Icelandic Phonology in Optimality Theory

Courtenay Gibson

     This dissertation provides a unified analysis of a portion of Icelandic phonology within the framework of Optimality Theory. The research focuses on the relationship between morphological structure and prosodic structure in Icelandic. This work addresses um laut, preaspiration, and vowel length in single-root words as well as compounds, epenthesis, syncope and restrictions on consonant clusters. The set of constraints proposed are ranked in a hierarchy that is consistent with the phonetic forms that are found in Icelandic. While the data appears to be superficially complex, Optimality Theory provides the theoretical mechanisms for the analysis that is simple and transparent and for which level ordering of affixes is not acquired.

---

Back to Recent Dissertations

Back to the Linguistics Department homepage

Revised January 17, 2001.