Rule Interaction Conversion Operations

Abstract

Different types of interactions between pairs of phonological rules can be converted into one another using three formal operations that we discuss in this article. One of these conversion operations, rule re-ordering (here called swapping), is well-known; another, flipping, is a more recent finding (Hein et al., 2014). We introduce a third conversion operation that we call cropping. Formal relationships among the members of the set of rule interactions, expanded by cropping beyond the classical four (feeding, bleeding, counterfeeding, and counterbleeding) to include four more (mutual bleeding, seeding, counterseeding, and merger), are identified and clarified. We show that these conversion operations exhaustively delimit the set of possible pairwise rule interactions predicted by conjunctive rule ordering (Chomsky & Halle, 1968), and that each interaction is related to each of the others by the application of at most two conversion operations.

A formal typology of process interactions

“…Another view of the typological space can be gained by relating the various molecular interaction types in the typology to each other via two formal 'conversion' operations (Baković & Blumenfeld 2019).…”

“…Another operation relating interaction types is CROPPING (Baković & Blumenfeld 2019). For example, suppose the Finnish raising rule is narrowed in scope to apply only after nonsibilants: e ÝÑ i { [-strid] #.…”

“…This term was introduced inBaković & Blumenfeld (2018, 2019) to clearly distinguish seeding from feeding, given the critical differences between these two classes of interactions elaborated upon in the text.…”

Serialism and Opacity in Phonological Theory

“…9 Baković (2011) provides a more comprehensive typology of these generalizations, some of which are problematic for OT and others of which are not. The recent work of Baković & Blumenfeld (2018, 2019 defines and formalizes an even wider range of phonological process interactions.…”

Shifting Interactions and Countershifting Opacity: A Note on Opacity in Harmonic Serialism

“…or "bleeding" have been discussed in Zwicky 1987 and Baković and Blumenfeld 2019, where they are referred to as "transfusions" (a term Zwicky 1987 attributes to an unpublished paper by Donald Churma). 3 Here I will refer to interactions as in (2) using the term shifting, because APOCOPE can be thought of as shifting the locus of application of STRESS.…”