Recent work in Harmonic Serialism (HS) has led to new insights into several outstanding problems in phonology. The gradual, serial optimization inherent to HS offers novel perspectives on the too-manyrepairs problem (McCarthy 2008a) and makes it possible to capture generalizations stated at intermediate levels of representation (McCarthy 2008b, Elfner to appear). This work has also highlighted ...

Seventeen years ago, John McCarthy wrote the note Epistemological challenges for connectionism as a response to Paul Smolensky’s paper On the proper treatment of connectionism. I will discuss the extent to which the four key challenges put forward by McCarthy have been solved, and what are the new challenges ahead. I argue that there are fewer epistemological challenges for connectionism, but p...

In a seminal paper McCarthy and Hayes suggested rst or der logic as a basis for knowledge representation and reasoning about action They considered and rejected a model of interacting au tomata as being epistemologically inadequate This chapter suggests multi entity models a framework closely related to the interacting au tomata of McCarthy and Hayes as a tool for knowledge representation and r...

[The English courts in November 2000 authorized the surgical separation of conjoined twins known by the pseudonyms “Jodie” and “Mary.” The operation resulted in the immediate death of Mary, while giving Jodie real hope of a normal life. Without the operation, both babies would have soon died. The author here considers how the morality of the operation would be assessed from the perspective of t...

The Correspondence model of base-reduplicant identity (McCarthy & Prince 1995, to appear) makes the prediction that any kind of segmental phonological process may result in any of these situations through ranking of phonological constraints with faithfulness constraints on the input and output and the basereduplicant relationship. Normal application arises when base-reduplicant faithfulness con...

There is a paucity of empirical research investigating potential causes of racial disparities in mental health status. However, a growing body of literature exists regarding barriers to mental health service utilization among African Americans. This literature suggests that African Americans experience greater difficulty in accessing mental health services than Caucasians (Hines-Martin, Malone,...