Teaching and Learning Guide for: Optimality Theory and Morphology
Authors: Xu Zheng 
Published: November 2011

This guide accompanies the following article: Zheng Xu, ‘Optimality Theory and Morphology’, Language and Linguistics Compass 5/7 (2011): 466–484. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749‐818X.2011.00290.x

Author’s Introduction

This article introduces Realization Optimality Theory (OT), a novel and promising morphological framework which adopts the formalism of OT and encodes the morphological realization rules of, for example, Aronoff (1994) as ranked violable constraints. These language‐particular realization constraints are interspersed with universal markedness constraints of morphology. This treatment of morphological realization in terms of constraints successfully accounts for various widely discussed morphological phenomena such as blocking and extended morphological exponence, the emergence of an unmarked morph under morpho‐phonological conditions, syncretism and partial identity of forms. The teaching and learning guide provides an overview of the materials that are most related to this article and can be taught in class.

The Author Recommends

Rather than on a hierarchy of importance, the arrangement of the following suggested readings is based on a logical development of the topic of OT and morphology. The readings are intended for a 3‐week course. Readers are supposed to get familiar with classical rule‐based models of morphology first and then the general architecture of OT. Finally, they will learn about why a modified version of OT should be applied to morphology and what advantages such a move can bring us in comparison with rule‐based models and conventional OT.

Zwicky, Arnold M. 1985. How to describe inflection, ed. by M. Niepokuj, M. van Clay, V. Nikiforidou and D. Feder. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society (BLS) 11. 372–86.

This is an important article in inflectional morphology. It proposed a rule‐based realizational framework to account for inflectional morphology and attracted many influential followers and challengers. In this article, Zwicky shows that paradigms are not mere arrays of forms, but have internal organization of considerable interest. Additionally, he shows that inflectional morphology is well captured within process‐based models. He gives definitions of some important terms such as rules of referral, rules of exponence and discusses the ways in which realization rules are arranged. He illustrates his framework with a description of a substantial portion of the declensional system of standard German.

Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology by itself: stems and inflectional classes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

This is one of the most influential works in inflectional morphology. Mark Aronoff argues that morphology must constitute a separate and autonomous component of the grammatical architecture rather than being a mere appendage of syntax and phonology. He argues that objects like morphomes and inflectional classes are purely morphological and cannot be reduced to either syntax or phonology. He demonstrates the application and formulation of realization rules and elucidates many important notions of morphology such as lexeme, lexicon, lexical representation, base, root, stem, citation form, and so on. This book is one of the must‐reads in the field of morphology.

Stump, Gregory T. 2001. Inflectional morphology: a theory of paradigm structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This book is one of the must‐reads in the field of inflectional morphology. It argues that morphology has its own autonomous system and equates the definition of a language’s inflectional morphology with the definition of its paradigm function. It proposes Paradigm Function Morphology, an inferential‐realizational morphology framework that is based on realization rules, rules of morpho‐phonology, and a series of principles that govern both the application and organization of these rules.

Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich. 1989. Inflectional morphology and naturalness. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

This important book introduces the concept of naturalness in grammar and discusses basic morphological concepts such as word and morpheme, inflection and derivation, inflectional rules, lexical representations, inflectional forms, category markers, categories, and inflectional classes. It studies the interaction of the principles which determine the structure of inflectional systems and manifest morphological naturalness. It shows how universal morphological naturalness principles interact with language‐particular properties of inflectional systems. It also shows how extra‐morphological factors affect morphological structuring. Furthermore, it explicates the concept of productivity in terms of the stability of inflectional classes.

Kager, René. 1999. Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This is one of the most influential textbooks on conventional OT. It introduces both the central idea and general architecture of OT. It explicates many important OT notions such as markedness constraints, rankings of constraints, optimality, and so on. It covers many important topics that center on OT such as the typology of changes of phonological structures, generalized alignment, metrical structures, reduplication, output‐to‐output correspondence, and opacity. It focuses on (morpho‐) phonology within OT, but also spends two chapters discussing OT’s extensions to syntax and language acquisition.

Yip, Moira. 1998. Identity avoidance in phonology and morphology. Morphology and its relation to phonology and syntax, ed. by S. G. Lapointe, D. K. Brentari and P. M. Farrell, 216–46. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

This article argues for an OT approach to avoidance of sequences of homophonous elements. It proposes a constraint‐based model that incorporates both OCP‐type constraints and realization constraints. It shows that the effects of OCP are cross‐linguistically observed while each particular language has its own instantiation of the general OCP constraint. The rankings of OCP‐type constraints with other markedness constraints predict a typology of cases that either forbid or allow for sequences of homophonous elements. Additionally, it shows that some morpho‐syntactic features must not be realized in the input in order for this model to work. Furthermore, it remarks that there is no clear‐cut divide between morphology and phonology, i.e. phonological effects can be observed in the morphological component while morphological information is necessary for many phonological operations.

Xu, Zheng, and Mark Aronoff. forthcoming. A Realization Optimality Theory approach to blocking and extended morphological exponence. Journal of Linguistics, doi: 10.1017/S002222671100003X.

Blocking in inflection occurs when a morphological exponent prevents the application of another exponent expressing the same feature value, thus barring the occurrence of multiple exponents of a single morpho‐syntactic feature value. In instances of extended exponence, more than one exponent in the same word realizes the same feature value. In this article, Xu and Aronoff provide a unified account of blocking and extended exponence that combines a realizational approach to inflection with OT (Realization OT), encoding morphological realization rules as ranked violable constraints. The markedness constraint *Feature Split bars the realization of any morpho‐syntactic feature value by more than one exponent. If *Feature Split ranks lower than two or more realization constraints expressing the same feature value, then extended exponence will occur. Otherwise, blocking of lower ranked exponents will be observed. They discuss the framework of Realization OT in this article and show that this framework is superior to various alternative approaches to blocking and extended morphological exponence.

Online Materials

 http://roa.rutgers.edu/

Rutgers Optimality Archive is the most well‐known website about OT. It was established and maintained by Rutgers University. Scholars who work on OT around the world keep posting their up‐to‐date works on this website, which has a good search function so that the user can search for OT‐related papers based on authors, paper titles, key words, and linguistic sub‐disciplines. The user can find many classical OT works there. The authors who post their works on this website often receive feedbacks from their readers.

 http://www.linguistlist.org

The Linguist List is one of the most well‐known linguistics websites. It houses a myriad of important resources including information about various types of publications such as books, book reviews, dissertations, academic papers, and so on. This publication information is nicely sorted out, which makes it easy for users to search for their desired information. After searching, you can find that this website lists many publications on morphology.

 http://wals.info/

The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) Online is a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars) by a team of leading scholars. It supersedes previous versions of WALS and is a joint effort of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Max Planck Digital Library. It comprises more than one hundred and forty chapters, each of which describes the typology of a specific language property. Additionally, the languages in its database are classified in terms of “feature values” or scalar properties. For example, each of the languages is categorized based on the size of its consonant inventory, which is assumed to be a feature by WALS. Each of them is labelled with a symbol on a map, which represents its feature value (small, moderately small, average, moderately large, or large). This website contains a lot of information about the morphology of diverse languages.

 http://www.surrey.ac.uk/english/smg/

The website of the preeminent Surrey Morphology Group (SMG) is a very valuable and important one of morphology. It lists a series of SMG research projects and their outputs. It also houses several important databases that were established and maintained by SMG. These databases that are based on typological surveys cover several morphological phenomena such as agreement, deponency, defectiveness, suppletion, and syncretism. The user can search for the data of each phenomenon on a language‐specific basis. Complete bibliographies on each of these phenomena are also listed on this website.

 http://www.ethnologue.com/

Ethnologue: Languages of the world is an encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s 6909 known living languages. It has both a web and print version. On its website, you can find out detailed descriptive and statistical information about each language in terms of where it is spoken, how many people speak it, and which language family it belongs to. The Ethnologue also has a full bibliography referencing each language in its database. This website will be useful for scholars to investigate the morphology of many languages.

Sample Unit

The following portion of a syllabus is designed to fit into a course on morphology. Although it starts as ‘Week I’, it is better for this partial syllabus to be inserted into the course schedule later in the semester. The syllabus reflects a logical development of the topic on OT and morphology with three sessions introducing three closely related theoretical models: classical rule‐based frameworks of morphology, conventional OT, and Realization OT that encodes realization rules as constraints. The goal of the syllabus is not only to make students familiar with the general architecture of the above models and understand why OT should be applied to morphology, but also to arouse their interests in doing future research in OT morphology. The class is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who have mastered basic linguistic knowledge, i.e. have taken introductory linguistics courses and are therefore familiar with basic linguistic terms.

Week I: Classical rule‐based frameworks of morphology

During this week, students learn about classical rule‐based frameworks of morphology. For example, they learn about the definition and formulation of rules of realization as well as the principles that govern both the application and arrangement of these rules.

Suggested readings

Zwicky, Arnold M. 1985. How to describe inflection, ed. by M. Niepokuj, M. van Clay, V. Nikiforidou and D. Feder. Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society (BLS) 11. 372–86.

Aronoff, Mark. 1994. Morphology by itself: stems and inflectional classes, Chapters 1, 2, 3. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 5–87.

Stump, Gregory T. 2001. Inflectional morphology: a theory of paradigm structure, Chapters 1, 2, 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–61, 139–67.

Suggested Learning Exercise

Learning exercise # 1 (see below for details)

Week II: Naturalness and Optimality Theory

During this week, students study the notion of naturalness in morphology and other linguistic sub‐disciplines. Additionally, they learn about the general architecture of OT, which encodes naturalness or unmarkedness in constraint rankings. For example, they learn about the types of constraints proposed in conventional OT as well as the principles that govern their rankings.

Suggested readings

Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich. 1989. Inflectional morphology and naturalness, Chapters 1, 2, 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1–73.

Kager, René. 1999. Optimality Theory, Chapter 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–48.

Suggested Learning Exercise

Learning exercise # 2 (see below for details)

Week III: Realization Optimality Theory

This is the week when students learn about Realization OT, a constraint‐based framework of morphology. They learn about the architectural assumptions of Realization OT. Additionally, in comparison with alternative frameworks such as rule‐based morphological models and conventional OT, they learn about the advantages of Realization OT in tackling various morphological issues such as syncretism, affix ordering, blocking and extended exponence, avoidance of adjacent phonologically (partially) identical forms.

Suggested readings

Xu, Zheng. 2011. Optimality Theory and Morphology. Language and Linguistics Compass 5/7. 466–84.

Yip, Moira. 1998. Identity avoidance in phonology and morphology. Morphology and its relation to phonology and syntax, ed. by S. G. Lapointe, D. K. Brentari and P. M. Farrell, 216–46. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

Xu, Zheng, and Mark Aronoff. forthcoming. A Realization Optimality Theory approach to blocking and extended morphological exponence. Journal of Linguistics, doi: 10.1017/S002222671100003X.

Suggested Learning Exercise

Learning exercise # 3 (see below for details)

Focus Questions

 What is the definition and formulation of a rule of realization? What are the principles that govern the application and arrangement of rules of realization?

 How is naturalness defined in a morphological framework such as Wurzel 1989?

 What is the definition and formulation of a markedness constraint? What types of constraints does conventional OT propose? What are the principles that govern the application and ranking of constraints?

 What is the definition and formulation of a realization constraint? What are the basic assumptions of Realization OT?

 In comparison with rule‐based frameworks of morphology and conventional OT, what advantages does Realization OT bring about in accounting for, for example, syncretism, blocking and extended morphological exponence, avoidance of adjacent phonologically (partially) identical forms?

Learning Exercises

Learning exercise # 1: Understanding rule‐based morphology

The purpose of this exercise is to make students grasp the basic assumptions and formulations of rule‐based morphology. Ask students to use the above websites to find a language with relatively rich inflectional morphology. Then ask them to use a framework such as Stump 2001 to account for its inflectional morphology and then discuss the problems and issues that arise in their formulations.

Learning exercise # 2: Understanding conventional OT

The purpose of this exercise is to make students understand the fundamental tenets of conventional OT, which encodes naturalness or unmarkedness in constraint rankings. The instructor can choose one or two exercises in a textbook such as Kager 1999 for the students to practise constraint rankings and OT tableaux. Additionally, ask students to think about whether conventional OT can extend to the inflectional morphology in the previous exercise.

Learning exercise # 3: Understanding Realization OT

The purpose of this exercise is to make students understand both the architectural assumptions of Realization OT and the reasons to propose such a theory. Ask students to use Realization OT to account for the inflectional morphology in the first learning exercise. Then ask them to compare the formulations of both rule‐based morphology and Realization OT and discuss the (dis)advantages of each framework.