| Abstract: | In this paper I analyze the pattern of [round] and [back] vowel harmony and disharmony in Turkish within the framework of Optimality Theoretic Phonology (Prince and Smolensky 1993). In Optimality theory, the phonological component of the grammar consist solely of a set of universal, violable constraints, ranked on a (partially) language-specific basis. My primary goal is to extend this framework to segmental phenomena, exploring the sorts of constraints which are required to account for a language with fairly rich segmental phonology. |
