Directional Constraint Evaluation in Optimality Theory

• Main Author: Jason Eisner
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Morgan Kaufmann 2000
• Subjects: Vio; DML
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.14.3468; http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/C/C00/C00-1038.pdf

this paper gives liuguis[ic a.n(l cmntmt;[- t,iomfi motiv,trion fiw I'he t)rOlmsa.l. [3 thmmlizes t, lie hlc:t mtd shows l:}ml, coutposizg a hu't,sduc:er with u di'rccZioial constraint yTcld.5 u tm,,sd,uccr. Thus direcl,ional const, taint, s, lik l)ounded (mcs, kee l) ()T wil:hin the class of regulm' relal&ms. (]lul, we also show l,hem to }>e more expressive.) 2 Motivation 2.1 Intuitions ]l:c;tll tll;d, O'l)'s consir;cliff, ra,nking m,'x:hmfism ram' evitltml.e ;t fi)rm }y aggrega.ting' i.s vio]&t- l, ions <f' seve]-:d consl, rdnl, s'? Abow we asked fims('.s al, several local,ions'? Figure I 511ustra.l:cs l, ha.t, ore' answer is.ius; (;onstrint rmtking redux. l)irect, iond ev;dml&m sl.ri(:l;ly ranks the impotlance of the local.ions wil;hin lbrm e.g., fi'om left, l,r) righi,. This eXeml)lties ()T's 5to on].y when necessm'y" sl,raI,egy: the (:<msl'rMnt; tn'dbrs to postpone ofikmses mn, il they strictly necessary towrd t, he right, of l, he tbrm, even [[ {,he cosl, of h;tving more of' them, One might think tom Figure 1 Lh;d, ead di- rccl, ional consl;r;finl, couM be decomposed into sewh'M himtry or other bounded consl.rMnts, yielding ;t gr;umnar nsing only bournled constrainIs. Howcvcr no single such grammar general cnongh to hmMle ;;11 inputs: the nmn- tmr of constraints needed [br Lhe decomposition corresl>onds i,o the length (i.e., the nmnber of locations) of tim underlying rel)resenl;M;ion