The purpose of this paper is to investigate in Optimality Theory the set of constraints which substitutes the set of the rules of Standard Theory which deals with the behaviors of Malay consonants. This paper also works on the ranking of such constrai...
The purpose of this paper is to investigate in Optimality Theory the set of constraints which substitutes the set of the rules of Standard Theory which deals with the behaviors of Malay consonants. This paper also works on the ranking of such constraints. The language under consideration is JM (Johore Malay), a Malay dialect spoken in the southern area of Malay Peninsula, and in this language the discrepancies between input and output are observed especially when a nasal consonant is to be followed by other consonants. In order to deal with such phenomena we need to posit the constraints such as *NC<sub>son</sub>, *N[C<sub>obstr</sub>, RootLin, ICC(P1), Ident(n), Ident(vd), MAX( [C+vd]) and so on. What is notable among these is that the constraint *N[C<sub>obstr</sub> has to mention the morpheme boundary between a prefix ending with a nasal consonant and a root beginning with a voiceless obstruent.