Variation through markedness suppression

Abstract

Certain optional phonological processes may apply to any number of the potential targets in a form, yielding outputs in which the process applies to a proper subset of the available loci. Such patterns are incompatible with OT-based frameworks that produce variation by providing multiple constraint rankings. While one ranking may favour exhaustive application and another no application, no ranking favours application at just some loci. The framework presented here, Markedness Suppression, solves this problem:evalmay ignore any violation mark assigned by designated markedness constraints, creating variation by manipulating candidates' violation profiles. By ignoring different violation marks on different evaluations, the full range of attested forms is produced, including ones with intermediate levels of process application. Markedness Suppression achieves better empirical coverage than competing frameworks, in terms of both producing the correct range of variants and modelling their output frequencies.