Optimality-Theoretic Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics ─ From Uni- to Bidirectional Optimization

This book investigates the morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of language, and the interactions between them, from the perspective of Optimality Theory. It integrates optimization processes into the formal and functional study of grammar, interpreting optimization as the result of conflicting, violable ranked constraints.

Unlike previous work on the topic, this book also takes into account the question of directionality of grammar. A model of grammar in which optimization processes interact bidirectionally allows both language generation-the process of selecting the optimal form of a given meaning-and language interpretation-the process of optimal interpretation of a given form-to be taken into account. Chapters in this volume explore the consequences of both symmetric (unidirectional) and asymmetric (bidirectional) versions of Optimality Theory, investigating the syntax-semantics interface, first language acquisition, and sequential bilingual grammars.

The volume presents cutting edge research in Optimality-Theoretic syntax and semantics, as well as demonstrating how optimization processes as modelled in this formalism serve as a viable approach for linguists and scholars in related fields.

Geraldine Legendre is Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University. She co-developed, with Paul Smolensky, the soft constraint-based precursor to Optimality Theory and has played a major role in the development of OT in syntax since the early 1990s, focussing particularly on comparative studies of phenomena in syntax and at the syntax-semantics interface and on the modelling of early child syntax and code-switching. She is co-author ofThe Harmonic Mind (with Paul Smolensky; MIT Press, 2006) and co-editor ofOptimality-Theoretic Syntax (with Jane Grimshaw and Sten Vikner; MIT Press, 2001).

Michael T. Putnam is Associate Professor of German and Linguistics at Penn State University. His work focuses on gaining a better understanding of the cognitive architecture underlying the language faculty at the intersection of culture, grammar, and performance biases, and he has published widely on comparative Germanic linguistics, the morphosyntax-semantics interface, and bilingualism. He is the author ofThe Structural Design of Language (with Thomas S. Stroik; CUP, 2013) and editor ofStudies in German-Language Islands (Benjamins, 2011).

Henriette de Swart is Professor of French Linguistics and Semantics at Utrecht University. Her research is concerned with cross-linguistic variation at the syntax-semantics-pragmatic interface, looking specifically at tense and aspect, negation, indefinites, genericity, and bare nominals. Her publications include Introduction toNatural Language Semantics (University of Chicago Press, 1998), The Semantics of Incorporation (with Donka Farkas; CSLI, 2003), andConflicts in Interpretation (with Petra Hendriks, Helen de Hoop, and Irene Kramer; Equinox, 2010).

Erin Zaroukian is a postdoctoral fellow in the Human Research and Engineering Directorate of the US Army Research Laboratory, where her primary research is in human-computer collaboration, including assessing the comprehension of controlled natural languages and establishing principles for their design and development. Her PhD work focused on normal semantics of approximation and hedging, which she continued, with an experimental focus, as a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (Ecole Normale Superieure, PSL Research University, CNRS).