Optimality Theory Syllabus

Course Outline

Linguistics 795

Day

Reading

Assignment

Lecture

Background

Mon Jan 24 reading: Kager, Ch. 1 and 2. assignment: Kager: Exercise 1 at the end of Ch. 1, Exercises 1,3 at the end of Ch. 2; lecture: Conspiracies, constraints , markedness and faithfulness    
Mon Jan 31 reading: Doing OT (McCarthy). Chap 2.3-2.10 [But skip 2.9 for now] Doing OT (McCarthy) assignment: p. 40: 4, 6, 7, 8, 9; pp. 51,52: 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 lecture: Typologies.    
Mon Feb 07 reading: OT (Kager). Intro (Chapter 1) OT (Kager) (Chapter 2). Doing OT (McCarthy) 2.12 [Skipping 2.11 for now] Doing OT (McCarthy) assignment: p. 64 : 16, 17, 18; pp. 71, 72: 19, 20; lecture: Theoretical issues    
Mon Feb 14 reading: OT (Kager) (Chapter 3). Doing OT (McCarthy) assignment: p. 80: 21, 22; p. 87: 25, 26; p. 94: 27, 28, 29; pp 105,6: 34; background Dutch voicing
Japanese velars
   
Mon Feb 21 reading: Prince and Smolensky (2004: 10-38) Part 1, Sections 2 & 3; Prince and Smolensky (2004: 103-202) Part2. Doing OT (McCarthy) assignment: p 95: 30; pp. 132-134: 41, 42, 43 Lecture: Syllabification. Berber and others.    
Mon Feb 28 Readings: Kager (372-400, Chapter 9). Roca's intro to Roca (1997). For further readings see reading list. Doing OT (McCarthy) assignment: Exercises 1 and 2, p. 141. Lecture: Opacity.    
Mon Mar 07 Readings: McCarthy (95-103, 2.9); Kager (341-371, Ch. 8); Bresnan (2000)   Lecture: Syntax.    
Mon Mar 14 Readings: Grimshaw (1997); Legendre et al (1998); Legendre (2001)   Lecture: Wh Movement.    
Mon Mar 21 Readings: Wilson (2001); Speas (2001) assignment: 2 page paper outline due with preliminary Bibliography Lecture: Anaphora.    
Mon Mar 28 H'day H'day H'day H'day H'day
Mon Apr 04 Readings: Grimshaw (2001); Anderson (2002); Legendre (2002)   Lecture: Clitics.    
Mon Apr 11 readings: Aissen (1999); Legendre et al (1993); Woolford (2001); assignment: 5 page paper preview due with data and example discussion (no lit reviews, please!) Lecture: Case/voice . Student presentations I  
Mon Apr 18 readings: Sells (2001a); Aissen (2003)   Lecture: Case/voice (ctd) Student presentations II  
Mon Apr 25 reading: Kager (296-340; Chapter 7). Tesar and Smolensky (1998) Short version. Riggle (2002), Goldwater and Johnson 2003,   Lecture: Learnability. Student presentations III  
Mon May 02 readings: Boersma and Hayes (2001), Prince aqnd Tesar (2004), Jarosz (2006)   Lecture: Learnability    
Mon May 09 readings: Hammond (1997), Ellison (1994), Karttunen (1998), Gerdemann and van Noord (2000)   Lecture: Computation: Finite State models