Dissertation - Michael Becker

stem or only in the plural stem for any given paradigm. Speakers were more successfullearning the language that paired –ot with stems that have [o] in the plural, as predicted bythe analysis that uses markedness constraints.The formal properties of the proposed OT-based model were explored and motivatedin chapter 4. In this model, the inconsistent behavior of lexical items under affixationgives rise to conflicting rankings of universal constraints. These rankings in turn are usedto classify the lexical items involved by cloning constraints and listing lexical items withclones. The resulting grammar captures the behavior of known items, so they can be derivedto correctly produce adult forms, and it also uses the relative numbers of the recorded itemsto apply probabilistically to novel items, as humans do.The analysis of Turkish in chapter 2 had to proceed in what Hayes (1999) calls “insideout”fashion, i.e. assuming that the base is identical to its surface form, without usingproperties of derived forms to enrich the underlying form of the base. This move wasgeneralized to a claim that universally, the underlying form of the root is identical to thesurface form of the base, and that abstract underlying forms are limited to affixes. Theimplications for Turkish and a variety of other languages were explored. Finally, the rangeof exceptionality that was predicted from the use of markedness and faithfulness constraintswas explored and shown to be fully instantiated.5.2 Future directionsThis final section explores some of the broader ramifications of the proposals made inthis dissertation, specifically with regard to the predicted naturalness of lexical organizationand the concomitant revised view of morpho-phonological analysis.5.2.1 Unnatural phonologyIt was seen that Turkish speakers do not project the effect that vowel quality has onstop voicing in their lexicon onto novel items, and I have claimed that this is due to the222