Lexical strata as a part of grammar have been assumed to account for various phonotactic (un)markedness in certain groups of lexical items. In particular, the reranking hypothesis of Ito and Mester (1995a,b) and the indexed FAITH hypothesis of Fukazawa (1998) had triggered disputes and discussions among scholars on the fundamental organization of phonological grammar. This article will examine approaches to the sublexicon, and show problems with the aforementioned studies. In particular, the emergence of the unmarked patterns in the marked vocabulary classes presents a serious problem.
