This review guide is intended to help you organize your studying and preparation for the midterm. Use lecture outline slides and data sets, your own notes, assigned readings (including handouts), and past assignments and their feedback.
You may be asked to apply what you know to a new or unfamiliar situation.
1. What to expect / how to prepare
- The exam is in class, on paper, closed-book, and is planned to take about 90 minutes (on average)
- Expect mostly application and problem-solving questions; for example:
- Distinguish between two groups of speech sounds
- Analyze morpheme alternations in a (small) data set
- Provide the "next step" in an analysis that is started for you
- Justify a choice between alternative analyses or approaches
- Explain how to test the predictions of a (new) model or proposal against data
- There may be a (brief) essay question on a topic such as:
- When scientists build models of the phenomena they are studying, what does this allow them to do?
- Why is it important to understand what a model predicts, even when you are pretty sure that the model is wrong?
- You may prepare and bring one page of notes:
- Letter-size paper (8.5 x 11 inches) or A4, or smaller
- On one side, you may print out this list of features
- You may add notes on both sides of the paper
- Other than the list of features,
your notes page must be handwritten — no screenshots or scans
- If you handwrite on your device and print the result, that's okay
- Your notes page must be turned in with the exam (it won't be graded)
2. Topics covered after the midterm exam: Optimality Theory
The final exam is cumulative. At least half the exam will involve using and applying Optimality Theory, but skills and concepts from before the midterm exam will also be covered. See the midterm exam review guide.
- The basics of the OT formalism and how to work with them
- Input and outputs
- Constraints: defining constraints and assessing violations
- Tableaus
- Hasse diagrams
- Key concepts in OT analysis
- Be able to propose or recognize informative losing candidates
- Be able to make valid ranking arguments
- Be able to use factorial typology to make predictions about possible language patterns
- Markedness and faithfulness constraints
- Be able to identify which type a constraint belongs to
- Understand and be able to discuss the role of these two constraint types in child language acquisition
- Understand and be able to discuss the role of these two constraint types in "richness of the base" argumentation
- Syllable-structure analysis in OT
- Be able to rank syllable-structure constraints in order to associate segments to syllables in a language
- Understand and be able to show how "possible syllable types" are predicted under factorial typology
- Segmental distribution patterns in OT
- Be able to define and rank constraints for complementary (predictable) distribution
- Understand and be able to discuss or apply the factorial typology of the three key constraint types relevant for segmental distribution
- Understand and be able to discuss or apply the connection between complementary distribution and "inventory gap" patterns