Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Harmonic Serialism is a serial version of Optimality Theory in which Gen is restricted to one operation at a time. What constitutes one operation has been a key question in the literature. This paper asks whether shift, in which a feature moves/flops from one segment to another, should be considered an operation. We review three pieces of evidence that suggest so. We show that only the one-step shift analysis can capture the tonal patterns in Kibondei and the segmental patterns in Halkomelem; grammars that rely on spreading or floating features cannot. We complement these findings with a factorial typology in which the one-step shifting grammars predict several attested patterns that the grammars without one-step shift cannot. We conclude that shift must be a single operation in Harmonic Serialism.
We would like to thank Michael Becker, Elizabeth Cowper, B. Elan Dresher, Christopher Green, Larry Hyman, Sharon Inkelas, Keren Rice, the audiences at the 3rd Annual Meeting on Phonology in Vancouver and the 46th Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society in Montreal, six anonymous reviewers and two editors for their comments and suggestions that helped improve this paper. Thanks also to Ruby Peter and Delores Louie for reviewing some of the Hul’q’umi’num’ data.