ABSTRACT
Phonological requirements sometimes hold specifically of material in phonologically prominent or “strong” positions, such as stressed syllables or roots. Here, such requirements are analyzed in the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993; McCarthy & Prince 1993ab, 1995) in terms of markedness constraints 1 that make specific reference to strong positions (abbreviated M/str(ong)). It is shown that only certain kinds of requirements ever hold of strong positions, so the inclusion of all logically possible M/str constraints in the universal constraint set (Con) would lead to incorrect typological predictions. The theory developed here is able to distinguish between those logically possible M/str constraints that are actual constraints and those that are not.
