Optimality Theory (Languages And Linguistics)

A theory of generative grammar is proposed in which universal grammar is given by a set of constraints --- or better, criteria of decision between alternatives -- and individual grammars consist of a ranking of those constraints. A number of applications are studied and the theory is laid out in formal detail. Distinctions and similarities between some related and opposing conceptions are examined.

This paper attempts to study the phonological variation between Odia and Sambalpuri, a variety of Odia using the Optimality Theoretic framework (Prince and Smolensky, 1993). Since Sambalpuri is a distinctively different variety, the paper primarily considers and discusses three phenomena, (i) the epenthesis of /r/ in the coda position in Sambalpuri verbs, (ii) the deletion of vowels (both monopthongs and diphthongs except /aɪ/) and (c) the lack of open syllables which makes Sambalpuri strikingly different form Odia Phonology. The phonological changes in Odia construction such epenthesis of /r/ as in /bʊlɪba:/> [bʊlba:r] 'to roam' and deletion of a wordmedial and word-final vowel as in /pɔ.ɖhɪ.ba:/> [paɖʰ.ba:r] 'to study' and /b h ɔlɔ/> [b h ɔl] 'good' respectively in Sambalpuri show how Sambalpuri prefers closed syllables while Odia prefers Open syllables. Odia, this paper tries to put forth, examine and analyse the differences and similarities between the varieties using the OT approach in order to exhibit the difference. In addition to the changes which make the syllables of Sambalpuri different from those of Odia, other phonological changes such as Vowel harmony are also observed in certain constructions of Odia words. For instance when /soɪba: / > [sʊɪba:r] 'to sleep' the vowel /o/ becomes harmonious with the following high vowel /ɪ/ and raised to /ʊ/. However, the diphthong /aɪ/ is adapted without any harmony. Apart from some newly created constraints, some well-known constraints are also used like *CODA, CONTIG-IO and IDENT (asp) to capture the phonological changes occurring when an Odia word comes in contact and is used in Sambalpuri.

Abstract: This chapter discusses the application of Optimality Theory to phonological change, and reviews work that treats various aspects of historical phonology, including segmental and prosodic changes, analogy, paradigmatic leveling, and other shifts due to functional considerations of systemic markedness and perceptual or listener-based factors that pose challenges to the original framework of the standard theory.

Keywords: sound change, comparison with derivational- or rule-based phonology, Optimality Theory and modeling of phonologization, analogy, restructuring, lexicalization and variation, gestural model, Dispersion Theory, markedness, grounding, perception, lexicon optimization, alternative models of Optimality Theory

Languages: English, French, Germanic, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Latin, Leonese, Polish, Portuguese, Romance, Russian, Slavic, Spanish.

The formation of standard Finnish male nicknames in terms of Optimality Theory (OT) is described. Formation of these nicknames is subject to phonological, morphological, segmental and prosodic restrictions and often proceeds via suffixation of a truncated, left-anchored stem, invariably producing a disyllabic, semantically narrow nickname with no coda, long vowels or diphthongs. Such foot binary-restricted items never include a second syllable onset. Disyllabic names are regularly shortened (CV.CV), while mono- and trisyllabic names often become geminate nicknames (CVC.CV) through expressive marking.
Geminate names lose the coda consonant in the nickname. Very long names are truncated and sometimes take an additional suffix. Nicknames
and their suffixes are strictly controlled to have either mixed harmonic back (a, o, u) and neutral front vowels (e, i), or only harmonic front vowels (y, ö, ä). Curious exceptions to the rules are found with names containing a word-internal sonorant, which therefore become uniquely suffixed nicknames through a Sonorant Sequencing Principle (SSP) constraint, leading to a three-consonant cluster and a shift of the sonorant from the syllable edge (CVCC.CV). Some nicknames have a limited geographical distribution (i.e. they are dialectal only), while a few others exhibit traces of diminutive markings. The data suggest the following ranking order for nickname formation in Finnish according to OT:
FtBin >> SSP for resonant-containing or RlzRed for trisyllabic >> AnchorLeftBT >> NoLong-Vowel >> NoDiphthong >> NoCoda >> MaximalityBT.

This paper deals with the vowel system in Iraqi Arabic and in Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. It shows within the framework of the optimality theory the indispensability of the vowel system for the Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. This indispensability results from the multifunctionality of the Case system in these two variants of Arabic. In Case of the Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, the optimality theory has its own means to keep this vowel system unaltered in the output. The best way to be faithful to this vowel system is to put the faithfulness constraint of the optimality theory on the very left edge of the constraint hierarchy; this procedure ensures then that the output and the input will be identical. In contrast to Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, Iraqi Arabic does not exhibit case affixes on nominal phrases, therefore the ranking of the constraints hierarchy will look very different from that of Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. This dysfunctionality of the vowel system for the Iraqi Arabic can be shown by the lower-ranking of the faithfulness constrains on the hierarchy. As a result, vowel affixes must be syncopated

Research in anthropology has shown that kin terminologies have a complex combinatorial structure and vary systematically across cultures. This article argues that universals and variation in kin terminology result from the interaction of (1) an innate conceptual structure of kinship, homologous with conceptual structure in other domains, and (2) principles of optimal, “grammatical” communication active in language in general. Kin terms from two languages, English and Seneca, show how terminologies that look very different on the surface may result from variation in the rankings of a universal set of constraints. Constraints on kin terms form a system: some are concerned with absolute features of kin (sex), others with the position (distance and direction) of kin in “kinship space,” others with groups and group boundaries (matrilines, patrilines, generations, etc.). Also, kin terms sometimes extend indefinitely via recursion, and recursion in kin terminology has parallels with recursion in other areas of language. Thus the study of kinship sheds light on two areas of cognition, and their phylogeny. The conceptual structure of kinship seems to borrow its organization from the conceptual structure of space, while being specialized for representing genealogy. And the grammar of kinship looks like the product of an evolved grammar faculty, opportunistically active across traditional domains of semantics, syntax, and phonology. Grammar is best understood as an offshoot of a uniquely human capacity for playing coordination games.

The data puzzle of Proto-Nordic rounding and front umlauts is addressed by positing an undominated markedness constraint that bans [±round] moraic stem-final segments. A related constraint restricts the assignment of [±round] in affixes. These constraints impact on how stem-final triggers spread features to target vowels, which proves a good predictor of the so far poorly understood distribution of umlaut in the lexicon. Since these constraints refer both to syllabification and to specification of contrastive features, the paper applies a tentative reconciliation of constraint-based Stratal Phonology with Contrastive Hier-archy Theory, which postulates universal organisation of emergent features in binary feature hierarchies. Stem-level segments are accordingly assumed to be stripped of redundant overspecification by stem-level constraints, while umlaut was enacted in word-level phonology.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Un-ported" license.

The aim of this work is to present an overview of the main approaches to phonologicalvariation, both categorical and optional, that have been put forward within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 2004). There are other overviews in the literature (e.g. Anttila, 2007), but the present discussion focuses on the phenomena found in the weakening processes that fi nal consonants exhibit in Spanish. Special attention is paid to the behavior of the sibilant /s/ because there are many qualitative and quantitative studies that thoroughly describe its weakening in the zones where this phenomenon occurs.

"This dissertation explores the phonological representation and the phonetic realization of prosodic prominence in Persian. It comprises two related parts: the first part addresses prosodic phrasing in Persian sentences, while the second part deals with phonetic correlates of prosodic prominence by reporting conducted production and perception experiments. The phonological part is carried out within the framework of Prosodic Phonology, and aims at determining the prosodic structure of Persian from foot level, up to utterance level. By adopting Optimality Theory, it tries to explain how morphosyntax-phonology interface constraints together with prosodic markedness constraints form the prosodic structure of the language. It begins with foot level and suggests that in languages like Persian which have one non-iterative weight-insensitive edgemost stress per word, a single foot which is edge-aligned with the minimal Phonological Word best explains the prosodic pattern at word level. This part also focuses on prosodic differences between lexical words and weak function words (clitics) and shows that any attempt to describe the prosodic structure of Persian without addressing this crucial difference, will not be able to provide explanation for a wide range of phenomena. This study suggests that proclitics and enclitics behave asymmetrically in Persian: enclitics prosodize as affixal clitics, while proclitics are free clitics. Next, it addresses the problem of weak function words which are not a part of their preceding or following XPs, and demonstrates how the phonological well-formedness constraints determine the direction of cliticization in these XP-external function words. It also deals with the issue of clitic clusters in Persian which was not explored in the previous works. Another contribution of this study is reclassification of so-called exceptionally initial-stressed words.
This dissertation also deals with the longstanding problem of Ezafe constructions and by reviewing previous proposals on the prosodic structure of these constructions, based on phonological evidence and phonetic observations suggests that each lexical word in an Ezafe construction maps onto a Phonological Phrase, and the Ezafe morpheme phrases with its preceding material to satisfy the phonological well-formedness constraint ONSET. The prosodic structure of XP-external clitics such as the Ezafe morpheme is explained by adopting a syntax-prosody interface constraint namely MAP-XP, that bans two sister XPs inside a single Phonological Phrase. This study proposes a ranking of OT constraints by which the prosodic structure of Ezafe constructions and other syntactic phrases such as DPs and VPs can be predicted and explained uniformly. It also proposes that the interaction between morphosyntax-phonology interface constraints and prosodic markedness constraints determine prosodic constituents of all levels and their heads, and other constraints require the heads of phonological phrases to be associated with audible accents. The rightmost Phonological Phrase in an Intonational Phrase is the head. This head associates with an accent which is perceived more prominently than the other accents. One further issue explored here is the fact that in lexicalized Ezafe constructions and also in the ones containing given/old information, some words may appear without audible accent.
The phonetic difference between final and non-final accents is the subject of the second half of this dissertation. Previous research on Persian has shown that the main acoustic correlate of prosodic prominence is f0. This study reports production and perception experiment results conducted in order to answer the question whether final (nuclear) accents are perceived more prominently than the other ones only because they are not followed by any other accent, or because they are phonetically different from the non-final (pre-nuclear) accents. The results of production experiments reveal that nuclear accented syllables have a lower f0 range, but a longer duration in comparison with pre-nuclear accented ones. Other parameters such as overall intensity, spectral tilt and vowel quality do not differ significantly in the two types of accents. Perception experiments reveal that native listeners can indeed distinguish the two types of accents without having access to the portion of the utterance that follows the final accent. This proves that the two types of accents are phonetically different. Perception tests also show that the difference between the shapes of f0 curves in the two types of accents is the main acoustic parameter that helps the listeners distinguish them from each other. In pre-nuclear accented words, the f0 peak is at the right edge of the metrically strong syllable, and the curve has a rising slope at this point. In these syllables, the peak may even occur on the initial syllable of the following word. However, in the syllables associated with nuclear accents, the f0 peak is located inside the syllable, and the curve has a falling slope at the right edge of the syllable.
If the f0 at the right edge of a nuclear accented syllable is manipulated and raised so that the f0 peak is moved to the right edge, the native listeners will perceive the word containing this syllable as a pre-nuclear accented word. This study also shows that duration alone cannot cue the difference between the two types of accents. However, when accompanied by f0 changes, it can help the listeners distinguish the two accents more easily and more efficiently.
Downloadable at: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1314_hosseini_1.pdf
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This paper aims to give an Optimality Theoretic account of the consonant cluster simplification process which occurs in Sylheti Bangla (henceforth SHB), a dialectal variety of Bengali Language, by the emergence of epenthetic vowel before and between the initial consonant clusters in the adaptation of loan words. The study of the Syllable structure of this dialect makes it clear that native Sylheti words are free from initial consonant cluster which compels Sylheti speakers to simplify word initial consonant clusters in loan words through two processes-to insert a vowel medially when clusters consist of obstruent+sonorant sounds, called anaptyxis. For example, /bro.t o/ is simplified as /br.t / 'fast' and a vowel is put initially when clusters start with sibilant[s]+stop, for example, /stei.n/ is pronounced as /i.ti.n/ 'station' as well as when it starts with sibilant[s]+nasal[m], for example, /smouk/ is articulated as /is.mouk/ 'smoke', known prothesis. The Optimality account of these two processes gives us a clear picture that in Sylheti dialect markedness constraint * COMPLEX ONS is undominated which dominates faithfulness constraint DEP-IO. However, a detailed picture of the Optimality Theoretic account of these two processes is given in the main paper.

One major research question in Optimality Theory (OT) that directly tackles phenomena at the interface of phonology and morphology is whether the model should allow intermediate levels of representation or not. This chapter takes on this discussion by presenting phenomena from Romance languages that challenge the parallel version of OT, in order to contrast the additional mechanisms proposed to maintain parallelism (especially, output-to-output constraints of several kinds and alignment constraints) with the analyses provided within different serial (stratal, derivational or cyclic) versions of OT. A further issue discussed under the light of parallel and serial versions of OT is the mechanism for phonologically conditioned allomorph selection. The data include, among others, French adjectival liaison, definite article allomorphy in Galician and Italian, Spanish diphthongization, vowel reduction and epenthesis in Catalan, and palatalization in Romanian.

The most comprehensive study to date of Italian contrastive focalization, Right Dislocation, Left Dislocation, and Destressing in Situ.
Provides scholars with the analytical tools to accurately determine which linguistic effects pertain to focalization and which to discourse givenness.
Presents new empirical arguments and data. Most data are supplied together with the discourse context in which they were elicited.

En este artículo se aborda el problema de la alternancia entre los órdenes SVO y VSO (ó VOS) que se observa en lenguas como el español, el griego moderno y el maya yucateco. Proponemos que para el español y el maya yucateco, es incorrecto tomar el orden de verbo inicial como básico para luego derivar el orden SVO por medio de la topicalización del sujeto. En vez de esto, proponemos un análisis en el que el orden no-marcado de estas lenguas es SVO, y en el que el orden de verbo inicial es producto de un requisito estructural que opera solamente sobre las oraciones que están especificadas en su semántica como juicios téticos. Aparte de esta situación, en estas lenguas el orden no-marcado se debe al Principio de Proyección Ampliado. Sin embargo, haciendo uso de los recursos que proporciona la Teoría de Optimidad, lo definimos como una restricción quebrantable que es superada por una restricción que requiere que los juicios téticos se manifiesten en la sintaxis como oraciones de verbo inicial.

Основне поставке теорије оптималности тeoриjски су oквир за ово истраживање. Циљ је биo утврдити како се мењала хијерархија ограничења од старословенског, као најраније записаног словенског језика, преко стандардног српског језика, до шатровачког, као жаргонске језичке игре. У старословенском и шатровачком, језицима са имплицитном нормом, хијерархија ограничења је снажна и стабилна и одступања од ње су веома ретка. У стандардном српском, језику са експлицитном нормом, одступања су много чешћа. Порекло таквих одступања је у самој норми, која мења природни поредак ограничења приликом примања лексике из других језика, попут енглеског, француског, немачког. На крају, показало се да српски језик има тенденцију да модификује своје слогове тако да се у њиховим језгрима налазе искључиво вокали, са изузетком сонанта /r/, који у свим трима језицима може бити слоготворан.

Les hypothèses bases de la théorie de l'optimalité sont le cadre théorique de cette recherche. L'objectif était de déterminer comment la hiérarchie des contraintes s'est changée, en partant de la langue vieux-slave, comme la première langue écrit des Slaves, à travers de la langue serbe standard, à šatrovački, un type d’un jeu de langue (similaire à verlan en français). Le vieux-slave et le šatrovački, les langues avec la norme implicite, ont la hiérarchie des contraintes forte et stable, et les déviances de celui-ci sont très rares. Dans le serbe standard, avec la norme explicite, les déviances sont beaucoup plus fréquentes. L'origine de ces variations est dans la norme, qui est en train de changer l'ordre naturel des contraintes pour recevoir le lexique des autres langues, telles que l'anglais, le français, l'allemand. Il sera démontré qu’il y a un principe pour l'adoption des lexèmes turcs et grecs, et l'autre pour le lexique plus nouveau. Enfin, il s'est avéré que la langue serbe tend à modifier ses syllabes ainsi qu'à leur noyau sont uniquement les voyelles, sauf la voix vibrant /r/, qui peut être syllabique dans les trois langues.

In its more than two decades, Optimality Theory has contributed to a great shift in linguistic theory. OT has made it possible for many different subfields of linguistics to converse more directly with one another. Besides, OT has also played a decisive role in the field of Language Acquisition. All these factors, besides its parallel processing and its computational nature, have contributed to a rapid growth of the model since its creation.

Abstract: This study is based on a representative corpus of episodes 1-85 (seasons 1 and 2) of the Hanna & Barbera Smurf series and on the Greek translation of the series “Στρουµφάκια”(episodes 1-44). Using the Optimality Theory framework (Prince and ...

This study looked into the different onset patterns of the syllables allowed in Standard Colloquial Bangla (SCB), and Jessore Bangla (JB), two of the major dialects of Bangla. Using the framework of Optimality Theory (OT) it captured how the same loan words with complex onsets are accommodated both in SCB and JB. The study found that SCB adopted the loan words with complex onsets as they are while JB adapted them using some repairs. SCB allows both simple and complex onsets but JB allows only simple onsets; complex onset is highly marked here. Two repair strategies, internal and external vowel epenthesis were found to be used in JB to simplify the complex onsets of the loan words. Hence, this study deployed relevant OT constraints and presented their rankings to explain the internal and external epenthesis contexts and the quality of the epenthetic vowel.

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich – ausgehend von den aktuell gültigen Vorgaben der Amtlichen Regeln (kurz AR) von 2006 – mit dem Komma vor Infinitiven. Ziel ist es, die Regelungen mithilfe von Beschränkungen im Rahmen einer optimalitätstheoretischen Modellierung linguistisch zu analysieren und zu hinterfragen; als Grundlage dafür werden die Arbeiten von Maas (2012abc, i.E.), Primus (2007) und Kriese-Sukalla (2008) herangezogen. Im Zuge der Herausarbeitung eines Systems wird allmählich die Fragestellung etabliert, ob die das Komma vor Infinitiv betreffenden Regeln alle systemgrammatikalisch motiviert sind. Die Argumentation wird zeigen, dass die zu einem überwiegenden Teil freigegebene Kommasetzung mit ihren ‚kann’-Regelungen zum Teil einen psycholinguistisch-sprachverarbeitungsorientierten Hintergrund hat. Die aufgestellten Beschränkungen (KKOMMA, PROP, KSUB, KOHÄR, PARS) werden schließlich in allen Fällen zu dem von den AR als korrekt anerkannten Output führen.

This paper represents a contribution to the theory of ‘substance free’ phonology.
The need for quantificational statements to express identity and nonidentity
conditons in phonology entails the rejection of feature geometry. Feature
geometric representation is insufficiently powerful, and must be replaced by an
algebraic form of representation that allows the use of variables and indices
for the purposes of identity checking. An attempt is made to explain apparent
gaps in attestation of certain combinations of posited phonological primitives
on phonetic grounds, instead of appealing to constraints on phonological computation.
The paper challenges the empirical and conceptual validity of the
Obligatory Contour Principle.

This paper provides an analysis of the morphological and lexical conditionings determining the triggering or the blocking of the rhotacism pattern observed in Algherese Catalan. In this dialect, laterals and dental stops rhotacise in intervocalic position; the process, however, exhibits some variation mainly conditioned by the area of the word in which the intervocalic segment occurs (the left edge of the root, the root or the suffix) and the type of word in which is contained (an inherited word or a loan). Our proposal is to account for these facts by means of lexically indexed constraints targeting exceptional behaviors in the lexicon. The article also analyses the functional interpretation of this pattern of rhotacism, and finally reflects on the changes in the lexicon as a reflect of the process of language substitution in Algherese Catalan.

In Balearic Catalan, first person singular present indicative verb forms do not show an explicit inflectional morph, as do most dialects of Catalan. Among these forms, we find final consonant clusters that involve a violation of the sonority constraint according to which the degree of sonority between the segments of a syllable must be decreasing in relation to the nucleus. The same clusters in nominal inflection are resolved by means of a process of vowel epenthesis. The exceptional phonological behavior of these consonant clusters is not circumscribed to sonority factors, but also concerns the regular phonology of the dialect, either because a general process fails to apply, or because a process applies though the conditions that make it applicable are not visible. Previous approaches have analyzed these final consonant clusters, not as codas, but as onsets of empty nuclei: this exceptional syllabic status would, according to these proposals, throw some light on this peculiar phonological behavior. In this paper we investigate the theoretical problems deriving from approaches of this kind and demonstrate that they are better analyzed by considering paradigmatic effects, such as uniformity and contrast between the members of a morphological paradigm. Furthermore, we critically review the different theories developed in Optimality Theory in order to account for surface resemblances and dissimilarities between the members of a paradigm and introduce a detailed formalization of PARADIGMATIC CONTRAST.

We analyze phonological conditions for sonants to gain  possibility of forming a syllable, that is, to become the nucleus of a syllable in Serbian and Šatrovački, a specific slang language game that bases on reversal of syllables in Serbian words.
By comparing the Šatrovački part to the research of syllable structure in Serbian by Draga Zec (2007), we learned that IO-Dep and Margins Sonority constraints are highly ranked in both systems. This gives space for syllabic sonants. In Serbian these sonants are /r/, /l/, /n/, mostly in final position. In Šatrovački these sonants are /r/, /l/, /lj/, /m/, /n/, with the addition of /j/ and /v/, which is quite odd if we notice that /j/ and /v/ are showing to be closer to consonants whether to sonants.
The theoretical frame for this research is Optimality Theory, so the final goal of the paper is to form constraint hierarchy for both systems and compare them, because we find that language game as this one may tell us something about the source language (Serbian, in this case).

Most linguistic theories postulate structures with covert information, not directly recoverable from utterances. Hence, learners have to interpret their data before drawing conclusions. Within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT), Tesar & Smolensky (1998) proposed Robust Interpretive Parsing (RIP), suggesting the learners rely on their still imperfect grammars to interpret the learning data. I introduce an alternative, more cautious approach, Joint Robust Interpretive Parsing (JRIP). The learner entertains a population of several grammars, which join forces to interpret the learning data. A standard metrical phonology grammar is employed to demonstrates that JRIP performs significantly better than RIP.

The three concepts of case, valency and transitivity belong to the most discussed topics of modern linguistics. On the one hand, they are crucially connected with morphological aspects of the clause, including case marking, person agreement and voice. On the other hand, they are related to several semantic issues such as the meaning of case, semantico-syntactic verbal classes, and the semantic correlates of transitivity. The volume unifies papers written within different theoretical frameworks and representing variegated approaches (Optimality Theory, Government and Binding, various versions of the Functional approach, Cross-linguistic and Typological analyses), containing both numerous new findings in individual languages and valuable observations and generalizations related to case, valency and transitivity.

The notion that language change consists solely of constraint
reranking is incoherent. The charges laid against this commonplace in the
Optimality Theory (OT) literature, are however, equally relevant to the older notion
that language change consists merely of rule loss or addition. In brief, the
argument is twofold: (1) some lexical restructuring is necessary to account for
change (or else all the Indo-European languages would necessarily have the same
input lexicon as English, which cannot be true in any interesting sense); and (2)
reranking or rule loss/addition cannot be defined within a single grammar, but
is, at best, a description of the relationship between grammars.

The Elementary Ranking Condition (ERC) embodies the restrictions imposed by a comparison between a desired optimum and a single competitor. It forms the basic formal element that allows OT grammars to be constructed, represented, and analyzed.

It is shown that all entailments between Elementary Ranking Conditions can be ascertained through three simple formal rules of ERC manipulation, so that ERC representation supports and reveals the logic of OT. One of them introduces a method of argument combination, fusion, shown to have the same sense as in relevance logic (RM3, in particular).

Fusion is central to detecting inconsistency in a set of ERCs; inconsistency and entailment are closely related here,  as in standard logic. Fusion therefore plays a key role in the detection of Harmonic Bounding and in the development of algorithms such as Recursive Constraint Demotion (RCD: Tesar & Smolensky 1994, 1998) that determine the rankings that comport with a set of data.

A number of other consequences and related matters are explored at varioud levels of detail.

Added note. For use of fusion to construct OT grammars, see Brasoveanu & Prince, 2011, Ranking and Necessity: the Fusional Reduction Algorithm.

This research aims to describe and explain the phonological process of deletion in Persian children’s speech. The theoretical framework of the analysis is optimality theory. The method of research is descriptive-analytic, including both qualitative and quantitative components. The Data were collected by accessible sampling. Twelve children’s (6 boys & 6 girls) daily speech, 20 minutes for each one, was recorded and categorized into three age categories: under 3, between 3-4 and between 4-5. After data-transcription, all phonological processes were studied and their frequency was figured out. It was found that in all 3 age categories, the phonological process of deletion is the most frequent one, that’s why the paper focuses on deletion. Findings show that in the category under 3; the sounds r, h and j, in category 3-4; the sounds, r, h and s, j , n (with the same frequency), and in category 4-5;h and t sound ,respectively, have the highest rate of deletion. Furthermore,5 positions were identified as the most possible and frequent positions to delete as follows: 1-coda in first syllable; 2-onset in two or more-syllabic words, 3- the first member of the coda cluster, 4-the coda of the second/third syllable, and 5-the second member of the coda-cluster. It was also found that the motivation for deletion is to simplify the production and to apply markedness constraints. The optimality-theoretic account of the deletion shows that this process happens due to satisfying the constraints *coda, *complex coda and producing unmarked syllables. The results also show that the markedness constraints have a higher rank in comparison to the faithfulness ones, in children’s speech and this accords to child language acquisition principles. Finally, using the violable constraints, a hierarchy of constraints is suggested to explain the phonological process of deletion.
key words: phonological processes, deletion, deletion position, optimality theory

Since the times of the old Arab grammarians, the syllable has played a major role in the
phonology of classical as well as colloquial Arabic. In the 1970s, phonologists
investigated Cairene Arabic (CA) syllable structure and found it the domain of some
phonological processes, such as emphatic spread, CVC syllables light word final but
heavy word internally, limitations on consonant clusters in certain positions of a word,
and finally epenthesis of a vowel to break consonant clusters if there happen to be more
than two consonants in word concatenation. This paper discusses phonological
phenomena investigated through different theories in generative phonology through
Optimality Theoretic framework (OT). The analysis finds that some syllable structure
constraints are high ranked and inviolable such as ONSET, and *[ μ μ μ ]σ . The study
also shows that OT analysis can illustrate and explain in one representation two different
phonological phenomena -- insertion and deletion of a vowel in consonant clusters --
despite their relatedness to separate prosodic domains, the syllable, the prosodic word,
and the phrase. This is carried out by analyzing the ranking, relationship and interaction
between the following constraints, ONSET, MAX-IO, *[ μ μ μ] ,*COMPLEX CODA, DEPIO>>
NOCODA, *APPENDIX; -*V,+hi]$:, ALIGNR (σ, PRWD),and LINEARITY. The study
analyzes data that is mainly from Cairene spoken Arabic, addressing one of the
contentious issues related to studies of the phonology of CA -- and that is mixing
between colloquial Cairene and classical Arabic.