Contrast and Redundancy in OT

Jill N Beckman; Catherine O Ringen

One of the basic tenets of optimality theory, termed richness of the base by Alan Prince & Paul Smolensky (1993/2002), excludes language-specific restrictions on possible input representations & interacts with another basic principle, lexicon optimization, to resolve indeterminacy in actual input representations. An examination of alternative optimality-theoretic analyses of Swedish initial stop outputs, which are contrastively either voiceless aspirated or fully voiced, is argued to show that the corresponding input representations must be specified for both [spread glottis] & [voice] features as a result of richness of the base & lexicon optimization, even though Swedish has only a two-way laryngeal distinction among stops. The admission of both features to the universal inventory provides a solution to a problem raised by Sharon Inkelas (1995) regarding the optimality-theoretic treatment of Turkish root-final stops, which display a three-way distinction among nonalternating voiceless aspirated, nonalternating voiced, & alternating voiceless aspirated & voiced outputs. 29 References. J. Hitchcock