Optimality Theory and Language Change

ISBN-13: 9781402014703 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 463 str.

D.E. Holt

Opis

Optimality Theory and Language Change
-discusses many optimization and linguistic issues in great detail;
-treats the history of a variety of languages, including English, French, Germanic, Galician/Portuguese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish;
-shows that the application of OT allows for innovative and improved analyses;
-allows researchers that appeal to OT to see the connections of their (usually synchronic) work with diachronic studies;
-contains a complete bibliography on Optimality Theory and language change.This volume may be used as one of the texts in courses on historical phonology or syntax that treat these topics from generative approaches or that give a general survey of various frameworks of research into these areas. Likewise, the volume may serve as a text for courses in phonology, syntax and Optimality Theory that have a component dedicated to extensions of linguistic theory to historical change. It is of interest for historical linguists, researchers into Optimality Theory and linguistic theory, and for phonologists and syntacticians with an interest in historical change.

Spis treści

List of contributors Acknowledgements Part I Optimality Theory and Language Change: Overview and Theoretical Issues: D.Eric Holt / Remarks on Optimatility Theory and language change.- Paul Boersma / The odds of eternal optimization in Optimality Theory.- Randall Gess / On re-ranking and explanatory adequacy in a constraint-based theory of phonological change.- Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero & Richard M. Hogg / The actuation problem in Optimality Theory: Phonologization, rule inversion and rule loss.- April McMahon / When history doesn't repeat itself: Optimality Theory and implausible sound changes.- Charles Reiss / Language change without constraint reranking.- Part II Case Studies of Phonological Change: Donka Minkova & Robert Stockwell / English vowel shifts and 'optimal' diphthongs: Is there a logical link?.- Viola Miglio & Bruce Morén / Merger avoidance and lexical reconstruction: An OT model of the Great Vowel Shift.- Haike Jacobs / The emergence of quantitiy-sensitivity in Latin: Secondary stress, lambic Shortening and theorectical implications for 'mixed' stress systems.- Conxita Lleó / Some interactions between word, foot and syllable structure in the history of the Spanish language.- D.Eric Holt / The emergence of palatal sonorants and alternating diphthongs in Old Spanish.- Jaye Padgett / The emergence of contrastive palatalization in Russian.- Part III Case Studies of Syntactic Change: Benjamin Slade / How to rank constraints: Constraint conflict, grammatical competition and the rise of periphrastic do.- Larry LaFond / Historical changes in verb-second and null subjects from Old to Modern French.- Bibliography on Optimality Theory and language change / Randall Gess.- References.- Indices: Names, Languages, Constraints, Terms.