Videogame play requires the negotiation of multiple synchronic points-of-view enabled through the use of cameras, avatars, interfaces, and vignettes (the cut-scenes, dialogue, and other attributes normally attributed to the “story”). Concurrent mastery of these points-of-view contributes to the game field of play and enables a greater possibility to complete the game’s goals. Using Prince of Pe...

This article pursues the idea of inferring aspects of phonological underlying forms directly from surface contrasts by looking at optimality theoretic linguistic systems (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). The main result proves that linguistic systems satisfying certain conditions have the faithful contrastive feature property: Whenever 2 distinct morphemes contrast on the surface in a particular...

The role of information structure in determining the placement of pitch accent in English is often reduced to notions of Focus (e.g. Chomsky, 1971; Vallduvı́, 1990; Rooth, 1992; Roberts, 1996) and Givenness (e.g. Chafe, 1974; Schwarzschild, 1999; Féry & Samek-Lodovici, 2006; Selkirk, 2007). In question-answer pairs like the following,1 the default sentential stress pattern of English, where the ...

Non-structure preserving phonological processes are defined by the emergence of a segment which is assumed to be absent from the lexical inventory of the language in question and, hence not contrastive. A central tenet of Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004, McCarthy & Prince 1993, 1995, 1999), the Richness of the Base Hypothesis (RotB; Prince & Smolensky 1993) states that lingu...

In fact, this assumption is incorrect and, whilst the Ancient Greek astronomers made huge contributions to astronomy, their knowledge was built upon the solid foundations laid by other great cultures. The Mesopotamian [1] and Zoroastrian astronomers and astrologers, in the Fertile Crescent and the empty deserts of Persia, made many sophisticated observations and devised complex theories to desc...