This book presents an introduction to Optimality Theory, a grammatical framework of recent origin (Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993a, b). The central idea of Optimality Theory (OT) is that surface forms of language reflect resolutions of conflicts between competing demands or constraints. A surface form is ‘optimal’ in the sense that it incurs the least serious violations of a set of violable constraints, ranked in a language-specific hierarchy. Constraints are universal, and directly encode markedness statements and principles enforcing the preservation of contrasts. Languages differ in the ranking of constraints, giving priorities to some constraints over others. Such rankings are based on ‘strict’ domination: if one constraint outranks another, the higher-ranked constraint has priority, regardless of violations of the lower-ranked one. However, such violation must be minimal, which predicts the economy property of grammatical processes. OT's basic assumptions and the architecture of OT grammars will be dealt with in chapters 1 and 2.

Optimality Theory is a development of Generative Grammar, a theory sharing its focus on formal description and quest for universal principles, on the basis of empirical research of linguistic typology and (first) language acquisition. However, OT radically differs from earlier generative models in various ways. To accommodate cross-linguistic variation within a theory of Universal Grammar, OT assumes that universal constraints are violable, while earlier models assumed ‘parametric’ variation of inviolate principles.