{"id":18251,"date":"2026-09-21T06:04:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T10:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=18251"},"modified":"2026-09-21T06:04:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T10:04:00","slug":"phonology-circle-christopher-legerme-mit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2026\/09\/21\/phonology-circle-christopher-legerme-mit-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Phonology Circle  - Christopher Legerme (MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Speaker: <\/strong> Christopher Legerme (MIT)<br class=\"\"><strong>Title: <\/strong>Representation and Computation in Phonological Theory: Faust and Scheer (2025)<br class=\"\"><strong>Time: <\/strong>, 5pm - 6:30pm<br class=\"\"><strong>Location: <\/strong>32-D831<br class=\"\"><br class=\"\"><strong>Abstract: <\/strong>Before asking what rules or constraints a grammar needs, we need to know what kind of representations those computations should be operating over in the first place: \u0093If the representations are right, then the rules will follow\u0094 (McCarthy 1988:84). I\u0092ll be presenting Faust & Scheer\u0092s (2025) work on the behavior of stem-final TR clusters in North-Eastern Creusois (NEC), using the paper to foreground a broader methodological question pertaining to the division of labor between representation and computation in phonological theory.  NEC shows a noun\/verb asymmetry in the repair of illicit stem-final TR clusters. The account of Faust & Scheer combines Strict CV representations with Optimality Theory (OT) to derive deletion in nouns and metathesis in verbs through non-transderivational morphological exponence that is followed by a completely regular phonological computation in which phonology doesn&#8217;t need to make reference to syntactic category (2025: 32). And so, we are brought to consider the broader architectural question of what a modular grammar might require of its interfaces. For Faust & Scheer, their study of the NEC pattern is only one contribution to a larger debate over whether phenomena that appear to require cross-modular information really force us to weaken certain assumptions about modularity, or whether they can instead be derived by reconsidering our phonological representations and how the different components of grammar get related to one another. Please note that, as the inaugural talk of the 2026-27 season of Phonology Circle, this presentation will be oriented primarily toward introducing the NEC data, which instantiate the kinds of patterns familiar from morphophonology more generally, and the basic concepts needed to follow the paper\u0092s argument, including the relevant machinery of OT, Strict CV, and some background assumptions about Spell-Out that motivate the analysis, rather than toward adjudicating the broader theoretical debate. That said, any comments, thoughts, or questions will of course be very welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Christopher Legerme (MIT)Title: Representation and Computation in Phonological Theory: Faust and Scheer (2025)Time: , 5pm - 6:30pmLocation: 32-D831Abstract: Before asking what rules or constraints a grammar needs, we need to know what kind of representations those computations should be operating over in the first place: \u0093If the representations are right, then the rules will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}