Sentence Comprehension and Production in OT

The two types of sentence performance, namely, sentence comprehension and sentence production, contain different input and output forms in OT, hence, should be accounted for from different angels (Fikkert & de Hoop, 2009; Mattausch, 2004;

Smolensky, 1996; Wilson, 2001; Zeevat, 2001). In sentence comprehension, the fixed form is the surface form, that is, an utterance, and the competitions are meanings.

This is the perspective of a hearer, and hence, the sentence comprehension should be illustrated by OT semantics. By contrast, in sentence production, the fixed form is the

3 There exist different perspectives towards how constraint reranking is accomplished. Some researchers believed that learning can result in an instantaneous change in the ranking of constraints, and hence, lower-ranking constraints will override high-ranking ones. Some researchers, however, claimed that learning can be more gradual. In this case, the relevant markedness and faithfulness constraints move closer towards each other, but they do not necessarily give rise to a reranking of the constraints. Other researchers refuted the existence of reranking. They proposed that constraints are floating at a particular stage, leading to variation.

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input, which is a meaning and is composed of the basic components of the intended utterance, such as lexical items, predicate-argument structure, and tense and aspect information. The competitions are the underlying forms, which are syntactic forms.

This is the perspective of a speaker, and hence, the sentence production ought to be explained by OT syntax.

In both OT semantics and OT syntax, since the input and the output are either the meaning and the form or the form and the meaning, faithfulness constraints evaluate the relation of association between the input and output rather than of identity of the two (Mattausch, 2004). In addition, since markedness constraints are output oriented, and the output differs in comprehension and production, constraints may bring different influences in OT semantics and OT syntax (Hendriks & Rij, 2009). This led linguists to wonder if OT semantics and OT syntax share the same constraints. Some researchers proposed that the grammar only differ in the faithfulness constraints (Pater, 2004); some contended that there is an asymmetric grammar for comprehension and production (Boersma, 1998; Hendriks et al., 2005).

Nevertheless, these claims are less convincing because different sets of constraints for different performance do not seem to take economy into account. As a matter of fact, it would be more feasible if both comprehension and production contain the same set of constraints and the same order of these constraints. What differs between comprehension and production is that some constraints will only be activated in one direction of optimization and not in the other (Smolensky, 1996; Fikkert & de Hoop, 2009).

OT semantics and OT syntax cannot be independent of each other since both theories discuss the relation between the form and the meaning (Zeevat, 2001).

Wilson (2001) suggested that there is a model of the syntax-semantics interface that

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merges comprehension and production. The idea of conflating the interpretive and expressive optimization was raised by Blutner (2000), who has pioneered a first version of bidirectional OT. A sentence is optimal only when both its structure is the optimal one for a particular interpretation and its interpretation is the optimal one for its structure (Ackema & de Hoop, 2006). The bidirectional OT forces the hearer or the speaker to simultaneously take both his and the interlocutor’s perspectives into consideration. This is essential in adult communication, whereas children under 6-7 years old have not acquired yet (Chapman & Miller, 1975). As noted by Fikkert & de Hoop (2009), children may interpret both unmarked and marked forms as the unmarked regardless of the reason why a speaker who could have used unmarked forms generate the marked forms. Therefore, not until children learn to optimize from meaning to form and from form to meaning simultaneously have they acquired an intact adult language.

1.2.3.1 Comprehension

Unlike OT syntax, which elucidates a speaker’s two opposing principles of generating a sentence, that is, to mark every semantically relevant property of the input by some syntactic feature for a hearer’s convenience and to use minimal effort for the speaker’s economy, it seems that the same conflict does not exist in OT semantics because if an interpreter wants to minimize his efforts, he may probably run into the situation of not finding the speaker’s intention. In other words, the hearer attempts to make the most of the signal he receives rather than considering economy.

Accordingly, if there are conflicting constraints in OT semantics, they must derive from constraints OT syntax (Blutner, 2000; Zeevat, 2001).

The central concept of OT semantics is that semantic interpretation is on the basis of OT syntax. Blutner (2000) contended that the proper treatment of OT in the

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interpretation has to take both OT semantics and OT syntax simultaneously. He used anaphor resolution, as shown in (11), as an evidence to illustrate the existence of syntactic representation in OT semantics. When interpreting (11b), a hearer knows the coreferential reading is impossible because there is a blocking effect caused by the form (11a), which obeys a weak constraint saying ‘bound NPs are marked reflexive.’

Knowing the failure of coreferential reading of (11b), the hearer must have the syntactic representation of the more cheaply generated sentence (11a) in mind. The interpretation from a semantic presentation to the syntactic representation and from the syntactic representation to the semantic representation is known as bidirection of optimization.

(11) a. Johni washes himselfi.

b. *Johni washes himi. (Blutner, 2000: 194 (31, b))

Since OT semantics is established on the basis of OT syntax, most constraints for the interpretation are from the production. There is just a small body of universal constraints in OT semantics that assist interpreters in deciding between different readings allowed by OT syntax (Zeevat, 2001). Compared to the constraints in OT syntax, which are assumed to be hard, immune to contextual variation, the constraints in OT semantics are rather soft constraints, which are subject to context effects (Keller, 2000). Therefore, except for the constraints derived from OT syntax, OT semantics involve constraints relevant to pragmatics. Only does the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information integrate in a system of ranked constraints will the set of constraints correctly derive the optimal interpretations (Chapman & Miller, 1975; Hendriks & de Hoop, 2001).

According to Zeevat (2001), the optimal interpretation at the sentence level is selected by two steps. Firstly, the OT syntax system determines the set {Content :

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Form is an optimal form for the content Content}. That is to say, the optimal pairs have already selected before the evaluation by semantic constraints. These selected optimal pairs form a set of generator for semantic evaluation. Secondly, one of the elements in the set that optimally satisfies the interpretation constraints is determined.

The pairs chosen at the end of the whole process give the form the possible interpretations.

1.2.3.2 Production

In OT syntax, what the input might look like is much less clear. Similarly, whether competing candidates have the same logical forms is still controversial. Some scholars, including Müller & Sternefeld (2000) and Grimshaw (1997), maintained that candidates generated from the input should be realizations of the same predicate or argument structure and have non-distinct logical forms (LF), while other scholars, including Legendre et al. (1998), claimed that there is no need for the candidates to have the same LF, and the LF structure of the optimal output will determine its interpretation. Another issue still under debate is whether the candidates are finite.

Some contended that candidate sets are typically large, often infinite (Gramshaw, 1997; Pesetsky, 1998), while others suggested that they cannot be infinite (Müller &

Sternefeld, 2000). In addition, scholars have not reached an agreement on the syntactic level at which the constraints are assessed. Some proposed that candidates are evaluated at S-Structure (Grimshaw, 1997), yet some claimed that they are evaluated at S-Structure, D-Structure and LF (Müller & Sternefeld, 2000). These unsettled issues reveal the fact that OT syntax is a rather fresh field, which needs much more studies to make it robust. Since OT syntax is still in shaping, there has been no particular set of constraints for syntax (Stevenson & Smolensky, 2005;

Zeevat, 2001). Nevertheless, constraints can be derived from Government and

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Binding Theory (GB), as suggested by Müller & Sternefeld (2000), or from the facts of sentence processing, as recommended by Stevenson & Smolensky (2005).

Fortunately, some constraints born from GB and from empirical studies of processing have been proposed and may offer a basis for explaining the current study in OT framework. We will discuss the constraints in detail in Chapter Five.

1.3 Linguistic Properties of Complex Sentences & Their Impacts on