Harmonic Improvement without Candidate Chains in Chamorro

This article argues that some ostensible advantages of Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (OT-CC) over classic OT are actually liabilities. OT-CC correctly predicts that Chamorro umlaut occurs only when trigger and target are adjacent. But OT-CC is incompatible with similar phenomena like Central Venetan metaphony, and attempts to modify OT-CC to produce metaphony impair the theory’s handling of umlaut. Classic OT provides a superior approach: constraints grounded in prominence asymmetries produce the umlaut facts, and there is no conflict with analyses of metaphony. This result suggests that despite OT-CC’s advancements in treatments of opacity, the theory’s machinery remains inadequate in important ways.