On the rapid expansion of optimality theory at the end of the twentieth century

Joshua M. Griffiths
The University of Texas at Austin

Despite being a recent development in generative linguistics, Optimality Theory (OT, Prince & Smolensky 1993) has had a profound impact on linguistics, particularly on phonology in North America. OT posits that observed forms of language arise due to conflicting linguistic constraints. When proposed in 1993, OT saw virtually overnight success in American phonology despite not having been the first theory of grammar to focus solely on the constraint. I argue, that the reasons for which OT saw such immediate success due in large part to the efforts of Prince and Smolensky to work at getting the word out, the state of American phonology at the time which felt stagnant to some, and the coincidence of OT’s birth with the Internet Boom which Prince and Smolensky used to their advantage

Table of contents

A great deal of the research on the history of generative linguistics has focused either on the incipient stages of the generative revolution or on the effect of Chomsky’s influence on generative syntax. One of the first generative revolutions in American phonology, though, was sparked when Morris Halle delivered a talk to the LSA on the voicing of Russian obstruents (Halle 1957); which was boosted by the publication of the Sound Pattern of Russian (Halle 1959), but as argued by Goldsmith (2008) the nascent stages of generative phonology could be traced as far back as Bloomfield (1926, 1939) or Wells (1949). Moreover, Chomsky, Halle, & Lukoff (1956) proposed frameworks which resembled generative phonology even before the delivery of Halle’s 1957 address. Like generative syntax, generative phonology has its fair share of supporters and critics, and the ideas have seen myriad revisions since their initial formalization by Halle (1957, 1959, 1962). The most pre-eminent revision was developed by Chomsky & Halle (1968), which provided a framework in which most phonologists were willing to develop their work. Chomsky’s and Halle’s Sound Pattern of English (SPE) analyses seemed to work well for many of the initial problems that phonologists encountered in formalizing structural analyses in a generative framework. In particular, SPE provided a thorough, robust description of processes that seemed cognitively plausible, and was attractive as it was couched within a theory that was familiar and widely-accepted: Feature Theory (Trubetskoij 1969).

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