Learnability in Optimality Theory (long version)

Abstract

How, exactly, does a theory of grammar bear on questions of learnability? Restrictions on what counts as a possible human language restrict the search space of the learner, and would thus appear to aid learnability. But beyond this very coarse observation, what can be said about exactly how learnability is enhanced by the particular kinds of restrictions imposed by a particular theory of grammar? The central claim of this paper is that the character of the restrictions imposed by Optimality Theory (‘OT,’ Prince and Smolensky 1991, 1993) have demonstrable and significant consequences for central questions of learnability. Our goal in this work is formal results that are independent of the substantive assumptions of an OT analysis of any particular linguistic domain: results that apply equally to phonology, syntax, or any other domain which might admit an OT grammar. These are results on the learnability consequences of OT’s general theory of cross-linguistic variation.