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Abstract: One of the most important insights of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993) is that phonological processes can be reduced to the interaction between faithfulness and universal markedness principles. In the most constrained version of the theory, all phonological processes should be thus reducible. This hypothesis is tested by alternations that appear to be phonological but in which universal markedness principles appear to play no role. If we are to pursue the claim that all phonological processes depend on the interaction of faithfulness and markedness, then processes that are not dependent on markedness must lie outside phonology. In this paper I will examine a group of such processes, the initial consonant mutations of the Celtic languages, and argue that they belong entirely to the morphology of the languages, not the phonology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

0It is one of the most basic generalizations in phonology that only certain sets of sounds pattern together in phonological processes. These sets are referred to as natural classes. This paper develops a new analysis of the natural class generalization, formulated in terms of Optimality Theory. It is shown that natural classes derive from the nature of the set of markedness constraints. For example, sounds can pattern together as a natural class if they violate markedness constraints in the same environment, so given constraints *XA and *XB A and B can form a natural class. As a result the range of possible natural classes depends on the inventory of constraints, not on the feature set. This analysis is shown to have empirical advantages over the standard account according to which natural classes are characterized purely in terms of features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]