The next talk in our 2025-2026 McGill Linguistics Colloquium Series will be given by Dr. Kate Mooney (University of Maryland, College Park) next Friday, February 20th at 3:30pm at Leacock 232. The details of the talk are given below.
Title: Explaining asymmetries between (morpho-)phonological and phonetic operations
Abstract: Phonological patterns often bear morphological restrictions. In both SPE-style rules and Optimality Theory, these partially productive alternations are often treated as manifestations of a single, computationally uniform phonological system. For example, rules may be restricted by their ordering or lexical diacritics, but the core claim is that these rules are not substantively different from those in general phonology. In this talk, I challenge this view. Based on a typological study, I demonstrate that morphologically-restricted and general phonological patterns do not in fact form the same class of alternations. Some patterns are only attested with morphological restrictions, but they never generalize fully. I therefore argue that phonology is not computationally uniform, and present one non-uniform model that offers an explanatory account of the typology. The picture that emerges is one where general phonology must preserve information — both order and certain types of (gestural) content — whereas only morphologically-restricted patterns can freely rewrite segments.