Model theory and the content of OT constraints
Christopher Potts and Geoffrey K. Pullum, Department of Linguistics, UC-Santa Cruz
We develop an extensible metalanguage for stating the content of
optimality-theoretic constraints in phonology, and specify a class of
structures for interpreting it. The aim is a transparent formalization of
OT constraints. Our proposal meshes well with recent work on constraint
ranking instigated by Karttunen and more fully developed by Samek-Lodovici
and Prince (SLP). We show how to state a wide range of constraints,
including markedness, input--output faithfulness, base--reduplicant
faithfulness, and paradigm uniformity. However, output--output
correspondence, sympathy, and targeted constraints are revealed to be
extremely problematic. It is unclear that any reasonable class of
structures can reconstruct their proponents' intentions. They are also
inconsistent with the developments of SLP. For the most part, the
problematic constraint types were developed to deal with opacity, which
therefore remains the most important theoretical crux for current OT. We
hope to shed new light on this debate, by subjecting some common responses
to it within OT to critical investigation.
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