Candidate chains, unfaithful spell-out, and outwards-looking phonologically-conditioned allomorphy

Abstract

The question of whether phonologically-conditioned suppletive allomorphy can ever be outwardly sensitive has been a key point of contention in debates between parallel and serial theories of morpho-phonology. Purely serial theories bar outwardssensitivity altogether, while parallel theories permit it across the board. A few examples have been reported, demonstrating the need for some degree of parallelism, but are sufficiently limited to suggest that some degree of serialism is also required. This paper advances a proposal regarding when allomorphs compete serially and when they compete in parallel. Specifically, it proposes that there is a connection between outwards-sensitivity and feature mismatches in morphological spell-out, and suggests a revision to the theory of Optimal Interleaving (OI: Wolf in Optimal interleaving: serial phonology-morphology interaction in a constraint-based model, 2008) which captures this connection. A proposal is also made regarding how to model outwards-sensitive root allomorphy under OI’s assumptions.