Recent work in distinctive features and feature geometry has presented strong evidence that certain features are privative: they have no negative values, so a sound is either marked [F] or else it is not. Evidence comes from possible types of sounds (for example, multiply articulated segments, in Sagey 1986) and from the fact that the negative values of these features are not referred to in phonological rules. Currently there is a nearly universal consensus that Place features are privative, and converging evidence from several authors (Mester & Itô 1989; Cho 1990; Lombardi 1991, 1995a) that [voice] is privative also.

What happens to tone when a form is reduplicated in a tone language? In Marantz's (1982) model of reduplication, it is only segmental melody that is copied from the base. This approach predicts that no tones of the base will appear on the reduplicant. In other models, the whole base is copied, including prosody (Steriade 1988; McCarthy & Prince 1988, forthcoming). This approach predicts that the tone of the base will always appear on the reduplicant, i.e. there will be ‘transfer’ of the tone (Clements 1985).

The group of guttural consonants consists of those consonants articulated at the back of the vocal tract or with some constriction of the pharynx: uvulars, pharyngeals, laryngeals and emphatics, or pharyngealised/uvularised consonants. These consonants pattern together in terms of several phonological properties, as extensively documented by McCarthy (1989, 1991, 1994). He argues that this natural class can be captured in a model of feature geometry by a node dependent on the Place node: the Pharyngeal node. However, the status of the laryngeal consonants within this class of segments is unresolved. While it is clear that the laryngeals [? h] pattern with the other guttural consonants in Semitic languages, these sounds have also been argued to lack Place specification altogether (Steriade 1987; Bessell 1992). McCarthy (1991, 1994) suggests that languages may in fact stipulate whether laryngeal consonants are specified with a Pharyngeal node, or are Placeless. Bessell & Czaykowska-Higgins (1992) and Bessell (1992), based on data from Interior Salish languages, argue that this selection is independent of the inventory of guttural segments within a language.

In a recent squib Manaster Ramer attempts to show ‘that rules of versification may not be sensitive to representations deeper than phonemic (or the similar lexical and syntactico-phonological levels of Lexical Phonology)’ (1994: 321–322). Manaster Ramer includes some of my work on Early Irish alliteration (1988c), challenging my claim that explication of such alliteration requires orthometric (versificational) interfacing at an underlying level of phonological representation and claiming that my explication ‘involve[s] rules which were clearly invented by native grammarians and metricians and often violated in natural, as opposed to formal, verse, and which, even more to the point, make crucial reference, not to deep levels of phonology, but rather to the orthography’ (1994: 321). I will attempt to counter this statement in §2, though I am somewhat handicapped by the fact that Manaster Ramer does not actually give any evidence for his position. However, since his claim goes beyond Irish to challenge deep-level orthometric interfacing in any and all languages, in the rest of this reply I will appeal to non-Irish evidence in attempting to show the weakness of his position. In particular, I will briefly review some of my work in Hebrew metre (§ 3) and Turkish rhyme (§4) – work cited by Manaster Ramer in his references but not addressed in the body of his paper (Malone 1982, 1983, 1988b).