Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993) makes the claim that well-formedness constraints are ranked and minimally violable. This dissertation examines the consequences of constraint ranking in three areas of phonology: segmental phonotactics (nasal-voiceless consonant sequences), metrical theory (English stress), and in phonological development (child English). These studies demonstrate that the introduction of constraint ranking allows for more principled descriptions of the facts in each of these domains, and often yields the correct predictions about the range of cross-linguistic variation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.42114 |
| Date | January 1996 |
| Creators | Pater, Joseph Vernon. |
| Contributors | Goad, Heather (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Linguistics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001554568, proquestno: NQ30356, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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