Speaker: Yeong-Joon Kim (MIT)
Title: Overapplication opacity as a consequence of phonetic faithfulness
Time: Monday, March 18th, 5pm – 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831
Abstract: This study contributes to the understanding of opacity by identifying substantive restrictions on counterbleeding interactions and proposing a novel analysis tied to these typological generalizations. A typological survey of counterbleeding-on-environment instances reveals an asymmetry in the types of opaque processes involved, with assimilation and consonant-induced vowel processes being the most common. A novel account of phonological opacity is suggested to deal with this asymmetrical distribution of the opacified processes. The basic idea for explaining this observed asymmetry is that most opaque interactions have a functional rationale, that of preserving phonetic properties of lexical entries (e.g., Flemming 2008). The approach can also account for overapplication opacity in feeding interactions, such as self-destructive feeding in Japanese, which is problematic for classical Optimality Theory.