Armin Mester
Professor of Linguistics
UC Santa Cruz
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Here is a list of my publications, with links to downloadable versions, and here is information about my current work.
I am co-editing the OT book series Advances in Optimality Theory (Equinox Publications, London). Contact me with ideas for OT book projects in phonology and phonetics; for OT book projects in syntax and semantics, contact Ellen Woolford (UMass, Amherst).
Research interests:
Phonology; prosodic phonology, and its influence on word structure; optimality theory.My work in linguistics focuses on the surprisingly simple and general organizing principles that give rise to the rich variety of prosodic structures found in human language. They manifest themselves in systems of syllabification, stress, and accent, and also in the prosodic factors that shape many word formation processes. For example, the basic rhythmic unit of Latin, the bimoraic trochee consisting of two light syllables or one heavy syllable, not only determines word stress, but has a host of direct and indirect consequences throughout the morphological system, determining the shapes of affixes and their distribution, etc.
I have a side interest in issues concerning phonological features, such as the proper understanding of contrastiveness and redundancy, and the cooccurrence restrictions usually subsumed under the Obligatory Contour Principle. My analytical work, which includes studies of Japanese, German, and classical Latin phonology and prosodic morphology, also gave rise to an investigation of the way the phonological lexicon of a language is organized into strata, and what this organization tells us about phonological theory itself.
In recent years I have been pursuing this research program in the context of Optimality Theory, with an additional interest in the basic architecture of the theory (parallelism, opacity).