Derivational meanders of High Vowel Palatalization in Polish

This article investigates interactions that are triggered by PAL-i, a constraint that asks for consonants and high vowels to agree in backness. It is shown that PAL-i heads a conspiracy that involves several different processes, among them Palatalization, /Ci/ → [Cʲi], and Retraction, /Ci/ → [Cɨ] that both occur in Polish. I argue that the analysis calls for derivational levels, so Derivational Optimality Theory rather than Standard Optimality Theory is the correct framework. Levels, constituting miniphonologies with their own inputs, constraint ranking and inventories, are motivated by six arguments, each discussed in a separate section.