Fell-Swoop Onset Deletion

1 Introduction

Harmonic Serialism (HS; McCarthy 2007b, 2008a,b, 2009) and Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (OT-CC; McCarthy 2007a,c) make assumptions about production of candidates by GEN significantly different from classic OT (Prince and Smolensky 2004). There are important differences in the ability of GEN to supply candidates recursively and the degree of "freedom of analysis" given to GEN.

On the one hand, classic OT is a parallel model and GEN yields output candidates only once. As a corollary, classic OT necessarily allows GEN to generate candidates entirely different from a given input. On the other hand, HS and OT-CC are serial theories and endow GEN with the ability to generate candidates recursively. But they impose a restriction on GEN: gradualness. It dictates that each step may contain at most one phonological change.

Repetitive candidate production and gradualness are interlocking notions in HS and OT-CC. In HS, GEN submits the fully faithful form and forms with minimal deviation from the input. EVAL chooses the most harmonic candidate as the output on the first pass. If it selects the faithful form, the derivation converges and no further step is taken. If it selects an unfaithful form, that form serves as the input on the next pass. The same procedure continues to be applied until the derivation converges. In OT-CC, each candidate forms a chain that starts with the form faithful to the input. The nth chain member can deviate only minimally from member n - 1 in the same chain and must perform better than n - 1 with respect to a language-specific ranking. This harmonic improvement is ensured with a loop of GEN and EVAL. GEN extends chains in consultation with EVAL, so complex phonological changes are results of iterative interaction between GEN and EVAL. In the serial theories, phonological transformation proceeds gradually toward better harmony, unlike in classic OT where candidates with varying degrees of faithfulness violation are produced at once.

Because of their different assumptions about GEN, HS and OT-CC make predictions different from those of classic OT. Suppose that C₁C₂ is a consonant cluster and that C₁ and C₂ are a coda and an onset, respectively. Moreover, suppose that C₁ is an ill-formed coda. Under the assumption that place features are subsegmental entities, McCarthy (2007c, 2008a) argues that the derivational theories correctly predict that C₁ is deleted crosslinguistically when C₁ and C₂ are tautomorphemic.

This squib discusses a case where C₂ is deleted. Examples come from verb suffix morphology in Japanese. A straightforward analysis is possible in classic OT. Given that place features are subsegmental entities rather than attributes, gradual harmonic ascent is impossible. This impossibility impedes an analysis of onset deletion couched in current HS and OT-CC. With evidence for place features as entities, I draw the conclusion that consonant deletion occurs in a fell-swoop fashion.

This squib is mapped out as follows. In section 2, I present relevant data from the verb suffix morphology of Japanese. Japanese is taken as a representative case, but similar onset deletion is widely attested across languages. In section 3, I show that the data presented in section 2 receive a straightforward account in classic OT. In section 4, I show that the same data cannot be analyzed in terms of stepwise deletion. In section 5, I discuss two alternative HS and OT-CC accounts that do not rest on onset deletion. They call for an unmotivated markedness constraint or unmotivated underlying representations of verb suffixes. One of the alternatives even makes incorrect empirical predictions. In section 6, I offer conclusions.

2 Onset Deletion in Japanese Verb Suffixation

In Japanese verb suffix morphology, an onset consonant is subject to deletion when faithful parsing of a coda-onset sequence would violate the Japanese coda condition.¹ Japanese prohibits coda consonants with their own place specification. Either a coda consonant must be placeless, or its place feature must be licensed by the immediately following onset (Ito 1986, 1989...