anchor (n./v.)

In NON-LINEAR PHONOLOGY, an application of the general use of this term to refer to a UNIT on which some other unit depends. For example, ROOT NODES are said to serve as ‘anchors’ for the FEATURES which define a SEGMENT, and a segment to which another segment associates is said to be its ‘anchor’. A unit which is not ‘anchored’ may be said to be FLOATING. The term has a special application in PROSODIC MORPHOLOGY, in the context of the phonological analysis of REDUPLICATION, where anchoring (which supersedes alignment) is a CONSTRAINT which places a structural restriction on the relation between the base (B) and the reduplicant (R): in R+B sequences, the initial element in R is identical to the initial element in B; and in B+R sequences, the final element in R is identical to the final element in B. Stated more generally in OPTIMALITY THEORY, anchoring is a class of CORRESPONDENCE constraints which requires that a segment at one EDGE of an INPUT form should have a corresponding segment at the same edge of the output form, and vice versa.