Constraints on multiple-feature mutation

Wolf (2005, 2007) argues that the realization of featural affixes in mutation morphology is triggered by the constraint MaxFlt which requires that phonological material not linked to a root node (“floating features”) is fully preserved in the output. As evidence that the realization of floating features cannot be achieved by the weaker, but more general constraint Realize-Morpheme (van Oostendorp, 2005), Wolf adduces cases where a single morphological category seems to involve mutation for multiple phonological features. In this paper, I show that the data Wolf cites are in fact morphologically complex, and exhibit well-behaved single-feature mutation under an appropriate morphological analysis. It follows that Realize Morpheme fully obviates MaxFlt for mutation.