The conflict between Government Licensing and Proper Government, which occurs in those languages in which empty nuclui do not license govern, may be resolved by parametric ranking of the principles (Charette 1991). When additional mechanisms come into play it appears that a particular ranking strategy need not be arbitrary. On the contrary, it seems to be determined by certain conditions. The interaction between principles may account for quite complex phonological systems in that it has the potential of unifying disjoint phenomena.
Strict criteria on phonological categoryhood coupled with strict privativity of representation inevitably lead to a conclusion that sonorants must not contain a prime responsible for voicing. Assuming that this prime is also not supplied to sonorants in the course of phonological derivation, this class of segments, contrary to observed patterns, should be inactive with respect to voicing phenomena. Presonorant sandhi voicing in Cracow-Poznań Polish is used to show how such apparent patterns can be dealt with without compromising the above theoretical assumptions. This however has consequences which bear on almost every aspect of laryngeal phonology. Some of them include: arbitrariness of the relation between phonology and phonetics, emergent nature of laryngeal categories, minimization of the role of phonological computation, re-evaluation of typical analytical criteria for deciding on phonological representation of laryngeal distinctions, which are used in phonological practice, as well as a possibility that the prime [voice], or its theoretical counterpart in various models, is not present in some 'voice' languages.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.