Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

P. COUTSOUGERA
6.1 Selection of the ❀candidate
With regard to the selection of the ❀candidate, McCarthy’s (1998) bases
his proposal on the notion of harmonic evaluation, which is central in
OT:
“There are three main principles involved in the choice of the sympathetic
candidate:
(1) Harmonic Evaluation
The sympathetic candidate is the most harmonic member of the subset of
candidates available under (2) (among the candidates which obey the
selector constraint, incurs the fewest violations of Faithfulness
constraints)
(2) Confinement to C (+F)
Selection of the sympathetic candidate ℵ F is confined to C (+F), the subset
of candidates that obey the I-O faithfulness constraint F.
(3) Invisibility of Sympathy Constraints
Selection of sympathetic candidates is done without reference to
Sympathy Constraints” [McCarthy 98: 8].
As far as invisibility in (3) is concerned, McCarthy claims that
“…the choice of ℵ F can’t depend on performance on a constraint that
needs to know what ℵ F is in order to be evaluated. … It also restricts the
descriptive power of the theory in an important way, and this helps to
sharpen the differences between sympathy and standard rule-based
serialism.” [McCarthy 98: 12].
6.2 Status of ❀candidate and ❀constraint
The ❀candidate is almost always identical to an intermediate stage of a
serial derivation. Although the ❀candidate is selected in a valid fashion
and according to specific conditions, the fact that another level of
representation is indeed needed for the correct output to be chosen, could
be used in favour of Serialism.
The connection therefore between classic Serialism and ST is that
the ❀candidate has the same status as the output of an intermediate stage
rule in a serial derivation (apart from some cases of multiple-opacity,
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