The Proper Treatment of Optimality in Computational Phonology

Abstract. This paper presents a novel formalization of optimality theory. Unlike previous treatments of optimality in computational linguistics, starting with Ellison 1994, the new approach does not require any explicit marking and counting of constraint violations. It is based on the notion of lenient composition", de ned as the combination of ordinary composition and priority union. If an underlying form has outputs that can meet a given constraint, lenient composition enforces the constraint; if none of the output candidates meet the constraint, lenient composition allows all of them. For the sake of greater e ciency, we may "leniently compose" the gen relation and all the constraints into a single nite-state transducer that maps each underlying form directly into its optimal surface realizations, and vice versa. Seen from this perspective, optimality theory is surprisingly similar to the two older strains of nite-state phonology: classical rewrite systems and two-l...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1998
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Lauri Karttunen
• Keywords: CORR 1998, Education, Lenient, Optimality Theory, Underlying Form