ROA: | 38 |
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Title: | NC: Licensing and Underspecification in Optimality Theory |
Authors: | Junko Ito, Armin Mester, Jaye Padgett |
Comment: | |
Length: | 58 |
Abstract: | NC: Licensing and Underspecification in Optimality Theory Junko Ito, Armin Mester, Jaye Padgett University of California, Santa Cruz In recent years the program of feature underspecification has come under intense critical scrutiny, with various empirical difficulties and apparent paradoxes leading some to abandon the use of underspecification altogether. This paper instead seeks to resolve one sort of underspecification paradox, exemplified by facts of voicing in Japanese, by harnessing the notions of constraint ranking and violability provided by Optimality Theory. Though output underspecification is maintained, it does not pattern in the all-or- nothing way predicted by known theories; further, it reveals itself as an emergent property of the grammar, thus leading to a rejection of the traditional reliance on a feature minimization imperative at the underlying representation, a notion that is not compatible with OT's output-oriented outlook. The empirical focus is post-nasal voicing; major issues addressed include a theory of feature licensing, the claim that segment similarity can constrain feature interaction, and the explicit extension of tableau-based candidate selection to Lexicon Optimization ('tableau des tableaux' technique). |
Type: | Paper/tech report |
Area/Keywords: | |
Article: | Version 1 |