ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of Plane Conflation in the analyses of harmony and syncope systems that invoke morpheme planes. With the exception of Tiberian Hebrew, there is evidence only for allowing Plane Conflation to apply once, at the boundary of the lexical and post-lexical levels. John McCarthy requires Plane Conflation in the analysis of several distinct phenomena. McCarthy provides further evidence for the Morpheme Plane Hypothesis and Plane Conflation, in addition to the evidence from syncope. In light of McCarthy's suggestion that Plane Conflation be equated with Bracket Erasure, the chapter examines the role of Bracket Erasure in various phonological analyses, concluding that the arguments for allowing Bracket Erasure to apply at any stage internal to the lexical level are not too strong. The discussion of the role of the Bracket Erasure Convention (BEC) in phonology led us to consider how locality constrains morphological and phonological rules.
