Title
Curt Rice (Tromso): What is and what should never be

CASTL colloquium

Date:  05.10.2006

Time:  19:15

Venue:  E010 1

The study of structure in phonology has taken a backseat in recent years to the study of results achievable from constraint interaction. CASTL has begun to earn a reputation as a center at which structural issues are considered to be a core element in the study of the phonological component. Much of the work here has considered issues at the segmental level, cf. the recent workshop "Phonological bases of phonological features." The present talk also pursues the broader agenda of illustrating that OT phonology cannot be productively pursued independent of the study of structure. Our focus this evening, however, is not on segmental phonology, but rather on metrical phonology. I identify a structure which is putatively unnecessary for modelling known stress patterns -- namely ternary feet -- and demonstrate that OT cannot model their absence through constraint interaction alone, contra various claims in the literature. This forms the basis for the claim that the usual rhetoric around the concept of "freedom of analysis" is ultimately untenable.