tilburg conference on ot call for papers tilburg university conference on the derivational residue in phonology 1 - 7 october 1995 the grammatical models group of tilburg university plans to organize a conference on the derivational residue in phonology . in this conference we hope to discuss all topics which were dealt with in standard generative phonology by derivational means such as level ordering , ( strict ) cyclicity and rule ordering , in the light of the recent shift of attention towards theories that are more representational in nature . can all the derivational tools mentioned be replaced by representational instruments ? if they can , what should the ` optimal ' representational theory look like ? if they cannot , what exactly is the residue of derivationalism that we still need ? we invite all papers with these or related topics ( a more complete description of the conference topic can be found below ) both for and against purely representational approaches to phonology . we expect to be able to ( partially ) reimburse travelling expenses and lodging for our speakers . furthermore we are proud that bruce hayes and geert booij have already agreed to be our invited speakers . deadline those interested in presenting a paper ( 40 minutes talks , 15 minutes discussion ) should send 5 copies of a two page abstract ( 10 anonymous ; 1 camera-ready , with name ( s ) , affiliation ( s ) and contact address , including e-mail ) to : marc van oostendorp or ben hermans , grammaticamodellen , tilburg university , postbus 90153 , 5000 le , tilburg , the netherlands . abstracts must be received by 1 may 1995 . abstracts with page text considered too condensed to be read will be rejected without review . no email submissions accepted . for additional information contact b . j . h . hermans @ kub . nl or m . voostendorp @ kub . nl . topic of the conference during the past few years the main focus of attention in phonology seems to have been shifted from derivational to representational models , such as prince and smolensky 's optimality theory , goldsmith 's harmonic phonology and burzio 's pes - model . yet generative phonologists have accumulated substantial evidence for derivational analysis . in standard lexical phonology , for instance , derivationalism plays a role in several ways : the model is divided into a lexical and a postlexical component , the lexical component itself is divided into several lexical levels , some lexical levels are cyclic and every affix starts its own cycle and , finally , the phonologicals rule within every cycle are ordered . the question is how we have to evaluate all these derivational instruments in a representational theory of phonology . the distinction between lexical and postlexical phonology seems to be least controversial . most optimality theory analyses seem to accept at least this remnant of derivationalism . yet one could imagine a more radical version of a purely representational theory in which the distinction between word-level and phrasal phonology is accounted for in an appropriate theory of phonological domains . in any case , the question remains as to how we have to evaluate the traditional criteria for lexical-postlexical distinction ( exceptions , sensitivity to morphological and syntactic boundaries , etc . ) in a theory of constraints and constraint ranking . similar questions could be asked about the internal level ordering within the lexical component . can all analyses which used to be framed in terms of lexical levels be reframed in representational terms ? and to what extent can a theory which makes extensive use of lexical levels still be called ` representational ' ? most discussion on derivationalism within optimality theory seems to have been concentrated on the issue of cyclicity . it has been demonstrated that some cyclic analyses can be replaced by an adequate theory of alignment between phonological and morphological structure . is this everything that needs to be said about this issue ? are , for instance , cyclic versions of ot feasible and desirable ? similarily , considerable effort has been put by several researchers into showing that strict cyclicity as a theoretical concept is superfluous or that it can be replaced by a theory of underspecification . whether this is an adequate answer to all derived environment effects is another topic we hope to address . finally , we expect that even at the finest grained level of derivationalism , viz . phonological rule ordering ( both intrinsic and extrinsic ) interesting questions remain unanswered . in particular all cases of what used to be known as counter-feeding and counter-bleeding relations seem to us still to be open for discussion . all of these questions have considerable conceptual import , yet it seems to us that they can ultimately be answered empirically . the issue of derivationalism is one of the interesting challenges that optimality theory and the other models mentioned earlier pose . we hope to receive many abstracts dealing with it .
