Remarks and Replies Evaluating the Complexity of Optimality Theory

Remarks and Replies A Simple Proof

Adapting arguments from Eisner 1997, 2000, this remark provides a simple proof that the generation problem for Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 2004) is NP-hard. The proof needs only the binary evaluation of constraints and uses only constraints generally employed in the Optimality Theory literature. In contrast, rule-based derivational systems are easily computable, belonging to the cla...

Optimality Of Monetary And Fiscal Policies In Iran: An Application Of The Stochastic Optimal Control Theory

Isogeometric Topology Optimization by Using Optimality Criteria and Implicit Function

A new method for structural topology optimization is introduced which employs the Isogeometric Analysis (IA) method. In this approach, an implicit function is constructed over the whole domain by Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS) basis functions which are also used for creating the geometry and the surface of solution of the elasticity problem. Inspiration of the level set method zero level...

Remarks and Replies

This article shows that Error-Driven Constraint Demotion (EDCD), an error-driven learning algorithm proposed by Tesar (1995) for Prince and Smolensky’s (1993/2004) version of Optimality Theory, can fail to converge to a correct totally ranked hierarchy of constraints, unlike the earlier non-error-driven learning algorithms proposed by Tesar and Smolensky (1993). The cause of the problem is foun...

Evaluating the complexity of Optimality Theory

Idsardi (2006) claims that Optimality Theory (OT; Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004) is “in general computationally intractable” on the basis of a proof adapted from Eisner (1997a). We take issue with this conclusion on two grounds. First, the intractability result holds only in cases where the constraint set is not fixed in advance (contra usual definitions of OT) and second, the result cruciall...