The Application of Phonological Rules.

Phonological evidence is presented in support of the hypothesis that all restrictions on the relative order of application of grammatical rules are determined by universal rather than language-specific principles. For a systematically representative set of synchronic and diachronic facts, previously accounted for by means of non-universal extrinsic-ordering constraints, it is shown that there are alternative explanations of equal or greater generality in which the relative order of application of rules is either entirely unrestricted, or else fully predictable from the forms of the rules by a universal principle of proper inclusion precedence.*