System-wide Evaluation and Optimality in English Vowel Shift

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper presents an explanatory account of English Vowel Shift within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1995). English Vowel Shift displays a height discrepancy between tense and lax vowels in such alternations as sane ~ sanity, serene ~ serenity, divine ~ divinity. The height discrepancy involves a holistic, system-wide change between the underlying and the surface vowel inventory. The questions that an explanatory account of English Vowel Shift must answer are why the system-wide change occurs and why only tense vowels undergo Vowel Shift. I argue that the answers to these two questions can be found in two functional principles: Perceptibility and Ease of Articulation. These two principles require that speech be perceptible, and that speech production impose a minimal articulatory burden. The functional principles give rise to grammatical well-formedness constraints. Perceptibility is expressed in the No Neutralization constraint, which guarantees the preservation of underlying contrast in the surface and thus yields the system-wide change. Ease of Articulation is expressed in the No Clash constraint, which disfavors some combination of features.