Complexity Scales and Licensing Strength in Phonology

Complexity Scales and Licensing Strength in Phonology - Eugeniusz Cyran

This work is not meant to be an attempt to combine Optimality Theory with Government Phonology. Its aim is to develop certain aspects of Government Phonology which seem to be crucial in phonological organisation but which have received insufficient attention in the literature, and to eliminate those aspects of the model which have proved untenable. Specifically, this work is an attempt to demonstrate that the basic principles of phonological organisation in Government Phonology boil down to the interaction between the strength of nuclei as licensers of phonological structure and various non-rerankable scales of complexity occurring at different levels of phonological representation. This study explores the possibility that the notion of complexity may account for both fairly basic and also quite complex issues connected with syllabification, such as syllabically driven phonological processes, syllable typology and markedness, as well as the interaction between syllable structure and higher prosodic organisation. It shows that the interaction between complexity scales and licensing strength has the potential of simplifying the model of Government Phonology by eliminating independent parameters and throwing new light on some of the most cherished principles in this model. This work is organised in the following way. Chapter 1 introduces the Element Theory and discusses various complexity effects at the melodic level. Chapter 2 deals with formally defined complexity at the syllabic level and its interaction with the melodic level. This chapter contains a new analysis of Polish consonant clusters and offers a fresh look at the interaction between phonology and morphology in Polish phonotactics. Chapter 3 considers issues connected with phonologically conditioned aspects of word structure. Its first part deals with the interaction between foot structure and syllabic organisation in the context of the historical development in Slavic languages called liquid metathesis.