This paper argues that rather than just select the best candidate, EVAL imposes a harmonic rank-ordering on the full candidate set. Language users have access to this enriched information, and it shapes their performance. This paper applies this idea to variation. The claim is that language users can access the full candidate set via the rank-ordering imposed by EVAL. In variation, more than one candidate is well-formed enough to count as grammatical. Consequently, language users will access more than just the best candidate from the rank-ordering. However, the accessibility of a candidate depends on its position on the rank-ordering. The higher the position a candidate occupies, the more likely it is to be selected. In a variable process, variants that appear higher on the rank-ordering (i.e. are more well-formed) will therefore also be the more frequent variants. This model is applied to variation in the phonology of Faialense Portuguese and Ilokano.

Vowel sounds may be inserted into a word by two mechanisms: insertion of a vocalic articulatory gesture (epenthesis), or retiming of existing gestures to produce a vowel-like transition between consonants (intrusion). I argue that epenthetic vowels are phonological units but intrusive vowels are not. A representation using abstract gestures as well as segments can capture facts about the typology of vowel intrusion.

A dispreference for onsetless syllables is often manifested by processes of consonant insertion or vowel deletion which eliminate onsetless syllables, and it is sometimes manifested by disallowing prosodic distinctions which onsetful syllables make, e.g. onsetless syllables may resist bearing tone or stress. This paper investigates the interaction between minimality and the structure of onsetless syllables in the Bantu language Zinza, documenting a previously unobserved onsetless effect which is partially conditioned by minimality. In Zinza, word-initial vowels of disyllables are lengthened, so /o-ljá/ becomes [óó-lja] ‘you eat’ (compare [o-líma] ‘you cultivate’ and [bá-lja] ‘they eat’, with no lengthening). These facts test previous theories of onsetless effects (Downing 1993, 1998, Odden 1995, Orie 2000). I argue that a special representation of onsetless syllables is not warranted, and does not explain this pattern of lengthening. A constraint against word-initial short onsetless syllables interacting with word minimality suffices to explain this lengthening.