ABSTRACT
The idea that constraints can be relativized to strong or weak positions, as with the M/str constraints discussed here, has previously been applied quite extensively in the OT literature to address positional neutralization phenomena. 1 Three kinds of position-sensitive constraints have been introduced to account for positional neutralization: F/str constraints (positional faithfulness constraints; Selkirk 1994; McCarthy & Prince 1995; Alderete 1995, l999a b; Beckman 1995, 1997, 1998; Casali 1996, 1997; Lombardi 1999; Steriade l999ab), M-Feat/wk constraints (positional feature-markedness constraints; Steriade 1997, among others), and Coincide constraints (alignment-type constraints for marked structure and strong positions; Zoll 1996, 1997a, 1998).
