We develop an extensible description logic for stating the content of optimalitytheoretic constraints in phonology, and specify a class of structures for interpreting it. The aim is a transparent formalisation of OT. We show how to state a wide range of constraints, including markedness, input–output faithfulness and base–reduplicant faithfulness. However, output–output correspondence and ‘intercandidate’ sympathy are revealed to be problematic: it is unclear that any reasonable class of structures can reconstruct their proponents’ intentions. But our contribution is positive. Proponents of both output–output correspondence and sympathy have offered alternatives that fit into the general OT picture. We show how to state these in a reasonable extension of our formalism. The problematic constraint types were developed to deal with opaque phenomena. We hope to shed new light on the debate about how to handle opacity, by subjecting some common responses to it within OT to critical investigation.

The markedness constraints of classic Optimality Theory assign violation-marks to output candidates without reference to the input or to other candidates. This article explores an alternative conception of markedness: markedness constraints compare the candidate under evaluation with another candidate, the most faithful one. Comparative constraints distinguish two situations: the candidate under evaluation contains an instance of a marked structure that is also present in the fully faithful candidate; or it contains an instance of a marked structure that is not present in the fully faithful candidate. Empirical consequences of comparative markedness are explored, including grandfather effects, derived environment effects, non-iterating processes, and counter-feeding opacity. Comparative markedness is found to have some advantages and some disadvantages in comparison with classic OT and alternatives like local conjunction, stratal OT, sympathy, and targeted constraints.

In Cairene Arabic, word-final vowels are short, but the same vowels are long when followed by a suffix, as shown in (1). (1) Cairene Arabic v ˘ ~ v+ alternation (Watson 2002:202) §ábu “father ” §abú+ja “my father”

These seven commentaries treat a wide range of topics in interesting and insightful ways. It is not possible to write a coherent response that addresses all of the criticisms and suggestions, large and small, that the authors have brought up. Several main themes emerge, however, that transcend the individual commentaries, and these themes supply the structure for this reply. They include

This study addresses two assumptions that have accompanied generative phonology from its inception, namely the binarity and phonetic grounding of features. It argues, based on both theoretical and empirical grounds, for the existence of n-ary phonological relationships that are not necessarily grounded in a phonetic dimension or parameter. It presents, further, a model labelled Structural Optimality, which combines represen-tations of this type with Optimality-Theoretic grammars. Four types of phenomena are presented as arguments for Structural Optimality: chain shifts, circle shifts (i.e. circular chain shifts), phonologically-driven ordering ef-fects in coordinate compounds, and certain dissimilatory effects in reduplication. Each of these phenomena present problems for theories that are inseparably tied to binarity, strongly committed to phonetic grounding, or both. Chain shifts have conventionally been hard to capture as a single process and have presented difficulties to output-oriented phonological models like Optimality Theory. This study raises another difficulty: phonetically grounded chain shifts may become

It is one of the hallmarks of natural language that abstract morphosyntactic and semantic information is realized in an intricate way by phonological structure. This mapping of representations of radically different types closely related to Martinet’s (1960) notion of ‘double articulation’ is traditionally called ‘exponence ’ (Matthews, 1991). This network brings together researchers from theoretical morphology and phonology to evaluate the properties of what we see as an emerging standard model of morphological exponence, and to explore on the basis of extensive crosslinguistic evidence how its core mechanisms can be simplified, minimized and restricted to the range of empirically observable data. To this end, we focus on syntagmatic and paradigmatic aspects of four basic areas of exponence: identity of exponence, nonidentity of exponence, parasitic exponence and zero exponence. The central questions we want to investigate are, what theoretically significant types of exponence there are and how core mechanisms of exponence relate morphological and phonological aspects of these domains. Es ist eines der grundlegenden Merkmale natürlicher Sprache, dass abstrakte morphosyntaktische und semantische Information in komplexer Weise durch phonologische Struktur realisiert wird. Diese Abbildungsbeziehung von fundamental unterschiedlicher Repräsentationen, die eng mit Martinets (1960) Konzept der “doppelten Artikulation ” verknüpft ist, wird traditionellerweise

•In “classic ” Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 2004), the system of candidate generation

Diminutive rime change is a process that alters the root rime with featural or prosodic changes to express various diminutive and/or hypocoristic forms. 1 For example, in Huojia Chinese (He 1989), the diminutive