Optimality Theory

Optimality Theory PDF Author: Rene Kager
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521589802
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is an introduction to Optimality Theory, whose central idea is that surface forms of language reflect resolutions of conflicts between competing constraints. A surface form is 'optimal' if it incurs the least serious violations of a set of constraints, taking into account their hierarchical ranking. Languages differ in the ranking of constraints; and any violations must be minimal. The book does not limit its empirical scope to phonological phenomena, but also contains chapters on the learnability of OT grammars; OT's implications for syntax; and other issues such as opacity. It also reviews in detail a selection of the considerable research output which OT has already produced. Exercises accompany chapters 1-7, and there are sections on further reading. Optimality Theory will be welcomed by any linguist with a basic knowledge of derivational Generative Phonology.

Optimality Theory

Optimality Theory PDF Author: Rene Kager
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521589802
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is an introduction to Optimality Theory, whose central idea is that surface forms of language reflect resolutions of conflicts between competing constraints. A surface form is 'optimal' if it incurs the least serious violations of a set of constraints, taking into account their hierarchical ranking. Languages differ in the ranking of constraints; and any violations must be minimal. The book does not limit its empirical scope to phonological phenomena, but also contains chapters on the learnability of OT grammars; OT's implications for syntax; and other issues such as opacity. It also reviews in detail a selection of the considerable research output which OT has already produced. Exercises accompany chapters 1-7, and there are sections on further reading. Optimality Theory will be welcomed by any linguist with a basic knowledge of derivational Generative Phonology.

Optimality Theory

Optimality Theory PDF Author: Alan Prince
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470759399
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the final version of the widely-circulated 1993 Technical Report that introduces a conception of grammar in which well-formedness is defined as optimality with respect to a ranked set of universal constraints. Final version of the widely circulated 1993 Technical Report that was the seminal work in Optimality Theory, never before available in book format. Serves as an excellent introduction to the principles and practice of Optimality Theory. Offers proposals and analytic commentary that suggest many directions for further development for the professional.

Bidirectional Optimality Theory

Bidirectional Optimality Theory PDF Author: Anton Benz
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255636
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
Bidirectional Optimality Theory (BiOT) emerged at the turn of the millennium as a fusion of Radical Pragmatics and Optimality Theoretic Semantics. It stirred a wealth of new research in the pragmatics-semantics interface and heavily influenced e.g. the development of evolutionary and game theoretic approaches. Optimality Theory holds that linguistic output can be understood as the optimized products of ranked constraints. At the centre of BiOT is the insight that this optimisation has to take place both in production and interpretation, and that the production-interpretation cycle has to lead back to the original input. BiOT is now generally interpreted as a description of diachronically stable and cognitively optimal form–meaning pairs. It found applications beyond the semantics-pragmatics interface in language acquisition, historical linguistics, phonology, syntax, and typology. This book provides a state of the art overview of these developments. It collects nine chapters by leading scientists in the field.

Doing Optimality Theory

Doing Optimality Theory PDF Author: John J. McCarthy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444358057
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Get Book Here

Book Description
Doing Optimality Theory brings together examples and practical, detailed advice for undergraduates and graduate students working in linguistics. Given that the basic premises of Optimality Theory are markedly different from other linguistic theories, this book presents the analytic techniques and new ways of thinking and theorizing that are required. Explains how to do analysis and research using Optimality Theory (OT) - a branch of phonology that has revolutionized the field since its conception in 1993 Offers practical, in-depth advice for students and researchers in the field, presented in an engaging way Features numerous examples, questions, and exercises throughout, all helping to illustrate the theory and summarize the core concepts of OT Written by John J. McCarthy, one of the theory’s leading proponents and an instrumental figure in the dissemination and use of OT today An ideal guide through the intricacies of linguistic analysis and research for beginning researchers, and, by example, one which will lead the way to future developments in the field.

A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory

A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory PDF Author: John J. McCarthy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521796446
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
Explains and explores the central premises of OT and the results of their praxis.

Optimality Theory in Phonology

Optimality Theory in Phonology PDF Author: John J. McCarthy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470755520
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 624

Get Book Here

Book Description
Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader is a collection of readings on this important new theory by leading figures in the field, including a lengthy excerpt from Prince and Smolensky’s never-before-published Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Compiles the most important readings about Optimality Theory in phonology from some of the most prominent researchers in the field. Contains 33 excerpts spanning a range of topics in phonology and including many never-before-published papers. Includes a lengthy excerpt from Prince and Smolensky’s foundational 1993 manuscript Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Includes introductory notes and study/research questions for each chapter.

Optimality Theory

Optimality Theory PDF Author: Joost Dekkers (linguiste)
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 9780198238447
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 656

Get Book Here

Book Description
Optimality theory has revolutionized phonological theory, and its insights are now being applied to other central aspects of language. This book presents the results of research as applied to syntax/language acquisition, as well as considering the main lines of attack by rule-based grammarians.

Learnability in Optimality Theory

Learnability in Optimality Theory PDF Author: Bruce Tesar
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262264884
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Get Book Here

Book Description
Highlighting the close relationship between linguistic explanation and learnability, Bruce Tesar and Paul Smolensky examine the implications of Optimality Theory (OT) for language learnability. Highlighting the close relationship between linguistic explanation and learnability, Bruce Tesar and Paul Smolensky examine the implications of Optimality Theory (OT) for language learnability. They show how the core principles of OT lead to the learning principle of constraint demotion, the basis for a family of algorithms that infer constraint rankings from linguistic forms. Of primary concern to the authors are the ambiguity of the data received by the learner and the resulting interdependence of the core grammar and the structural analysis of overt linguistic forms. The authors argue that iterative approaches to interdependencies, inspired by work in statistical learning theory, can be successfully adapted to address the interdependencies of language learning. Both OT and Constraint Demotion play critical roles in their adaptation. The authors support their findings both formally and through simulations. They also illustrate how their approach could be extended to other language learning issues, including subset relations and the learning of phonological underlying forms.

The Syllable in Optimality Theory

The Syllable in Optimality Theory PDF Author: Caroline Féry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139437380
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 431

Get Book Here

Book Description
The syllable has always been a key concept in generative linguistics: the rules, representations, parameters, or constraints posited in diverse frameworks of theoretical phonology and morphology all make reference to this fundamental unit of prosodic structure. No less central to the field is Optimality Theory, an approach developed within (morpho-)phonology in the early 1990s. This 2003 book combines two themes of central importance to linguists and their mutual relevance in recent research. It provides an overview of the role of the syllable in OT and ways in which problems that relate to the analysis of syllable structure can be solved in OT. The contributions to the book not only show that the syllable sheds light on certain properties of OT itself, they also demonstrate that OT is capable of describing and adequately analyzing many issues that are problematic in other theories. The analyses are based on a wealth of languages.

Optimality Theory

Optimality Theory PDF Author: Diana Archangeli
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631202264
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume provides the first general introduction to optimality theory -- arguably the d linguistic theory of the 1990s. The book leads the reader to an understanding of optimality theory via the exploration and resolution of specific problems in phonology, morphology, and syntax, but presumes virtually no background knowledge in linguistics.