Alderete examines the influences of morphological factors on stress and pitch accent within Optimality Theory.

This volume draws together papers that argue for a renewed focus on the role of hard constraints on phonological representations as well as the processes that operate on them. These are issues that have been sidelined since the shift in emphasis in phonological research to functionally grounded output-oriented constraints. Taking Optimality Theory as their starting point, the articles attack the question to what degree the Generator function Gen should be given freedom of analysis on three fronts. (1) What is the nature of the representations that Gen manipulates? Is a return to more articulated theories of segmental and prosodic representation desirable? (2) What restrictions might there be on the operations that Gen carries out on representations? Should Gen be endowed with structure-changing potential, as assumed in work couched within Correspondence Theory, or is a return to the principle of Containment preferable? Should Gen be restricted in the number of edits it can carry out at any one time? Should Gen be restricted to generating phonetically interpretable candidates? (3) What is the relationship between Gen and functionally arbitrary or opaque phonological patterns? Should Gen's freedom be restricted in order to account for language-specific phonology? The solutions offered to these questions bear significantly on current issues that are of fundamental concern in linguistic theory, including representations, parallelism vs. serialism, and the division of labour between linguistic modules. The authors scrutinize these issues using data from a variety of unrelated languages, including Czech, English, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Lardil, Spanish, Turkish, and Yowlumne.

Explains and explores the central premises of OT and the results of their praxis.

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.

Representing Phonological Detail Part I: Segmental Structure and Representations Part II: Syllable, Stress and Sign Part II of Representing Phonological Detail focuses on the latest phonological research on suprasegmental structure and sign language. The first main theme in this volume is syllable structure, touching on phonotactics, syllabification, gemination, syllable weight, diphthongization, and other rules. The other main theme is tone and stress, including issues in data collection, the assignment of primary and secondary stress, resolution of stress clashes, lexical accent, and syntax-tone interaction. The final section is on sign language, with special attention paid to iconicity, phonological processes, and the relation between phonetic and phonological representation.

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.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.