Processing optimality-theoretic syntax by interleaved chart parsing and generation

Abstract

The Earley deduction algorithm is extended for the processing of OT syntax based on feature grammars. Due to faithfulness violations, infinitely many candidates must be compared. With the (reasonable) assumptions (i) that OT constraints are descriptions denoting bounded structures and (ii) that every rule recursion in the base grammar incurs some constraint violation, a chart algorithm can be devised. Interleaving parsing and generation permits the application of generation-based optimization even in the parsing task, i.e., for a string input.