<OT> New Posting: ROA-584

[roa@ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 584-0203

Input-Output Mismatches in OT

David Beaver <dib@stanford.edu>
Hanjung Lee <hanjung@csli.stanford.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=584


Abstract:
Bidirectional Optimality Theory allows us to see a wide 
range of problems which would previously have been considered 
unrelated from a new perspective, the perspective of asymmetric 
relationships between input and output. For interpretation, the 
input is a form and the output a meaning, and for production 
the input is a meaning and the output is a form. A mismatch is 
any case where there is no isomorphism between the space
of meanings
and the space of forms, say because one form has no meaning 
(uninterpretability), or multiple meanings (ambiguity),
or because
a meaning is inexpressible,(ineffability) or may be expressed
in
multiple ways (optionality). In this paper, we study architectural
aspects of four versions of bidirectional OT so far proposed, 
and their treatments of these form-meaning asymmetries. The four
models to be studied here are the strong and weak bidirectional 
OT of Blutner (2001), and the asymmetric OT models of Wilson
(2001)
and Zeevat (2001). We show that each of these models provides
at
best a partial solution to the problems of form-meaning
asymmetry.
We also discuss some possible directions in which these existing
proposals could be developed so as to model cases of form-meaning
mismatches that they fail to account for.   

Keywords: bidirectional optimality theory, ambiguity, optionality,
ineffability, uninterpretability, blocking, freezing

Areas: Pragmatics/Semantics, Syntax

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=584