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Idempotency in Optimality Theory1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2017

GIORGIO MAGRI
GIORGIO MAGRI*
Affiliation:
SFL (CNRS, University of Paris 8, UPL)
*
Author’s address: SFL UMR 7023 CNRS, University of Paris 8, UPL 59/61 rue Pouchet, 75017 Paris, Francemagrigrg@gmail.com
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Abstract

An idempotent phonological grammar maps phonotactically licit forms faithfully to themselves. This paper establishes tight sufficient conditions for idempotency in (classical) Optimality Theory. Building on Tesar (2013), these conditions are derived in two steps. First, idempotency is shown to follow from a general formal condition on the faithfulness constraints. Second, this condition is shown to hold for a variety of faithfulness constraints which naturally arise within McCarthy & Prince’s (1995) Correspondence Theory of faithfulness. This formal analysis provides an exhaustive toolkit for modeling chain shifts, which have proven recalcitrant to a constraint-based treatment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , 01 February 2018 , pp. 139 - 187
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

[1]

Parts of this paper have been presented at WCCFL 33 at Simon Fraser University in March 2015 (see also Magri 2016), at the Workshop on Computational Phonology and Morphology at Chicago University in July 2015, and at OCP 12 in Budapest in January 2016. The research reported in this paper has been supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship (Grant agreement number: PIEF-GA-2011-301938).

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