In QC, the possessive is expressed by means of combinations of a large number of segmental and prosodic alternations in the nominal stem, namely vowel lengthening, the addition or change of the location of a glottal stop, the addition or change of the location of the accent, the addition of a syllable of which the vowel is based on the stem-final vowel, and tone shift. The possessive paradigm consists of a number of morphemes with a highly complicated internal structure, containing both segmental and non-segmental aspects. Such words participate fully in the possessive formation. Tone changes in the morphology present a problem for the principle of Containment, since the original tone on the stem need not be preserved.
Tone has to be present underlyingly, since it is distinctive.
Tone plays a distinctive role, although it is not quite clear how many tone levels there are. Tone sandhi does not offer an explanation for the tone patterns of the possessive since the tone of the possessive morpheme remains constant for every person form. Hence, we must conclude that the stem tone is sacrificed in favour of the tone of the possessive morpheme. As a result, the correct candidate output cannot be generated. More examples of such Containment violations will be presented in the talk, to show that QC is not an isolated case.