The Domain of Phonological Processes

Abstract

In Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), phonological constraints are evaluated with respect to adomain corresponding to the usual notion of grammatical word. I argue here that some commonphonological patterns are better analysed by relaxing this restriction. In particular, while a notion of'phonological' or 'prosodic' word has previously been shown to provide the relevant domain forphonological processes, I argue that productive morphemes can also provide such a domain. Thehypothesis is tested with respect to data from Australian and other languages. I show that a model allowingfor both intra-and inter-word domains of evaluation provides a more unified analysis of cross-linguisticphenomena such as syllabification and stress.