Input, Output Candidates, Markedness Constraints, and Ineffability in OT-LFG

Tara Mohanan and KP Mohanan

Abstract

Proceedings of LFG03; CSLI Publications On-line

This paper tries to clarify the concepts of inputs, output candidates, faithfulness constraints, and markedness constraints in Optimality-Theoretic syntax in the context of the multidimensional architecture in Lexical Functional Grammar, and to explore the consequences of the clarification of these concepts to the problem of ineffability. We propose that multidimensional markedness constraints expressing the correspondences between syntactic and semantic representations correctly derive at least some instances of ineffability without appealing to bi-directional optimization.