Correspondence is a relation between one representation and another
(McCarthy & Prince 1993, 1994, 1995). This relationship may be between
an underlying or lexical representation and a surface representation, that
is: Input–Output forms; or between surface forms such as a reduplicant
and its base (McCarthy & Prince 1995) or other derivationally related
pairs
(see for example Benua 1995, McCarthy 1995, Kenstowicz 1996) –
i.e. Output–Output. Correspondence constraints over related words
in a
paradigm ensure uniformity within the paradigm. In earlier theories this
effect was ensured by the Strict Cycle Constraint, which forbade structure-changing
operations except in immediately derived environments and
thus ensured that most of the base word stayed the same in derivation.
In
this paper we show that correspondence between derivationally related
output forms (Benua 1995) is essential for the proper analysis of vowel
length in Warray, a language of Northern Australia spoken near Darwin,
and superior to an account making use of cyclicity. Correspondence
constraints ensuring identity between output forms explain the pattern
of
vowel length in nouns, predicting both where long vowels occur as well
as
the apparently anomalous appearance of short vowels where long vowels
might be expected.