Morea Linearity in Compensatory Lengthening

In this paper, I argue that the linear order of moras matters and is enforced by the constraint LIN-μ. Evidence comes from Slovak. When yer vowels are deleted, their moras are preserved and moved over an intervening consonant and onto the preceding vowel (via compensatory lengthening). Multiple such movements may be connected to form a long-distance chain, such that the deletion of the final vowel can lengthen the antepenult rather than the penult. At the same time, moras in Slovak are not permitted to move around within the stem. This can stop a possible chain reaction in its tracks, limiting it to just one mora movement. Now, it is possible to imagine that a mora could instead move directly from its original host to its ultimate landing site in “one fell swoop” without going through such a chain reaction of local movements. However, this would need to be banned from crossing over any stem-internal syllables, which proves impossible to formulate. It must therefore be banned entirely in the language, leaving chain reactions as the only mechanism for long-distance compensatory lengthening. The only way to achieve this is to prohibit the metathesis of one mora over another via LIN-μ.