More on Alignment as an Alternative to Domains: The Syllabification of Catalan Clitics

Abstract

In Catalan vowel epenthesis and consonant deletion seem to have a different conditioning in simple words, in verb-clitic or clitic-verb sequences, and in clitic-clitic sequences (where an emergence of the unmarked effect with respect to syllable structure is found). In this paper, it is argued that, in spite of these domain effects, which would suggest the need for a serial analysis, all the facts concerning epenthesis and consonant deletion can be accounted for in a parallel optimality-theoretic approach. The differences in behavior are the consequence of the different ranking of morphological Alignment constraints with respect to other constraints and an Alignment constraint that makes reference to subsyllabic constituents.