LING 861 - Topics in phonology
(Optimality theory and opacity)

Fall Session 1997

Times and Places

Wednesdays, 10-1
Linguistics Dept., 46 East Delaware Ave.

Instructor

Professor William Idsardi
Office: 46 E. Delaware Ave., Room 101
Phone: 831-6886
e-mail: idsardi@udel.edu
Office hours: Monday 1-2 or by appointment

Textbooks

• Iggy Roca, Derivations and constraints in phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. (optional, but many good sources for paper topics)
  

  ---

• Readings:
  • Archangeli, Diana. 1997. Optimality Theory: An introduction to linguistics in the 1990s. In Diana Anchangeli and D. Terence Langendoen (eds) Optimality Theory: An overview. Cambridge MA: Blackwell 1997, 1-32.
  • Benua, Laura. 1995. Identiry effects in morphological truncation. In Jill Beckman et al (eds) Papers in Optimality Theory (= Univesity of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 18), Amherst MA: GLSA, 77-136.
  • Halle, Morris and William J. Idsardi. 1997. r, hypercorrection and the Elsewhere Condition. In Iggy Roca (ed) Derivations and constraints in phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 331-348.
  • Hammond, Michael. 1997. Optimality Theory and prosody. In Diana Anchangeli and D. Terence Langendoen (eds) Optimality Theory: An overview. Cambridge MA: Blackwell 1997, 33-58.
  • Idsardi, William J. 1997. Phonological derivations and historical changes in Hebrew spirantization. In Iggy Roca (ed) Derivations and constraints in phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 367-392.
  • Idsardi, William J. 1998. Tiberian Hebrew spirantization and phonological derivations. To appear in Linguistic Inquiry.
  • Idsardi, William J. ms. Sympathy causes chaos.
  • McCarthy, John. 1991. Synchronic rule inversion. Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 17: 192-207.
  • McCarthy, John. 1993. A case of surface constraint violation. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 38: 169-95.
  • McCarthy, John. 1995. Remarks on phonological opacity in Optimality Theory. To appear in J. Lecarme, Jean Lowenstamm and Ur Shlonsky (eds) Proceedings of the second colloquium on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics.
  • McCathy, John. 1997. Sympathy and opacity in Optimality Theory. HOT handout.
  • Roca, Iggy. 1997. Derivations or constraints, or derivations and constraints. In Iggy Roca (ed) Derivations and constraints in phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 3-42.
  • Other readings to be determined (probably from the Roca book).

Course Goals

• To write a publishable research paper.
• To explore opacity and conspiracies in phonology.
• To evaluate and compare arguments in OT and derivational phonology.

Optimality Theory (OT) developed out of dissatifaction with derivational phonological analyses. But is OT a definitive improvement over previous theories? Can OT solve the core problems that generative phonology was invented to solve? This is the issue that we will examine this term. In order to examine this issue we will need to develop the best possible analyses in both derivational terms and in OT. Then we will compare the analyses and try to find ways to evaluate their relative merits. It is our hope that this will lead to new kinds of questions, which will then lead to productive research, and better theories of phonology.

To facilitate this, each student must pick a language problem to work on. It can be a problem that has been analyzed before, but it must be a problem of sufficient complexity that it cannot be solved with just one or two rules. It is important to pick the problem early in the term, because you will have to find resources on the language--in the library, by inter-library loan, on the web, with informants, etc.

Grading

• Research paper: 40%
• Research draft: 20%
• Presentations: 20%
• Participation: 20% (including reading presentation)

Schedule

Week	Topic	Research paper work
Sep 3	Introduction
Sep 10	Overview Archangeli 1997 Roca 1997 Hammond 1997
Sep 17	English /r/  McCarthy 1991, McCarthy 1993	Declare topic
Sep 24	English /r/ Halle and Idsardi 1997	Present basic problem, data and prelimary bibliography
Oct 1	Hebrew McCarthy 1995 Benua 1995
Oct 8	Hebrew Idsardi 1997 Idsardi 1998
Oct 15	Hebrew: McCarthy 1997 Idsardi ms
Oct 22		Draft presentations - I
Oct 29		Draft presentations - II
Nov 5	TBA	Drafts due
Nov 12	TBA
Nov 19	TBA
Nov 26		Presentations - I
Dec 3		Presentations - II
Dec 10		Papers due