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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Optimal Paradigms, John J. Mccarthy
Optimal Paradigms, John J. Mccarthy
John J. McCarthy
Transderivational Correspondence and Uniform Exponence are two recent theories of surface resemblances among morphologically related words. This article describes the Optimal Paradigms theory, which incorporates elements of both. In OP, candidates consist of entire inflectional paradigms. Within each candidate paradigm, there is a correspondence relation from every paradigm member to every other paradigm member. Faithfulness constraints on this intraparadigmatic correspondence relation resist alternation within the paradigm. This model is illustrated and supported with a type of evidence that has not figured in previous discussions, the templatic structure of the Classical Arabic verb. Generalized Template Theory demands that templatic restrictions emerge …
Taking A Free Ride In Morphophonemic Learning, John J. Mccarthy
Taking A Free Ride In Morphophonemic Learning, John J. Mccarthy
John J. McCarthy
As language learners begin to analyze morphologically complex words, they face the problem of projecting underlying representations from the morphophonemic alternations that they observe. Research on learnability in Optimality Theory has started to address this problem, and this article deals with one aspect of it. When alternation data tell the learner that some surface [B]s are derived from underlying /A/s, the learner will under certain conditions generalize by deriving all [B]s, even nonalternating ones, from /A/s. An adequate learning theory must therefore incorporate a procedure that allows nonalternating [B]s to take a «free ride» on the /A/ →[B] unfaithful map.
The Length Of Stem-Final Vowels In Colloquial Arabic, John J. Mccarthy
The Length Of Stem-Final Vowels In Colloquial Arabic, John J. Mccarthy
John J. McCarthy
This paper has argued that richness of the base, when combined with OT’s inherent commitment to typology, leads to an improved understanding of problems of indeterminacy in underlying representations. The controversy over the length of Arabic final vowels, a controversy to which many analysts have contributed without a final resolution, disappears once the phenomena are examined from the perspective of ROTB and a typologically responsible CON. It has been suggested (M. Hale and Reiss 1998: 660) that “the notion of richness of the base [is] a computational curiosity of OT grammars that may be quite irrelevant to human language”. This …