10 A pseudo-cyclic effect in Romanian morphophonology DONCA STERIADE* Abstract Romanian phonology is shown to be subject to inflection dependence, a systematic restriction on phonological alternations. Inflection dependence means that segmental alternations are permitted in the derivatives of a lexeme only if certain inflected forms of that lexeme, its inflectional bases (Albright 2002), independently display the alternation. The study documents this per- vasive constraint on alternations and proposes an analysis for it, based on a modified variant of Lexical Conservatism (Steriade 1999b). The broader significance of inflection dependence is the need to allow access in phonological computations to a broader class of lexically-related, derived lexical items relative to what the phonological cycle (Chomsky et al. 1956) and its descendants permit. I discuss the difference between inflec- tion dependence and the phonological cycle and propose a mechanism that reduces the formal differences between them to rankings of correspondence and phonotactics. 10.1 Introduction 10.1.1 The phenomenon This is a study of the interaction between lexical structure, paradigm structure, correspondence, and phonotactics. I document a new type of alternation * The chapter has benefited from Rebrus and Torkenczy (2005), a revealing analysis of the interac- tion of paradigm structure and phonotacticS in Hungarian, and from discussions with Adam Albright, Karlos Arregi, Luigi Burzio, Dani Byrd, Anna Cardinaletti, Edward Flemming, Bruce Hayes, Giorgio Magri, and with audiences at UCLA, LSRL 28 (Rutgers University), the LSA Winter 2007 meeting (Anaheim, CA), and in 24.965 (MIT). Finally, I am grateful to the editors of this volume, AsafBachrach and Andrew Nevins, for their very helpful comments, their patience, and for insisting that I get everything right.