The main example we discuss is mccarthy s 1995 study of rotuman metathesisa cover term for morphemic alternations of the type in 1 termed by churchward 1940 completeincomplete phase. That approach made sense in the spe theory of phonology, where the goal of the analysis was to construct and order a set of languageparticular rules. Apr 11, 2008 doing optimality theory brings together examples and practical, detailed advice for undergraduates and graduate students working in linguistics. Notes on optimality theory college of the holy cross. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading doing optimality theory.
It posits that universal grammar has a set of violable universal constraints con. Optimality theory is a general model of how grammars are structured. Doing optimality theory 2 alternations in latin third declension nouns, for instance. A reader is a collection of readings on this important new theory by leading figures in the field, including a lengthy excerpt from prince and smolenskys neverbeforepublished optimality theory. Mccarthy university of massachusetts amherst abstract. Roa, which was created by alan prince in 1993, is an electronic depository of work in, on, or about ot. No prior knowledge of ot is required, though it is assumed that all participants are familiar with the goals. Download unpublished paper perceptually grounded faithfulness in harmonic serialism 2010.
Acknowledgments special thanks to john mccarthy for detailed discussion of virtually every issue raised here and for a finegrained skepsis of the entire first draft of the ms. Given that the basic premises of optimality theory are markedly different from other linguistic theories, this book presents the analytic techniques and new ways of thinking and theorizing that are. Mccarthy is the author of doing optimality theory 4. Reviewed by s am h ellmuth, university of york doing optimality theory is intended to equip student and more advanced practitioners with key tools and concepts needed to construct an analysis within optimality theory ot. Optimality theory as applied to language was originally proposed by the linguists alan prince and paul smolensky in 1991, and later expanded by prince and john j. Theory, in which markedness has no substantive status in the grammar, but functions as an external system of annotations on parameter values, evaluating a grammars complexity. An idempotent phonological grammar maps phonotactically licit forms faithfully to themselves. Syllabus introduction to phonology linguistics and. Optimality theory ot is a wideemployed theoretical framework used in contemporary linguistics. Pay particular attention to the critiques of optimality theory.
The emergence of the unmarked optimality in prosodic morphology. Given that the basic premises of optimality theory are markedly different from other linguistic theories, this. Mccarthy doing optimality theory brings together examples and practical, detailed advice for undergraduates and graduate students working in linguistics. Students who are officially registered for a grade need to do one written assignment. Request pdf on jul 1, 2009, sam hellmuth and others published john j. This paper establishes tight sufficient conditions for idempotency in classical optimality theory. As optimality theory has failed to analyse the data in a compelling manner, the introduction of derivation, benefit ting from the legacy of lexical phonology, seems inevitable. This book describes optimality theory from the top down, explaining and exploring the central premises of ot and the results of their praxis. Doing optimality theory brings together examples and practical, detailed advice for undergraduates and graduate students working in linguistics.
Ot assumes that constraints are ordered transitively with respect to their violability. Treatments of vowel harmony in optimality theory by tomomasa sasa a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctor of philosophy degree in linguistics in the graduate college of the university of iowa july 2009 thesis supervisors. Given that the basic premises of optimality theory are markedly different from other linguistic theories, this book presents the analytic. Introduction he distinction between marked and unmarked structures has played a role throughout this century in the development of phonology and of linguistics generally. Two recent and comprehensive textbooks are kager 1999 and mccarthy 2002.
Mccarthy, university of massachusetts, amherst ot does not need to permanently influence linguistic theory. Given the architecture of generative phonology, which distinguishes between underlying lexical forms and surface forms, and given the. Homework for a given week will normally be due on monday of. Its topic is optimality theory ot, to which mccarthy already devoted a. It is a theory that has been most widely accepted in the realm of phonology, but has implications for all areas of linguistics. Section and page numbers refer to my doing optimality theory blackwell, 2008. The opus classicum of optimality theory is prince and smolensky 1993. This document consists of about 30 pages of text to supplement doing optimality theory blackwell, 2008. Although much of the interest in optimality theory has been associated with its use in phonology, the area to which optimality theory was first applied, the theory is also.
Mccarthy points out that some of the most significant work on ot is available for free on the rutgers optimality archive. Optimality theory confronts these issues directly, designing its basic architecture to deal with them. Among these contributions is his formalization of the principles of autosegmental association. If you want to learn ot as a phonological theory, you could read r. The basic formal element of the theory is the constraint. Building on tesar, these conditions are derived in two steps. Optimality theory ot is a linguistic model originally proposed by the linguists alan prince and paul smolensky in 1993. Doing optimality theory supplement on harmonic serialism john j. Doing optimality theory wiley online books wiley online library. Applying theory to data kindle edition by mccarthy, john j download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets. Alves in doing optimality theory 2008, you say that ot is a theory. Constraint interaction in generative grammar compiles the most important readings about optimality theory in phonology from some of the most. Jan 15, 2009 language, volume 85, number 4 2009 doing optimality theory.
Given that the basic premises of optimality theory are markedly different from other linguistic theories, this book presents the analytic techniques and new ways of thinking and theorizing that are required. Clinical application of optimality theory 243 optimality theory is different from the majority of linguistic frameworks in that it does not appeal to rules or processes to explain such patterns in grammar. Doing optimality theory is an ideal guide through the intricacies of linguistic analysis and research for an audience of both advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and, by example, will lead the way to future developments in the field. This article surveys the motivations for ot, its core principles, and the basics of analysis. The collection of alternatives produced by gen for a given input is called a candidate set. Harmonic serialism supplement to doing optimality theory. Reviewed by sam hellmuth, university of york doing optimality theory is intended to equip student and more advanced practitioners with key tools and concepts needed to construct an analysis within optimality theory ot. In this interview, professor john mccarthy talks about the prospects and. Introduction nick clementss contributions to phonological theory have profoundly influenced my own work as well as that of many others.
Derivational residue in phonological optimality theory ben hermans, marc van oostendorp. Contemporary views on architecture and representation in. These constraints encompass universal properties of languages. Doing optimality theory brings together examples and practic. Optimality theory in phonology california institute of. Where to begin how to rank constraints working through an analysis in phonology the limits of ranking arguments candidates in ranking arguments harmon. Autosegmental spreading in optimality theory1 john j. It espouses a serialist view of morphology that is rejected by most current phonologists. Additional readings can be found in the readings section.
The prevailing nonsequential approach to phonology, the optimality theory, ot, is based not on rewrite rules but on constraints. Success depended on generating all of the correct forms using maximally simple rules. From a phonetic perspective, id recommend starting there. Examples are drawn from phonology, morphology, and syntax, but the emphasis throughout is on the theory rather than the examples, on understanding what is special about ot and on equipping readers to apply it, extend it, and. The hope, therefore, is that by offering a coherent view of phonology that is not optimality theory based back cover, the book can complement ot and move the field beyond it. Handouts distributed in class will also be available in pdf format at the course website. Request pdf on jan 1, 2010, walcir cardoso and others published doing optimality theory. We offer simple, principled solutions which we hope will contribute to a more constrained theory of phonologyone that perhaps has no place for ooc. In doing optimality theory, one of the key proponents of the theory explains how to do analysis and research using this model. As the theory of representations in syntax has ramified, the theory of operations has dwindled in content, even to triviality and, for some, nonexistence. Otcc has particularly focused on phonological opacity mccarthy 2007a and.
A second central hypothesis of optimality theory is that gen is entirely universal and not susceptible at all to languageparticular modification. Mccarthy august 25, 2010 preparation of this work was supported by grant bcs08829 from the national science foundation to the university of massachusetts amherst. These notes explain the procedures and assumptions behind a valuable technique using in studying adaptation called optimality theory. Optimality theoretic representation of stress in cairene. Work on prosodic morphology within optimality theory mccarthy and prince 1993b et. Optimality theory ot shifts the focus of linguistic discovery from rules and derivations to constraints and rankings. Mccarthy, one of the theory s leading proponents and an instrumental figure in the dissemination and. First, idempotency is shown to follow from a general formal condition on the faithfulness constraints. Mccarthy find, read and cite all the research you need on researchgate. Pdf in its more than two decades, optimality theory has contributed to a great shift in. Doing optimality theory applying theory to data john j. May 16, 2008 optimality theory revolutionized the field of phonology and had a huge impact on linguistics in general when it was first proposed in 1993. Rene kagers textbook is one of the rst to cover optimality theory ot, a declarative grammar framework that swiftly took over phonology afterit was introduced by prince, smolensky, and mccarthy in 1993.
Optimality theory has transformed the field of linguistics more than almost any other development of the past halfcentury, and prince and smolensky started it all. It also addresses some frequently asked questions about this theory and offers suggestions. Optimality theory revolutionized the field of phonology and had a huge impact on linguistics in general when it was first proposed in 1993. The original reference for ot is prince and smolensky 1993. How to construct an analysis doing optimality theory. Prince university of massachusetts, amherst rutgers university 1.
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