Linguistic pragmatics is one of the fastest growing fields in contemporary theoretical linguistics. It grew from the influential work of philosophers such as Grice, Austin, Stalnaker, Lewis, and others on context and communicative inferences. It engages directly with general rationality, theory of mind, and systems of intention. One of the major debates in pragmatics has been where to precisely draw the line between semantic phenomena and pragmatic phenomena. In this chapter, three classical and influential ideas on the nature of pragmatics, courtesy of Grice (1975), Stalnaker (1978), and Lewis (1979), are discussed. This discussion leads to three further general philosophical frameworks for separating semantic from pragmatic processes and analyses that have roots in the aforementioned triumvirate: (P1) the indexical conception, (P2) the cognitivist conception, and (P3) social-inferential conception. Each option offers a different demarcation. Finally, three linguistic theories of pragmatics are selected as candidate representations of the contemporary state of the art: (L1) optimality-theoretic pragmatics, (L2) game-theoretic pragmatics, and (L3) Bayesian pragmatics. It’s shown that each of these prominent frameworks exploit the philosophical demarcations (P1–P3) presented to different degrees.

The third chapter is the first to exclusively address core linguistic issues by comparison of the ancient Indian and modern Western traditions. It addresses rule interaction, an issue which has been a core topic of research in Pāṇinian linguistics, and which has also been a central issue in the development of modern phonological theory, in many respects driving theoretical developments over the last fifty years. A central focus is on the Elsewhere Principle, also known as 'Pāṇini's principle', and on the outworking of this fundamental principle in different phonological theories including Lexical Phonology, Declarative Phonology and Optimality Theory.

Stress placement in English loanwords into Mirpur Pahari (MP) is used to explore whether a usage-based approach can inform the incorporation of external factors (e.g., exposure to a donor language; here, English) into formal phonological analysis of loanword adaptation alongside internal factors (e.g., phonology of the recipient language; here, MP). Stress placement in English loanwords into MP shows across- and within-speaker variation between conformity to MP stress rules (formalized in classical Optimality Theory; OT) and retention of stress on the syllable that is stressed in English; this is a challenge for most theories of loanword adaptation. In our hybrid approach, variable adaptation patterns in individual speakers’ loanword realizations in production data from twelve MP speakers in the UK are correlated with degree of exposure to English, operationalized as vocabulary size, and a unified formal account is sketched through usage-based weighting of constraints in Stochastic OT.

This co-authored chapter traces the development of generative and other formal approaches to phonology from 1960-2000. After discussing empiricism, positivism, and logical positivism, Prague Circle functional phonology (Jakobson, Trubetzkoy 1939) and American phonology (Harris 1950s), it turns to Generative Phonology, launched by Chomsky and Halle (Sound Pattern of English, SPE 1968), with its algorithmic mentalism: explicit formulation; formal simplicity used to choose between analyses; derivational rules (from underlying to surface form); no phonemic ‘contrast’; ‘abstract’ (non-occurring) segments can ‘trigger’ a rule.

From the 1960s to the end of the century, there were serious criticisms of SPE and debates about a series of new approaches: ‘concrete’ Natural Generative and Natural Phonology; Lexical Phonology; and, with the integration of the syllable, Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. The late 1980s and 1990s brought (rule) ‘conspiracies’ and ‘harmonic phonology,’ which ultimately led to Optimality Theory (OT), in which an algorithm selects a surface representation that satisfies a set of ranked (universal) constraints. In 2000+, OT was the most popular formal approach.

Other approaches studied the relationship of phonetics and phonology, linked phonology and psychological experimentation, variation in phonology, and so forth.

This chapter explicates the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) theory of case assignment and outlines its OT implementation and its extension to instrumental case assignment and case syncretism. The ’non-OT’ theory of case assignment in RRG is a version of dependent case theory that assigns nominative, accusative, absolutive and ergative case in terms of the ranking of actor and undergoer, while its OT-based counterpart defines accusative, ergative, dative and instrumental case with reference to (non-)macrorole status, conflates nominative and absolutive as an any-argument case, and derives the variation of case syncretism from the case hierarchy of Silverstein (1980/1993).

The introduction presents a general discussion of syntactic theories, contrasting transformational approaches with those that adopt feature-structural representations to show how they provide differing cognitive models of the human language faculty. The three key components of the OLG framework – Linking Theory (LT), Optimality Theory (OT) and Competing Grammars (CG) – are briefly laid out. These are motivated by phenomena that necessitate multiple levels of case, linking between levels that permits mismatches in some grammars, a means of restricting the linking apparatus while still capturing the data, and a cogent account of morphosyntactic variation. One such phenomenon is introduced: case-marking facts in Insular Scandinavian. The dative–nominative Icelandic predicates are contrasted with the Faroese dative–accusative pattern, along with plural number agreement with the object in Icelandic versus non-agreement in Faroese. Next, an overview is presented of the motivation for each theoretical component of OLG, in turn outlining the advantages of LT, OT and the CG hypothesis. The introduction concludes with an outline of the specific empirical findings from surveys conducted on the Faroe Islands and Iceland, including quirky case predicates and passives, followed by an overview of the book’s structure.

Chapter 3 outlines OLG’s core components, giving the prerequisite theoretical background for understanding the data analyses that follow. The Linking Theory section answers questions regarding levels of lexical–semantic and syntactic representation, mapping between levels, and the architecture of grammar. A short review is presented of the core propositions of Optimality Theory (OT) approaches to syntax, including a list of proposed constraints governing case-assignment. Linking Theory originates in Kiparsky (1997); the central innovation is that three levels of case – abstract, morphosyntactic and morphological – are distinguished, and the same set of binary features is seen to operate at all levels, though with level-appropriate realisation. The introduction to OT focuses on its application to the syntactic module of grammar; a key point is that a huge number of unlikely candidates are harmonically bounded by undominated or high-ranked constraints. Such markedness constraints interact with faithfulness constraints enforcing realisation of all features present in the input, preventing omission of input material other than in highly marked forms. This allows us to capture long-standing generalisations about phrase structure without having to claim they will be completely unviolated across languages: language-specific rankings may result in more or less marked structures.

Chapter 6 presents new data on Faroese personal and impersonal passives, in addition to a discussion of case preservation and availability of passive with the dative-subject verbs. First, data from further Faroese surveys are investigated. The analysis demonstrates that the proposed constraints regulating the passive, here simply the addition of PARSE, covers all relevant sentence types in both Faroese and Icelandic personal passives, and with DEP and ARGSP also the impersonal passives. The argumentation builds on Kiparsky (2013), providing additional empirical support for the Linking Theory approach. An important finding is that the facts of case substitution in the active and case non-preservation in the passive are related: it is argued that there are preserving versus non-preserving grammars, represented by the two competing rankings. Speakers have access to both rankings, and choice of verb strongly predicts which grammar is activated. This approach predicts patterns that emerge from the constraint rankings themselves. The non-preserving grammar (activated, for example, with uses of the verb ‘like’) implies availability of passive and nominative substitution, both of which hold true; likewise, the preserving grammar predicts unavailability of passive and case substitution, which again turn out to be true for the verb ‘need’.

This chapter provides a survey of the most frequent methods of the treatment of inconsistencies in Optimality Theory (OT).raises the problem of whether our findings in the preceding chapters can be supported by the analysis of a linguistic theory that makes conscious and deliberate use of inconsistencies.will provide a brief overview of the basic ideas of OT. In , we will reveal the types of inconsistency in Optimality Theory with the help of an instructive case study without applying the terminology and the notation of the p-model. Some passages of René Kager’s argumentation in connection with the introduction of two correspondence constraints will be presented, which are quite simple but seem to be especially illuminating concerning the emergence and the treatment of inconsistencies in OT. In , we will analyse the structure and the treatment of these inconsistencies with the help of the p-model.will infer the solution to the problem mentioned.

Umlaut and ablaut as morphological (rather than phonological) processes, affix order and bracketing paradoxes, subcategorization and stratum ordering, critique of Optimality Theory with respect to its ability to account for major phonological patterns in English, as described in rule terms in the preceding chapters. These include stress, vowel shift, and laxing. Special attention is given to opacity. Opacity presents the same problem to Optimality Theory as it does to pre-Generative structuralist phonology, due to its output orientation. Velar Softening is opaque in medicate (underapplication) and in criticize (overapplication). Various patches proposed to deal with this issue have involved the reintroduction of the intermediate derivational stages that Optimality Theory was designed to eliminate. These patches do not allow for Duke of York derivations such as that which appears in English in the derivation of pressure. The device of stratal Optimality Theory, combining level ordering and constraints differently ranked on different strata, can account for some Duke of York derivations but at the expense of making some postlexical processes lexical.

Chapter 5 deals with (asymmetric) differential object marking (DOM), a phenomenon occurring in over 300 languages whereby the object of a verb can be either marked or unmarked for morphological case, depending on a number of factors. These factors have to do with the individuation/prominence of the object, often its definiteness, specificity and animacy value. The chapter begins with illustrations of the phenomenon in several languages, showing its sensitivity to different properties of the object. The reasoning behind DOM is then discussed. Two specific proposals are considered: one treats DOM as a signal of higher transitivity; the other views it as a disambiguation mechanism whereby a non-prototypical object is marked and, as a result, not confused with the subject. In addition to features of the object, properties of the verb have been argued to play a role in DOM; this relation is considered in a separate section. Further, several cross-linguistic analyses of the phenomenon are reviewed.