Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

P. COUTSOUGERA
As can be seen, in rule 6, the cluster can be reduced in two different
ways: either by deleting the obstruent v (vCC) or by deleting r (CrC).
5. Opacity and Sympathy Theory
As I have mentioned above, classic OT [Prince & Smolensky 1993] has
been proven incapable of accounting for phonological opacity as OT is in
principle output-based.
The mechanism of OT is fairly simple: first we establish the
constraint hierarchy in such a way that it will reflect the phonology of
the language in question. The constraints (CON) operate on the candidate
set – generated by GEN (Generator) – via the mechanism of EVAL
(Evaluator), which performs evaluation of candidates in a parallel or
simultaneous manner and without considering any intermediate forms
between input-output (henceforth I-O).
Parallel evaluation is feasible in an OT tableau: EVAL checks
whether the candidates violate or obey each constraint (e.g. whether they
are faithful to the input or not, and also whether they obey other type of
constraints: markedness or alignment ones). The candidate which has the
most non-violations, starting with the highest ranked constraint and
carrying on in a descending order, is the winner.
This is problematic for opacity examples, where the trigger (i.e. the
conditioning environment) is not present in the surface representation
(e.g. in [ale'fka] from underlying /alevria/, the apical trill r, which is
responsible for the velar k, does not surface). Thus the output forms are
characterised by ‘gratuitous’ faithfulness violations e.g. unmotivated by
surface structural harmony (e.g. [omorca'] violates the constraint *rca
seemingly gratuitously in tableau 2 below since it does meet its structural
description).
The need for intermediate levels of representation (by means of
which we arrive at the surface level) could be regarded as major
motivation for serial derivation (or Serialism, following McCarthy 1998’s
terminology), as opacity can be easily accounted for by a derivational
framework. This is due to the presence of intermediate levels of
representations in a derivational framework, which determine the
properties of the final output form.
However, deviations from the classic OT output-based mechanism
have been proposed by McCarthy & Prince (1995), Benua (1995/1997),
Kenstowicz (1996). Cases of Reduplication, Truncation, Paradigm
32