Shift in Harmonic Serialism

Harmonic Serialism is a serial version of Optimality Theory in which Gen is restricted to one operation at a time. What constitutes one operation has been a key question in the literature. This paper asks whether shift, in which a feature moves/flops from one segment to another, should be considered an operation. We review three pieces of evidence that suggest so. We show that only the one-step shift analysis can capture the tonal patterns in Kibondei and the segmental patterns in Halkomelem; grammars that rely on spreading or floating features cannot. We complement these findings with a factorial typology in which the one-step shifting grammars predict several attested patterns that the grammars without one-step shift cannot. We conclude that shift must be a single operation in Harmonic Serialism.