Goals

The main goal is to develop, present, and argue for an OT analysis of a data set.

Data

Consider the distribution of voiced stops [b, d, g] and continuants [β, ð, ɣ] in the following data.

IPA	gloss
bastante	‘plenty’
brinkar	‘to jump’
berðe	‘green’
futbol	‘soccer’
sombra	‘shade’
uβa	‘grape’
karβon	‘coal’
suβo	‘I climb’
uβo	‘there was’
saβino	‘cypress’
kaβe	‘it fits’
kluβ	‘club’
deðo	‘finger/toe’
droɣas	‘drugs’
komuniðað	‘community’
seða	‘silk’
ganaðo	‘cattle’
usteð	‘you (sg. polite)’
gastos	‘expenses’
gonsales	a surname
alɣo	‘something’
jaɣa	‘sore, boil’
aɣrio	‘sour’
gustar	‘to please’
xweɣo	‘game’
alβondiɣas	‘meatballs’

Guidelines

Write up your analysis in the form of a short paper, with introduction, numbered sections, numbered examples, and conclusion. Follow the advice about analysis and writing in Chapters 2 and 3 of Doing OT.
Your target audience is someone who knows the mechanics of OT but does not have access to the Spanish data.
- You don’t need to include all of the data above in your paper, but make sure you include the data that are relevant.
- Don’t dump all of the data at once. Present generalizations one at a time followed by relevant examples.
Your write-up will include:
- Descriptive generalizations about the distribution of the voiced stops [b, d, g] and their continuant counterparts [β, ð, ɣ].
  - Discuss their distribution (e.g. full contrast, allophonic variation, positional neutralization, etc.).
  - Explain what diagnostic(s) led to your conclusion about their distribution.
- An OT analysis.
  - Propose a constraint set to account for the data.
    - Don’t forget to include relevant faithfulness constraints, even if they’re low-ranked.
    - Use constraints from class or the readings when possible.
    - Define every constraint explicitly.
    - Use features to charaterize context-free or context-sensitive segmental markedness constraints. Make your featural assumptions clear.
  - Establish crucial rankings through pairwise winner/loser comparisons.
    - Provide as many crucial rankings as possible for your constraints.
  - Support your analysis with (at least) summary tableaux for [kaβe] and for [gustar].
    - These tableau will show that the correct candidate wins given the grammar you provide.
  - Make sure your analysis is consistent with Richness of the Base, and shows that reasonable Spanish-like outputs obtain regardless of whether URs contain voiced stops or continuants (even if you argue that Spanish URs only contain one or the other).
    - Include summary tableaux for these hypothetical inputs, too.
  - Make sure that you use both comparative tableaux and violation tableaux as appropriate.
- Discussion of any feasible alternative OT analyses.