Positional Asymmetries and Licensing

The most restrictive version of Optimality Theory includes just three families of constraints: Markedness, Faithfulness and Alignment (Prince 1997). Using only these constraints there have been two basic approaches to licensing in phonology. In the first, licensing effects follow from context-specific markedness constraints such as those in (1). (1) Licensing is context-specific markedness: (Kiparsky 1995, Smolensky 1995, Ito and Mester 1996, Zoll 1996, Steriade 1997 inter alia) License(voice): No voiced obstruents in coda position License(complex segment): A complex segment coincides with the first syllable Alternatively, others have argued that licensing constraints are context specific faithfulness constraints, exemplified by the POSITIONAL FAITH-FULNESS constraint shown in (2). (2) Licensing is context-specific faithfulness: (Selkirk 1994, Alderetem 1995, Beckman 1995, 1997, Casali 1997) IDENT-ONSET(voice): An onset segment is identical to its input correspondent with respect to voicing This paper, an expanded handout of a talk given at the LSA meeting in January 1998, demonstrates that licensing must be due to context- specific markedness constraints. The predictions of the two approaches differ in at least three ways, and in each case only context-specific markedness yields the correct result. In particular, the faithfulness version of licensing: (i) wrongly restricts the possible repairs of potentially unlicensed material; (ii) wrongly predicts that licensing will not be sensitive to derived properties; and (iii) cannot straight- forwardly account for necessarily negative licensing effects. It follows that while context-specific markedness constraints are indispensable, context-specific faithfulness is both inadequate and probably unnecessary for licensing. This result has important consequences for Optimality Theory more generally, since the expression of context-specific markedness appears to require the additional power of constraint conjunction (Smolensky 1995).The definitive version of this paper was published in Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader and is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470756171.ch18/summaryZoll, C. (2008) Positional Asymmetries and Licensing. In J. J. McCarthy (ed), Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader (ch 18), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK. doi: 10.1002/9780470756171ISBN: 9780631226888 (Published book)DOI: 10.1002/9780470756171 (published book chapter)Notice: MS Word and RTF files require SILDoulosIPA fon