0. Combinations of Sonority and Stress In their analysis of Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber syllabification, Prince and Smolensky (1993) postulate that different types of prominence, such as sonority and syllabicity, should align—a phenomenon they term prominence alignment. This concept is implemented by Prince and Smolensky using families of inherently-ranked constraints that are derived from combini...

In this paper we provide an analysis of the location of main stress in Pirah~a, from the perspective of Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993a,b). The three-syllable window for possible stress placement, coupled with quantity-sensitivity and default nality have to our knowledge de ed convincing explanation within current phonological theory. We will show th...

the purpose of this research is to analyze differential adpositional case marking (dacm) in vafsi within ot framework by using the generalization of aissen’s (2003) differential object marking (dom) model. while bossong (1985) has traced dom in more than 300 languages, dacm has not been investigated typologically, yet. dacm, as a branch of differential case marking (dcm), questions the effect o...

A central claim of Optimality Theory is that grammars may differ only in how conflicts among universal well-formedness constraints are resolved: a grammar is precisely a means of resolving such conflicts via a strict priority ranking of constraints. It is shown here how this theory of Universal Grammar yields a highly general Constraint Demotion principle for grammar learning. The resulting lea...

The analysis of opaque relations presents a problem to classic Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993), inherently a surface-oriented theory. Many different proposals have been made to integrate the analysis of opacity into OT. In this paper, we address the problem of opacity in Tundra Nenets (TN), a Uralic (Samoyedic) language spoken in Arctic Russia and No...

metathesis as a phonological phenomenon in order to reverse segments has been focus of many studies. metathesis according to the range of application can be sporadic or regular. it links synchronic studies of language to diachronic ones and thereby has some consequences for phonological theory. the central goal of this paper is to elucidate the conditions under which metathesis occurs synchroni...

Harmonic Grammar is a connectionist-derived grammar formalism, of which Optimality Theory is a kind of limiting case. Harmonic Grammar is expressive enough to specify the trees that are correct parses on a given contextfree grammar. Here, we show how to construct a connectionist parsing network which finds correct parses given a sentence, of if none exist, signals a rejection. Finally, a brief ...