Abstract
This paper analyzes the language-theoretic complexity of Harmonic Serialism (HS), a derivational variant of Optimality Theory. I show that HS can generate non-rational relations using strictly local markedness constraints, proving the “result” of Hao (2017), that HS is rational under those assumptions, to be incorrect. This is possible because deletions performed in a particular order have the ability to enforce nesting dependencies over long distances. I argue that coordinated deletions form a canonical characterization of non-rational relations definable in HS.
Highlights
This paper analyzes the language-theoretic complexity of Harmonic Serialism (HS), a derivational variant of Optimality Theory
Frank and Satta find that OT can be made equivalent to finite-state transducers (FSTs) by assuming that for each constraint there is an upper bound on the number of violation marks that the constraint may assign to any given input–output pair
This paper presents an analysis of Harmonic Serialism (HS), a variant of OT in which surface forms are computed by recursively applying incremental changes to underlying forms
Summary
This paper analyzes the language-theoretic complexity of Harmonic Serialism (HS), a derivational variant of Optimality Theory. I show that HS can generate non-rational relations using strictly local markedness constraints, proving the “result” of Hao (2017), that HS is rational under those assumptions, to be incorrect. Frank and Satta (1998) carry out an analysis of Optimality Theory (OT, Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004), showing that the full OT framework can describe non-rational relations, and is too powerful according to the criterion of finite-stateness. They do this by following Ellison (1994) in thinking of OT constraints as FSTs that read input–output pairs and emit violation marks. We assume without loss of generality that if →(q, x, y, r), x y= λ
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