Locality and globality in phonological variation

This paper explores the consequences of Harmonic Serialism (HS), a derivational variant of OT, for local and global phonological variation. Variation is local when each locus within a single form may vary independently, as in French schwa deletion. Variation is global when all loci within a single form must covary, as in labial (de)voicing in Warao. Within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT) with parallel evaluation, only global variation is predicted to exist. In this paper,I show how implementing a multiple-rankings theory of phonological variation within HS accounts for both local and global variation. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.