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In optimality theory (OT) the essence of both language learning in general (learnability) and language acquisition (the actual development children go through) entails the ranking of constraints from an initial state of the grammar to the language-specific ranking of the target grammar. This is the common denominator in all OT studies on language acquisition and learning. There are many unsettled issues, however. Are the constraints innate or do they emerge during acquisition (nature-nurture)? And if they emerge, where do they come from? What is the initial state? Does the (re)ranking of constraints only involve the demotion of markedness constraints, the promotion of faithfulness constraints, or can it be achieved by both the demotion and the promotion of constraints? Another issue is whether comprehension and production are mediated by the same grammar or whether there is one grammar for comprehension and another for production. This article reviews the current state of affairs in language acquisition studies in OT and ends with some critical remarks and speculations on how the field is likely to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how syllabic and metrical constraints interact differently in two dialects of Bunun, despite their similarity in that both dialects exhibit modifications of vowel clusters in response to the O constraint. In Isbukun Bunun, foot forms are constrained both syllabically and moraically. Stress shifts from the unmarked penultimate syllable to final position under duress to satisfy both O and the requirement that heavy syllables must not stand in a prosodically weak position. In contrast, in Takituduh Bunun, metrical wellformedness is considered more important, so the preferred disyllabic foot forms are maintained at the cost of creating onsetless syllables. The analysis is formalized within Optimality Theory by ranking syllabic and metrical constraints differently in the two dialects. OT is advantageous in analyzing the data for two additional reasons: 1) the correlation between stress assignment in nonsuffixed and suffixed words in Isbukun can be directly captured by an output constraint, and 2) the metrical influence on syllabification in Takituduh can be readily handled by allowing syllabic and metrical constraints to interact in the same hierarchy. An implication of the Isbukun data for the properties of surface glides is that pre-peak glides can be moraic or not, depending on whether they follow a tautosyllabic consonant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of optimality theory (Prince & Smolensky 2004), Steriade (2001a,b) proposes the P-map hypothesis, whose fundamental tenet is that the rankings of faithfulness constraints are grounded in perceptual-similarity rankings. This article provides empirical support for this hypothesis. In Japanese loanword phonology, a voiced geminate, but not a singleton, devoices to dissimilate from another voiced obstruent within a single stem. Based on this observation, I argue that the [+ voice] feature is protected by two different faithfulness constraints, IDENT(+ voi)Sing and IDENT(+ voi)Gem and they are ranked as lDENT(+ voi)Sings (+ voi)Gem in Japanese. I further argue that this ranking is grounded in the relative perceptibility of [+ voice] in singletons and geminates, and this claim is experimentally supported. The general theoretical implication is that phonetic perceptibility can directly influence patterns in a phonological grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the current debates within Optimality Theory is whether sequences are derived serially (cyclically or in strata) or in a parallel fashion. In this paper we describe two different types of domain effects found in the phonology of pronominal clitics in Catalan (Barcelona variety), and demonstrate that any type of serial analysis runs into problems, while a parallel analysis is fairly straightforward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the system of Modern Standard German (MSG) noun plural formation in the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993, hereafter OT). We concentrate our analysis on the thorny issue of why vowel mutation (umlaut) in the stem is used in combination with other plural suffixes or alone in order to mark plurality. In this paper, we maintain that a historical process of umlaut ceased early on to be an active phonological process in German Umlaut became reinterpreted as a morphological marker of plurality which then spread analogically into other classes. We then capture the synchronic distribution of plural markers in Standard German using a set of independently motivated constraints and constraint rankings based both on phonological properties of the lexical input and on universal principles of morphology adapted from current work in Natural Morphology (Mayerthaler 1981, Wurzel 1984a; hereafter NM). We show that OT can provide a principled analysis of the umlaut+suffix plurals and predict more ‘natural’ patterns or plural formation in non-standard dialects and the responses of native speakers to nonce word experiments. In several respects, general principles of NM anticipate developments in OT, although this has not been generally acknowledged. In this paper, we make explicit the relationship between two theories that share much of the same conceptual ground. Specifically, we incorporate NM ideas of markedness, iconicity. and uniformity into an OT constraint framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]