Optimality Theory
نویسندگان
چکیده
René Kager’s textbook is one of the first to cover Optimality Theory (OT), a declarative grammar framework that swiftly took over phonology after it was introduced by Prince, Smolensky, and McCarthy in 1993. OT reclaims traditional grammar’s ability to express surface generalizations (“syllables have onsets,” “no nasal+voiceless obstruent clusters”). Empirically, some surface generalizations are robust within a language, or—perhaps for functionalist reasons— widespread across languages. Derivational theories were forced to posit diverse rules that rescued these robust generalizations from other phonological processes. An OT grammar avoids such “conspiracies” by stating the generalizations directly, as in TwoLevel Morphology (Koskenniemi, 1983) or Declarative Phonology (Bird, 1995). In OT, the processes that try but fail to disrupt a robust generalization are described not as rules (cf. Paradis (1988)), but as lower-ranked generalizations. Such a generalization may fail in contexts where it is overruled by a higher-ranked requirement of the language (or of the underlying form). As Kager emphasizes, this interaction of violable constraints can yield complex surface patterns. OT therefore holds out the promise of simplifying grammars, by factoring all complex phenomena into simple surface-level constraints that partially mask one another.1 Whether this is always possible under an appropriate definition of “simple constraints” (e.g., Eisner (1997b)) is of course an empirical question.
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