Direct OT: Representation as Pure Markedness

This paper argues for a model of morphology and phonology in which phonological form is represented purely in terms of markedness rather than by strings of segments. The argument runs as follows: (i) underlying representations are prosodified; (ii) this makes them relatively ill-formed; (iii) so representations can be represented purely in terms of ill-formedness. Step (i) brings to its logical conclusion the incorporation of prosody into generative phonology begun in the 1970s and 1980s, making prosody relevant at all phonological levels of description. Step (ii) allows representation to be tied directly to markedness. Step (iii) makes it impossible to represent unmarked structure. I formalize representation as pure markedness in terms of intentional violation of phonological well-formedness constraints: the distintive features of representation are given in terms of constraint violations. The result is a theory in which representation and evaluation are completely conflated.s Representation as pure markedness (RPM) has three important results for grammatical theory. First, it requires abandoning a central (if bizarre) claim implicit in most current work in phonology, which I'll call the theorem of Impossibility. Impossibility states that every underlying form is an impossible surface form; it keeps grammatical theory from having a unified theory of representation. Impossibility follows jointly from the assumption that underlying forms are not syllabified and that surface forms are. I'll argue that Impossibility is as theoretically and empirically unsupportable as it is counter-intuitive. In its place Direct OT offers a completely unified theory of phonological representation throughout the grammar. Second, RPM requires rather than stipulates the underspecification of phonological representations (Kiparsky 1982; Archangeli 1984; Steriade 1987). Unmarked structure is underspecified in Direct OT because it is not representable. The permanence of underspecification (Steriade 1994) follows as well: unmarked structure is unspecified at all levels of phonology because it is not representable at any level. Third, RPM makes the linear order of segments fully redundant. Linear representations like /pajama/ or [ba.na.na] are purely expository devices in Direct OT. Actual representation is completely non-linear.