Dissertation - Michael Becker

IDENT(voice) σ1 . The existence of constraints in CON that are specific to initial syllablesallows Turkish speakers to learn separate lexical trends for monosyllabic and polysyllabicnouns. On the other hand, in the absence of universal constraints that relate voicing andvowel backness, the backness of the stem-final vowel cannot be used in recording thebehavior of any lexical items, and this aspect of the lexicon goes ignored by speakers.To encode lexically-specific constraint rankings, the version of Optimality Theory usedhere is one augmented by a mechanism of constraint cloning (proposed in Pater 2006,2008b, see also Mahanta 2007; Coetzee 2008). In this theory, language learners detectthat their language requires opposite rankings of a pair of constraints, and then clone oneof those constraints. In the Turkish case, speakers realize that some lexical items requireIDENT(voice) ≫ *VÙV and some lexical items require the opposite ranking. They cloneone of the constraints, say IDENT(voice), and then non-alternating nouns are associatedwith the clone of IDENT(voice) that ranks over *VÙV, and alternating nouns are associatedwith the clone that ranks under *VÙV.The resulting grammar contains two lists of nouns, as every Ù -final noun of Turkish islisted under one of the clones of IDENT(voice). Since most Ù -final nouns do alternate,most nouns will be listed with the clone that ranks below *VÙV. Now suppose aspeaker encounters a novel noun in its bare form, and they are required to produce thepossessive form. The grammar allows the final stop to either alternate or not alternate,but the alternating behavior is more likely, since more nouns are listed with the cloneof IDENT(voice) that ranks below *VÙV. Cloned constraints allow speakers to reacha grammar that records the behavior of known items, and then project that behaviorprobabilistically onto novel items.The full analysis of Turkish will involve the faithfulness constraints IDENT(voice) andIDENT(voice) σ1 , to protect final stops from becoming voiced, and additionally MAX andMAX σ1 , to protect final dorsals from deleting (see §2.4.6). These faithfulness constraintsconflict with a family of markedness constraints against voiceless stops, either between two22