<OT> New Posting: ROA-722

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 722-0305

Less than zero: Correspondence and the null output

John J. McCarthy <jmccarthy at linguist.umass.edu>
Matthew Wolf <mwolf at linguist.umass.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=722


Abstract:
A central property of Optimality Theory is competition (Prince
and Smolensky 2004).  GEN associates an array of candidate
output forms with each input, and these candidates compete
against one another. EVAL chooses the winner of this competition.

But what if some input has no output, as in the case of
paradigmatic gaps? What candidate is the winner of the
competition? Prince & Smolensky (2004: 57ff.) propose a 
solution to this problem: the gap is itself a candidate for 
every input. Under the appropriate conditions, the gap will 
be able to win like any other (non-harmonically bounded) 
candidate. The gap candidate � which they refer to as the null
parse is taken to violate only a single constraint, named MPARSE.

Our primary goal in this paper is to rationalize the properties
of the null parse. In particular, how is it possible for
this candidate to violate only MPARSE and satisfy all faithfulnes
s and markedness constraints?  We argue for a revision of
the theory of correspondence (McCarthy and Prince 1995,
1999) from which the null output'�s faithfulness status
follows automatically, and we also explain why it violates
no markedness constraints.

Comments: 
Keywords: null parse, null output, MParse, gap, correspondence
Areas: Phonology,Morphology,Formal Analysis
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=722