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Implications Of Harmonic Serialism For Lexical Tone Association, John J. Mccarthy, Kevin Mullin, Brian W. Smith

John J. McCarthy

In some languages, notably Kikuyu, the association of tones and syllables is completely predictable. In this chapter, we show that a derivational version of Optimality Theory, Harmonic Serialism, cannot account for Kikuyu if underlying representations include preassociated tones. If richness of the base is to be maintained, then underlying representations can contain associated tones in no language, even a language with contrastive tone association. This leads to a discussion of alternative ways of lexically encoding these contrasts, such as sequences of identical tones and diacritic accents.

Pausal Phonology And Morpheme Realization, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

Revised December 2009

Classical Arabic has complex phonological alternations affecting words in utterance-final position, traditionally called "pause". All pausal forms end in a heavy syllable, but the ways of achieving this result are both diverse and subject to both phonological and morphological conditioning. This chapter argues that an adequate analysis of Arabic's pausal phonology requires a derivational version of Optimality Theory, called Harmonic Serialism, in which morpheme spell-out is interleaved with phonological processes.

Studying Gen, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

In Optimality Theory, phonological patterns are accounted for with output constraints ranked in a hierarchy. There is little explanatory role for a theory of operations, and hence little has been said about the Gen component. This situation has changed with the emergence of a derivational version of Optimality Theory called Harmonic Serialism.

One of the principal differences between Harmonic Serialism and standard Optimality Theory is that Harmonic Serialism's Gen is limited to doing one thing at a time. Harmonic Serialism's analyses and explanations depend on knowing what it means to “do one thing at a time”, and that requires a …

Harmonic Serialism Supplement To Doing Optimality Theory, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

This document consists of about 30 pages of text to supplement Doing Optimality Theory (Blackwell, 2008).

The P-Map In Harmonic Serialism, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

According to the P-Map, a phonological mapping is less faithful to the extent that there is more perceptual distance between its input and output. Although this idea is attractive, it cannot be implemented in the standard parallel version of Optimality Theory. This note explains why and shows how a derivational version of OT, Harmonic Serialism, can solve this problem.