Download or read book Optimality Theory and Language Change written by D.E. Holt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work discusses many optimization and linguistic issues in great detail. It treats the history of a variety of languages, including English, French, Germanic, Galician/ Portuguese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish and shows that the application of Optimality Theory allows for innovative and improved analyses. It contains a complete bibliography on OT and language change. It is of interest to historical linguists, researchers into OT and linguistic theory, and phonologists and syntacticians with an interest in historical change.

Download or read book Bidirectional Optimality Theory written by Anton Benz and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bidirectional Optimality Theory (BiOT) emerged at the turn of the millennium as a fusion of Radical Pragmatics and Optimality Theoretic Semantics. It stirred a wealth of new research in the pragmatics‑semantics interface and heavily influenced e.g. the development of evolutionary and game theoretic approaches. Optimality Theory holds that linguistic output can be understood as the optimized products of ranked constraints. At the centre of BiOT is the insight that this optimisation has to take place both in production and interpretation, and that the production-interpretation cycle has to lead back to the original input. BiOT is now generally interpreted as a description of diachronically stable and cognitively optimal form–meaning pairs. It found applications beyond the semantics-pragmatics interface in language acquisition, historical linguistics, phonology, syntax, and typology. This book provides a state of the art overview of these developments. It collects nine chapters by leading scientists in the field.

Download or read book Optimality Theoretic Studies in Spanish Phonology written by Fernando Martínez-Gil and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-03-15 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This outstanding volume offers the first comprehensive collection of optimality-theoretic studies in Spanish phonology. Bringing together most of the best-known researchers in the field, it presents a state-of-the-art overview of research in Spanish phonology within the non-derivational framework of optimality theory. The book is structured around six major areas of phonological research: phonetics–phonology interface, segmental phonology, syllable structure and stress, morphophonology, language variation and change, and language acquisition, including general as well as more specialized articles. The reader is guided through the volume with the help of the introduction and a detailed index. The book will serve as core reading for advanced graduate-level phonology courses and seminars in Spanish linguistics, and in general linguistics phonology courses. It will also constitute an essential reference for researchers in phonology, phonological theory, and Spanish, and related areas, such as language acquisition, bilingualism, education, and speech and hearing science.

Download or read book Optimality Theory Phonological Acquisition and Disorders written by Daniel A. Dinnsen and published by Equinox Publishing (Indonesia). This book was released on 2008 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the phonologies of children with functional (non-organic) speech disorders, this volume reports the latest findings in optimality theory, phonological acquisition and disorders. The book is based on typological, cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental evidence from over 200 children. It stands out because of the unique test case that the population offers to optimality theory, particularly with respect to puzzles of opacity, lawful orders of acquisition, and language learnability. Beyond its theoretical significance, this research holds clinical relevance for the assessment and treatment of disordered populations, most notably the systematic prediction of learning outcomes. The volume bridges the gap between theory and application by showing how each informs the other. It is intended for linguists, psychologists, speech pathologists, second-language instructors and those interested in the latest developments in phonological theory and its applied extensions.

Download or read book Optimality Theory written by Rene Kager and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-28 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an introduction to Optimality Theory, whose central idea is that surface forms of language reflect resolutions of conflicts between competing constraints. A surface form is 'optimal' if it incurs the least serious violations of a set of constraints, taking into account their hierarchical ranking. Languages differ in the ranking of constraints; and any violations must be minimal. The book does not limit its empirical scope to phonological phenomena, but also contains chapters on the learnability of OT grammars; OT's implications for syntax; and other issues such as opacity. It also reviews in detail a selection of the considerable research output which OT has already produced. Exercises accompany chapters 1-7, and there are sections on further reading. Optimality Theory will be welcomed by any linguist with a basic knowledge of derivational Generative Phonology.

Download or read book Optimality Theory in Phonology written by John J. McCarthy and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader is a collection of readings on this important new theory by leading figures in the field, including a lengthy excerpt from Prince and Smolensky’s never-before-published Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Compiles the most important readings about Optimality Theory in phonology from some of the most prominent researchers in the field. Contains 33 excerpts spanning a range of topics in phonology and including many never-before-published papers. Includes a lengthy excerpt from Prince and Smolensky’s foundational 1993 manuscript Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Includes introductory notes and study/research questions for each chapter.

Download or read book Optimality Theory written by Rene Kager and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-06-28 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an introduction to Optimality Theory, whose central idea is that surface forms of language reflect resolutions of conflicts between competing constraints. A surface form is 'optimal' if it incurs the least serious violations of a set of constraints, taking into account their hierarchical ranking. Languages differ in the ranking of constraints; and any violations must be minimal. The book does not limit its empirical scope to phonological phenomena, but also contains chapters on the learnability of OT grammars; OT's implications for syntax; and other issues such as opacity. It also reviews in detail a selection of the considerable research output which OT has already produced. Exercises accompany chapters 1-7, and there are sections on further reading. Optimality Theory will be welcomed by any linguist with a basic knowledge of derivational Generative Phonology.

Download or read book Optimality Theory written by Alan Prince and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the final version of the widely-circulated 1993 Technical Report that introduces a conception of grammar in which well-formedness is defined as optimality with respect to a ranked set of universal constraints. Final version of the widely circulated 1993 Technical Report that was the seminal work in Optimality Theory, never before available in book format. Serves as an excellent introduction to the principles and practice of Optimality Theory. Offers proposals and analytic commentary that suggest many directions for further development for the professional.

Download or read book Doing Optimality Theory written by John J. McCarthy and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-09-23 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Doing Optimality Theory brings together examples and practical, detailed advice for undergraduates and graduate students working in linguistics. Given that the basic premises of Optimality Theory are markedly different from other linguistic theories, this book presents the analytic techniques and new ways of thinking and theorizing that are required. Explains how to do analysis and research using Optimality Theory (OT) - a branch of phonology that has revolutionized the field since its conception in 1993 Offers practical, in-depth advice for students and researchers in the field, presented in an engaging way Features numerous examples, questions, and exercises throughout, all helping to illustrate the theory and summarize the core concepts of OT Written by John J. McCarthy, one of the theory’s leading proponents and an instrumental figure in the dissemination and use of OT today An ideal guide through the intricacies of linguistic analysis and research for beginning researchers, and, by example, one which will lead the way to future developments in the field.

Download or read book Optimality Theory written by Joost Dekkers (linguiste) and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Optimality theory has revolutionized phonological theory, and its insights are now being applied to other central aspects of language. This book presents the results of research as applied to syntax/language acquisition, as well as considering the main lines of attack by rule-based grammarians.

Download or read book A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory written by John J. McCarthy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains and explores the central premises of OT and the results of their praxis.

Download or read book Change Chance and Optimality written by April M. S. McMahon and published by . This book was released on 2000-11-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about how languages change. It is also a devastating critique of a widespread linguistic orthodoxy. April McMahon argues that to provide a convincing explanation of linguistic change the roles of history and contingency must be accommodated in linguistic theory. She also shows that theoretical work in related disciplines can be used to assess the value of such theories. Optimality Theory, or OT as it is usually called, dominates contemporary phonology, especially in the USA, and is becoming increasingly influential in syntax and language acquisition. Having set out its basis principles, Professor McMahon assesses their explanatory power in analysing language change and its residues in current phonological systems. Using cross-linguistic data, and drawing comparisons with other theories inside and outside linguistics, she shows that OT is incapable of accounting for language change, without the addition of rules and an appreciation of chance and historical contingency that would then undermine its theoretical underpinnings. OT relies on innateness and needs to discuss the origins of allegedly genetically-specified features.; The author considers the nature and evolution of the human language capacity, and demonstrates a profound mismatch between the predictions of evolutionary biology and the claims for innateness made in OT.

Download or read book Optimality Theory An Introduction written by Patrick Schmitz and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, RWTH Aachen University, language: English, abstract: The linguistic model Optimality Theory was for the first time proposed by the linguist Alan Prince (Rutgers University, New Jersey) in cooperation with his colleague Paul Smolensky (John Hopkins University, Baltimore) in the year 1993. This representational model has – since then – been constantly expanded for instance owing to the work of John J. McCarthy (University of Massachusetts Amherst) and other scholars such as René Kager in the Netherlands or Caroline Féry in Germany. The studies conducted in this term paper are primarily based upon the work of the aforementioned scholars with a particular focus on the examinations by the three ‘fathers’ of Optimality Theory, viz. Prince, Smolensky and McCarthy. Another fact revealing that this model is a current and productive one – i.e. beside the spreading and development of Optimality Theory all over the linguistic world – is its applicability to different subfields of linguistics, namely phonology, syntax and morphology. With reference to its wide use, it should be said that this term paper predominantly examines the phonological applicability of this linguistic model. The theory itself borrows fundamental aspects from Generative Grammar such as the role of Universal Principles in language, which will be pointed out as one of the most important pillars of Optimality Theory in the course of this paper. In addition to explaining the fundamental principles and processes in Optimality Theory such as the roles of constraints and various other functions as for example GEN or EVAL in a general introduction (chapter 2), I will also report on two case-studies (chapter 3): one on Tagalog prefix infixation already examined by Prince and Smolensky and one on German Final Devoicing worked upon by Féry. The examination of these particular case-studies shall prove that Optimality Theory is helpful when it comes to scrutinizing certain grammatical phenomena either in well-known languages such as German or less known and used languages such as Tagalog, an Austronesian language spoken in the Philippines. Finally, I want to point out the advantages and disadvantages of this linguistic model by focussing on the set of the following questions: why do scholars employ the strategies of Optimality Theory and how do these strategies support linguists in coming to their respective results? What actually is Optimality Theory good for and in which respect does it prove inadequate for studying languages and grammatical systems?

Download or read book Optimality Theory in Phonology written by John J. McCarthy and published by Blackwell Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader is a collection of readings on this important new theory by leading figures in the field, starting with a lengthy excerpt from the original source, Prince and Smolensky’s never-before-published report Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. The 33 selections cover a broad range of topics in phonology and include many of the foundational works, some of them revised to reflect the most recent developments. Optimality Theory in Phonology is designed as a text for advanced phonology courses, but is also of interest as a reference work for scholars in the field of linguistics and related disciplines. Each chapter includes introductory notes to set the stage and highlight connections, as well as a list of study and research questions.

Download or read book Theoretical Approaches to Linguistic Variation written by Ermenegildo Bidese and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions of this book deal with the issue of language variation. They all share the assumption that within the language faculty the variation space is hierarchically constrained and that minimal changes in the set of property values defining each language give rise to diverse outputs within the same system. Nevertheless, the triggers for language variation can be different and located at various levels of the language faculty. The novelty of the volume lies in exploring different loci of language variation by including wide-ranging empirical perspectives that cover different levels of analysis (syntax, phonology and prosody) and deal with different kinds of data, mostly from Romance and Germanic languages, from dialects, idiolects, language acquisition, language attrition and creolization, analyzed from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives. The volume is divided in three parts. The first part is dedicated to synchronic variation in phonology and syntax; the second part deals with diachronic variation and language change, and the third part investigates the role of contact, attrition and acquisition in giving rise to language change and language variation in bilingual settings. This volume is a useful tool for linguistics of diverse theoretical persuasions working on theoretical and comparative linguistics and to anyone interested in language variation, language change, dialectology, language acquisition and typology.

Download or read book Bidirectional Optimality Theory written by Anton Benz and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bidirectional Optimality Theory (BiOT) emerged at the turn of the millennium as a fusion of Radical Pragmatics and Optimality Theoretic Semantics. It stirred a wealth of new research in the pragmatics-semantics interface and heavily influenced e.g. the development of evolutionary and game theoretic approaches. Optimality Theory holds that linguistic output can be understood as the optimized products of ranked constraints. At the centre of BiOT is the insight that this optimisation has to take place both in production and interpretation, and that the production-interpretation cycle has to lead back to the original input. BiOT is now generally interpreted as a description of diachronically stable and cognitively optimal form–meaning pairs. It found applications beyond the semantics-pragmatics interface in language acquisition, historical linguistics, phonology, syntax, and typology. This book provides a state of the art overview of these developments. It collects nine chapters by leading scientists in the field.

Download or read book Motives for Language Change written by Raymond Hickey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-16 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This specially commissioned volume considers the processes involved in language change and the issues of how they can be modelled and studied. The way languages change offers an insight into the nature of language itself, its internal organisation, and how it is acquired and used. Accordingly, the phenomenon of language change has been approached from a variety of perspectives by linguists of many different orientations. This book, originally published in 2003, brings together an international team of leading figures from different areas of linguistics to re-examine some of the central issues in this field and also to discuss new proposals. The volume is arranged into sections, including grammaticalisation, the typological perspective, the social context of language change and contact-based explanations. It seeks to cover the subject as a whole, bearing in mind its relevance for the general analysis of language, and will appeal to a broad international readership.