[More theory-wrangling]

 

Johanna –

 

I’m not entirely sure what to do with Optimality theory, largely because I can’t claim to have read enough of it to have a sufficiently informed opinion. If it’s the case that a given (nonambiguous) sentence is still dealt with in the theory as having only one “correct” structure, then I would class the theory as monostructural, even if there a variety of modules and principles that “competed” to produce that one correct structure. What I’m terming multistructural theories include ones like Systemic-Functional Linguistics, which explicitly groups elements in the sentence in more than one way simultaneously, or Stratificational Grammar, which certainly allows for simultaneously existing constituent structures even if it doesn’t mandate them in particular cases.

 

Bill Spruiell

 

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University