Optimality Theory and Sound Change

초록

The goal of this paper is to overview how historical sound changes are characterized within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & prince 1995, etc.). This paper focuses on the following questions: i) How are sound changes formalized or modelled within the framework of Optimality Theory?; ii) What triggers a sound change? ;iii) Can sound changes be predictable?. In order to find an answer to these questions, we will review Jakobs (1995), Zubritskaya (1995), Holt (1997) and Bermudez-Otero (1999).