Re: THEORY: OT Syntax (Was: Re: THEORY: phonemes and Optimality Theory tutorial)

Jesse S. Bangs wrote:

> > Mary saw a man.
> > Who did Mary see?
> > [snipping excellent description]
> >
> >                      | WH-initial | Q-head | Stay
> > ->Who did Mary see? |            |        |  **
> >    Who Mary did see? |            |   *!   |   *
> >    Did Mary see who? |     *!     |        |   *
> >    Mary did see who? |     *!     |   *    |
>
>Huh.  One of the first advantages of OT that was touted to me was the lack
>of ordered rules, rule ordering deemed to be unnatural.  You obviously do
>have ordered (or ranked) rules, though.
OT must have constraint ranking, otherwise it does not work. The entire
basis of the theory is that languages have conflicting tendancies, and the
relative ranking of the constraints determines which is satisfied and which
is violated. This is true of syntax, phonology, and semantics (all of which
can be done with OT).

>Where in this analysis does the "did" come from, since there is none in
>the declarative form "Mary saw a man"?  How do you account for the past
>tense movement?
I was glossing over that fact for a reason. :) I didn't want to get into
all the technical structural stuff.

Here is one way that you could explain it in OT (but not Minimalism or
TAG). English verbs must occur to the right of the subject and negation (if
present): 'I went', 'I did not go'; never *'Went I', *'I went not', or *'I
did go not.' Tense must always be to the left of negation: 'I did not go.'
In question, the tense must be to the left of the subject: 'Who did you
see' and 'Did you go?'. In order to satisfy these conflicts, you add in a
semantically vacuous word "do" to carry the tense (called "Do-Support).
'Do' is not constrained to stay to the right of negation and the subject,
therefore, it can move to the left and carry the tense with it.  Any
"verb-like" element that is largely semantically vacuous can behave like
"do". Take "be" for example: 'I am not hungry' and 'Are you hungry?'. Quite
different from regular verbs.

Any of you who have studied a Romance or other Germanic language know that
those languages do not have "do" and those languages move the verb in
questions. This is because they do not have the same constraint as English
that verbs be to the right of the subject, hence no need for "do".

For the generativists among you: verbs in English cannot raise to
Tense/Inflection, but must remain lower in the structure (below Negation).
Tense therefore must lwoer to the verb. If Negation intervenes, the
lowering is blocked, so 'do' must be inserted to carry Tense. Subject-Aux
Inversion moves Tense to Comp. It is impossible to both lower to the verb
and raise to Comp; therefore you insert 'do' to carry Tense so that it can
raise in questions. French, Spanish, and German allow verbs to raise to
Tense, therefore they do not require "do" support in negative or question
sentences.

> > We can simply rearrange the order of these constraints to get other
> > language types. Say, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese have question markers
> > but no wh-movement. So we put WH-initial below Stay, and there you go,
> > languages that have question markers at the head of the sentence, but the
> > Wh-pronoun stays in place.
>
>Does OT make significant claims to be "universal," then?
Most current linguistic theories do.

>Learnable by who/what?  I seem to have learned Transformational Grammar
>just fine, although I find it a bit copious.
Usually when linguists talk about "learnability" they are refering to
children learning the language. When I'm talking Linguistics, I forget that
not everybody follows this practice. So when I say those theories are
unlearnable, it means that a child would not be able to learn the language
if those theories are accurate models of grammar.  We can learn the theory
itself just fine; but we can learn a lot of unnatural, unrealistic things.


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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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