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Abstract: This article considers to what extent sample based typological research may shed light on questions of central concern within the minimalist program of generative grammar. Focusing on the nature of the structure building operation assumed within the minimalist program (Merge), it is argued that typological data may be relevant to the question whether the product of Merge, a pair of sisters, is symmetric or asymmetric. To this end, a case study is presented showing a fundamental and universal asymmetry between the members of a binary noun phrase coordination, such that the relation between the two conjuncts is invariably marked on the second conjunct. Assuming coordination to present the product of ‘pure Merge’ (i.e. undisturbed by further movement operations or rearrangements of any other kind), the result suggests that Merge creates an asymmetric sister pair, in which linear order and morphological dependency marking are consistently patterned. The article argues that this is generally the case in contexts of ‘restricted syntax’, which might equally well be studied using large typological samples. The article furthermore argues that the asymmetry between members of sister pairs involves both phonological and semantic dependence, suggesting that the asymmetry originates within the central syntactic component of grammar. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper provides two arguments that error-driven constraint-based grammars should not be learned by directly mirroring the frequency of constraint violation and satisfaction in the target words of a language. The first argument comes from a class of stages attested in phonological development, called Intermediate Faith (IF) stages, in which children produce marked structures only in privileged positions. Two such stages are presented and analyzed, from the literature on English and French L1 acquisition, and their learning consequences are examined. The second argument concerns the degree of restrictiveness that a learner's end-state grammar encodes, using two hypothetical interactions between learner's assumptions about hidden structure and developing constraint rankings that can trick a learner into adopting a superset grammar. These two arguments are used to support an approach called Error-Selective Learning (ESL), in which errors are learned and stored gradually, in a way that relies on violation frequency, but rankings themselves are learned in a non-gradual way (relying on the algorithms of ). It is also shown that violation frequencies can still cause problems regardless of a learner's method of grammatical evaluation—either ranked constraints as in Optimality Theory, or weighted constraints as in Harmonic Grammar. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Experimental evidence suggests that syllable-final devoicing is often ‘incomplete’: devoiced obstruents are phonetically subtly different from underlyingly voiceless ones, and speakers are sensitive to these differences. While it has been suggested in the literature that these results cause severe problems to formal theories of phonology, this article argues that we only need a three-way distinction at the end of the phonological derivation between voiced, voiceless and devoiced. It is shown how this distinction follows naturally from a Containment-based view of input–output relations within the framework of Optimality Theory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines morphophonological alternations involving apicoalveolar tap-consonant clusters in Urban East Norwegian from the framework of gestural Optimality Theory. Articulatory Phonology provides an insightful explanation of patterns of vowel intrusion, coalescence, and rhotic deletion in terms of the temporal coordination of consonantal gestures, which interacts with both prosodic and morphological structure. An alignment-based account of derived-environment effects is proposed in which complete overlap in rhotic-consonant clusters is blocked within morphemes but not across morpheme or word boundaries. Alignment constraints on gestural coordination also play a role in phonologically conditioned allomorphy. The gestural analysis is contrasted with alternative Optimality-theoretic accounts. Furthermore, it is argued that models of the phonetics–phonology interface which view timing as a low-level detail of phonetic implementation incorrectly predict that input morphological structure should have no effect on gestural coordination. The patterning of rhotic-consonant clusters in Norwegian is consistent with a model that includes gestural representations and constraints directly in the phonological grammar, where underlying morphological structure is still visible. On the assumption that Universal Grammar lacks faithfulness constraints on input timing, the phonology is free to include non-contrastive phonetic detail such as intersegmental gestural coordination without the danger of overgenerating impossible contrasts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper provides a representational and constraint-based analysis of the segment inventory and consonant–vowel interactions of Standard Serbian. It shows that the phonological and morpho-phonological patterns of this language pose several challenges to the more traditional feature theories, which assume that consonants and vowels use (for the most part) different features. To capture all the Serbian facts (including velar fronting, velar palatalization, iotization and lateral vocalization), I make use of the Parallel Structures Model of feature geometry and Optimality Theory. The advantage of using the Parallel Structures Model is that it representationally captures quite complex consonant–vowel and place-manner alternations using a limited set of privative features applicable to both consonants and vowels. OT is employed to explain the inventory, the morphological specificity of the consonant–vowel interactions, and the context specificity of lateral vocalization, as well as other “soft constraint” effects. However, this analysis differs from most constraint-based approaches in assuming segment-internal representations, providing an explicit mechanism to explain the inventory (including justifying particular feature specifications), and providing a unified account of both the inventory and phonological process facts. [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]