How Functional is OT?

[Tony Wright]

At 08:33 AM 12/10/99 -0600, Geoffrey S. Nathan wrote:

> Let me chime in here with an endorsement of what Joan Bresnan and
> Martin Haspelmath have said about the functional nature of current
> phonological theory.

Indeed, this very trend is lamented by Mark Hale and Charles Reiss in
_Substance Abuse and Dysfunctionalism: Current Trends in Phonology_ in
which it is argued that phonology, particularly current implementations of
OT, are drifting off toward functionalism, and that phonology qua phonology
should be "all form, no substance."

(This paper was once on the Rutgers Optimality Archive, but I find it has
been removed, probably owing to its subsequent publication in Linguistic
Inquiry (if memory serves)).

--Tony Wright