The recent phonological literature has witnessed the emergence of a significant body of research under the rubric of underspecification theory. This model of inquiry was first proposed by Kiparsky (I982), developed more deeply in Archangeli (i984), and is articulated most exhaustively in Archangeli & Pulleyblank (forthcoming a). One of the most basic assumptions advanced in these works is that for each contrastive feature one value is specified underlyingly and the other is inserted by default. Feature changing harmony, which requires both values to be underlying, is a particularly interesting challenge to this claim and appears to undermine its restrictiveness. Indeed, it figures prominently in some recent proposals, such as Steriade (i987b), to justify relaxing the theory and admit both feature values at the underlying level. Feature changing harmony is generally acknowledged to be extremely rare (cf. Lieber I987). Height harmony in the Pasiego dialect of Montanfes Spanish, as analysed by McCarthy (1984), is widely cited as one of the most solid pieces of evidence for the reality of feature changing harmony. The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate that Pasiego height harmony is in fact not feature changing. Rather, the facts provide additional support for the strongly constrained model of underspecification which recognises only one underlying feature value. In ? 2 I outline the basic facts and McCarthy's feature changing analysis. In ?3 I account for the transparency of the low vowel /a/ in terms of the interaction of feature architecture and segmental underspecification. In ?4 I motivate the underspecification of the feature [high], thus obviating the feature changing property of height harmony. In ? 5 I argue that in general the feature [high] is floating in underlying structure. In ?6 I discuss the formalisms that first link and then spread the feature [high]. Finally, in ?7 I summarise the major findings and draw conclusions for phonological theory.
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