Workshop: Is the Best Good Enough? Optimality in Syntax, Spring 1995 in Cambridge, MA

9421404 摘要 语言学理论的最新发展促使人们重新思考语法整体结构中最优性考虑的性质和作用。从这项研究中出现的是这样一种观点，即语法的不同组成部分相互作用，从一组候选词中产生最佳选择。 这一想法背离了生成语法中语言层次输出的更传统的方法，通过生成语法，规则、原则和约束相互作用，以确定每个语言对象的语法状态，而独立于可能竞争者的状态。 在过去的一两年里，乔姆斯基的最简方案中的“经济”概念以及普林斯和斯摩棱斯基最初为语音学发展的优选理论引发了人们对优选性在语言学中作用的兴趣。随着对这些概念的研究探索了新的分析可能性，出现了许多问题。这些问题包括对推导的限制和对表示的限制之间的旧争论的新版本，以及关于候选集的性质的全新问题，此外还有关于可学习性和可计算性的复杂且尚未完善的问题。 这类问题正在占据当前辩论的中心舞台。然而，这些问题尚未得到系统的讨论，无论是在印刷品上还是在公开讲习班上。因此，将于1995年5月19日至21日在麻省理工学院召开一个讨论这些问题的讲习班。 讲习班的明确目的是比较各种方法并确定进一步研究的问题。讨论将尽可能集中，希望在为期三天的会议期间能够取得真正的科学进展。

9421404 ABSTRACT Recent developments In linguistic theory have led to a reconsideration of the nature and role of optimality considerations in the overall architecture of grammar. Emerging from this research is the idea that different components of grammar interact to yield the best choice from a set of canidates. This idea departs from more traditional approaches to the output of linguistic levels in generative grammar, by which rules, principles and constraints interact to determine the grammatical status of each linguistic object independent of the status of possible competitors. In the past year or two, interest in the linguistic role of optimality has been sparked by the sharpened notions of "economy" in Chomsky's Minimalist Program and by Prince and Smolensky's Optimality Theory, originally developed for phonology. As work on these notions has explored new analytic possibilities, many questions have arisen. These include new versions of an old debate between constraints on derivations and constraints on representations, and entirely new questions about the nature of the candidate set, in addition to complex and as yet imperfectly formulated questions about learnability and computability. These sorts of questions are coming to occupy a center stage in current debate. Nonetheless, the questions have not been systematically discussed, either in print or in a public workshop. Therefore, a workshop addressing these issues will convene at MIT May 19-21, 1995. The explicit aim of the workshop is to compare approaches and define questions for further research. The discussion will be as focused as possible, in the hope that genuine scientific progress can be made during the three days of the conference.