Synopses & Reviews
Formal and Empirical Issues in Optimality Theoretic Syntax is a collection of selected works which involve a new approach to syntax by bringing together Optimality Theory (OT) and Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). The volume's importance is precisely in this new approach, which differs greatly from other OT approaches to syntax. The book first develops formal foundations of Optimality Theory. The works within the volume then go on to analyze certain kinds of linguistic data, as well as more technical questions of the formal foundations, and of the utility of the approach in (industrial) natural language processing applications.
Peter Sells is associate professor in the department of linguistics at Stanford University. Joan Bresnan is professor of linguistics at Stanford University. Miriam Butt is a researcher at University of Konstanz. Tracy Holloway King is a researcher at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
Synopsis
This book collects recent work in OT-LFG (Optimality Theoretic Lexical Functional Grammar) which is developing the empirical coverage of the approach as well as the formal foundations of the OT approach. The papers deal with phenomena in a wide range of languages, including English, Fore, Hindi, Kashmiri, Korean, Marathi. Central to the general approach is the issue of typological implication and the notion of markedness. Additionally, some papers here take up issues related to language production and comprehension (in terms of bidirectional optimization), and some explore the formal foundations. This is a collection of papers which involve a new approach to syntax bringing together Optimality Theory (OT) and Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). Its importance is precisely in this new approach, which differs from other OT approaches to syntax.
About the Author
Tracy Holloway King is a principal product manager with the Search Science team at eBay Inc.
Table of Contents
Contributors
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Introduction - Peter Sells
2. Phrase Structure, Information Structure, and Resolution of Mismatch - Hanjung Lee
3. Markedness and Word Order Freezing - Hanjung Lee
4. Verb Raising and Phrase Structure Variation in OT - Yukiko Morimoto
5. Optimal Order and Pied-Piping in San Dionicio Zapotec - George Aaron Broadwell
6. Kashmiri Case Clitics and Person Hierarchy Effects - Devyani Sharma
7. Linking, Optionality, and Ambiguity in Marathi - Ash Asudeh
8. Generation and Parsing in Optimality Theoretic Syntax: Issues in the Formalization of OT-LFG - Jonas Kuhn
9. Optimality Theory Style Constraint Ranking in Large-scale LFG Grammars - Anette Frank, Tracy Holloway King, Jonas Kuhn and John T. Maxwell III
Subject Index
Name Index