- Introduction
- Linguistic Units in Language Acquisition
- The Adaptive Approach to Grammar
- The Cartography of Syntactic Structures
- Categorial Grammar
- Cognitive Grammar
- Embodied Construction Grammar
- Sign-Based Construction Grammar
- Conversation Analysis
- Corpus-Based and Corpus-Driven Analyses of Language Variation and Use
- Dependency Grammar and Valency Theory
- An Emergentist Approach to Syntax
- Framework-Free Grammatical Theory
- Functional Discourse Grammar
- Systemic Functional Grammar and the Study of Meaning
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Grammaticalization and Linguistic Analysis
- Linguistic Minimalism
- Morphological Analysis
- Neurolinguistics: A Cooperative Computation Perspective
- Experimental Phonetics
- Phonological Analysis
- Optimality Theory in Phonology
- Optimization Principles in the Typology of Number and Articles
- The Parallel Architecture and its Place in Cognitive Science
- Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Theory of Conversational Implicature
- Relevance Theory
- Probabilistic Linguistics
- Linguistic Relativity
- Role and Reference Grammar as a Framework for Linguistic Analysis
- Default Semantics
- Experimental Semantics
- A frames Approach to Semantic Analysis
- The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach
- The Analysis of Signed Languages
- Simpler Syntax
- Distributional Typology: Statistical Inquiries into the Dynamics of Linguistic Diversity
- Formal Generative Typology
- Usage-Based Theory
- Word Grammar
Abstract and Keywords
In Optimality Theory (OT), a grammar is a language-specific ranking of universal, violable constraints, which select the optimal candidate among imperfect alternatives. The article surveys the fundamental premises of OT as applied to phonology. It also explores some consequences of OT for phonological theory, including typology, learnability, acquisition, and variation.
Keywords: alignment, conspiracies, faithfulness, learnability, Optimality Theory, phonological theory, syllable structure, typology, variation
Maria Gouskova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at New York University. She works in phonology and its interfaces with phonetics and morphology in the framework of Optimality Theory. She is interested in the relation of phonological constraints to each other and to linguistic primitives. She has published in the journals Linguistic Inquiry and Phonology on a variety of topics in phonological theory ranging from the role of sonority in syllable structure to templates in reduplication.
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- Introduction
- Linguistic Units in Language Acquisition
- The Adaptive Approach to Grammar
- The Cartography of Syntactic Structures
- Categorial Grammar
- Cognitive Grammar
- Embodied Construction Grammar
- Sign-Based Construction Grammar
- Conversation Analysis
- Corpus-Based and Corpus-Driven Analyses of Language Variation and Use
- Dependency Grammar and Valency Theory
- An Emergentist Approach to Syntax
- Framework-Free Grammatical Theory
- Functional Discourse Grammar
- Systemic Functional Grammar and the Study of Meaning
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Grammaticalization and Linguistic Analysis
- Linguistic Minimalism
- Morphological Analysis
- Neurolinguistics: A Cooperative Computation Perspective
- Experimental Phonetics
- Phonological Analysis
- Optimality Theory in Phonology
- Optimization Principles in the Typology of Number and Articles
- The Parallel Architecture and its Place in Cognitive Science
- Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Theory of Conversational Implicature
- Relevance Theory
- Probabilistic Linguistics
- Linguistic Relativity
- Role and Reference Grammar as a Framework for Linguistic Analysis
- Default Semantics
- Experimental Semantics
- A frames Approach to Semantic Analysis
- The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach
- The Analysis of Signed Languages
- Simpler Syntax
- Distributional Typology: Statistical Inquiries into the Dynamics of Linguistic Diversity
- Formal Generative Typology
- Usage-Based Theory
- Word Grammar
