Idsardi (2006) claims that Optimality Theory (OT; Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004) is “in general computationally intractable” on the basis of a proof adapted from Eisner (1997a). We take issue with this conclusion on two grounds. First, the intractability result holds only in cases where the constraint set is not fixed in advance (contra usual definitions of OT) and second, the result cruciall...

This volume represents a synthesis of collaborative research from Indiana University’s Learnability Project. Its chapters report data, methods, treatments, and findings derived primarily from corpora of nearly three hundred English-learning children aged 3 to 7 with ‘functional (non-organic) phonological delays’, referred to hereafter in this review as PDs. The book sustains an extended argumen...

It was exactly 25 years ago that Paul Smolensky introduced Harmony Theory (Smolensky, 1986), a framework that would pursue an exciting, but certainly not straight path through linguistics (namely, Optimality Theory) and other cognitive domains. The goal of this workshop is not so much to look back to this path, but rather to discuss its potential continuation(s). Soon after its publication, Opt...

This paper discusses a case of syntax/semantics interaction of a characteristically optimality-theoretic kind. Finnish partitive constructions exhibit a case alternation that is partly semantically, partly syntactically driven. The crucial semantic condition that plays a role in case selection is quantitative determinacy, which replaces the de niteness condition familiar from the Partitive Cons...

The article gives a brief summary of work dealing with morpho-syntactic phenomena in OT, and also addresses more general problems. It highlights on questions of optimal ordering, optimal case, and optimal agreeement, including phenomena such as morphological gaps, repairs and case-split. It finally addresses the concepts of stochastic OT and bidirectional OT. key words: bidirectional OT, candid...

Optimality Theory (OT) shifts the focus of linguistic discovery from rules and derivations to constraints and rankings. It is a theory that has been most widely accepted in the realm of phonology, but has implications for all areas of linguistics. There are many linguists who accept OT while there are others who doubt its efficacy, especially with regard to providing a substantive theory of gra...

1. Overview Output-output correspondence (OOC) constraints, constraints which demand correspondence between independently occurring surface forms, have recently been added to the set of constraint types invoked in much OT work. In this paper we examine some of the better-known arguments originally adduced in support of OOC constraints, and argue that adoption of such a powerful mechanism is not...

Ever since the discovery of neural networks, there has been a controversy between two modes of information processing. On the one hand, symbolic systems have proven indispensable for our understanding of higher intelligence, especially when cognitive domains like language and reasoning are examined. On the other hand, it is a matter of fact that intelligence resides in the brain, where computat...

The Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995, 2000) and Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004) are not alternative theories logically inconsistent with each other. Optimality Theory is a theory of how universal constraints of grammar interact (Prince and Smolensky 1993, Grimshaw 2005). Minimalism, as Chomsky notes (2000:41), is a research program –not a theory– investigating to what extent...

Given a constraint set with k constraints in the framework of Optimality Theory (OT), what is its capacity as a classification scheme for linguistic data? One useful measure of this capacity is the size of the largest data set (i.e. set of input-output pairs) of which each subset is consistent with a different grammar hypothesis. This metric is known as the Vapnik-Chervonenkis Dimension (VCD) a...