The Syllable in Optimality Theory (review)

With The syllable in optimality theory, Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver deliver a collection of papers which they suggest offers several opportunities for insight (3). The most general of these insights centers on the results available from the study of the syllable, a core concept in generative phonology after The sound pattern of English (Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, New York: Harper & Row, 1968). In the context of optimality theory (OT), one can easily agree that some of the clearest illustrations of the factorial typology, for example, have emerged from the analysis of crosslinguistic variation in syllable structure.

The book contains one of the canonical papers on opacity in optimality theory, John J. McCarthy’s ‘Sympathy, cumulativity, and the Duke-of-York gambit’, in which the particular revision of sympathy theory known as cumulativity is presented. Beyond this now-familiar proposal, McCarthy’s paper finds some thematic unity with at least two others in the volume by invoking the notion of the semisyllable. For McCarthy, this is a moraless syllable, motivated by rhythmic requirements. Young-mee Yu Cho and Tracy Holloway King (‘Semisyllables and universal syllabification’) advocate a structurally similar view of the semisyllable, now motivated as an aid in achieving exhaustive well-formed syllabification. Paul Kiparsky (‘Syllables and moras in Arabic’) uses the semisyllable—albeit with a somewhat different definition—to illustrate subtle differences between Arabic dialects, as part of his ongoing program to develop a version of optimality theory that preserves central aspects of the architecture of lexical phonology and morphology.

Haruo Kubozono (‘The syllable as a unit of prosodic organization in Japanese’) demonstrates the importance of the syllable in Japanese, where the literature usually focuses on the role of the mora. Kubozono also makes an important contribution to the study of foot typology, giving several arguments for the footing of Japanese syllables into uneven trochees. Such a foot necessarily consists of a heavy-light sequence, and since some of the literature in metrical phonology suggests that this foot type is universally unavailable, it is useful to study the varied evidence that Kubozono brings to bear on this issue.

Junko Itô and Armin Mester (‘On the sources of opacity in OT’) use some facts about the German coda to discuss several theoretical aspects of opacity. The theoretical tool receiving most attention here is constraint conjunction, especially involving faithfulness and markedness constraints in an independently established hierarchical relation. Itô and Mester note the need for more research on various aspects of constraint conjunction, and one might add to their list the question as to whether this operation fundamentally undermines OT. One of the core tenets of the theory, of course, is that all variation derives from reranking of a universal set of constraints. Maintaining this view and allowing conjoined constraints requires the conclusion that conjoined constraints are part of the universal set of constraints. When one takes into account the requirement that a conjoined constraint should dominate its components, then OT analyses should show much heavier use of conjoined constraints than we usually see. If, by contrast, conjunction is actually an operation, then it is a tool for formulating language-specific constraints. Language-specific constraints, of course, undermine the OT ambition of defining the universal space of variation for grammar. Itô and Mester provide a stimulating opportunity to reflect on these issues.

The book also includes papers by Stuart Davis (‘The controversy of geminates and syllable weight’), Draga Zec (‘Prosodic weight’), Caroline Féry (‘Onsets and nonmoraic syllables in German’), Antony Dubach Green (‘Extrasyllabic consonants and onset well-formedness’), Caroline R. Wiltshire (‘Beyond codas: Word and phrase-final alignment’), Marc van Oostendorp (‘Ambisyllabicity and fricative voicing in West Germanic’), Ruben van de Vijver (‘The CiV-generalization in Dutch: What...