Go back to John McCarthy's homepage.
You can download my CV in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format here.
A list of works that I have made available on the Rutgers Optimality Archive can be obtained here (select my name in the box below “See information about an author”).
Some
of the latest
Warning: Downloadable versions labeled as "manuscript" are not guaranteed to be identical to the published version.
(forthcoming) The serial
interaction of stress and syncope. Natural Language and
Linguistic Theory. Published version available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-008-9051-3 if your university has a subscription.
Abstract: Many languages respect the generalization that some or all unstressed vowels are deleted. This generalization proves elusive in classic Optimality Theory, however. The source of the problem is classic OT's parallel evaluation, which requires that the effects of stress assignment and syncope be optimized together. This article argues for a version of OT called Harmonic Serialism, in which the effects of stress assignment and syncope can and must be evaluated sequentially. The results are potentially applicable to other domains where process interaction is best understood in derivational terms..
(2008) Doing
Optimality Theory.
(2007) Hidden Generalizations:
Phonological Opacity in Optimality Theory.
(2007) Slouching toward optimality: Coda reduction in OT-CC. Phonological Studies (Journal of the
Phonological Society of
Abstract: There is a well-established asymmetry
in the behavior of medial consonant clusters: the first consonant in the
cluster can undergo assimilation or deletion, but the second consonant in the
cluster cannot. This article presents an explanation for that asymmetry based
on a version of Optimality Theory with candidate chains (McCarthy 2006a). The
key idea is that a consonant can only assimilate or delete if it first loses
its place features by debuccalizing, and
debuccalization is only possible in coda position.
(2007) Consonant harmony via correspondence: Evidence from Chumash. In
Leah Bateman, Michael O'Keefe, Ehren Reilly, and Adam
Werle (eds.) Papers in Optimality Theory III (=
Abstract: Hansson (2001), Rose &
(2006/to appear) Restraint of analysis. In Eric
Bakovic, Junko Ito, and John McCarthy (eds.) Wondering at the Natural Fecundity of Things: Essays in Honor of Alan
Prince.
Abstract: Prince & Smolensky (1993) describe
a version of OT, one in which maximal harmony is achieved in small steps of
gradual harmonic improvement, because a more restrained GEN is limited to
making modest changes in the input one at a time. In this chapter, I explore
some of the differences between classic OT with free GEN on the one hand and
persistent OT with restrained GEN on the other. I show, as Prince and Smolensky
(1993) suggest, that the single-operation and harmonic-improvement requirements
do indeed have consequences that are different from those of the familiar OT
model. This chapter's goal is not to decide squarely for one version of OT over
the other, though elsewhere (McCarthy 2006) I argue in favor of a derivative of
persistent OT called OT-CC (for OT with candidate chains).
(2005) Taking a free ride in morphophonemic learning.
In Maria-Rosa Lloret and Jesús
Jiménez, eds., Morphology
in Phonology, thematic issue of Catalan
Journal of Linguistics 4, 19-55. Download from CJL website.
Abstract: As language learners begin to analyze
morphologically complex words, they face the problem of projecting underlying
representations from the morphophonemic alternations that they observe.
Research on learnability in Optimality Theory has started to address this
problem, and this article deals with one aspect of it. When alternation data
tell the learner that some surface [B]s are derived from underlying /A/s, the
learner will under certain conditions generalize by deriving all [B]s, even
nonalternating ones, from /A/s. An adequate learning theory must therefore
incorporate a procedure that allows nonalternating [B]s to take a “free
ride” on the /A/ →[B] unfaithful map.
(2005) Optimal paradigms. In
Laura Downing, Tracy Alan Hall, and Renate Raffelsiefen, eds., Paradigms in
Phonological Theory.
Abstract: This paper uses evidence from Arabic
to argue for a theory of Optimal Paradigms, in which faithfulness constraints
among members of paradigms resist alternation. OP is compared with
output-output faithfulness; the main difference is that OP allows any paradigm
member to influence the phonology of any other paradigm member, whereas OO
faithfulness gives priority to morphologically simplex forms.
(2003) OT constraints are categorical. Phonology 20, 75-138.
Abstract: This paper argues for a restrictive
theory of constraints in OT. The main conclusion is that all constraints are
categorical. There are no gradient constraints, and in particular there are no
gradient alignment constraints. The many and diverse ways in which gradience has been used in the OT literature are examined
and reinterpreted or reanalyzed.
(2003) On targeted constraints and cluster
simplification. Phonology 19, 273-292. Download here.
Abstract: This paper discusses targeted
constraints as proposed in work by Colin Wilson. The paper’s main argument
is that a result claimed to follow from adopting targeted constraints -- an
explanation for why simplification of intervocalic consonant clusters always
targets the first member of the cluster -- does not in fact go through. Other
aspects of the targeted constraints theory are also elucidated.
(2003) Comparative markedness [short version]. Theoretical Linguistics 29, 1-51 (plus commentary).
Download here.
Abstract: All markedness constraints, it is
proposed, should be split into two by considering their impact on the
input-output mapping. ‘Old’ markedness constraints are violated by
outputs containing marked structures that they have inherited from the input.
‘New’ markedness constraints are violated by outputs containing
markedness structures that are not inherited from the input. Applications to
counter-feeding opacity, derived environment effects, iterative processes, and
grandfather effects are presented. This issue of Theoretical Linguistics
also contains commentary
on my article by various scholars and a response by me. Also see the long
version two entries below.
(2003) Sympathy, Cumulativity, and the Duke-of-York
Gambit. In Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver, eds., The Optimal Syllable.
Abstract: This paper discusses some extensions
of my earlier work on Sympathy Theory with particular reference to the problem
of Duke-of-York derivations.
(2002) Comparative markedness [long version]. In
Angela C. Carpenter, Andries W. Coetzee, and Paul de Lacy, eds., Papers in
Optimality Theory II (University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in
Linguistics 26).
Books
and the like
(2004) ed. Optimality Theory in
Phonology: A Reader.
Review on LinguistList by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy.
(2002) A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory.
Review on LinguistList by Marina Tzakosta.
(1999) Introductory OT on CD-ROM.
Handouts for teaching a course on Optimality Theory in
phonology.
(1996) with Alan Prince. Prosodic
Morphology 1986. Technical Report #32,
This work has never been published. It was first circulated in 1986. This 1996
edition contains corrections, added comments, and a bibliography.
(1993) with Alan Prince. Prosodic Morphology
I: Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction. Technical
Report #3,
Abstract: This never-published book-length
manuscript presents the basics of OT, an extensive analysis of the phonology
and prosodic morphology of Axininca Campa, and a chapter on other aspects of
prosodic morphology, such as infixation.
(1992) ed. with Mushira Eid and Ellen Broselow Perspectives on Arabic
Linguistics IV, Benjamins,
(1990) ed. with M. Eid Perspectives on
Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the Second Symposium, Benjamins,
(1982) Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and
Morphology,
This is my 1979 MIT doctoral dissertation. To download a scanned copy, see
below.
(1981) ed. with C. L. Baker The
Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, MIT Press,
Other
articles, book chapters, and conference papers
(2000) The Prosody of Phase in Rotuman. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18, 147-197. Download here.
(2000) Faithfulness and Prosodic Circumscription.
In Joost Dekkers, Frank van
der Leeuw and Jeroen van de Weijer, eds., Optimality
Theory: Syntax, Phonology, and Acquisition.
(2000) Harmonic Serialism and Parallelism, in Masako Hirotani, Andries
Coetzee, Nancy Hall, and Ji-yung Kim, eds., Proceedings
of the North East Linguistics Society 30, GLSA, Amherst, MA. Pp.
501–524. Download from
ROA.
Harmonic serialism is an architecture for OT in which
every output of the grammar is returned to the grammar as input until
convergence. This paper compares harmonic serialism with the standard parallel
model of OT.
(1999) Sympathy and Phonological Opacity. Phonology
16, 331-399. Download
here.
Sympathy theory is an approach to the problems of phonological opacity in OT.
(1999) with Alan Prince Faithfulness and Identity in Prosodic Morphology,
in The Prosody Morphology Interface. Ed. by René Kager, Harry van der Hulst, and Wim Zonneveld.
This chapter is a considerably shortened and somewhat improved version of
McCarthy and Prince 1995.
(1999) with John Alderete, Jill Beckman, Laura Benua, Amalia
Gnanadesikan, & Suzanne Urbanczyk Reduplication with Fixed Segmentism. Linguistic
Inquiry 30, 327–364. Download here.
This article argues that a class of reduplication patterns involve emergence of
the unmarked (McCarthy and Prince 1994). Various languages are discussed,
including Nancowry, Igbo, Tubatulabal,
and English.
(1998) with Abigail Cohn Alignment and Parallelism in Indonesian Phonology,
Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 12, 53–137. Download from ROA.
This paper was originally circulated in 1993 or 1994. It presents an early
application of alignment to phonology/prosody interactions.
(1998) Morpheme Structure Constraints and Paradigm Occultation, in M.
Catherine Gruber, Derrick Higgins, Kenneth Olson, and Tamra
Wysocki, eds., CLS 32, vol. II: The Panels.
Under the thesis of richness of the base, OT does not countenance morpheme
structure constraints. This paper shows that some phenomena that have been
attributed to morpheme structure constraints can be analyzed with constraints
that forbid alternations within paradigms.
(1997) Process-specific Constraints in Optimality
Theory, Linguistic Inquiry 28, 231–251. Download here.
OT predicts certain limitations on the action of blocking constraints. The
evidence comes from emphasis harmony in Palestinian Arabic.
(1995) with Alan Prince Faithfulness and Reduplicative Identity, in
This paper introduces correspondence theory and applies it to the problem of
reduplication-phonology interactions.
(1994) The Emergence of the Unmarked: Optimality
in Prosodic Morphology, in Mercè Gonzàlez,
ed., Proceedings of the North East Linguistics Society 24, GLSA,
In OT, because all constraints are present in the grammar of all languages,
even a low-ranking and normally inactive markedness constraint can emerge if
the conditions are right. Many reduplicative phenomena can be analyzed in these
terms.
(1994) The Phonetics and Phonology of Semitic Pharyngeals, in Patricia Keating, ed., Papers in
Laboratory Phonology III: Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form,
The guttural segments of the Semitic languages form a natural class.
(1994) with Alan Prince. Prosodic Morphology, in
John Goldsmith, ed., A Handbook of
Phonological Theory, Basil Blackwell,
An overview of results in the theory of prosodic morphology.
(1994) On Coronal 'Transparency'. Handout of a
talk presented at TREND,
Only a handout, not a paper, but available here because it's
occasionally cited and requested. I believe that 'TREND' stands for
'Trilateral Phonology Weekend', a mini-conference of phonologists at UC Santa
Cruz, UC Berkeley, and Stanford.
(1993) Template Form in Prosodic Morphology, in Laurel Smith Stvan et al., eds., Papers from the Third Annual Formal
Linguistics Society of Midamerica Conference,
Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington. Pp. 187–218. Download here.
A pre-OT analysis of the verbal templates in Akkadian and Arabic.
(1993) with Alan Prince Generalized Alignment, Yearbook of Morphology,
pp. 79–153. Download
from ROA.
Alignment constraints require the coincidence of edges. They have applications
in stress, phonology-morphology interactions, infixation,
and other areas.
(1993) A Case of Surface Constraint Violation, in Carole Paradis and
Darlene LaCharité, eds., Constraint-Based Theories
in Multilinear Phonology, special issue of Canadian
Journal of Linguistics 38, 169–195. Download here.
An OT analysis of r/zero alternations in the
(1991) [1992] Synchronic Rule Inversion, in L. Sutton, C. Johnson, and R.
Shields, eds., Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley
Linguistics Society, Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, CA. Pp.
192–207. Download here.
An earlier analysis of r/zero alternations in the
(1991) L'infixation réduplicative dans les langages secrets, Langages
101, 11–29.
Some properties of secret languages like
(1991) with Linda Lombardi Prosodic Circumscription in Choctaw
Morphology, Phonology 8, 37–72. Download here.
An application of prosodic circumscription to the verb system
of Choctaw.
(1990) with Alan Prince Foot and Word in Prosodic Morphology: The Arabic
Broken Plural, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8, 209–282. Download here.
Introduces prosodic circumscription, applying it to pluralization in Arabic and other phenomena.
(1990) with Alan Prince Prosodic Morphology and Templatic
Morphology, in M. Eid and J. McCarthy, eds. Pp.
1–54. Download
here.
An analysis of Arabic verb and noun templates.
Articles,
Chapters, and Conference Papers (pre-1990, selected)
These works were produced in the days of typewriters or with early word-processors, so they don’t exist in electronic form. I have been gradually remedying this by scanning them.
About the scans: Scanned files linked below are in the Adobe Acrobat format called ‘Original Image with Hidden Text’. What you see is a graphical image of the original page, including any extraneous marks and with margins cropped away to save space. This image can be printed, but it cannot be edited or cut-and-pasted. Acrobat’s OCR engine has been applied to the image to create the hidden text. This text is used when you search the file, but it is otherwise unavailable to you. Searches are not 100% reliable; they are only as good as the OCR engine and the quality of the original image. And because these files contain a lot of image data, they are significantly larger than typical Acrobat files, on the order of 3-20 megabytes.
(1977) CT, in J. Kegl, D. Nash, and A. Zaenen, eds., Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting
of the North Eastern Linguistic Society, Cambridge, MA. Pp. 209–218.
The special status of coronals in consonant clusters.
(1979) On Stress and Syllabification, Linguistic Inquiry 10,
443–465.
A representational theory of syllable weight and its effect
on stress.
(1979) Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology, Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Download here.
(1980) A Note on the Accentuation of Damascene Arabic, Studies
in the Linguistic Sciences 10, 77–98.
Metrical analysis of some complications in the stress system
of this Arabic dialect.
(1981) The Representation of Consonant Length in
Hebrew, Linguistic Inquiry 12, 322–327.
Geminate integrity in Biblical Hebrew.
(1981) A Prosodic Theory of Nonconcatenative Morphology, Linguistic
Inquiry 12, 373–418.
A CV skeleton analysis of Arabic root-and-pattern morphology.
Download
here.
(1981) with Morris Halle The Metrical Structure
of Psalm 137, Journal of Biblical Literature 100, 161–167.
Psalm 137 has a syllable-counting meter. As in French, syllables after the
line-final stress are not counted. Several emendations of the textus receptus are
also proposed. Download
here.
(1981) Stress, Pretonic Strengthening, and Syllabification in Tiberian
Hebrew, in H. Borer and Y. Aoun, eds., Theoretical
Issues in Semitic Languages [=MIT Working Papers in Linguistics
III],
Tiberian Hebrew has an unusual, deeply opaque process of word-initial gemination.
(1981) The Role of the Evaluation Metric in the Acquisition of Phonology,
in C. L. Baker and J. McCarthy, eds., (1981), pp. 218–248.
The Evaluation Metric of SPE, when taken seriously, produces some good results.
Evidence comes from English, Spanish, and Maori.
(1982) Prosodic Templates, Morphemic Templates, and Morphemic Tiers, in H. van der Hulst and N. Smith, eds., The Structure of Phonological Representations [=Linguistic Models, 2], Foris, Dordrecht. Pp. 191–223.
(1982) Nonlinear Phonology: An Overview, GLOW Newsletter 8, 63–77. Download here.
(1982) Prosodic Structure and Expletive Infixation,
Language 58, 574–590.
Fan-fuckin’-tastic.
Download
here.
(1983–84) with Ellen Broselow A Theory of Internal Reduplication, The Linguistic Review 3, 25–88.
A broad survey and typology of infixing reduplication.
Download
here.
(1983) Phonological Features and Morphological Structure, in J.
Richardson, M. Marks, and A. Chukerman, eds., Papers
from the Parasession on the Interplay of Phonology,
Morphology, and Syntax, Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, IL. Pp.
135–161.
Sound symbolism and other phenomena where individual
distinctive features act as morphemes.
(1983) Consonantal Morphology in the Chaha Verb, in M. Barlow, D. Flickinger, and M. Wescoat, eds., Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 2, Stanford Linguistics Association, Stanford, CA.
(1983) A Prosodic Account of Arabic Broken Plurals, in
I. Dihoff, ed., Current Trends in African
Linguistics I, Foris,
Arabic broken plurals as infixation.
(1984) Prosodic Structure in Morphology, in M. Aronoff
and R. Oehrle, eds., Language Sound Structure,
MIT Press,
(1984) Speech Disguise and Phonological Representation in Amharic, in H.
van der Hulst and N. Smith,
eds., Advances in Nonlinear Phonology (=Linguistic Models 7), Foris, Dordrecht. Pp. 305–312.
An autosegmental analysis of a secret language used by
prostitutes in
(1984) Theoretical Consequences of Montañes Vowel Harmony, Linguistic Inquiry 15, 291–318. Download here.
(1985) with Hamza Al-Mozainy and Robert Bley-Vroman. Stress Shift and Metrical Structure, Linguistic Inquiry 16, 135–143.
(1986) OCP Effects: Gemination and Antigemination, Linguistic Inquiry 17, 207–263. Download here.
(1986) Lexical Phonology and Nonconcatenative Morphology in the History of Chaha, Revue québécoise de linguistique 16, 209–228.
(1988) Feature Geometry and Dependency: A Review, Phonetica 45, 84–108.
(1988) with Alan Prince. Quantitative Transfer in Reduplicative and Templatic Morphology, in Linguistic Society of Korea, ed., Linguistics in the Morning Calm 2, Hanshin Publishing Co., Seoul. Pp. 3–35. Download here.
(1989) Linear Order in Phonological Representation, Linguistic Inquiry 20, 71–99. Download here.
Book
Reviews
(1982) Review of A. Bell and J. B. Hooper, eds., (1978) Syllables and Segments. Language 58, 198–204.
(1992) with Alison Taub, Review of C. Paradis and J.-F. Prunet, eds. (1991) The Special Status of Coronals. Phonology 9, 363–372.
(1995) Short review of A. A. al-Nassir (1993) Sibawayh the Phonologist: A Critical Study of the Phonetic and Phonological Theory of Sibawayh as Presented in His Treatise Al-Kitab. Linguistics 33, 138–140.
(1998) Review of Alan S. Kaye (ed.) (1997) Phonologies of Asia and
(1999) Review of Iggy Roca (ed.) (1997) Derivations and Constraints in Phonology. Phonology 16(2). Download appendix here.
(2001) Review of Bruce Tesar and Paul Smolensky (2000) Learnability in Optimality Theory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
(2004) Review of Janet C. E. Watson (2002) The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic. Language.
Go back to John McCarthy's homepage.
Last revised .September 23, 2008.