Arto Anttila Variation and Opacity

Phonological variation and phonological opacity have been extensively studied independently of each other. This paper examines two phonological processes that simultaneously exhibit both phenomena: Assibilation and Apocope in Finnish. The evidence converges on two main conclusions. First, variation results from the presence of MULTIPLE METRICAL SYSTEMS within Finnish. Assibilation and Apocope are metrically conditioned alternations and the segmental variation reflects metrical variation. The metrical analysis explains a number of apparently unrelated phenomena, including typological asymmetries across dialects, quantitative asymmetries within dialects, differences between nouns and verbs, differences among noun classes, and the loci of lexical frequency effects. Second, phonological opacity arises from MORPHOLOGICAL LEVEL ORDERING. By interleaving transparent phonologies with independently motivated morphosyntactic constituents (stems, words, phrases) we derive the transparent and opaque interactions of four phonological processes, including Assibilation and Apocope. ABBREVIATIONS: 1P/2P/3P – first/second/third person; ALL – allative; CAUS – causative; CLIT – clitic; COND – conditional; ESS – essive; GEN – genitive; ILL – illative; INE – inessive; PAR – partitive; PAST – past tense; PL – plural; PX – possessive suffix; SG – singular; SUP – superlative; TRA – translative; QUE – question