ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Optimality Theory (OT) addresses issues of learnability more effectively than other theories, and benefits from its ability to incorporate explicit predictive mechanisms. At its core, an OT grammar implements a search procedure that finds the surface form that is most compatible with the relevant underlying representation, given the specific properties of the particular language. The set of potential output forms produced by the module Gen is, in classic OT, assumed to be both infinite and independent of the properties of the input. In OT, the "needs of the speaker" are largely expressed via markedness constraints, which tend to require that surface representations have certain properties and, by implication, that they do not have some other properties. Another commonly cited advantage of OT is the resolution of the "duplication problem", whereby apparent restrictions on the form of underlying representations are reproduced in dynamic alternations.
