This paper presents a set of mathematical and computational tools for manipulating and reasoning about regular languages and regular relations and argues that they provide a solid basis for computational phonology. It shows in detail how this framework applies to ordered sets of context-sensitive rewriting rules and also to grammars in Koskenniemi's two-level formalism. This analysis provides a common representation of phonological constraints that supports efficient generation and recognition by a single simple interpreter. 1.

this paper we suggest some strategies for reuniting phonology and the rest of grammar in the context of a uniform constraint formalism. We explain why this is a desirable goal, and we present some conservative extensions to current practice in computational linguistics and in non-linear phonology which we believe are necessary and sufficient for achieving this goal. We begin by exploring the application of typed feature logic to phonology and propose a system of prosodic types. Next, taking HPSG as an exemplar of the grammar frameworks we have in mind, we show how the phonology attribute can be enriched, so that it can encode multi-tiered, hierarchical phonological representations. Finally, we exemplify the approach in some detail for the nonconcatenative morphology of Sierra Miwok and for schwa alternation in French. The approach taken in this paper lends itself particularly well to capturing phonological generalisations in terms of high-level prosodic constraints. 1. Phonology in Constraint-Based Grammar Classical generative phonology is couched within the same set of assumptions that dominated standard transformational grammar. Despite some claims that "derivations based on ordered rules (that is, external ordering) and incorporating intermediate structures are essential to phonology" (Bromberger & Halle, 1989:52), much recent work has tended towards a new model, frequently described in terms of constraints on well-formedness (Paradis, 1988; Goldsmith, 1993; McCarthy & Prince, 1993; Prince & Smolensky, 1993). While this work has an increasingly declarative flavour, most versions retain procedural devices for repairing representations that fail to meet certain constraints, or for constraints to override each other. This view is in marked contrast to the interpretation...

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This paper investigates the incorporation of a non-procedural theory of phonology into HPSG, based on the 'one-level' model of Bird & Ellison (1992). The standard rule-representation distinction is replaced by the description-object distinction which is more germane in the context of constraint-based grammar. Prosodic domains, which limit the applicability of phonological constraints, are expressed in a prosodic type hierarchy modelled on HPSG'S lexical type hierarchy. Interactions between phonology and morphology and between phonology and syntax are discussed and exemplified I

Is Optimality Theory a constraining theory? A formal analysis shows that it is, if two auxiliary assumptions are made: (1) that only markedness and faithfulness constraints are allowed, and (2) that input and output representations are made from the same elements. Such OT grammars turn out to be incapable of computing circular or infinite chain shifts. These theoretical predictions are borne out by a wide range of natural phonological processes including augmentation, alternations with zero, metathesis, and exchange rules. The results confirm, extend, and account for the observations of Anderson & Browne (1973) on exchange rules in phonology and morphology.

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.

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A characteristic feature of conservative varieties of Tokyo Japanese (Hibiya 1999) is the interaction of a morphophonemic process of compound voicing with a general allophonic process of g-weakening. Given the current interest in parallelist approaches to the masking of certain phonological generalizations on the surface (dubbed “opacity ” in Kiparsky 1973), the immediate goal of this paper is to demonstrate that this interaction represents a type of opacity that cannot be described in an adequate way by means of Sympathy (McCarthy 1998), which has been suggested as a general and strictly parallelist tool to deal with all types of opacity in Optimality Theory (henceforth, OT; Prince and Smolensky 1993). Mistakenly put forth as an argument for Sympathy in our own earlier work (Ito & Mester 1997b) the case receives a superior understanding under familiar conservative assumptions, where the opacity arises naturally out of the serial interaction of the lexical and postlexical modules of phonology. Construed more broadly, this result constitutes an additional argument for the weakly parallel architecture of Optimality Theory argued for in Ito & Mester (to appear a,b), which maintains lexical and postlexical phonology as different and serially connected systems, without necessarily embracing the entirely separate assumption of serially connected levels within the lexical phonology itself argued for by Kiparsky 1998.

Detailed study of data in Dixon's (1977) grammar indicates that previous analyses of Yidi# have erred in supposing that the synchronic pattern of the language continues the historical pattern, whereby various nominal stems have their underlying final vowels deleted when no suffix follows. Instead, it appears that the system has undergone a radical reanalysis, whereby the suffixed forms are now projectable by general principles from the isolation forms. More precisely, a pattern of multiple predictability has developed: the form of suffixed allomorphs is largely predictable from the isolation allomorphs, but the older pattern, whereby isolation allomorphs can be predicted from the suffixed allomorphs, also persists. From this descriptive result, three principal theoretical consequences are developed: (a) Yidi# possesses a fully-productive pattern of alternation that is not driven by markedness-faithfulness interactions; (b) the phonological constraints that are active in Yidi# likely include some that are quite unlikely to be members of a universal inventory; (c) there are more relations of predictability among surface forms in Yidi# than can be treated by the normal method, namely that of deriving all the surface allomorphs from a single underlying representation. A tentative suggestion is made for how Optimality Theory might be extended to treat cases of this sort, by means of a class of "Anticorrespondence" constraints. Phonological Restructuring in Yidi# and its Theoretical Consequences 1.

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