Debate
In Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky 2004), the OCP has been again redefined as a violable constraint. Yet many issues as to its precise formal character remain: (i) locality - what is the domain of the OCP (i.e. strict adjacency? etc.) and how is the domain represented in the theory; (ii) near-identical sequences - many languages show an OCP-like resistance to sequences of segments that differ in just one distinctive feature; is this the effect of the OCP, some other constraint? If the latter, how is this constraint formally related to the OCP; (iii) status as an OT constraint - is the OCP a single constraint, or is it the local self-conjunction of markedness constraints (Alderete 1997)? These and other issues related to the OCP continue to be hotly debated in phonological theory.
Read more about this topic: Obligatory Contour Principle
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