Sign-Based Morphology and Phonology with special attention to Optimality Theory

This dissertation develops Sign-Based Morphology (SBM), a novel,comprehensive theory of the phonology-morphology interface.SBM is a declarative theory that derives cyclic phonological effects from static constituent structure configurations. Its existence is proof that, contrary to commonly expressed beliefs, there is nothing intrinsically or irreducibly derivational about cyclic phonology. Though sharing fundamental insights with current paradigmatic approaches to the phonology-morphology interface (Steriade 1994, Kenstowicz 1995, McCarthy 1995, Benua 1995, 1996), SBM differs from them in certain crucial respects. Its unique constructional orientation enables SBM to offer principled accounts of five critically important phenomena that existing paradigmatic approaches are unable to deal with in a satisfactory manner: SBM (1) predicts the inside-out nature of cyclic phonological effects, (2) deals successfully with Bracket Erasure effects, (3) handles morphologically bound stems that act as cyclic phonological domains, (4) handles noncyclic as well as cyclic phonological effects, and (5) deals with cyclic effects involving ungrammatical stems. SBM shares properties of all three traditional types of morphological theories: Item-and-Arrangement (IA), Item-and-Process (IP), and Word-and-Paradigm (WP). Combining a constituent structure-based view of morphology with a realizational approach to affixation, SBM builds on ideas in both IA and IP approaches to morphology. It also has a plausible paradigmatic interpretation, incorporating insights of the WP approach. By using insights from these approaches to morphology, usually assumed to be mutually incompatible, SBM captures their individual advantages while avoiding their pitfalls.Ph.D