Emerging grammars in contemporary Yoruba phonology

Abstract This article provides a description and an Optimality Theory (OT) analysis of contact-induced changes variation in contemporary Yoruba syllable structure. The claims that major diachronic change has occurred the structure phonology due to its continued contact with English, resulting invention, preservation, hypercorrection clusters codas. I characterize this terms OT constraint re-ranking (Miglio Moren 2003) assess synchronic against indexed approach Itô Mester (1995a, b, 1999), ranked-winners Coetzee (2004), partial-order co-phonology Anttila (1997), Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) model Goldwater Johnson (2003). show none these approaches is able account independently for categorical, gradient, lexically conditioned structure, but rather MaxEnt augmented lexical indexation most economical fits data accurately.