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Optionality, lexicality and sound change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1997

PRAMOD KUMAR PANDEY
PRAMOD KUMAR PANDEY
Affiliation:
Author's address: Department of Linguistics, M. S. University of Baroda, Baroda 390 002, Gujarat, India. E-mail: escapint/[email protected] Department of Linguistics, University of Baroda
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Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between variability and lexicality on the one hand and sound change on the other within the theory of Lexical Phonology. The former leads to the proposal of the Optionality Constraint (OC), which prohibits the application of optional rules in the lexical module. The constraint is found to be violated at the word level. The violation of OC as well as of other lexical modular principles is accounted for by the help of a new licensing principle, called the Polarity Principle. This allows for interacting modules to have different properties of representation and rule application at their opposite ends. The OC leads to a resolution of the Neogrammarian Controversy, that is consonant with the standard assumption concerning sound change, namely, the inherent relation between the latter and variability.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 1997 , pp. 91 - 130
Copyright
1997 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

A major part of the research reported in this paper has been carried out with the help of a financial grant from the Nuffield Foundation Travelling Fellowship at the Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, England from April 2 to July 15, 1990. I am grateful to Mahendra Verma, Steve Harlow, John Kelly, John Local, John Coleman and Judy Weyman for their hospitality and help. I am also indebted to Paul Kiparsky and K. P. Mohanan for their help in the early stage of this work, to three anonymous JL referees for their incisive comments and useful suggestions for improvements in the submitted drafts, and to Parimal Patil and Brian Robinson for reading the final draft through and suggesting improvements in the English. For any faults that remain, the responsibility is entirely mine.