Gemination In English:an Optimality Theoretical Account

This paper aims at working out the constraints and constraint ranking of gemination in English under the framework of OT, and also, accounting for the existence of it. Gemination, which usually refers to a sequence of two identical consonantal segments, is a very common phenomenon in the world languages. However, there are some people who believe that this kind of phenomena is restricted. For example, an "e" is always added before the plural form "s" to the base "bus". The added "e" will appear as [i] in the reading form of this word. That is to say, the epenthesis of letter "e" is caused by its underlying form. The epenthesis with a different vowel is to block the identical consonants/s/to be neighbors. Some scholars call this kind of restriction as "degemination". This thesis will present a further discussion of gemination under the structure of OT. Constraints like degemination will be considered and ranked during the discussion.The reason to choose OT as the instrument of this analysis is that OT opens a completely different space with classical phonological theories. It keeps away the conflicts between blocking and triggering of nonlinear phonological rules. And its final purpose is to generate the surface form of language with parallel violated universal constraints.First of all, this paper observed the research background of gemination to find out the meanings and significances of the research. Furthermore, to figure out the phonological position of English gemination, the author generalized gemination in other languages. On the basis of these introductions, the author analyzed the constraints of gemination in English and discussed their ranking problems. Finally, the constraint ranking was determined after verifying it with a various of methods.