Talk:Optimality theory/Archive 1

Hey Guys! I've decided to have a shot at expanding this article a bit and I'll probably have to change what is written quite a bit. This is just because it is written in a sort of concise way, not because it sounds bad at all. Please feel free to revert back if you don't like it. AnandaLima 01:24, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

There

Ok, I've added some more text to the stub (is it still a stub?). Changes very welcome though: I tried to keep it simple, but I am not too happy with my plural example, so feel free to replace for a better one. Is would also be nice to have and example for the emrgence of the unmarked maybe and maybe a tableaux. May get back to it shortly. —preceding unsigned comment by AnandaLima (talk • contribs) 02:20, 12 June 2004 (UTC)

Theory or not?

The word "theory" has a well-defined meaning in science. It means "something that makes a prediction that you can test". Einstein's Theory of Relativity does that; it makes quite a number of predictions. Likewise, Darwin's Theory of Evolution does. However, Optimality Theory doesn't. If anyone thinks that it does, please list the predictions that it makes instead of gratuitously un-doing the edits. I know of no reason to use any other definition of "theory". gpkh 18 December 2005.

In OT phonology, a case of purely phonological opacity (where the optimal candidate has worse faithfulness and no better markedness than a competitor candidate) that is uninfluenced by morphological boundaries or paradigm uniformity effects would (and has indeed been claimed to) falsify OT. Sympathy theory would allow for this, but sympathy theory is not widely accepted among OT linguists, precisely because it strengthens OT to the point of unfalsifiability. OT would also be falsified by a language that prefers cross-linguistically marked structures (e.g. syllables without onsets) to cross-linguistically unmarked ones (like syllables with onsets). Here again, there are people who have proposed constraints that say things like "syllables must not have onsets", but such suggestions are generally rejected by other linguists. In OT syntax, cases of ineffability (where a given input structure has no grammatical output) present a serious challenge to OT, since OT predicts that any input will have some grammatical output. There has been some discussion of ineffability in the OT syntax literature, but I don't know enough about it to say what the proposed explanation is or whether it's been accepted by the OT syntax community. --Angr (t·c) 05:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Response: OT has too many variants and options

OK. Lets look at that piece by piece. For OT to be a falsifiable theory, OT must predict something like the following: No language shall allow sentence X under conditions Y. Then, if a language allows X, OT is invalid.

Note that some particular variant or extension of OT might be a falsifiable theory, but perhaps not OT as a whole. If you want to claim that OT as a whole is a theory, you need to restrict yourself to statements that have a broad consensus. One practical problem is that OT has been applied in many ways, with many different sets of constraints, so that finding a broad consensus is dificult. I think I can safely say that there is no universally accepted set of constraints (though some constraints are shared among many linguists who do OT). If you disagree, I'd like to see a citation pointing to a list of constraints that is (a) broadly accepted, and (b) extensive enough so that practioners rarely have to step outside the list.

So, one argument I would make is that OT is not definite enough to be a theory. In support of this, I would quote from http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~sells/votproc.pdf : "...they discuss difficulties in defining the INPUT in various MP-OT approaches..." and "...in turn, this involves a rather radical difference in the architecture of the OT grammar between phonology and syntax..." These are not quotes that support the idea of a single, well-defined, stable, generally accepted theory.

A related problem is that the constraints of OT are not defined in terms of observable quantities. For instance, there is no way to absolutely know if a particular vowel is reduced. In many cases acoustic measurements yield ambiguous answers; Phoneticians don't always agree with each other.

Further, a language is not a uniform entity. People speak dialects, and can change dialect in different circumstances. Nor are dialects uniform: different people can show mixtures of features from (e.g.) Estuary English and (e.g.) Cornish English. So, the data that any test of OT must depend upon is a bit wobbly.

Claim 1: phonological opacity

Now, let's take that first claim: ...a case of purely phonological opacity (where the optimal candidate has worse faithfulness and no better markedness than a competitor candidate) that is uninfluenced by morphological boundaries or paradigm uniformity effects would ... falsify OT.

You're referring to Moreton 1996. I note that the first paper I found via google ( http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~artstein/publications/underspec.pdf ) that points to Moreton describes it thus: Morton (1996) shows that, given some common assumptions about Optimality Theory.... That's hardly the wording that one would use in describing a well established, well-defined theory. Read on down the page to get a description of more options within OT (i.e. disagreements about what OT actually predicts).

But, leaving aside such concerns, one basic problem is that the term "marked" is not well-defined. One often hears about alternation between marked and unmarked forms. One can objectively tell that the two forms are different, but can one objectively tell which is marked? How? Suppose a violation of the first claim was proposed: what would keep people from saying "Oh well, the other form must be marked." Often, nothing! For an example, consider http://odur.let.rug.nl/~hendriks/otwab8 , which builds an argument that the pluperfect tense is marked compared to the past tense. OK, sure, I can believe that. The trouble is, I could believe it the other way around also.

(Admittedly, some forms of markedness are less easy to believe when reversed, but my point is that there's a lot of fuzziness here.) Much the same kind of argument could be made for "faithfulness" constraints. The key question is "faithful to what?" Again, there are enough loose ends so that a purported counterexample would not kill OT. Rather, it would likely be reinterpreted within the framework of OT.

Claim 2: markedness

Now, let's take that other example: OT would also be falsified by a language that prefers cross-linguistically marked structures (e.g. syllables without onsets) to cross-linguistically unmarked ones (like syllables with onsets).

First of all, that's darned weak. It's just a statement that "all languages we've seen so far have few syllables without onsets, therefore we predict the next language to have few syllables without onsets." One can make that prediction without all the mechanism of OT. So, if OT's falsifiability rests on that, it will fall to Occam's Razor.

Second, I'll bet that any good OT guy could come up with an explanation for any particular example of a syllable without an onset. One can always invent a new constraint if necessary.

Finally, I will argue as Hercule Poirot would say from the psychology of the individual. If people really believed that they could falsify OT, someone would be out there collecting data in New Guinea. If anyone could convincingly falsify OT, it would be the biggest result in linguistics in 50 years. If you couldn't get an endowed professorship out of that, well... Anyhow, given the lackluster attempts to disprove OT, I must conclude that people either believe it is 100% correct, or have a gut feeling that their data would just get absorbed.

So, overall, I don't buy your examples. Gpkh 00:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)