A Constraint-based Morphological Analyzer for Concatenative and Non-concatenative Morphology

PACLIC 20 / Wuhan, China / 1-3 November, 200

On Reversing the Generation Process in Optimality Theory

Optimality Theory, a constraint-based phonology and morphology paradigm, has allowed linguists to make elegant analyses of many phenomena, including infixation and reduplication. In this work-in-progress, we build on the work of Ellison (1994) to investigate the possibility of using OT as a parsing tool that derives underlying forms from surface forms. 1 Introduction Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993) is a constraint-based phonological and morphological system that allows violable constraints in deriving output surface forms from underlying forms. In OT a system of constraints selects an "optimal" surface output from a set of candidates. The methodology allows succinct analyses of phenomena such as infixation and reduplication that were difficult to describe under sets of transformational rules. Several computational methods for OT have been produced within the short amount of time since Prince and Smolensky's paper (Ellison, 1994; Tesar, 1995; Hammond, 1995). These system..