A Reanalysis of Spirantization in English

Abstract

The purpose of this paper under Optimality Theory (henceforth, OT) framework is to offer a new account of the Spirantization in English. The account based on the traditional generative phonology raises some problems: it has to set up complicated level ordering and does not grasp the intrinsic nature of the process. On the contrary, the new account based on OT framework provides a simple and intrinsic account of the Spirantization in English without the necessity of setting up a level ordering. The paradigmatic identity-based analysis proposed in this study focuses directly on identity relation of paradigmatically-related words and thus shows the intrinsic content of the relation between related words explicitly, by showing the interaction of these paradigmatic identity constraints and other phonological constraints explicitly accounts for the canonical and non-canonical phonological processes including the process of Spirantization in English. Another advantage of this study is that the identity-based analysis can capture some unified generalization among the different phonological processes in English including the Spirantization: in the English hierarchy of constraints, both sets of O(utput)O(output)-Identity constraints are ranked. These two classes of affixed words pattern differently, since OO1-Identity and OO2-Identity constraints have the different rank in the hierarchy of constraints.