McCarthy, John

Job Title

Distinguished University Professor and Provost Emeritus

Last Name

McCarthy

First Name

John

Discipline

Linguistics
Morphology
Near Eastern Languages and Societies
Phonetics and Phonology

Introduction

My recent work has focused on Harmonic Serialism, a derivational version of Optimality Theory that appears to have several significant advantages over the parallel version.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 90

Open Access
Alignment and parallelism in Indonesian phonology
(1998) McCarthy, John J; Cohn, Abigail
In this paper, we present a complete account of word stress in Indonesian and the ways in which it interacts with affixation, limitations on root structure, PrWd juncture, syllabification, and reduplication, developing and extending the ideas and empirical material in Cohn (1989). Phenomena that had formerly been analyzed in terms of the phonology/morphology mapping, the cycle, (non-)iterative foot assignment, and morpheme-structure constraints are all subsumed under Generalized Alignment. Parallelism leads to examination of Alignment-based alternatives to the cycle, in which the influence of morphology on prosodic structure is direct. Furthermore, several conditions are discussed where only a parallel analysis will work, because the top-down, bottom-up, or identity effects observed are simply inconsistent with a step-wise derivation. The paper concludes with an appendix discussing other accounts of Indonesian stress, those of Cohn (1989), Halle & Idsardi (1993), Kager (1993), and Goldsmith (1992 et passim).
Open Access
Slouching toward optimality: Coda reduction in OT-CC
(2007) McCarthy, John J
There is a well-established asymmetry in the behavior of medial consonant clusters: the first consonant in the cluster can undergo assimilation or deletion, but the second consonant in the cluster cannot. This article presents an explanation for that asymmetry based on a version of Optimality Theory with candidate chains (McCarthy (2006a)). The key idea is that a consonant can only assimilate or delete if it first loses its place features by debuccalizing, and debuccalization is only possible in coda position.
Open Access
The phonetics and phonology of Semitic pharyngeals
(1994) McCarthy, John J
The guttural segments of the Semitic languages form a natural class.
Open Access
Two lectures on prosodic morphology
(1994) McCarthy, John J; Prince, Alan
Open Access
Remarks on phonological opacity in Optimality Theory
(1996) McCarthy, John J
In these remarks, I have examined the problem of phonological opacity for theories without serial ordering of rules, focusing on Optimality Theory. I have argued in favor of extending a correspondence-based approach to faithfulness to the statement of phonological markedness constraints. The core of the proposal is separate specification of the levels at which featural, adjacency, and linear order conditions must be met. I have compared this approach to two others, noting many similarities and a few differences: the structural approach adopted in Prince and Smolensky (1993) and most other OT work, and the Two-Level or Cognitive Phonology of Koskenniemi (1983) and Lakoff (1993).
Open Access
Review of C. Paradis and J.-F. Prunet, eds. (1991) The Special Status of Coronals
(1992) McCarthy, John J; Taub, Alison
Open Access
Theoretical consequences of Montañes vowel harmony
(1984) McCarthy, John J
Open Access
Consonant harmony via correspondence: Evidence from Chumash
(2007) McCarthy, John J
The phonology of [anterior] in Chumash supports recent proposals by Hansson (2001), Rose & Walker (2004), and Walker (2000a, 2000b) that long-distance consonant assimilation does not involve autosegmental spreading. Linking of the feature [anterior] is forbidden across morpheme boundaries, but long-distance [anterior] harmony is allowed across morpheme boundaries. The Chumash evidence therefore shows that assimilation can occur without autosegmental spreading.
Open Access
What does comparative markedness explain, what should it explain, and how?
(2003) McCarthy, John J
These seven commentaries treat a wide range of topics in interesting and insightful ways. It is not possible to write a coherent response that addresses all of the criticisms and suggestions, large and small, that the authors have brought up. Several main themes emerge, however, that transcend the individual commentaries, and these themes supply the structure for this reply. They include alternatives to comparative markedness, possible counterexamples, comparative markedness on other dimensions of correspondence, and questions about the authenticity of opaque phonological processes. These themes will each be addressed in turn.
Open Access
Stress shift and metrical structure
(1985) McCarthy, John J; Al-Mozainy, Hamza; Bley-Vroman, Robert