Long-Distance Licensing in Harmonic Grammar

Abstract

Positional Licensing constraints can compel a feature to spread to a prominent position such as a stressed syllable. In Harmonic Grammar, this spreading takes a pathological form: over long distances, spreading can be blocked because it would accumulate too many faithfulness violations. The result is an unattested system in which there is an arbitrary upper bound to the distance across which a feature can spread. This defect is remedied here by modifying Positional Licensing so that rather than simply assigning one violation for an unlicensed feature, it assigns violations in proportion to the distance between the feature and its licensor. It can therefore counter faithfulness regardless of the distance between trigger and target. This reformulation necessitates other changes to avoid new problems: Positional Licensing must reward licensed features instead of penalizing unlicensed ones, and it must be couched in Serial Harmonic Grammar. This result provides new support for those theoretical constructs, and it helps clarify the differences between OT and HG.

Positional faithfulness in Harmonic Grammar

“…First, because HG alters the way in which constraints interact with one another, the tension between positional licensing and faithfulness is resolved in new ways. For example, no longer does the higher ranked/weighted constraint have unfettered control: when satisfaction of positional licensing requires too much unfaithfulness, the accumulated violations of a lower weighted faithfulness constraint can block positional licensing’s normal effect (Kaplan 2015a,b, to appear). Such systems appear to be unattested.…”

“…Likewise, a constraint like License (Coronal, ) is illicit in both OT and HG because in both frameworks it singles out unmarked place features. Whatever form positional licensing must take in HG (see Kaplan (2015a,b, to appear) for an argument that it must be quite different formally from its OT counterpart), it must still be prohibited from producing unattested overwrite, and it must not single out unmarked features.…”

On prominence scale interactions in Hayu: a Harmonic Grammar account

“…For arguments for the use of rewards and hence positive integers in HG-phonology seeKimper (2011),Kaplan (2016).…”