MARBURGER ARBEITEN ZUR LINGUISTIK Nr. 6 Correspondence Theory: More Candidates Than Atoms in the Universe

In Correspondence Theory (McCarthy & Prince 1995), elements of two strings (S , S ) belonging to designated representational levels such as (input, output) may become associated through an arbitrary correspondence relation, while constraints like MAX, DEP evaluate such string pairs relative to the set of elementwise correspondences they find. Using some elementary calculations, I show that the number of candidates produced by correspondence-theoretic GEN quickly grows out of proportion, exceeding the estimated amount of atoms in the entire universe for strings of length greater 6 under conservative upper bounds for amount of epenthesis, reduplication and allophonic inventory size. This finding suggests that it is hopeless to do realistic manual verification of correspondence-theoretic analyses, while leaving open suitable restrictions of the formal power of correspondence, as e.g. proposed by Primitive Optimality Theory (Eisner 1997). While phonology may not count, phonologists clearly should sometimes.