ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a set of cases from Odawa with respect to which the Paul Kiparsky proposal of either makes no clear prediction as to the preferred analysis or leads to a very implausible analysis. It suggests that neutralization principle acts not only as a constraint on rule application, but also as a constraint on the abstractness of representations, and as a constraint on the formulation of rules. This neutralization principle is proposed by Kiparsky as an alternative to incorporating 'global' rules into phonological descriptions. An explanation for the apparent unexceptional behaviour of the suffixes -il and -ikw with respect to l-palatalization begins to emerge when one considers some other facts of Odawa phonological structure. Since the categorization of the apparent exceptions to coalescence and to l-palatalization by the use of exception features is ruled out, there appears to be only one way in which a description of Odawa phonology may embody an explanation for the complementarity of the environments.
