<OT> New Posting: ROA-902

[Rutgers Optimality Archive]

ROA 902-0207

An Optimality Theoretic Account of Optionality and Variation in
Stylistic Fronting

Jim Wood <jpt6 at unh.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=902


Abstract:
This paper accounts for a phenomenon known as Stylistic
Fronting (Maling 1980/1990) within an Optimality-Theoretic
(OT) framework (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004). The primary
aim of this paper is to extend the notion of Floating Constraints
(FCs) (previously proposed in Reynolds 1994 and Nagy & Reynolds
1997) to the domain of OT syntax as conceived by Grimshaw
(1997) and others. Floating Constraints has been used to
account for intra-speaker language variation without positing
several grammars in one speaker by allowing some constraints
within a grammar to float within a fixed domain among other
'anchored' constraints. This approach has the advantage
of accounting not only accounting for variants but also
for the frequency of their appearance. Crucially, a Floating
Constraint approach can only work in syntax when the variants
are completely optional ways of realizing the same proposition
and argument structure. This seems to be the case for Icelandic
Stylistic Fronting (see Burton-Roberts & Poole 2006, Holmberg
2000, and Poole 1997), and this thesis argues that an Optimality-
Theoretic account, using Floating Constraints, can parsimoniously
account for the basic and more problematic properties of
Stylistic Fronting along with the frequency with which the
relevant constructions appear.

Comments: BA Thesis
Keywords: Floating Constraints, Icelandic, Stylistic Fronting, Syntax
Areas: Syntax
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=902