Locality and globality in phonological variation

摘要

This paper explores the consequences of Harmonic Serialism (HS), a derivational variant of OT, for local and global phonological variation. Variation is local when each locus within a single form may vary independently, as in French schwa deletion. Variation is global when all loci within a single form must covary, as in labial (de)voicing in Warao. Within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT) with parallel evaluation, only global variation is predicted to exist. In this paper, I show how implementing a multiple-rankings theory of phonological variation within HS accounts for both local and global variation.