Lenition and Optimality Theory

Geminate Inalterability and Lenition

0. INTRODUCTION It is a well-known observation that phonological processes which apply to short segments frequently fail to apply to corresponding long ("geminate") segments. For example, post-vocalic spirantization of velar stops in Tigrinya yields [/a-xalIb] 'dogs' (cf. [k elbi] 'dog'), but [fekk er e] 'boasts', not [f exk er e] nor [f exx er e] (Kenstowicz 1982).1 This phenomenon of geminate...

Optimality Of Monetary And Fiscal Policies In Iran: An Application Of The Stochastic Optimal Control Theory

Routes to Lenition: An Acoustic Study

BACKGROUND Vowel lenition and its link with coarticulation have been the subject of extensive debate in the literature. The aims of the present paper are to demonstrate how vowel lenition and coarticulation are linked in Cypriot Greek (henceforth CG), to determine the nature of vowel lenition, and to illustrate how vowel lenition and coarticulation result from aerodynamic phenomena. METHODOLO...

Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variation: Acoustic Characteristics of s-lenition in the Speech of Spanish-speaking Children

S-lenition is wide-spread in many dialects of Spanish, including Spanish spoken in the Caribbean region, coastal Mexico, Central America (but not in Costa Rica and Guatemala), and the Pacific coast of Colombia, Ecuador, coastal Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and much of Argentina (Lipski, 1994). Spanish s-lenition is a phonological process that weakens both morphological /-s/ (plural marker /-...

Control Theory and Economic Policy Optimization: The Origin, Achievements and the Fading Optimism from a Historical Standpoint

Economists were interested in economic stabilization policies as early as the 1930’s but the formal applications of stability theory from the classical control theory to economic analysis appeared in the early 1950’s when a number of control engineers actively collaborated with economists on economic stability and feedback mechanisms. The theory of optimal control resulting from the contributio...