Articles
Studying Gen, Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan (2010)
In Optimality Theory, phonological patterns are accounted for with output constraints ranked in a hierarchy....
The gradual path to cluster simplification, Phonology (2008)
When a medial consonant cluster is simplified by deletion or place assimilation, the first consonant...
The serial interaction of stress and syncope, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (2008)
Many languages respect the generalization that some or all unstressed vowels are deleted. This generalization...
Slouching toward optimality: Coda reduction in OT-CC, Phonological Studies (Journal of the Phonological Society of Japan) (2007)
There is a well-established asymmetry in the behavior of medial consonant clusters: the first consonant...
What is Optimality Theory?, Language and Linguistics Compass (2007)
Optimality Theory is a general model of how grammars are structured. This article surveys the...
Taking a free ride in morphophonemic learning, Catalan Journal of Linguistics (2005)
As language learners begin to analyze morphologically complex words, they face the problem of projecting...
Comparative markedness, Theoretical Linguistics (2003)
The markedness constraints of classic Optimality Theory assign violation-marks to output candidates without reference to...
OT constraints are categorical, Phonology (2003)
In Optimality Theory, constraints come in two types, which are distinguished by their mode of...
What does comparative markedness explain, what should it explain, and how?, Theoretical Linguistics (2003)
These seven commentaries treat a wide range of topics in interesting and insightful ways. It...
On targeted constraints and cluster simplification, Phonology (2002)
In his article 'Consonant cluster neutralisation and targeted constraints', Wilson (2001) proposes a far-reaching revision...
Review of Bruce Tesar and Paul Smolensky (2000) Learnability in Optimality Theory, Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2001)
The prosody of phrase in Rotuman, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (2000)
The "phase" alternation in Rotuman is remarkable (and has attracted a good deal of previous...
Reduplication with fixed segmentism (with John Alderete, Jill Beckman, Laura Benua, Amalia Gnanadesikan, and Suzanne Urbanczyk), Linguistic Inquiry (1999)
Fixed segmentism is the phenomenon whereby a reduplicative morpheme contains segments that are invariant rather...
Sympathy and phonological opacity, Phonology (1999)
This paper explores the nature of phonological opacity (in the sense of Kiparsky 1971, 1973)...
Review of Alan S. Kaye, ed. (1997) Phonologies of Asia and Africa: (Including the Caucasus), Phonology (1998)
Process-specific constraints in Optimality Theory, Linguistic Inquiry (1997)
Similar phonological processes can be governed by different constraints. Davis (1995) claims that the effect...
Short review of A. A. al-Nassir (1993) Sibawayh the Phonologist: A Critical Study of the Phonetic and Phonological Theory of Sibawayh as Presented in His Treatise Al-Kitab, Linguistics (1995)
A case of surface constraint violation, Constraint-Based Theories in Multilinear Phonology, special issue of Canadian Journal of Linguistics (1993)
Generalized alignment (with Alan Prince), Yearbook of Morphology (1993)
Structural relations between grammatical categories (here, morphological and phonological) are governed by a single family...
Review of C. Paradis and J.-F. Prunet, eds. (1991) The Special Status of Coronals (with Alison Taub), Phonology (1992)
Foot and word in prosodic morphology: The Arabic broken plural (with Alan Prince), Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (1990)
This article proposes a theory of Prosodic Domain Circumscription, by means of which rules sensitive...
Linear order in phonological representation, Linguistic Inquiry (1989)
In this article I have argued that morphological distinctions play no direct role in planar...
Feature geometry and dependency: A review, Phonetica (1988)
A fundamental problem in phonological theory is the fact that processes often operate on consistent...
Lexical phonology and nonconcatenative morphology in the history of Chaha, Revue québécoise de linguistique (1986)
A problem in the historical phonology of the Ethiopian Semitic language Chaha is examined from...
OCP effects: Gemination and antigemination, Linguistic Inquiry (1986)
Few putative properties of phonological organization have had as erratic a history as the Obligatory...
Stress shift and metrical structure (with Hamza Al-Mozainy and Robert Bley-Vroman), Linguistic Inquiry (1985)
A theory of internal reduplication (with Ellen Broselow), The Linguistic Review (1983)
A broad survey and typology of infixing reduplication.
Nonlinear phonology: An overview, GLOW Newsletter (1982)
The last five or six years have seen a substantial change in the nature of...
Prosodic structure and expletive infixation, Language (1982)
An analysis of English Expletive Infixation (as in fan-fuckin-tastic) in terms of a metrical theory...
A prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology, Linguistic Inquiry (1981)
A CV skeleton analysis of Arabic root-and-pattern morphology.
The metrical structure of Psalm 137 (with Morris Halle), Journal of Biblical Literature (1981)
Psalm 137 has a syllable-counting meter. As in French, syllables after the line-final stress are...
The representation of consonant length in Hebrew, Linguistic Inquiry (1981)
Geminate integrity in Biblical Hebrew.
A note on the accentuation of Damascene Arabic, Studies in the Linguistic Sciences (1980)
Three models of metrical stress assignment in the Arabic dialect of Damascus (Halle and Vergnaud...
On stress and syllabification, Linguistic Inquiry (1979)
Of all the diverse properties of segmental strings, syllable structure is the one that stress...
Books
Doing Optimality Theory (2008)
Optimality Theory revolutionized the field of phonology and had a huge impact on linguistics in...
Hidden Generalizations: Phonological Opacity in Optimality Theory (2007)
Hidden Generalizations is the first monograph devoted exclusively to the problem of phonological opacity. Opacity...
Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader (2004)
Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader is a collection of readings on this important new...
A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory (2002)
This book describes Optimality Theory from the top down, explaining and exploring the central premises...
Prosodic Morphology 1986 (with Alan Prince) (1996)
This work has circulated in manuscript form since October, 1986. Its basic contents were first...
Prosodic Morphology I: Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction (with Alan Prince) (1993)
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction; 2. Optimality Theory; 3. The Stratal Organization of Axininca...
Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology (1985)
This study deals with the formal character of phonological representations and rules. Two basic lines...
Contributions to Books
Pausal Phonology and Morpheme Realization, Prosody Matters: Essays in Honor of Lisa Selkirk (2010)
Classical Arabic has complex phonological alternations affecting words in utterance-final position, traditionally called "pause". All...
Consonant harmony via correspondence: Evidence from Chumash, Papers in Optimality Theory III (University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics) (2007)
The phonology of [anterior] in Chumash supports recent proposals by Hansson (2001), Rose & Walker...
Derivations and levels of representation, The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology (2007)
In the theory of generative phonology, the phonological grammar of a language is regarded as...
Less than zero: Correspondence and the null output (with Matthew Wolf), Modeling Ungrammaticality in Optimality Theory (2007)
In this chapter, we have argued for a revision of correspondence theory in which strings...
Restraint of Analysis, Linguistics Research Center (2006)
Prince & Smolensky (1993) describe a version of OT, one in which maximal harmony is...
Optimal paradigms, Paradigms in Phonological Theory (2005)
Transderivational Correspondence and Uniform Exponence are two recent theories of surface resemblances among morphologically related...
The length of stem-final vowels in Colloquial Arabic, Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVII-XVIII (2005)
This paper has argued that richness of the base, when combined with OT’s inherent commitment...
Phonological processes: Assimilation (with Norval Smith), Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2003)
Sympathy, cumulativity, and the Duke-of-York gambit, The Syllable in Optimality Theory (2003)
The Duke-of-York gambit (Pullum 1976) involves derivations of the form A->B->A, where underlying /A/ passes...
Comparative markedness (long version), Papers in Optimality Theory II [University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 26] (2002)
The markedness constraints of classic Optimality Theory assign violation-marks to output candidates without reference to...
Faithfulness and prosodic circumscription, Optimality Theory: Syntax, Phonology, and Acquisition (2000)
Morphological processes are often sensitive to the prosodic structure of their inputs. Phenomena like these...
Harmonic serialism and parallelism, Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society (2000)
The most familiar architecture for Optimality Theory is a fully parallel one, meaning that "all...
Faithfulness and identity in prosodic morphology (with Alan Prince), The Prosody-Morphology Interface (1999)
This article is largely based on the more extensive study McCarthy & Prince (1995), but...
Alignment and parallelism in Indonesian phonology (with Abigail Cohn), Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 12 (1998)
In this paper, we present a complete account of word stress in Indonesian and the...
Morpheme structure constraints and paradigm occultation, CLS 32, vol. II: The Panels (1998)
The morpheme structure constraints of classic generative phonology impose language-particular restrictions on underlying representations. It...
Remarks on phonological opacity in Optimality Theory, Studies in Afroasiatic Grammar. Papers from the Second Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics, Sophia Antipolis, 1994 (1996)
In these remarks, I have examined the problem of phonological opacity for theories without serial...
Faithfulness and reduplicative identity (with Alan Prince), University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18: Papers in Optimality Theory (1995)
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction; 2. Correspondence Theory; 3. Correspondence Theory and Overapplication; 4....
Prosodic morphology (with Alan Prince), A Handbook of Phonological Theory (1994)
An overview of results in the theory of prosodic morphology.
The emergence of the unmarked: Optimality in prosodic morphology (with Alan Prince), Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society 24 (1994)
This paper identifies and illustrates a key consequence of Optimality Theory called 'emergence of the...
The phonetics and phonology of Semitic pharyngeals, Papers in Laboratory Phonology III: Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form (1994)
The guttural segments of the Semitic languages form a natural class.
Template form in prosodic morphology, Papers from the Third Annual Formal Linguistics Society of Midamerica Conference (1993)
A pre-OT analysis of the verbal templates in Akkadian and Arabic.
Synchronic rule inversion, Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1991)
An earlier analysis of r/zero alternations in the Boston dialect.
Prosodic morphology and templatic morphology (with Alan Prince), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics II (1990)
An analysis of Arabic verb and noun templates.
Quantitative transfer in reduplicative and templatic morphology (with Alan Prince), Linguistics in the Morning Calm 2 (1988)
Prosodic structure in morphology, Language Sound Structure (1984)
The thesis of this paper is that morphological templates have access to a richer variety...
Speech disguise and phonological representation in Amharic, Advances in Nonlinear Phonology (Linguistic Models 7) (1984)
An autosegmental analysis of a secret language used by prostitutes in Addis Ababa.
A prosodic account of Arabic broken plurals, Current Trends in African Linguistics I (1983)
Arabic broken plurals as infixation.
Consonantal morphology in the Chaha verb, Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 2 (1983)
In the Gurage (Ethiopian Semitic) language Chaha, erstwhile phonological processes of palatalization and labialization have...
Phonological features and morphological structure, Papers from the Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax (1983)
Sound symbolism and other phenomena where individual distinctive features act as morphemes.
Prosodic templates, morphemic templates, and morphemic tiers, The Structure of Phonological Representations (Linguistic Models 2) (1982)
In recent work (McCarthy 1979, 1981; Halle and Vergnaud 1980; Harris 1980; Marantz, to appear;...
Stress, pretonic strengthening, and syllabification in Tiberian Hebrew, Theoretical Issues in Semitic Languages (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics III) (1981)
Tiberian Hebrew has an unusual, deeply opaque process of word-initial gemination.
The role of the evaluation metric in the acquisition of phonology, The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition (1981)
The Evaluation Metric of SPE, when taken seriously, produces some good results. Evidence comes from...
CT, Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (1977)
The special status of coronals in consonant clusters.
Unpublished Papers
Autosegmental spreading in Optimality Theory (2009)
This paper is a shorter (and better) version of "Harmony in Harmonic Serialism." It has...
Classified Bibliography of Works on OT with Candidate Chains (OT-CC) and Harmonic Serialism (HS) (2009)
Harmony in harmonic serialism (2009)
What OT constraint favors autosegmental spreading? Existing proposals for the pro-spreading markedness constraint make implausible...
The P-Map in Harmonic Serialism (2009)
According to the P-Map, a phonological mapping is less faithful to the extent that there...