Some Formal Implications of Deletion Saltation Unavailable

Abstract: Two classes of saltation alternations (phonological derived-environment effects) are formally distinct under Harmonic Grammar (HG), but formally equivalent under Optimality Theory (OT, with or without local constraint conjunction). The familiar feature-scale saltation pattern cannot be modeled in HG without additional formal devices (White 2013), but deletion saltation arises as a simple gang effect under classic Correspondence Theory faithfulness constraints. If future work finds corresponding empirical differences between the two saltation types (e.g., in learnability), this would support weighted-constraint models such as HG over ranked-constraint models such as OT, and in addition would be evidence against MAX and DEP constraints on privative features and against the *MAP approach to faithfulness.