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Doing Optimality Theory
Doing Optimality Theory: Applying Theory to Data John J. McCarthy
2008 John McCarthy. ISBN: 978-1-405-15135-1
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Doing Optimality Theory
Applying Theory to Data
John J. McCarthy
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2008 by John McCarthy
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
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First published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
1 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCarthy, John J., 1953-
Doing optimality theory : applying theory to data / John J. McCarthy.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-5135-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4051-5136-8
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Optimality theory (Linguistics) 2. Constraints (Linguistics)
I. Title.
P158.42.M429 2008
415.018 dc22
2007051238
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Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Read This First! x
List of Abbreviations xii
1 An Introduction to Optimality Theory 1
1.1 How OT Began 1
1.2 Why Must Constraints Be Violable? 7
1.3 The Nature of Constraints in OT 13
1.4 Candidate Sets: OTs Gen Component 16
1.5 Candidate Evaluation: OTs Eval Component 19
1.6 Constraint Activity 22
1.7 Differences between Languages 26
1.8 The Version of OT Discussed in This Book 27
1.9 Suggestions for Further Reading 28
2 How to Construct an Analysis 30
2.1 Where to Begin 30
2.1.1 Choosing a problem to work on 30
2.1.2 Formulating a descriptive generalization 33
2.1.3 Getting from the generalization to an analysis 37
2.1.4 Summary 39
2.2 How to Rank Constraints 41
2.3 Working through an Analysis in Phonology 53
2.4 The Limits of Ranking Arguments 65
2.5 Candidates in Ranking Arguments 72
2.6 Harmonic Bounding 80
2.7 Constraints in Ranking Arguments 83
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vi Contents
2.8 Inputs in Ranking Arguments 87
2.9 Working through an Analysis in Syntax 95
2.10 Finding and Fixing Problems in an Analysis 103
2.10.1 How to check an analysis for problems 103
2.10.2 Problem 1: An invalid ranking argument 108
2.10.3 Problem 2: A ranking paradox 109
2.10.4 Problem 3: Dealing with richness of the base 113
2.11 Constraint Ranking by Algorithm and Computer 115
2.12 The Logic of Constraint Ranking and Its Uses 124
3 How to Write Up an Analysis 137
3.1 Introduction 137
3.2 How to Organize a Paper 138
3.3 How to Present an OT Analysis 142
3.4 The Responsibilities of Good Scholarship 152
3.5 How to Write Clearly 157
3.6 General Advice about Research Topics 162
4 Developing New Constraints 166
4.1 Introduction 166
4.2 When Is It Necessary to Modify Con? 167
4.3 How to Discover a New Constraint 171
4.4 How to Define a New Constraint 174
4.5 Properties of Markedness Constraints 176
4.5.1 How markedness constraints assign violations 176
4.5.2 Constraints that are evaluated gradiently 181
4.5.3 Constraints derived by harmonic alignment 186
4.6 Properties of Faithfulness Constraints 195
4.6.1 Correspondence theory 195
4.6.2 Faithfulness to features 199
4.6.3 Positional faithfulness 203
4.6.4 Faithfulness constraints in the early OT literature 208
4.7 Justifying Constraints 212
4.7.1 The three ways of justifying a constraint 212
4.7.2 Justifying constraints formally 213
4.7.3 Justifying constraints functionally 220
4.8 A Classified List of Common Phonological
Markedness Constraints 223
5 Language Typology and Universals 235
5.1 Factorial Typology 235
5.2 Language Universals and How to Explain Them in OT 236
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Contents vii
5.3 Investigating the Factorial Typology of a
Constraint Set 239
5.4 Using Factorial Typology to Test New Constraints 247
5.5 Factorial Typology When Con Isnt Fully Known 250
5.6 How to Proceed from Typology to Constraints 254
6 Some Current Research Questions 260
6.1 Introduction 260
6.2 How Does a Language Vary? 260
6.3 How is Language Acquired? 264
6.4 Does OT Need Derivations? 266
6.5 How Is Ungrammaticality Accounted For? 271
6.6 Is Faithfulness Enough? 274
Afterword 279
References 280
Constraint Index 298
Language Index 301
Subject Index 303
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Acknowledgments
This book is the product of 15 years of teaching Optimality Theory to
undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Mass-
achusetts Amherst and at two Linguistic Institutes (Cornell in 1997 and
MIT in 2005). Some of it was first circulated on CD-ROM as a collec-
tion of handouts for teaching OT (McCarthy 1999). The many students
I have taught over the years have shaped this work profoundly.
My colleague Joe Pater, who shares responsibility for teaching intro-
ductory phonology at the University of Massachusetts, has been an
important influence, as have John Kingston and Lisa Selkirk. Alan Prince
and I have talked many times about the challenges of teaching and
doing OT, and I have learned much from him. His comments on
portions of chapter 2 were valuable and led to significant changes in
the presentation.
I am very grateful for help from the members of our weekly phono-
logy group, who devoted a meeting to helping me brainstorm about
what should go in this book and another meeting to going over the
results: Leah Bateman, Michael Becker, Tim Beechey, Ioana Chitoran
(Dartmouth College), Emily Elfner, Kathryn Flack, Elena Innes, Gaja
Jarosz, Karen Jesney, Mike Key, Wendell Kimper, Kathryn Pruitt,
Ma Qiuwu (Nankai University), Nathan Sanders (Williams College),
Ellen Simon (Ghent University), and Matt Wolf. In addition, I re-
ceived useful written comments from Ubirat Kickhfel Alves, Ioana
Chitoran, Gaja Jarosz, and Shigeto Kawahara. The students in a course
I taught at the III Seminrio Internacional de Fonologia in Porto
Alegre, Brazil, gave me lots of good feedback through their comments
and questions.
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Acknowledgments ix
Kathryn Flack read the entire book and gave me literally hundreds
of useful and insightful comments. Ive used as many of them as I could.
Im also grateful to Anna Oxbury for her superb work copy-editing the
manuscript.
This book is dedicated to my nephews and niece Michael, Jack, and
Kennedy McCarthy.
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Read This First!
The goal of this book is to explain how to do analysis and research in
Optimality Theory. Many of OTs basic premises are very different from
other linguistic theories. This means that OT requires new and often
unfamiliar ways of developing analyses, arguing for them, and even
writing them up. Furthermore, the research frontier in OT isnt too dis-
tant from the core of basic knowledge. For this reason, any analyst, even
a novice, may soon find herself or himself in the position of making
proposals about universal grammar.
Throughout this book, there is plenty of practical advice do this,
but dont do that! This advice is presented in a maximally general way,
but its also illustrated with specific examples. The examples require
minimal previous background, and explanatory notes (printed in a box)
are included wherever necessary. The intended audience includes
readers who are encountering OT for the first time as well as those
who are more advanced. Because of its focus on practical matters, this
book is a good companion to my Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory
(McCarthy 2002), which has a more theoretical and polemical orientation.
Chapter 1 provides a succinct summary of the core concepts of
OT. Readers who are new to OT will want to read this chapter closely.
Chapter 2 explains how to construct, justify, and test an analysis.
Chapter 3 is the expositional counterpart to chapter 2: it provides sug-
gestions and a model for writing up OT analyses in a way that is clear
and persuasive. A lot of chapter 3s advice about writing in linguistics
is independent of OT, so even readers who arent interested in OT might
find it useful.
In OT, its sometimes necessary to posit new universal constraints
or modify old ones. This special responsibility is the topic of chapter 4.
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Read This First! xi
Positing a new constraint changes the typological predictions, and so
chapter 5 addresses that topic. Finally, chapter 6 introduces some of
the areas of recent research.
Every few pages, there are sections labeled Exercises or Questions.
The primarily theoretical chapters (1 and 6) have more questions
than exercises, and the primarily practical chapters (25) have more
exercises than questions. The exercises call for pencil and paper (or
computer and keyboard); they are good practice and suitable as home-
work assignments. A few of the questions could also be assigned as
homework, but most of them are more open-ended; they are intended
to stimulate thought and discussion. By dispersing the exercises and
questions throughout the book rather than leaving them for the ends
of chapters, I hope to encourage readers to master each concept or
technique before going on and to engage in a continuing dialogue
with the text and with their classmates and teachers.
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Abbreviations
Abbreviations of constraint names can be found in the index of constraints.
C Any consonant
Con Constraint component of Optimality Theory
Eval Evaluator component of Optimality Theory
GB Government Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981)
Gen Generator component of Optimality Theory
OT Optimality Theory
ROA Rutgers Optimality Archive, [Link]
SPE The Sound Pattern of English (Chomsky and Halle 1968)
t A syntactic trace
UG Universal grammar
V Any vowel
XP Any phrasal category
