ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a summary of John McCarthy 1989, an influential Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP)-based analysis of cooccurrence restrictions in the Mayan languages. OCP-based accounts of laryngeal cooccurrence restrictions at first appear promising. OCP-based analyses of cooccurrence restrictions have two particular shortcomings. First, featural identity is a poor way of describing different degrees of similarity, whether the gradiency at issue is the strength of the restriction, or the graded nature of similar categorical restrictions in different languages. Second, and most important, there is difficulty in accounting for the identity effect without violating theory-internal principles. McCarthy 1989 offers an analysis of the Mayan prohibition on heterorganic ejectives. McCarthy’s analysis requires that vowels, which may intervene between identical ejectives, be transparent to consonant association lines. Vowels may intervene between consonants instantiating branching Root nodes because, in the Mayan languages, they exist on a separate plane from consonants.
