Optimality theory and Mutations

[Andrew Carnie]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 20:44:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nicholas Kibre <nick at STL.Research.Panasonic.COM>
To: The Celtic Linguistics List <CELTLING at mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Just a reminder! We're here

> HI All,
>
> Celtling has been pretty dead for the past few months, so I'm just sending
> a note to remind people we are still here!
>
> If you have a posting on the theoretical syntax, morphology, phonology,
> phonetics of the Celtic languages, please post it.
>
Ok, maybe this'll spice things up. Have any of you Celtic phonologists
out there had any luck applying Optimality Theory to consonant mutation?

I just spent a couple of days trying to apply a floating-feature based
approach under Christa Zoll's model to Welsh, and didn't have too much
luck.  I also tried a model proposed by a paper from SWOT II by Elzinga,
who proposed (for Fula) that mutations could be treated by a kind of
morphological constraint, and for various reasons (mostly having to do
with the chain-shift involved in Lenition) couldn't get that to work for
Welsh at all.

Any thoughts?

Nick

 ---------o---  Nicholas Kibre /'nihkahlahs 'kayber/
         /      Research Linguist/Speech Programmer
        /       Panasonic Speech Technology Laboratory
 __=========__  805 687 0110 xt 230
 | |_|_|_|_| |  nick at stl.research.panasonic.com
 |_|_______|_|
 --o=o---o=o--  http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/depts/linguistics/grads.html#kibre