Violable is variable: Optimality theory and linguistic variation

Optimality theory (OT) (McCarthy & Prince, 1993; Prince & Smolensky, 1993) has been proposed as a constraint-based theory of phonology in which the phonological facts of each language are accounted for by a language-specific ordering of a universal inventory of constraints. The constraints, expressing desirable (i.e., optimal) phonological states, evaluate possible candidate forms, selecting the optimal output. Any constraint may be violated by a surface form if it is overridden by a higherranked constraint; the ordinal sequence of constraints provides a weak quantification of constraint effects. Variability has been treated within OT by varying constraint orders. This model is analogous in several important respects to the variable rule model (VR) of Labov (1969) and Cedergren and Sankoff (1974). In VR, variable constraints express desirable phonological states which are variably realized on the surface, when not overridden by other constraints; constraints are probabilistically quantified. This article compares the OT and VR models, arguing that the VR model is superior on theoretical and empirical grounds: constraint effects in VR are stable, transparent, and learnable. Moreover, the probabilistic treatment of constraint effects allows VR to model successfully cases in which multiple violations of a single constraint lead to a cumulative reduction in likelihood of a form; such cases cannot be efficiently treated in OT.

[1]  Gregory R. Guy,et al.  Inherent variability and the obligatory contour principle , 1997, Language Variation and Change.

[2]  CAROLE PARADIS,et al.  ON CONSTRAINTS AND REPAIR STRATEGIES , 1987 .

[3]  David Sankoff,et al.  Linguistic Variation: Models and Methods , 1978 .

[4]  N. Nagy.  Language contact and language change in the Faetar speech community , 1996 .

[5]  Alan Prince,et al.  Prosodic morphology : constraint interaction and satisfaction , 1993 .

[6]  Raúl Aranovich.  The Proceedings of the Thirteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics , 1995 .

[7]  A Otto Santa Ana,et al.  Sonority and syllable structure in Chicano English , 1996, Language Variation and Change.

[8]  W. Labov.  Contraction, deletion, and inherent variability of the English copula , 1969, Language.

[9]  J. McCarthy.  OCP effects: Gemination and antigemination , 1986 .

[10]  M. Yip.  The obligatory contour principle and phonological rules: a loss of identity , 1988 .

[11]  Gregory R. Guy.  Contextual conditioning in variable lexical phonology , 1991, Language Variation and Change.

[12]  Paul Smolensky,et al.  Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar ; CU-CS-696-93 , 1993 .

[13]  John Goldsmith,et al.  The last phonological rule : reflections on constraints and derivations , 1993 .

[14]  Thomas Clark Veatch,et al.  English vowels : their surface phonology and phonetic implementation in vernacular dialects , 1991 .

[15]  William Thomas Reynolds,et al.  Variation and phonological theory , 1994 .

[16]  J. McCarthy.  Feature Geometry and Dependency: A Review , 1988 .

[17]  Bill Reynolds,et al.  Optimality Theory and variable word-final deletion in Faetar , 1997, Language Variation and Change.

[18]  Henrietta J. Cedergren,et al.  Variable Rules: Performance as a Statistical Reflection of Competence , 1974 .

[19]  Katya Zubritskaya,et al.  Mechanism of sound change in Optimality Theory , 1997, Language Variation and Change.

[20]  Gregory R. Guy.  Explanation in variable phonology: An exponential model of morphological constraints , 1991, Language Variation and Change.