Optimality Theory and Language Change

✍ Scribed by D. Eric Holt (auth.), D. Eric Holt (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 460
• Series: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 56
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xi
Remarks on Optimality Theory and Language Change....Pages 1-30
The Odds of Eternal Optimization in Optimality Theory....Pages 31-65
On Re-Ranking and Explanatory Adequacy in a Constraint-Based Theory of Phonological Change....Pages 67-90
The Actuation Problem in Optimality Theory....Pages 91-119
When History Doesn’t Repeat Itself....Pages 121-142
Language Change Without Constraint Reranking....Pages 143-168
English Vowel Shifts and ‘Optimal’ Diphthongs....Pages 169-190
Merger Avoidance and Lexical Reconstruction....Pages 191-228
The Emergence of Quantity-Sensitivity in Latin....Pages 229-247
Some Interactions Between Word, Foot, and Syllable Structure in the History of Spanish....Pages 249-283
The Emergence of Palatal Sonorants and Alternating Diphthongs in Old Spanish....Pages 285-305
The Emergence of Contrastive Palatalization in Russian....Pages 307-335
How to Rank Constraints....Pages 337-385
Historical Changes in Verb-Second and Null Subjects from Old to Modern French....Pages 387-412
Bibliography on Optimality Theory and Language Change....Pages 413-441
Back Matter....Pages 443-462

✦ Subjects

Theoretical Languages; Linguistic Anthropology; Phonology; Syntax; Comparative Linguistics