Licensing and Default Implication of Korean [Iat] in OT

Abstract

In this paper, we show that different surface forms realized from underlying /l/ are positional variables which crucially depend on syllable structure. We will first demonstrate that [lateral] must be "non-crisply" right aligned with a syllable in the sense of Itô, Mester & Padgett (1994), as argued in Hong (1997a). However, we will further show that Alignment (Hong 1997a) and Syllable Contact (Davis & Shin 1997) are not enough for successful analysis of Nasal Lateralization in /nV/ and /In/. For successful analysis, we stick to "non-crisp" Alignment constraint for [lateral] as in Hong (1997a), but we introduce the notion of Default implication in Optimality Theory. Itô, Mester and Padgett (1995) explain Voicing in Japanese NC clusters by implementing Licensing and Redundancy of the feature [voice] in OT. This paper demonstrates that a similar effect can be achieved in the analysis of Korean Nasal Lateralization by implementing a Licensing and Default implication of [lateral].