Segmental Phonology In Optimality Theory

This volume, first published in 2001, brings together work by scholars researching the details of featural phonology with optimality theory.

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.

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.

This volume contains revised, expanded and updated versions of papers originally presented at the International Workshop on Phonological Structure held at the University of Durham in September 1994. As the title suggests, the contributions focus on aspects of phonological structure, both segment internal and suprasegmental. A number of questions surrounding phonological structure are approached from a wide variety of theoretical standpoints, including the frameworks of prosodic phonology, declarative phonology, optimality theory, metrical phonology, government phonology, feature geometry, particle theory and dependency phonology. This range of viewpoints allows the crossfertilisation of various strands of phonological thinking with respect to many of the central issues concerning phonological structure. The empirical basis of the contributions is also wide-ranging, including among the languages dealt with Aranda, Cayuvava, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish.

This book proposes a new way of understanding the behavior of consonants and vowels in a broad cross-section of the world's languages. A new model of subsegmental phonology within optimality theory that differs from standard autosegmental phonology both in its limited use of representational distinctions and in the form of the grammar to which the representations submit is introduced. The research focuses particularly on floating features and ghost segments, and demonstrates that the current understanding of segmental representation fails to characterize the full range of subsegmental phenomena found cross-linguistically. Zoll proposes instead an analysis in which the grammar derives the variety of surface phenomena from a single underlying representation. This work both enlarges the empirical foundation on which an adequate theory of segment structure must be based, and in developing such an account sheds new light on classic problems of subsegmental parsing.

The Segment in Phonetics and Phonology unravels exactly whatthe segment is and on what levels it exists, approaching the studyof the segment with theoretical, empirical, and methodologicalheterogeneity as its guiding principle. A deliberately eclectic approach to the study of the segmentthat investigates exactly what the segment is and on what level itexists Includes new research data from a diverse range of fields suchas experimental psycholinguistics, language acquisition, andmathematical theories of communication Represents the major theoretical models of phonology, includingArticulatory Phonology, Optimality Theory, Laboratory Phonology andGenerative Phonology Examines both well-studied languages like English, Chinese, andJapanese and under-studied languages such as Southern Sierra Miwok,Päri, and American Sign Language

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.

The syllable has always been a key concept in generative linguistics: the rules, representations, parameters, or constraints posited in diverse frameworks of theoretical phonology and morphology all make reference to this fundamental unit of prosodic structure. No less central to the field is Optimality Theory, an approach developed within (morpho-)phonology in the early 1990s. This 2003 book combines two themes of central importance to linguists and their mutual relevance in recent research. It provides an overview of the role of the syllable in OT and ways in which problems that relate to the analysis of syllable structure can be solved in OT. The contributions to the book not only show that the syllable sheds light on certain properties of OT itself, they also demonstrate that OT is capable of describing and adequately analyzing many issues that are problematic in other theories. The analyses are based on a wealth of languages.