Sympathy and Phonological Opacity



John J. McCarthy



University of Massachusetts, Amherst





This paper explores the nature of phonological opacity (in 
 the sense of Kiparsky 1971, 1973) within Optimality Theory. 
 Previous attempts to address opacity in OT are discussed and 
 a novel proposal, an inter-candidate faithfulness relation 
 called 'sympathy', is offered. Specific applications of 
 sympathy are presented and some general results are derived 
 about counter-bleeding, counter-feeding, multi-process, and 
 Duke-of-York opaque interactions.