Re: Moraic codas [was Re: 'Yemls Morphology]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2001, John Cowan wrote:

> SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY wrote:
> >>learned. As long as people continue to create "arbitrary" constraints
> >>based on a description of the data, rather than use some kind of
> >>theoretical guidelines, Optimality Theorists are likely to get
> >>many explanatory results.
> >>
> >
> > Oops. That end should read: "Optimality Theorists aren't likely to get..."
>
>
> Oh. And here I read it as "are likely to get too many explanatory
> results."
>
> It's easy to concoct theories that explain Everything.  The trick is
> not to explain too much.
This is the basis for my claim that they aren't going to get explanatory
results. "A theory that predicts everything, predicts nothing." I have not
been able to find anything that cannot be explained in OT using
appropriately constructed constraints; therefore, OT cannot really explain
anything. The same is true of the GB/Minimalism/Antisymmetry view of
syntax.

Marcus, the disgruntled linguist. :)