‘Coda’ licensing

Abstract

One of the main thrusts of the research programme known as Government Phonology has been the attempt to replace the rule component of a phonology by a group of universal principles common to all linguistic systems along with a series of parameters which delimit the nature of linguistic variation from one system to another. Given the wealth of analyses that employ rules and the fact that their number continues to grow, even to this day, it is a daunting task to find plausible alternative stories for each and every analysis that employs phonological rules in some crucial way. One of the leading ideas of work done on syllable structure that I have participated in for the last ten years has been the emergence of such alternative analyses for a series of phenomena that seemed to call for phonological rules.