Exceptions to Japanese rendaku voicing that are independent of Lyman’s Law have usually been considered to be random and unsystematic. This article proposes that such exceptions are largely systematic and can be explained through lexical specification and Positional Markedness. Two main types of systematicity are examined: the clustering of blocking cases around particular lexical items, and a prosodic size effect, where “long” compounds, with at least one constituent exceeding two moras, will disable blocking under most conditions. Lexical clustering is explained through lexical specification of features under Combinatorial Underspecification while the prosodic size effect is seen as an expression of Positional Markedness. It is argued that only in long compounds is the morpheme boundary at the edge of a Prosodic Word, a prosodically strong position that more freely permits the marked [−sonorant, +voice] featural combination of rendaku voicing to occur.

This article consists of a generative analysis of the variable surface ordering of demonstratives in Michif, a mixed language historically derived from French and Cree, and spoken by some Métis. It is claimed that all demonstratives in Michif originate in [Spec, DemP] and raise to [Spec, DP]. Prenominal demonstratives occur when the head of the movement chain is pronounced, while postnominal demonstratives are the result of two factors: first, the pronunciation of the tail rather than the head of the demonstrative’s movement chain, and second, the noun undergoing a last resort p-movement, adjoining to DemP. The different patterning is motivated via meaning differences in the corresponding patterns, appealing to the differences in the featural makeup of demonstratives. Pragmatic information, said here to be a contrastive focus feature, is posited on some demonstratives while not on others, yielding the different ordering and also a different interpretation. The variable nature of demonstratives cross-linguistically is also discussed.