THEORY: [CONLANG] OT Syntax

Marcus:
> And Rosta wrote:
>
> >If this is to be a distinctively OT analysis then you need to show that
> >the constraints conflict and so must be ranked.
>
> Indeed. If you look back at my example, if you rank "stay" above the other
> two, you would get sentences that are WH-in-situ and have no Subject-Aux
> Inversion: "Mary saw who?"
>
> >For the particular example you give, it's hard to see whether conflicting
> >constraints are called for. I have a competing analysis without conflicts,
> >but conceivably you could come up with an analysis with fewer but
> >conflicting constraints and so arguably superior.
> >  But the three constraints
> >you give are problematic.
>
> I agree. But as you state, this examples was constructed for expository
> purposes.
>
> >  "Stay" seems pointless,
>
> As a matter of fact, it is a common constraint in OT analyses. OT -- like
> Minimalism, TAG, CG, TG, etc -- assumes that sentences are heirarchical,
> and represent the structure with trees. Movement from node to node is in
> fact what "Stay" attempts to prevent -- very similar to the Minimalist
> principle of Economy ("Don't move unless it is absolutely required").
So "Stay" could be renamed something like "*chain" -- "exclude any structure
that contains positions coindexed with a trace"? Fair enough.

> >  because 'Gen' should
> >generate all forms willynilly, and random or any other rearrangements
> >should simply not be part of the model.
>
> That depends on your theory of "Gen". Prince and Smolensky actually provide
> two different models. One - the one nearly everybody uses - generates all
> possible forms, then selects the most "optimal" form based on the
> constraints. The other only generates the forms relevant for the next
> constraint on the list. After that constraint has made a decision, the
> optimal candidate is used as the base form for generating the next set to
> be judged from. McCarthy is the only person I know of to use such a model
> in Phonology (but I'm not a phonologist, so I don't know the literature).
> Under this second theory of Gen, you do not get the forms generated
> "willynilly". Indeed, McCarthy has suggested that Phonology should follow
> Syntax in using such a Gen. (That was at the West Coast Conference of
> Formal Linguistics, 2000).
I have a gut preference for the former, more declarative Gen. But I'd
be interested to see the arguments pro & con.

> >  It's not clear from your exposition
> >why Q-head requires inversion, so I can't judge Q-head.
>
> Absolutely. Q-head simply states that there must be an element in the CP to
> mark the question. It would also be possible to insert a question marker
> like Chinese, move the wh-pronoun there, or something else. I avoided those
> issues for simplicity.
>
> There are a couple approaches you could take to this. One would be to say
> that the Q-head requires a tensed element in it. Thus, inversion of the
> tensed material would be necessary. If you rank such a constraint above
> "Stay", then Inversion results. If you rank it below "Stay", then you would
> get a question marker like Chinese. This, in fact, could be part of a much
> broader constraint that requires "heads" to raise as high as they can in
> their phrase. Their upward movement would only be halted by a constraint
> that does not allow further movement. English verbs cannot cross the
> subject, but French verbs can. That would a difference in constraint ranking.
>
> >  Finally, Wh-initial
> >is all well and good, but it wrongly excludes quizshow questions ("Mary
> >will see who?").
>
> Not at all. We can introduce another constraint that requires arguments to
> occur in their cannonical position in certain contexts like echo questions
> and such. You rank that constraint above Wh-initial, and the facts fall
> out. But in neutral contexts, this new constraint is dormant and fronting
> applies.
It seems to me to be an inescapable weakness of both OT and Minimalism that
they have such difficulties dealing with 'free variant' structures --
structures that are different but are the same at interpretation at the
conceptual interface. Wh-questions with and without fronting would be such
an example, for although echo questions are not interpretationally equivalent
to wh-fronted questions, quizshow questions are.

> >I must in fairness concede that this example was chosen as an exposition
> >of what OT syntax is like rather than as an exemplar of analysis where OT
> >does better than other theories, but on the other hand the same could be
> >said of 98% of the OT analyses I've seen.
>
> Yes. I'm not a firm proponant of OT Syntax.  I jokingly objected to Dirk's
> claim that OT is theory of Phonology, and somebody (sorry, don't remember
> who) asked to see OT syntax. Viola. Here we are. Basically, I find OT and
> Minimalism to alternative characterizations of the exact same ideas and
> principles.
Ah -- I'd been wondering who at UCLA is an OT syntactician. I know Jane
Grimshaw has been doing OT syntax, and Joan Bresnan has been using it in
her work.

> >Could you give an example of an analysis does better than other theories?
>
> Without going into details, a further application to WH-questions. Note the
> behavior of wh-subjects:
>
> Who saw Mary?
>
> No inversion (or at least not visible). No Do-Support. This is an
> embarrasment to Generative Theories -- all the theories for it in GB and
> Minimalism are weak, and everybody knows it. They just don't talk about it.
> But, under the OT analysis I just sketched (ie, wh-elements raise to the
> front, verbs raise as high as they can without crossing the subject), this
> is actually predicted. The subject appears in front of the Q-head like
> wh-pronouns must in neutral questions. The verb may then safely be in the
> Q-head without violating the ban on crossing (or raising above) the
> subject. Thus, Do-Support is not needed. Recall that verbs also cannot
> raise above negation, thus we expect that in a negative question with a
> wh-subject, Do-Support should return. In fact, it does: "Who didn't see Mary?"
OK, I get it. But in fact the implication that "OT syntax" is an OT-ization
of some other theory, so you get "OT Minimalism" and "OT LFG", etc. etc., seems
much more on the mark to me, and makes more sense.

> >Just point me to someone's article if that's easier.
>
> You could always search the Rutgers Optimality Archive. There isn't much on
> Syntax in there.
>
> >BTW, I'm assuming that you're keen to engage in 'lively debate'. But if I'm
> >coming across as bullying or obstreporous, just let me know & the thread
> >will immediately be aborted.
>
> Not at all. I would just like to point out that I am not an OT
> syntactician. I am an amateur dabbler, who spends most of his time split
> between Minimalism (which I am very dissatisfied with) and Field Work
> (which I love).
Interesting. It seems to be true of all the artlangers here that at heart
they are fieldworkers, even when, like Matt & Dirk, they're also theoreticians.

I've never had any desire to do fieldwork, but then I'm more loglanger than
artlanger.

> But I have professors who hate OT, and fail to see that it is not
> fundamentally different from their own pet theories. That irritates
> me sometimes. I have a friend who wanted to write her thesis in OT,
> and all her professors refused to advise her until she switched back to
> Minimalism/Antisymmetry.
Bloody hell. That's outrageous. Was she set on not switching institutions?

> > > For all of you who may have been brainwashed into believing that
> Minimalism
> > > is the only way to go,
> >
> >= 0% of the list membership, as far as I can see.
>
> I know there are people on the list who are learning GB style theories. I
> was mainly addressing that comment to them.
>
> >  Matt is the only high-
> >profile Chomskyan here, and he's not a heavyduty Minimalist.
>
> Matt crosses Minimalism with Antisymmetry, and does some very interesting
> work based on that. But it is true that he seems to entertain functionalist
> ideas often than many (most?) Chomskyans. He is very enlightening to talk
> to about theoretical matters.
>
> > > And to be fair, for all of you who have been brainwashed into believing
> > > that Minimalism is the Anti-Christ, Minimalism is one of three theories of
> > > syntax that have been shown to be learnable, the other two being Tree
> > > Ajoining Grammar and Categorial Grammar. The jury is still out on OT, and
> > > all the rest (Transformational Grammar, Lexical Function Grammar, HPSG,
> > > Role and Reference Grammar, etc) have been proved to be unlearnable.
> > > Chomsky was not happy to hear that about his theory. :-)
> >
> >Since so little is known about learnability from a psychological perspective,
> >I assume this argument must be about learnability from a logicomathematical
> >perspective?
>
> Yes, it is.
>
> >I'd like -- nay love -- to see the evidence for the claims you give. Can
> >you give the reference?
>
> All I can say is that the work has been done by people such as Ed Stabler
> of UCLA and several of his students, such as Henk Harkeman. People are
> doing similar work at Rutgers, IIRC. I should be able to be more specific
> sometime during the next quarter, when I plan to take Ed's class on the topic.
I'll remain interested if you share it with us then.

> >BTW, I remember reading a paper by Shalom Lappin & David Johnson about why
> >*Minimalism* (unlike certain other theories -- I forget which, but possibly
> >including GB and HPSG) was pyschologically unviable. I forget the details,
> >but the essence was that economy could be computed only over entire
> >derivations,
> >so to compute the most economical derivation you have to compute every
> >derivation. I seem to recall that Minimalism has since taken steps to fix
> >that problem, though.
>
> Currently, most people usually compute Economy at each step during the
> derivation, rather than over the entire thing. But that isn't the only area
> of Minimalism that is psychologically unviable.
>
> For instance, the production of most biclausal structures takes longer to
> pronounce than the "language buffer" in our brains can handle. That is, our
> minds can only see so far ahead of what we are actually saying. The
> distance has been measured (according to Bruce Hayes, but I don't remember
> the exact length or who did the work). Some agglutinative/polysynthetic
> languages can form words that take longer to pronounce than the buffer can
> handle. (The evidence comes from agglutinative languages that determine
> stress from the end of the word, and checking to see how long a word can be
> formed before stress cannot be accurately computed anymore.) Minimalism
> requires that the entire sentence be constructed before pronunciation
> occurs. But how is that possible, if the sentence is longer than the buffer
> has space for? I can't believe that a multi-clausal structure can be
> constructed, stored, then pronounced, when it is not even possible to
> compute the stress pattern of a single super-long word.
The most charitable answer I can give here is that Minimalism is not to the
slightest degree a model of processing, except in the metaphors it uses to
describe itself; it is a model only of competence. The obvious riposte to
this is, How can an ostentatiously mentalistic model of competence ignore
processing, given that a halfway decent model of processing could quite
possibily handle the rest of competence?

> We have to have a theory that allows the formation of the sentence as it is
> being pronounced. No theory of syntax or grammar that I know of is capable
> of this yet. But we will by the time I finish my dissertation in five years
> or so. :-) (That's only a half joke. I am working in that direction during
> my spare time. I occasionally discuss portions of my developing theory with
> various people -- professors and fellow grad students--, but nobody has
> heard anything close to the whole story. The most damning criticism I've
> been given so far is that my ideas are symmetrical to Minimalism.)
I'm surprised at your claim. LFG was founded as a psychologically more viable
alternative to TG. I don't see the processing problems in HPSG or Categorial
or Word Grammar (the theory my PhD grew out of). I know of other,
processing-driven formalist models of syntax, too.

--And.