Abstract
The first part of this paper shows that a non-teleological account of sound change is possible if we assume two things: first, that Optimality-Theoretic constraints that do not contribute to determining the winning candidate are ranked randomly with respect to each other, i.e. differently for every speaker; second, that learners acquire as their underlying representations the forms that they detect most often in their environment. The resulting variation-and-selection scheme can be regarded as locally optimizing. It is shown, however, that it is possible that a sequence of such optimizing sound changes ends up in a loop rather than in a single absorbing final state. This kind of cyclic optimization is shown to be exactly what happened in the attested and reconstructed changes in the Indo-European consonant systems. The second part of this paper presents a simulation that shows that cyclic optimization is not only possible but also rather likely: twenty percent of all inventories are in an optimizing loop or heading towards one.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Boersma, P. (2003). The Odds of Eternal Optimization in Optimality Theory. In: Holt, D.E. (eds) Optimality Theory and Language Change. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 56. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0195-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0195-3_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-1470-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-0195-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive