Phonology II

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This is the second half of an introduction to the graduate/senior level phonology. In Phonology 1 or in Sounds of language, we have seen various phonological phenomena. The focus was mainly on descriptive phonology. In this course, we will focus on formalization of phonological data. Within the Optimality Theory (OT), which is currently the predominant theory in the field, we will analyze phonological data. Topics to discuss include metrical theories, correspondence theories, morphology-phonology interactions, and variations in phonology, all of which are relatively less seriously discussed in Phonology 1 and in Sounds of language. Some important topics to discuss include the following; (a) Rule vs. constraint (vs. parameter) (b) Parallelism vs. serialism (c) Variations, exceptions, optionality, gradiency, frequency, probability in phonology (d) Lexicon: morpheme-based vs. word-based