Harmonic Serialism vs. Parallel-OT, compensation, allomorphs of the nonpast affix, emphasis on the reanalyzed ‘stem’ of suppletive form, Takeo Saga dialect of Japanese
This paper proposes a complete analysis of a morphophonological complex phenomenon—the interaction of apocope with compensation for the further absence of the wordfinal liquid—in the harmonic serialism of optimality theory and argues that harmonic serialism is superior to standard parallel OT in explaining this complex phenomenon. Built on the established constraints with the ranking of consonant cluster simplification in harmonic serialism, 1) the faithfulness constraint on the marked manners of articulations and 2) the constraint on the final vowel of the underlying nonpast forms with both ranked above the constraint CODACOND, are shown to explain the apocope. Which constraint outranks the constraints HAVEPLACE and NOLINK[Place] between the constraint IDENT[Cons] and a novel constraint on emphasizing the reanalyzed ‘stem’ of the suppletive form explains the compensation that occurs. Because no concept of intermediate forms is available, standard parallel OT, by contrast, is argued i) to incorrectly associate the geminate of the first consonant *[...Vri.ri...] together with the second consonant absent with the underlying forms /...Vriu#Cj.../ and ii) not to be able to exclude constraints and rankings that predict the interaction of unnatural liquid syncope with the lengthening of the first vowel of the back vowel sequences and somehow correctly predict the non-past forms ending with /uru/ or /oru/. A novel analysis of the nonpast forms of ‘vowel /e/-final’ stem and ‘irregular’ verbs explains the provided data for the ends of the nonpast forms, being extendable to other morphophonological data and those of other dialects and old Japanese.