A Guide to Analysis in MaxEnt Optimality Theory, Chapters 1 and 2
Bruce P. Hayes, Claire Moore-Cantwell
February 2025
 

This document consists of the first two chapters of a projected textbook for Maximum Entropy Optimality Theory, a.k.a. “MaxEnt”. The text is directed to beginners (i.e. to linguists who are new to MaxEnt) and is meant as a “how-to” book, more pedagogical than polemical. The book is rooted in our view that there are many linguists who are in possession of gradient data (e.g. from observations of free variation, corpora, or experiments) and wish to develop a rigorous generative analysis of their findings — but lack an appropriate formal framework for doing so. We feel that MaxEnt is a very useful such framework, and hope to make it more accessible to researchers by making it easy to learn, and by offering practical advice based on our own research experience. We show how MaxEnt can be done effectively using Excel spreadsheets, and offer example analyses along with spreadsheet implementations. Right now we are posting just Chapters 1 and 2, but hope to expand this soon, posting versions (see Contents) of the remaining seven chapters. Chapter 2 is the central tutorial chapter, and could be used, we think, as a reading in a graduate course. We would be grateful for feedback, including suggestions for citation (bhayes@humnet.ucla.edu, moore.cantwell@ucla.edu).
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/008789
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:
keywords: maxent, optimality theory, phonology, textbooks, phonology
Downloaded:50 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]