Disjunctive application is a type of interaction between phonological
mappings that has received special attention since the inception of
generative phonology and has significantly impacted research in other
subfields in linguistics. In this book, Bakovic argues that the
principle commonly held to be responsible for disjunctive application,
the Elsewhere Condition, is little more than a collection of necessary
stipulations within Chomsky and Halle's original framework of
assumptions in The Sound Pattern of English. By contrast, disjunctive
application is shown to follow automatically from the most basic
assumptions of Optimality Theory with no added stipulations necessary.
This book provides an in-depth discussion of the history and analysis of
blocking interactions, of which disjunctive application is a special
case. The distinguishing feature of disjunctive application is shown to
be complementarity. The analyses of two types of complementarity
(allophonic or 'unbounded' complementary distribution as opposed to
'bounded' complementary distribution) in both SPE and OT are discussed
in detail, and it is shown that both have been analyzed very differently
in SPE but very similarly in OT.
The various stipulated components of the Elsewhere Condition are then
discussed and contrasted with the lack of any such stipulation in OT.
This is followed by a proof of two theorems within OT that solidify the
result that two mappings in a particular formal relation to each other
are bound to apply in complementary fashion.
