Sympathy, cumulativity, and the Duke-of-York gambit
 

John McCarthy

University of Massachusetts





The Duke-of-York gambit (Pullum 1976) involves 

derivations of the form A->B->A, where underlying 
 /A/ passes through an intermediate stage B before 
 returning to A at the surface. Optimality Theory 
 (Prince and Smolensky 1993) has significant implications 
 for the Duke of York gambit. Furthermore, attested 
 and unattested Duke-of-York cases have implications 
 for the analysis of opacity in Optimality Theory 
 using sympathy (McCarthy 1998, to appear). A key 
 idea pursued in this paper is that derivations 

must be cumulative, and a measure of cumulativity 
 is incorporated into sympathy theory.