The Phonological Dimension of Grammatical Markedness

In recent years the phonology - morphology interface has been a topic of considerable interest in theoretical linguistics. This book represents a contribution to the study of this interface. Couched in the framework of Optimality Theory it explores the correlation between grammatical markedness and the phonological properties of outputs inflected for morpho-syntactic categories on a grammatical markedness hierarchy. The main claim made in the book is that under otherwise similar phonological conditions outputs carrying specifications for a marked member of a given grammatical category can license a given type of marked phonological structure to an extent that is equal or greater than outputs inflected for the unmarked category. Illustrations are provided for the morpho-syntactic categories of case (Old Saxon) number (Romanian) and voice (Mayak). The book is mainly intended for theoretical linguists researchers and graduate students but may also present interest for a larger circle of readers.