Violable constraints in language production: Testing the transitivity assumption of optimality theory

Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince. Smolensky, 1993) characterizes linguistic k nowledge as a ranked set of constraints that select the best possible outpu t form of a word given a particular input. OT assumes that constraints are ordered transitively with respect to their violability. An artificial langu age learning paradigm was used to test this assumption by teaching particip ants to pronounce words that provided evidence about three constraints affe cting the stress patterns of words. The words demonstrated that the first c onstraint outranked the second and the second outranked the third. The rela tionship between the first and third could only be derived from the transit ive nature of the system. Three experiments tested whether speakers could d etermine the stress patterns of words requiring knowledge of the relationsh ip between these two constraints. Evidence was found for a transitively ord ered constraint system as well as a system that stores commonly heard stres s patterns as metrical templates. (C) 2000 Academic Press.