Umlaut in optimality theory

Synchronic umlaut in German, Icelandic, and Chamorro is investigated within Optimality Theory. It is shown that umlaut is unpredictable from the segmental content of the triggering morphemes in the three languages. Consequently, it is argued that floating autosegments trigger umlaut in the three languages. The previously published and the new data presented show that German umlaut does not interact with stress, that Icelandic u-umlaut interacts with non-primary stress, and that Chamorro umlaut interacts with metrical constituency. Umlaut uniformly targets the edges of constituents: German and Icelandic umlaut target the right edge of the root and the left edge of the word; Chamorro umlaut targets the left edge of the foot.;The interaction between Chamorro stress and umlaut reveals that Chamorro footing is non-iterative in roots, and stem stress to the left of the main stress is represented by metrical prominence only. Prefixal stress is accounted for by reference to the immediate dominance among morphological constituents in ANCHOR constraints.;The ANCHOR constraint schema is revised to accommodate floating autosegments in Correspondence Theory. It is argued that the data can only be accounted for if both the existential and the universal quantifier are integrated into a revised ANCHOR schema that allows gradient violation. The existential quantifier is decisive in the analysis of both German umlaut and Icelandic u-umlaut. The universal quantifier is crucial to the analysis of Chamorro umlaut. German umlaut shows that upward completion is a viable mode of constraint evaluation which must, however, be obviated by domain superscription for Icelandic u-umlaut. The directionality of umlaut is shown to fall out from the interaction of constraints. It is shown that lexically-determined constraint ranking reversals, unlike open-class parochial constraints, account for both the lexical iterativity of Old High German umlaut and the directionality of Modern German umlaut without compromising constraint universality.;None of the umlaut patterns discussed requires cyclicity or lexical strata. Furthermore, it is shown that the interaction between Chamorro stress and umlaut does not require transderivational power beyond two-level Optimality Theory. Feature-to-node spreading is extended to floating autosegments and is integrated as a constraint into Optimality Theory.