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No description available.

The goal of this thesis is to explore alignment and adjacency of constituents in the framework of Optimality Theory. Under the notion of alignment, certain categories, prosodic and morphological, are required to correspond to certain other categories, prosodic or morphological. The alignment of categories is achieved through the operation of constraints which evaluate the wellformedness of outputs. The constraints on the alignment of categories and the ranking of these constraints are examined with emphasis on two Australian languages, Warlpiri and Arrernte. The aim is to provide an adequate account in the theory of Optimality of the processes of stress, reduplication and vowel harmony evident in the data. The thesis expands on the range of edges for the alignment of feet. Foot alignment is developed to account for the fact that the edges of intonational phrases, morphemes, and specific morphemes, as well as phonologically specific syllables, play an active role in determining the location of feet. An additional finding is that the location of feet can also be determined by adjacency, resolving conflict between morphological alignment, and ensuring rhythmic harmony. Requirements on adjacency are further supported to account for segmental harmony, where harmony provides evidence for the simultaneous action of segmental and prosodic processes. The analysis provides a unified account of binary and ternary rhythm recommending modifications to alignment of certain categories, thereby laying the groundwork to deal with variation. The account of variation involves relaxing certain constraints. In addition, the notion of rhythm is expanded to account for onset sensitivity to stress, with evidence of this sensitivity found in reduplication and allomorphy. The interaction of prosodic categories with each other and with morphological categories can be directly captured in OT, providing a unified and coherent account of phenomena, some of which were previously seen as exceptions and, therefore unrelated and arbitrary.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: William J. Idsardi, Dept. of Linguistics. Includes bibliographical references.

A “last resort” is argued to be nothing more than a winning, i.e. grammatical form, once it is understood in terms of competition between alternative candidates. It is a theorem of OT that we find last resort effects, since it follows from the nature of competition and constraint interaction.

We discuss the problem of optimal allocation of the design points of an experiment for the case where the trials may fail with non-zero probability. Numerical results for D-optimal designs are given for estimating the coefficients of a polynomial regression. For small sample sizes these designs may deviate substantially from the corresponding designs in the case of certain response. They can be less efficient, but are less affected by failing trials. (author's abstract) / Series: Forschungsberichte / Institut für Statistik

The variogram plays a central role in the analysis of geostatistical data. A valid variogram model is selected and the parameters of that model are estimated before kriging (spatial prediction) is performed. These inference procedures are generally based upon examination of the empirical variogram, which consists of average squared differences of data taken at sites lagged the same distance apart in the same direction. The ability of the analyst to estimate variogram parameters efficiently is affected significantly by the sampling design, i.e., the spatial configuration of sites where measurements are taken. In this paper, we propose design criteria that, in contrast to some previously proposed criteria oriented towards kriging with a known variogram, emphasize the accurate estimation of the variogram. These criteria are modifications of design criteria that are popular in the context of (nonlinear) regression models. The two main distinguishing features of the present context are that the addition of a single site to the design produces as many new lags as there are existing sites and hence also produces that many new squared differences from which the variograrn is estimated. Secondly, those squared differences are generally correlated, which inhibits the use of many standard design methods that rest upon the assumption of uncorrelated errors. Several approaches to design construction which account for these features are described and illustrated with two examples. We compare their efficiency to simple random sampling and regular and space-filling designs and find considerable improvements. (author's abstract) / Series: Forschungsberichte / Institut für Statistik

Cross-linguistically, the notion 'minimal word' has proved fruitful grounds for explanatory accounts of requirements imposed on morphological and phonological constituents. Word minimality requires that a lexical word includes the main-stressed foot of the language. As a result, subminimal words are augmented to a bimoraic foot through diverse strategies like vowel lengthening, syllable addition, etc. Even languages with numerous monomoraic lexical words may impose a minimality requirement on derived words that would otherwise be smaller than a well-formed foot. In addition, the minimal word has been argued to play a central role in characterizing a prosodic base within some morpho-prosodic constituent for the application of processes such as reduplication and infixation. / The goal of this thesis is to offer an explanation as to why and in which contexts grammars may prefer a prosodic constituent which may not be reducible to a bimoraic foot. I provide explanatory accounts for a number of cases where the prosodic structure of morphological or phonological constituents cannot be defined as coextensive with the main stressed foot of the language. To this end, I propose to add to the theory of Prosodic Structure (Chen 1987; Selkirk 1984, 1986, 1989, 1995; Selkirk and Shen 1990) within an optimality-theoretic framework by providing evidence for a new level within the Prosodic Hierarchy, that of the Prosodic Stem (PrStem). / An important aspect of the model of prosodic structure proposed here is a notion of headship which follows directly from the Prosodic Hierarchy itself and from the metrical grouping of prosodic constituents. A theory of prosodic heads is developed which assumes that structural constraints can impose well-formedness requirements on the prosodic shape and the distribution of heads within morphological and phonological constituents.

Building on earlier work, notably Kager (1993, 1995) and framed in Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), this thesis presents a theory of foot structure in which the asymmetric maximal expansions of iambic and trochaic feet (cf. the Iambic/Trochaic Law: 1TL, e.g. Hayes 1995) are accounted for by a single constraint, HEAD GOVERNMENT (Mellander 2001c, 2002b). The present analysis devotes special attention to a class of quantitative processes in trochaic systems which generate uneven (HL) trochaic feet. In contrast to previous analyses (e.g. Hayes 1995), such processes are shown to be of phonological rather than phonetic nature in certain languages, and the ramifications of this conclusion are explored with regard to a variety of issues in prosodic theory. / The evidence for the phonological status of (HL)-creating processes comes from published data on Mohawk, Selayarese, Gidabal, and Oromo, as well as original field data from Central Slovak. Following Piggott (1998, 2001) and Mellander (2001a, c, 2002b), these processes are seen to follow from H EAD PROMINENCE, a constraint which requires greater relative intrinsic prominence in the head of a prosodic constituent. Since HEAD PROMINENCE is sensitive to intrinsic prominence, its effects are shown to hold irrespective of derived prominence resulting from the application of stress rules. H EAD PROMINENCE is also shown to play a central role in accounting for diphthongal quantity-prominence relations, where cross-linguistic patterns of long vowel diphthongization in bimoraic syllables mirror those of (HL)-creating processes in disyllabic feet. / In contrast to previous work on HEAD GOVERNMENT (Mellander 2001c, 2002b), the absence of languages which require violations of this constraint implies that it is universally undominated, contra the standard Optimality Theoretic assumption of universal constraint violability. This view is also supported by the analysis of ternary stress systems, where the absence of unattested quaternary and quinternary systems relies crucially on the inviolability of HEAD G OVERNMENT. / A final aspect of this thesis is the development of a preliminary model to explain asymmetries in structure and markedness between iambic and trochaic systems, including distributional asymmetries, Iambic Lengthening, and the ITL. Based on work by Van de Vijver (1998) this approach abandons traditional symmetric notions of iambicity and trochaicity in favour of an asymmetric pair of constraints---PEAK-FIRST and *E DGEMOST. Iambic/trochaic asymmetries consequently emerge as artefacts of constraint interaction and require no additional theoretical machinery.

The goal of this thesis is to explore alignment and adjacency of constituents in the framework of Optimality Theory. Under the notion of alignment, certain categories, prosodic and morphological, are required to correspond to certain other categories, prosodic or morphological. The alignment of categories is achieved through the operation of constraints which evaluate the wellformedness of outputs. The constraints on the alignment of categories and the ranking of these constraints are examined with emphasis on two Australian languages, Warlpiri and Arrernte. The aim is to provide an adequate account in the theory of Optimality of the processes of stress, reduplication and vowel harmony evident in the data. The thesis expands on the range of edges for the alignment of feet. Foot alignment is developed to account for the fact that the edges of intonational phrases, morphemes, and specific morphemes, as well as phonologically specific syllables, play an active role in determining the location of feet. An additional finding is that the location of feet can also be determined by adjacency, resolving conflict between morphological alignment, and ensuring rhythmic harmony. Requirements on adjacency are further supported to account for segmental harmony, where harmony provides evidence for the simultaneous action of segmental and prosodic processes. The analysis provides a unified account of binary and ternary rhythm recommending modifications to alignment of certain categories, thereby laying the groundwork to deal with variation. The account of variation involves relaxing certain constraints. In addition, the notion of rhythm is expanded to account for onset sensitivity to stress, with evidence of this sensitivity found in reduplication and allomorphy. The interaction of prosodic categories with each other and with morphological categories can be directly captured in OT, providing a unified and coherent account of phenomena, some of which were previously seen as exceptions and, therefore unrelated and arbitrary.