ORDERING RELATIONS AMONG POSITIONAL FUNCTIONS: CONSTRAINTS VS. RULES

Abstract

The paper chooses the reduction of unstressed vowels as a typical example in comparing constraints with rules, two distinct devices to account for phonological patterns employed respectively in Burzio (2000) and Positional Function Theory. Based on the inadequacy of Burzio’s (2000) proposal, the paper examines whether Positional Function Theory can explain stress patterns, especially those that have posed problems for Burzio (2000). Along with this discussion, the paper also studies ordering relations among Positional Functions by use of the two principles in Chomsky (1967). We agree with Chomsky (1967) that linear ordering does exist, but we argue that not all rules are strictly linearly ordered.