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garland.com>Rosenthall, Samuel; Vowel/Glide Alternation in a Theory of Constraint Interaction; 0-8153-2884-2, cloth; 302 pages, $64; Garland Publishing; Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics Using Prince and Smolensky's Optimality Theory, this study shows that the distribution of high vowels and glides is a consequence of simultaneously comparing moraic and nonmoraic syllabifications of high vowels for satisfaction of phonological constraints. A high vowel surfaces when the moraic parse best satisfies the constraints and a glide surfaces when the nonmoraic parse best satisfies the constraints. This study concentrates on the syllabification of high vowels in vowel sequences. The interlinguistic variation in syllabification is shown to follow from different rankings of the same set of phonological constraints. First, it examines the syllabification of vowel sequences in languages with only surface monophthongal vowels. In these languages, high vowels are syllabified as vowels when followed by a consonant, but are syllabified as glide when followed by another vowel. Furthermore, the syllabification of nonhigh vowels varies across these languages. Second, stress can influence the distribution of high vowels. In Lenakel and Spanish, the generalization is that a high vowel adjacent to a nonhigh vowel is a vowel when stressed, otherwise it is a glide. This is shown to be a consequence of simultaneously comparing candidate syllabifications and metrifcations of the vowel sequence. Third, in a language like Berber, glides must be present underlyingly, and these underlying glides can alternate with high vowels. In this case, moraic and nonmoraic syllabifications of the underlying glide are compared for constraint satisfaction. (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, 1994; revised with new preface, bibliography, and index) E-mail: infoMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
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