Many theories of language assume that the change of a language over time and the acquisition of a language by an individual are interrelated. In this paper we compare and try to relate Mattausch’s (2004) diachronic bidirectional Optimality Theory (bi-OT) account of the development of pronominal binding in English to Hendriks and Spenader’s (2004; 2005/6) synchronic bi-OT account of English-spea...

In this paper, I discuss Finnish case alternation adpositions from a theoretical and corpus perspective. First, I argue that postpositional PP constructions with genitive case denote the standard spatial meaning of which an extension is marked with partitive case. Also, I show how word order interacts with case assignment. Both findings are formalized in a bidirectional Optimality Theoretic fra...