Sympathy Theory and German Truncations



Junko Ito & Armin Mester

University of California, Santa Cruz





Phonological opacity, in the proposal of McCarthy 1997, arises through 
 constraints on a new type of correspondence relation holding within the 
 candidate set that Gen produces for a given input, i.e., a relation 
 between co-candidates. A candidate may win because it is in sympathy 
 with a particular failed co-candidate, one that is optimal with respect 
 to a specific lower-ranking constraint. This paper presents independent 
 evidence for Sympathy by arguing that, enriched with the new notion, 
 Optimality Theory can explain a certain type of prosodic-morphological 
 formations requiring access to virtual forms accessible neither in the 
 input in the output. The empirical focus throughout is a productive 
 pattern of truncation in contemporary German deriving hypocoristics and 
 other kinds of shortenings. In a broader vein, it is suggested that with 
 the inclusion of Sympathy, the power of Output-Output constraints can be 
 drastically reduced, leading to a simpler overall theory.