Course Description
 Optimality Theory and Typology (B Course)
Judith Aissen and Joan Bresnan
[revised and updated July 6, 2002]

  Summary: The classical generative theory of knowledge of language is that a speaker's mental grammar is a pure combinatorial engine, blind to typology and resistant to grammar-external forces. It arises from domain-specific innate principles of UG, whose parametric variation becomes fixed upon exposure to a given linguistic experience. In this classical epistemology, markedness hierarchies such as the animacy hierarchy cannot play a role in the individual synchronic grammar of a present-day English speaker. These hierarchies are not universal; they are exception-ridden, both across languages and even within the individual languages where their effects sometimes appear.

The emergence of Optimality Theory, particularly stochastic OT, has introduced new ways of thinking about these fundamental issues, in phonology and syntax alike. The OT architecture provides a very natural way of capturing the softness and emergent quality of universal markedness hierarchies, modelling substantive functional/typological theories of linguistic structure, and integrating variation and change into the general theory.

(Excerpted and paraphrased from Bresnan and Aissen (2002) "Optimality and Functionality: Conjectures and Refutations", Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 81--95.)

In this course we will first introduce (classical, vanilla) OT by showing how it explains 'emergence of the unmarked' effects, typological asymmetries, and morphosyntactic inventories. We then reconsider the role of markedness hierarchies in syntax with the aim of building a bridge between the insights and results of functional/typological work on the one hand, and the explicit modeling techniques of Optimality Theory (OT) on the other.
We show how OT augmented with stochastic evaluation (Boersma 1998) can capture generalizations across hard and soft syntactic constraints that elude classical approaches.

OT provides solutions to several problems in syntactic typology, including the following.

  1. The problem of nonconvergent language-particular hierarchies
    2. Hierarchies of person, animacy, definiteness, grammatical function, semantic role, etc. underlie grammatical asymmetries which are found both within particular languages and in the cross-linguistic distribution of various grammatical phenomena. Yet even though universal tendencies in the nature of these hierarchies are discernible, no single simple formulation of any of the hierarchies holds true across all languages. The nonconvergence of these hierarchies -- both across and even within languages -- has impeded recognition of their explanatory importance for typology in formal generative grammar, and has also prevented recognition of their role in universal grammar in functional/typological approaches. Recasting them within OT as subhierarchies of universal constraints which are violable and may be overridden by conflicting constraints offers a solution to this problem.

  2. The emergence of categoricity from frequency

    3. The effects of hierarchy alignment which are categorical in some languages are expressed as usage preferences in others. It is "a mainstay of functional linguistics" that "linguistic elements and patterns that are frequent in discourse become conventionalized in grammar" (from a publisher's blurb on Bybee and Hopper 2001). Yet the competence/performance distinction has excluded usage preferences from the scope of formal analysis. The development of Stochastic OT makes it possible to comprehend both categorical properties of grammar and usage preferences within a single model of grammar. We will show that the same hierarchies that play a role in the categorical structure of some languages continue to play a role in the usage preferences of English (as already recognized by Givon 1979), and that Stochastic OT offers an elegant way to understand these phenomena.
If there is sufficient interest among the course participants, we will offer some practice problems in the use of freely available computer software as a tool for syntactic analysis using stochastic OT.




Downloadable Reader:
Bresnan, Joan (to appear). The emergence of the unmarked pronoun.

Bresnan, Joan (to appear). Pidgin genesis and optimality theory.

Aissen, Judith (1999). Markedness and subject choics in optimality theory.

Bresnan, Joan, Shipra Dingare and Christopher D. Manning (2001). Soft constraints mirror hard constraints: Voice and person in English and Lummi.

Boersma, Paul and Bruce Hayes (2001). Empirical tests of the gradual learning algorithm.

Dingare, Shipra (2001). The effect of feature hierarchies on frequencies of passivization in English.

Aissen, Judith (2000). Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. Economy.

Rosenbach, Anette (to appear). Aspects of iconicity and economy in the choice between the s-genetive and the of-genetive in English.

Bresnan, Joan and Judith Aissen (to appear). Optimality and functionality: Objections and refutations


Downloadable Handouts:

Handout 1: Course Plan
Handout 2: Markedness and Optimality Theory
Handout 3: Pidgin Genesis and Optimality Theory
Handout 4: Harmonic Alignment in Morphosyntax: Subject selection


Lecture Notes:

Lecture Notes for class 2, July 18, 2002, Judith Aissen on Harmonic Alignment
Lecture Notes for class 3, July 20, 2002, Joan Bresnan on Stochastic Generalization
Lecture Notes for class 4, July 23, 2002, Joan Bresnan on Stochastic Generalization, Part II
Lecture Notes for class 5, July 25, 2002, Joan Bresnan on Stochastic Generalization, Part III
Lecture Notes for class 6, July 27, 2002, Judith Aissen on Differential Case Marking - I
Lecture Notes for class 7, July 30, 2002, Judith Aissen on Differential Case Marking - II
Lecture Notes for class 8, August 1, 2002, Judith Aissen on Harmonic Alignment in Morphosyntax: The Realization of Possessors
Lecture Notes for class 9, August 3, 2002, Joan Bresnan on Language particularity in Optimality Theory
Lecture Notes for class 9, August 3, 2002, Judith Aissen on Evidence for the active cognitive status of constraints
Lecture Notes for class 9, August 3, 2002, Joan Bresnan Questions ...


Partial reading list:

Aissen, J. (1999). Markedness and subject choice in optimality theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17(4): 673-711.
http://ling.ucsc.edu/~aissen/

Aissen, J. (2000). "Differential object marking: Iconicity vs. economy". http://ling.ucsc.edu/~aissen

Boersma, P. and B. Hayes (2001). "Empirical tests of the Gradual Learning Algorithm". Linguistic Inquiry 32(1): 45-86.

Bresnan, J. (2001)  "The emergence of the unmarked pronoun."  In Optimality-Theoretic Syntax, edited by G. Legendre, J. Grimshaw, and S. Vikner.  The MIT Press, 113-142.
http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/bresnan/download.html

Joan Bresnan. 2000.   "Pidgin Genesis and Optimality Theory".  In Processes of Language Contact: Case Studies from Australia and the Pacific, edited by Jeff Siegel. Montreal: Les Editions Fides, 145--173.
http://www-ot.stanford.edu/bresnan/download.html

Bresnan, J. and J. Aissen. (2002) "Optimality and functionality: Objections and refutations". Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 20(1): 81-95. Draft on-line, Stanford University:
http://www-ot.stanford.edu/bresnan/download.html

Bresnan, J., S. Dingare, and C. Manning. (2001). "Soft constraints mirror hard constraints: Voice and person in Lummi and English". On-line Proceedings of the LFG2001 Conference. M. Butt and T. H. King, CSLI Publications.
http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/6/lfg01-toc.html

Dingare (2001). The effect of feature hierarchies on frequencies of passivization in English. MA thesis, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford,CA. ROA-467-0901.
http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=467

Haspelmath, Martin. 2001. "Explaining the Ditransitive Person-Role Constraint: A usage-based explanation." Ms., Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipzig .

Newmeyer, F. (2002). "Optimality and functionality: A critique of functionally-based optimality-theoretic syntax". Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 20(1): 43-80. http://faculty.washington.edu/fjn/MH&FN_outline.html
[See also Newmeyer's rejoinder to Bresnan and Aissen (2002) in the same number.]
Newmeyer, F. (2002). Where is functional explanation. Papers from the Thirty-Seventh Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. M. Andronis, C. Ball, H. Elston and S. Neuvel. Chicago, Chicago Linguistic Society.
http://faculty.washington.edu/fjn/MH&FN_outline.html

Rosenbach, A. (to appear). Aspects of iconicity and economy in the choice between the s-genitive and the of-genitive in English. Determinants of grammatical variation in English. B. Mondorf and G. Rohdenburg. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter. http://ang3-11.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~ang3/Rosenbach/Rosenbach.PDF

Software options

Boersma, Paul and David Weenink. 2000. Praat computer program. On-line, Institute of Phonetic Sciences, University of Amsterdam,
http://www.praat.org/ (for Windows, Mac, Solaris, Linux...)

OTSoft from Bruce Hayes' webpage: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft/ (for Windows only)

The following is a tutorial for the OT module of the Praat system, available by download from the ROA (Rutgers Optimality Archive: http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html)--
(ROA-380-02100) Optimality-Theoretic learning in the Praat program, Paul Boersma, 19 pages.