Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1980, Blaðsíða 24

22
George N. Clements
/kanamana/ /kanamana +1/
(5) by A: kanaman -
by B: kanama -
output: [kanama] [kanamanat]
Under Anderson’s account it would be natural, indeed expected, for
this ordering statement to be deleted, giving rise (in a single step) to
the new altemation kanamana +1 — ka in the attested stage of the
language (cf. (4)). Anderson supports his account of historical change
by appealing to the principles of phonological change proposed by
Kiparsky (1968), and says: „This principle [i.e. that of rule unordering
— GNC] admits exactly the class of changes discussed by Kiparsky
[i.e., rule reorderings from unnatural order into natural order — GNC],
and treats them as formal simplification through the elimination of
ordering statements from the grammar“ (Anderson 1974:147). How-
ever, Kiparsky, in the cited paper, assumed a framework in which rules
are linearly ordered; he did not, therefore, cite or admit any changes
leading to grammars in which violations of linear order occurred.
4.
What conclusions may we draw from this discussion? It has not been
my purpose to argue in favor of one theory or the other on the basis
of new empirical evidence, but rather to elicit the different empirical
claims inherent in the two views of mle ordering. However, if my con-
stmal of the standard view of mle ordering is correct, isolated cases of
„ordering paradoxes" cannot be cited as evidence supporting the theory
of local ordering or refuting the theory of linear ordering. Rather, the
choice between the two theories depends upon the plausibility of their
respective accounts of mle interaction, both synchronic and diachronic.
In this respect many phonologists may remain in sympathy with the
traditional view; but it is clear, in any case, that the issue cannot be
resolved through the examination of any single instance of mle inter-
action taken out of the context of the full set of empirical claims associ-
ated with the alternative theories.
Harvard University,
Cambridge, USA