Change, Chance, and Optimality

by April M. McMahon

Overview

This book is about how languages change. It is also a devastating critique of a widespread linguistic orthodoxy. April McMahon argues that to provide a convincing explanation of linguistic change the roles of history and contingency must be accommodated in linguistic theory. She also shows that theoretical work in related disciplines can be used to assess the value of such theories.

Optimality Theory, or OT as it is usually called, dominates contemporary phonology, especially in the USA, and is becoming increasingly influential in syntax and language acquisition. Having set out its basis principles, Professor McMahon assesses their explanatory power in analysing language change and its residues in current phonological systems. Using cross-linguistic data, and drawing comparisons with other theories inside and outside linguistics, she shows that OT is incapable of accounting for language change, without the addition of rules and an appreciation of chance and historical contingency that would then undermine its theoretical underpinnings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198241256
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	09/28/2000
Series:	Oxford Linguistics Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

"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."—Roger Lass, University of Cape Town

"This book is a careful study of some of the fundamental issues underpinning current linguistics, especially Optimality Theory, and it is a very welcome and timely contribution to debate in that area."— Andrew Spencer, University of Essex

From the Publisher