Constraints that refer to a markedness hierarchy must be freely rankable and mention a contiguous range of the hierarchy, including the most marked element. The empirical focus is sonority-driven stress in Nganasan and Kiriwina. In addition, Prince & Smolensky's (1993) fixed ranking theory of markedness hierarchies is shown to be unable to produce the full range of attested conflations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , August 2004 , pp. 145 - 199
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am grateful to John Kingston, John McCarthy, Alan Prince and Lisa Selkirk for their detailed comments on earlier work from which this article evolved. I would also like to thank the associate editor and three anonymous reviewers for their very thorough and helpful reviews. Kate Ketner, Jan Henning Schulze, Catherine Kitto, George Puttner and Patrik Bye also provided valuable advice and comments. With regard to the data, I am especially grateful to Eugene Helimski, Olga Vaysman, Joanne Chapter and Anastasia Minaeva for their help.