Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

24.1. Sławomir Zdziebko (Lublin): There is no escape from abstract representations. Containment, faithfulness and Polish palatalizations [zoom]

The presentation offers a comprehensive overview of the palatalization processes attested in Polish. It also argues for the following set of theoretically relevant points:

• the underapplication of Surface Velar Palatalization in the context of de-nasalized nasal vowels is best accounted for under the containment version of OT
• most palatalization changes must take morphological and lexical context into account. They are not purely phonological and are best analysed in terms of the anchoring of floating Place of Articulation nodes onto the stem-final consonants
• a uniform account of morphophonologically-driven palatalizations calls for the reference to traditional faithfulness constraints (Max, Ident). This suggests that the containment version of OT must assume faithfulness constraints
• the comprehensive account of Polish palatalizations does not call for constraint re-ranking at any point of the derivation. It may be provided within the parallel version of OT.