Antigemination in English Phonology

The trend in linguistics today is to look for broad ranging principles to explain linguistic phenomena, rather than proliferating rule systems. One such principle, originally due to Leben 1973, is the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) which prohibits the specification of adjacent segments in phonological representations. In a recent paper McCarthy (1986) proposed that the OCP is an active principle which operates throughout the phonological derivation. One of its effects is to block rules if their output would be a sequence of identical segments and thus in violation of the OCP. McCarthy calls this 'antigemination'. In this squib, I will present further evidence for McCarthy's view drawn from well known facts about English.