The University of Massachusetts Amherst

1. HG with universal constraints

Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky collaborated on a 1991 Linguistic Institute course entitled “Connectionism and Harmony Theory in Linguistics”. Shortly thereafter, they abandoned weighted constraints in favor of the ranked constraints of Optimality Theory (OT; Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004). The main guiding question for this part of the course is what happens when we use weighted constraints for OT-style linguistic analysis. We will start with a version of HG that assumes parallel evaluation, as in the original version of OT, and then consider a version that uses serial evaluation, as in Harmonic Serialism (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004 ch. 2, McCarthy 2007 et seq.).

Methods: OT-Help

Parallel HG

Main readings for class discussion

Jesney, Karen. 2009. Licensing in multiple contexts: an argument for Harmonic Grammar. In Proceedings of the 45th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 45).  Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.

Legendre, Géraldine, Antonella Sorace & Paul Smolensky. 2006. The Optimality Theory–Harmonic Grammar connection. In Paul Smolensky and Géraldine Legendre, The Harmonic Mind. MIT Press. 339–402.

Pater, Joe. 2009. Weighted Constraints in Generative Linguistics. Cognitive Science 33: 999-1035.

Pater, Joe. 2009. Review of Smolensky and Legendre (2006). The Harmonic Mind. Phonology 26: 217-226.

Potts, Christopher, Joe Pater, Karen Jesney, Rajesh Bhatt and Michael Becker. 2010. Harmonic Grammar with Linear Programming: From linear systems to linguistic typology. Phonology 27:
77-117.

Other readings

Bane, Max and Jason Riggle. 2010. The typological consequences of weighted constraints. To appear in the Proceedings of CLS 45.

Farris-Trimble, Ashley. 2008. Cumulative faithfulness effects: Opaque or transparent? In IUWPL6: Phonological Opacity Effects in Optimality Theory, ed. by Ashley W. Farris-Trimble and Daniel A. Dinnsen, pp. 119-145. Bloomington, IN: IULC Publications.

Serial OT

Main readings for class discussion

John J. McCarthy. 2006. Restraint of analysis. Wondering at the Natural Fecundity of Things: Essays in Honor of Alan Prince, Linguistics Research Center, UC Santa Cruz. 195-219.

John J. McCarthy. 2011. Autosegmental spreading in Optimality Theory. Tones and Features (Clements memorial volume). Ed. John Goldsmith, Elizabeth Hume, and Leo Wetzels. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2011.

Other readings

See lists of papers compiled here and here.

Serial HG

Mullin, Kevin. 2011. Strength in Harmony Systems: Trigger and Directional Asymmetries. Ms, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Pater, Joe. To appear. Serial Harmonic Grammar and Berber syllabification In Toni Borowsky, Shigeto Kawahara, Takahito Shinya and Mariko Sugahara (eds.) Prosody Matters: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth O. Selkirk. London: Equinox Press.

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