Modeling Ungrammaticality in Optimality Theory

In linguistics, the study of grammaticality involves, for syntax, models that focus on movements that apply to inputs to satisfy the requirements a particular grammar imposes on its outputs and, in phonology, the manipulation of inputs through operations such as spreading, syllabification, deletion, and insertion. Any generative theory of grammar, declare Rice (director, Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics, U. of Tromso, Norway) and Blaho (a researcher at the Linguistics Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), must account for the flipside, cases in which no movement or manipulation is invoked to create a grammatical output for some particular input, which the phenomena of ungrammaticality (also called ineffability in the realm of syntax). They present seven papers exploring to the problems presented by ungrammaticality for the architectural structure of Optimality Theory, which with its focus on outputs and constraint violability is particularly challenged by the phenomenon. The papers include contributions from both syntacticians and phonologists. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)