Opacity and cyclicity

Cyclic phonology-morphology interactions & opacity have been dealt with in strictly parallelist optimality theory (OT) by introducing new constraint types, including base-output constraints & sympathy. An alternative OT approach to the phonology-morphology interface is a constraint-based version of lexical phonology & morphology (LPM), in which stems, words, & sentences are subject to separate, serially related OT constraint systems. I show that OT-based LPM provides a superior account of the cyclic morphology-phonology interaction in Levantine data from which Kenstowicz & Kager drew support for base-output constraints, & that the same account explains the derivational opacity phenomena for which sympathy theory provides a purely descriptive solution. 22 References. Adapted from the source document