THE DOMAIN OF GLIDING IN FRENCH: AN OPTIMALITY THEORETIC APPROACH

Gliding is a domain-sensitive phonological process of European French in which the high vowels Ii/, Iy/, lui become their corresponding glides £jJ, [If], [w] in the presence of a following vowel, within the do-main of the Prosodic Word. Previous studies have either ignored the fact that the phenomenon is sensitive to prosodic domains, or have es-tablished an unnecessary prosodic domain, i.e., the Clitic Group, in or-der to account for the behavior observed in prefix plus root sequences. A more updated study, conducted by Noske (1996), proposes an Optimality Theoretic account for the phenomenon without any con-sideration to prosodic domains. As a result, illicit forms are predicted. The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis for Gliding in French in which prosodic domains serve as loci for phonological pro-cesses. Accordingly, the study complements the work of Noske for Gliding in French, within the same theoretic framework. 1