A study of constraint interaction in Slavic phonology

This thesis surveys a range of phonological phenomena in Slavic phonology, within the framework of Optimality Theory, with the object of providing formal explanations for them. In Chapter 1, I review Havlik's Law in Old Russian and argue that what are commonly known as 'exceptions' to this law are actually by-products of phonological and morphological requirements. In Chapter 2, I examine the vowel-zero alternation in modern Polish. Since this alternation has its origin in the disappearance of historical jers, many authors posit synchronic jers and a deletion rule to account for it. However, I demonstrate that there is no need to postulate such abstract vowels if two morphological factors are taken into account; (1) foreign lineage and (2) declensional class. Chapter 3 deals with the history of palatalization in Slavic languages. Although Russian has a large inventory of palatalized consonants which can occur syllable-initially as well as syllable-finally, the majority of Slavic languages impose positional and segmental restrictions on the occurrence of palatalization. For instance, Bulgarian prohibits all soft consonants at the end of a syllable, while Polish prohibits only soft labials at this position. I represent such differences by means of constraint reranking. Chapter 4 explores voice alternation in modern Polish. It is generally held that the (voice) of sonorants is unspecified; however, I concur with Lombardi (1996) and specify (voice) in sonorants as well as in obstruents. It is widely known that, unlike the (voice) of obstruents, that of sonorants does not spread to neighboring segments. I argue that such inertness is the result of compliance with IDENT...