A sympathy account of multiple opacity in Wintu

Abstract

Wintu, a Penutian language, exhibits three phonological rules that interact in ways that produce two different kinds of opacity. One rule that raises mid vowels before a low vowel with one consonant intervening interacts with a rule of cluster simplification that deletes the first of two consonants in a cluster. The raising rule also interacts with a rule of absolute neutralization so that it appears that some mid vowels do not raise even when the structural description of the rule is met. These cases of opacity are shown to be analyzable within the framework of optimality theory through an appeal to McCarthy's (1998) proposal of 'sympathy'. While McCarthy describes cases where a language with multiple opaque interactions can have distinct ❀-candidates which are subject to distinct sympathy relations, this paper will show that distinct ❀-candidates may also be subject to the same sympathetic correspondence, thus lending support to the validity and universality of sympathy constraints