ABSTRACT

In this chapter I consider other proposals for the analysis of segmental transparency. The first of the alternative analyses is one calling on the gapped configuration. I argue that this alternative is weaker than the sympathy-based analysis proposed in the preceding chapters, because the sympathy-based approach obviates the need for transparency-specific gapped representations and brings segmental transparency into the larger realm of derivational opacity, a widespread phonological phenomenon with independent need for explanation. In addition, a gapping account offers no explanation for the asymmetry in blocking versus transparent outcomes for segments. In contrast, with the evaluation metric for opacity effects in grammar (discussed in 3.6), the sympathy-based account correctly predicts that blocking will be a less 'marked' outcome than segmental transparency for segments that are (gradiently) incompatible with nasalization. The second alternative I consider is the important representationally-driven account of nasal harmony proposed by Piggott (1992), where two different types of nasal harmony are posited. I argue that the fundamental advantage of the analysis of segmental transparency as an opacity effect proposed in the previous chapter is that it obtains a unified typology calling on only one basic type of nasal harmony. In addition, the unified analysis eliminates the need for any ad hoc representational assumptions. Finally, obviation of the gapped representation in the sympathy-based account offers an argument against further alternatives producing effects similar to gapping, such as violable feature expression or embedding of

feature domains, which require parochial constraints to obtain segmental transparency.