Richness of the Base, Lexicon Optimization, and Suffix /i/~{ Alternation in Korean *

Hong, Sunghoon. 2001. Richness of the base, lexicon optimization, and suffix /ˆ/~{ alternation in Korean. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 7.1. 215-242. This paper presents an OT analysis of the phonological patterns exhibited by the verbal/adjectival suffixes in Korean. I propose that it is not arbitrarily determined whether a suffix is alternating or non-alternating, but rather phonologically motivated for the most part. I will show that alternating suffixes with /i/ serve us to avoid bad ‘syllable contact’ or to discard a coda consonant, while non-alternating suffixes without /i/ enable us to be maximally faithful, better aligned, or to observe syllable-based phonotactic constraints. Based on this analysis, I touch on the issue of UR for the verbal/adjectival suffixes. Richness of the Base in OT guarantees that there are no restrictions imposed on inputs, but the consideration of learnability drives us to select a particular input for an output. Utilizing Paradigm-level Lexicon Optimization, motivated to deal with allomorphy, I propose that the suffixes in question do not have /i/ in their UR’s. (Hansung University)