Obviation versus Blocking. Two approaches to the distribution of anaphors and pronominals have been explored in Binding Theory. The OBVIATION approach, originating in Lasnik 1976 and extensively developed in the GB tradition, posits autonomous disjoint reference principles which directly filter out illicit coindexations in certain structural domains. The BLOCKING approach treats disjoint reference derivatively, by making anaphors obligatory under coreference in the binding domain, and invoking a syntactic or pragmatic principle that forces disjoint reference pronominals in the “elsewhere” case.

Inflected words in Finnish show a range of interdependent stem and suffix alternations which are conditioned by syllable structure and stress. In a penetrating study, Anttila (1997) shows how the statistical preferences among optional alternants of the Genitive Plural can be derived from free constraint ranking. I propose an analysis which covers the rest of the nominal morphology and spells out the phonological constraints that interact to produce the alternations, and show how it supports a stratal version of OT phonology.