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.

This paper presents an extension of indexed constraints, such that they can apply not only to individual morphemes, but also to potentially complex constituents such as the stem. This modification allows us to capture a class of long-distance morphologically derived environment effects (MDEEs) that have been previously unexplained. MDEEs typically involve an exceptional phonological pattern that is lost under affixation. Formally, MDEEs are predicted if complex constituents such as stems are treated as lexically exceptional only when every morpheme contained within them is independently exceptional. This approach further predicts asymmetries between bare roots and affixed words, between roots and affixes, and between inflected and derived words. All other things being equal, the first of each pair is more likely to be exceptional in more contexts.

Various German dialects delete certain word-final plosives in plural forms (e.g. [hʊnt] ‘dog’ vs. [hʊn] ‘dogs’). I claim that this type of subtractive pluralisation is best analysed as an epiphenomenon resulting from the affixation of a disyllabic trochaic foot. This metrical template can create word-final empty-headed syllables; subtraction targets the onset of these syllables. Independent evidence comes from related phenomena, for the first time unified in a comprehensive account. Firstly, all varieties with word-final consonant subtraction delete the same consonants in the onset of post-tonic syllables containing a vowel. Additionally, some dialects display predictable interactions of consonant subtraction with either vowel shortening or the assignment of tonal accent. The proposal in this paper supports the idea that morphology is generally additive, and that subtraction can be derived from prosodic affixation. I thus argue that using more sophisticated independently motivated phonological representations can help to simplify the morphological grammar.

Consonant epenthesis is typically assumed to be part of the basic repertoire of phonological grammars. This implies that there exists some set of linguistic data for which epenthesis is the best analysis. However, a series of artificial grammar learning experiments found no evidence that learners ever selected an epenthesis analysis. Instead, phonetic and morphological biases were revealed, along with individual variation in how learners generalised and regularised their input. These results, in combination with previous work, suggest that synchronic consonant epenthesis may only emerge very rarely, as a result of a gradual accumulation of changes over time. It is argued that stored stem–allomorph pairs should be adopted as the null hypothesis in cases of potential epenthesis, and that a universal criterion is needed for rejecting this hypothesis. Such a criterion requires a formal theory of exceptions, a necessity for falsifiability in phonological theory.

It has been observed that the trigger and target in labial harmony are sometimes required to share a particular feature. Working within the framework of Radical CV Phonology, I argue that labial harmony is always subject to further requirements, stated in terms of additional licensing relations. Radical CV Phonology uses a limited set of elements that can be involved in such licensing, resulting in a restricted typology of labial harmony. Furthermore, I propose a distinction between lexical elements, which are always visible, and elements derived through harmony, which become visible in cycles. Crucially, elements derived through labial harmony do not have access to elements derived through tongue-root harmony, thus accounting for the lack of labial harmony in high vowels in tongue-root harmony systems. This architecture also accounts naturally for the behaviour of /i/, which is opaque to labial harmony in Tungusic languages but transparent to labial harmony in Mongolic languages.