The Directionality of Vowel Elision in Picard

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis for the domain-sensitive process of Vowel Elision in Picard, whose directionality depends on the interaction of a variety of phonological, morphosyntactic and semantic factors. By adopting the framework of Optimality Theory, I propose an analysis in which constraints are decomposable into their domain-specific counterparts. The main advantage of such an approach to domain-driven phenomena is its intrinsic assumption that only one grammar (or constraint ranking) is responsible for domain-driven variation cross-linguistically.