The theoretical substance of the optimality formalism

At the substantive level, OT represents a research program that seeks to explain the invariance, recurrence, and variability of linguistic patterns across languages by postulating a set of universal requirements on linguistic representations, and accounting for complex patterns as interactions among simple requirements. At the formal level, OT employs constraints to express requirements on representations, and constraint ranking to express interactions among the requirements. This article tries to unearth the meanings of the formal devices, so as to facilitate a productive critical evaluation. I make three points. First, constraint ranking in OT is a device to capture the formal property of non-monotonicity. It is only one of the different types of non-monotonic formalisms for the expression of conflict resolution, an obvious alternative being weighted constraints. By overlooking weight assignment as an alternative, OT focuses exclusively on competition among constraints, ignoring other interesting aspects of interaction. Second, OT makes the strong claim that there are no language particular constraints; the grammar of a language can only specify (in addition to the properties of its lexical items) a language particular ranking of the universal constraints. By denying that at least some constraints are language particular, OT fails to see that some of the language particular constraints may be expressed as an assembly' of universal ingredients. The result is a proliferation and duplication of the constraints in UG. Third, the two problems above have led the research program to an unhealthy preoccupation with the formal expression of the universal requirements and their interactions, to the detriment of a serious substantive inquiry into what these requirements are

Epistemology · Linguistics · Programming language · Rotation formalisms in three dimensions · Computer Science · linguistics and terminology studies · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence · Theoretical Computer Science

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