Unlike existing analyses with lexical tone, metrical foot-based approaches to tonal accent in Franconian not only focus on an explicit analysis of the tonal contours, but are also equipped to account formally for morphological alternations and other predictable correlates. Examples are interactions of tonal accent with duration, vowel and consonant quality. The existence of such additional correlates is in line with a foot-based analysis, since it mirrors correlates of stress and foot structure found in Germanic languages and elsewhere.

This paper presents a Harmonic Serialism analysis of synchronic metathesis, and proposes to eliminate transposition as an atomic operation, instead analysing metathesis as a result of the sequential application of simpler operations. The analysis of phase alternations in Rotuman offers a unified account of metathesis, deletion and umlaut as all undergoing splitting followed by fusion. A non-transposition analysis of multiple metathesis in Kwara'ae shows that a prosodically motivated locality restriction on the splitting domain is crucial in deriving the attested patterns. CC metathesis in Balangao is analysed as fusion followed by splitting. Eliminating transposition has several benefits: (a) it simplifies the inventory of operations in Harmonic Serialism, (b) it correctly predicts the locality restrictions on metathesis patterns with smaller constraint sets and (c) it accounts for the differences observed in the segment types involved in CV(VC) vs. CC metathesis.

Much recent work has studied phonological typology in terms of Formal Language Theory (e.g. the Chomsky hierarchy). This paper considers whether Optimality Theory grammars might be constrained to generate only regular languages, and also whether the tools of formal language theory might be used for constructing phonological theories similar to those within Optimality Theory. It offers reasons to be optimistic about the first possibility, and sceptical about the second.