<OT> ConCat: A catalogue of constraints

[Rutgers Optimality Archive]

ConCat (Constraint Catalogue) is a wiki-style encyclopedia of
constraints proposed in the literature on Optimality Theory (OT), now
available at:

      http://jones.ling.indiana.edu/~concat/moin.py/MainPage

This wiki will work like any other wiki: since people can change each
other's work, it is impossible to guarantee correctness, or copyright.
However, the wiki is set up in such a way that only people who have
registered can add or change things. This will be a minimal protection
against vandalism.

The idea for this wiki came up during a discussion between Curt Rice
(University of Tromsø, Norway) and Marc van Oostendorp (Meertens
Institute, The Netherlands) during the PhonologyFest at Bloomington,
Indiana (USA) in the summer of 2006.

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More information from the main page:

OT assumes that the grammar of a natural language consists of a set of
constraints, called Con, plus an ordering on these constraints. In
many (but not all) versions of OT, it is assumed that Con is
universal: the ranking is the only difference between languages.

There is as yet no agreement on the contents of Con. Furthermore,
there is a lot of confusion in the literature about the orignal
sources and formulation of many constraints. ConCat aims to build an
encyclopedia of constraints which have been proposed, citing their
original sources. ConCat assumes the form of a wiki: it can be freely
edited by any interested party. All constraints are welcome; it is not
our goal to present one particular view on constraints.

At present, we will still have to find out what is the best structure
for an individual entry. There is one simple lemma, on Onset, as well
as a few lemmas which have been created because they have some
relevance for this lemma (Alignment, *Onset/x, HNuc). The references
to OT literature each get their own separate page as well (e.g. Prince
and Smolensky 1993).