ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I demonstrate that it is possible to enrich phonological representations with gradient phonetic detail, such as effort cost, while maintaining a formal distinction between the contrastive vs. predictable (or freely varying) behavior of particular features, as well as their categorical or gradient variation, within particular sound systems?l This formal point is something of an excursus from the problems of lenition typology which are the focus of this dissertation; nevertheless, this issue is crucial to the general program of capturing substantive phonetic explanation within the formalism of phonological theory, of which the effort-based approach to lenition is an example.
