An idempotent phonological grammar maps phonotactically licit forms faithfully to themselves. This paper establishes tight sufficient conditions for idempotency in (classical) Optimality Theory. Building on Tesar (2013), these conditions are derived in two steps. First, idempotency is shown to follow from a general formal condition on the faithfulness constraints. Second, this condition is show...

Just War Theory can be found in almost all major cultures. But since war was a business that could not be easily stopped, some aimed to constrain it. In its classic form, Just War Theory has been around for several centuries—ever since nationhood in Europe replaced provincial governments. Having made some introductory considerations, I will ask: should Just War Theory be left as it is, changed,...

Using density functional theory with the B3LYP and M06 functionals, we show conclusively that the (H(2)IMes)(Cl)(2)Ru olefin metathesis mechanism is bottom-bound with the chlorides remaining trans throughout the reaction, thus attempts to effect diastereo- and enantioselectivity should focus on manipulations that maintain the trans-dichloro Ru geometry.

We present a new connection between self-adjusting binary search trees (BSTs) and heaps, two fundamental, extensively studied, and practically relevant families of data structures (Allen, Munro, 1978; Sleator, Tarjan, 1983; Fredman, Sedgewick, Sleator, Tarjan, 1986; Wilber, 1989; Fredman, 1999; Iacono, Özkan, 2014). Roughly speaking, we map an arbitrary heap algorithm within a broad and natural...

The development of a ring-opening metathesis/ring-closing metathesis/cross metathesis (ROM-RCM-CM) cascade strategy to the synthesis of a diverse collection of bi- and tricyclic sultams is reported. In this study, functionalized sultam scaffolds derived from intramolecular Diels-Alder (IMDA) reactions undergo metathesis cascades to yield a collection tricyclic sultams. Additional appendage base...

While the fundamental series of [2+2]cycloadditions and retro[2+2]cycloadditions that make up the pathways of ruthenium-catalysed metathesis reactions is well-established, the exploration of mechanistic aspects of alkene metathesis continues. In this Feature Article, modern mechanistic studies of the alkene metathesis reaction, catalysed by well-defined ruthenium complexes, are discussed. Broad...

Bob Frank, Giorgio Satta, and Lauri Karttunen stunned the computational OT community some years ago when they pointed out that unidirectional optimization is essentially a finite state technique. If all components of an OT system can be modeled by a finite state machine, then the complexity of the entire system does not exceed the complexity of its components. There has been some debate in past...

This article surveys research in Spanish phonology from the perspective of Optimality Theory, a formal linguistic framework based on ranked and violable constraints. Theoretical insights from OT enrich our understanding of Spanish phonology, and Spanish data also figure prominently in the latest theoretical developments within OT. The article concludes with areas for ongoing research and a bibl...

As [5] and [11] have shown, some applications of Optimality Theory can be modelled using finite state algebra provided that the constraints are regular. However, their approaches suffered from an upper bound on the number of constraint violations. We present a method to construct finite state transducers which can handle an arbitrary number of constraint violations using a variant of the tropic...