<OT> New Posting: ROA-925

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 924-0907

Linguistic Optimization

Joe Pater <pater at linguist.umass.edu>
Rajesh Bhatt <bhatt at linguist.umass.edu>
Christopher Potts <potts at linguist.umass.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=924


Abstract:
Optimality Theory (OT) is a model of language that combines
aspects of generative and connectionist linguistics. It
is unique in the  field in its use of a rank ordering on
constraints, which is used to formalize optimization, the
choice of the best of a set of potential linguistic forms.
We show that phenomena argued to require ranking fall out
equally from the form of optimization in OT's predecessor
Harmonic Grammar (HG), which uses numerical weights to encode
the relative strength of constraints. We further argue that
the known problems for HG can be resolved by adopting assumptions
about the nature of constraints that have precedents both
in OT and elsewhere in computational and generative linguistics.
This leads to a formal proof that if the range of each constraint
is a bounded number of violations, HG generates a finite
number of languages. This is nontrivial, since the set of
possible weights for each constraint is nondenumerably infinite.
We also briefly review some advantages of HG.

Comments: 
Keywords: Harmonic Grammar, local conjunction, locality, typology
Areas: Phonology,Formal Analysis,Learnability,Computation
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=924