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Sommario
- Chapter 1: Optimality Theory: The Basics
- Chapter 2: Optimality in a Complex World: Additions and Extensions
- Chapter 3: Constraints, Causation, and Change
- Chapter 4: Cognates and Comparisons: Natural Morphology and Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Biology
- Chapter 5: The Emergence of the Innate: Evolving Optimality
- Chapter 6: Optimality and Optimism: The Panglossian Paradigm
Info autore
Dr April McMahon has been Lecturer in Historical Linguistics and Phonology at the University of Cambridge since 1988. From March 2000 she will be Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of Understanding Language Change (CUP, 1994) and Lexical Phonology and the History of English (CUP, forthcoming 2000), and has published articles and reviews in many journals. She has long-standing research interests in the relationship of phonological theory and sound change, and in interdisciplinary issues including connections between evolutionary theory, genetics and historical linguistics.
Riassunto
About how languages change. This is also a devastating critique of Optimality Theory - the dominant theory in contemporary phonology and increasingly influential throughout linguistics. The author sets out its basis principles and shows it to be incapable of explaining either language change or variation.
Testo aggiuntivo
A stunning book, elegantly argued and deftly written. A major theoretical critique, confronting Optimality Theory and other formalist innatist paradigms with the realities of evolutionary biology and neuroscience. One of the most important and sophisticated works in phonological theory of the past couple of decades.
