I will assess earlier approaches to the morphology of the G-stem imperative in Semitic and mount a reconstruction that supports a specific set of disyllabic patterns for the imperative of the basic stem in Proto-Semitic, i.e., qutul, qitil, and qital. The most common process envisioned for the formation of the imperative is clipping from the prefix conjugation, but the most recent full treatment of the topic is Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal’s revision and expansion of a century-old proposal that qatul, qatil, and (...) qital are the patterns of the imperative in Proto-Semitic. I refute both the clipping approach and Bar-Asher’s patterns in favor of qutul, qitil, and qital, which are the most economical and precise reconstruction in accounting for the realizations of the imperative in the various branches of Semitic. (shrink)

Compared to more familiar varieties of Swedish, the dialects spoken in Finland have rather diverse syllable structures. The distribution of distinctive syllable weight is determined by grammatical factors, and by varying effects of final consonant weightlessness. In turn it constrains several gemination processes which create derived superheavy syllables, in an unexpected way which provides evidence for an anti-neutralization constraint. Stratal OT, which integrates OT with Lexical Phonology, sheds light on these complex quantity systems.