Universal Generation for Optimality Theory Is PSPACE-Complete
Computational Linguistics
Venue: CL
Type: Journal
Formal Languages
Phonology
Complexity
Author
Affiliation
Sophie Hao
New York University
Abstract
This paper shows that the universal generation problem (Heinz, Kobele, and Riggle 2009) for Optimality Theory (OT, Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004) is PSPACE-complete. While prior work has shown that universal generation is at least NP-hard (Eisner 1997, 2000b; Wareham 1998; Idsardi 2006) and at most EXPSPACE-hard (Riggle 2004), our results place universal generation in between those two classes, assuming that NP ≠ PSPACE. We additionally show that when the number of constraints is bounded in advance, universal generation is at least NL-hard and at most NPNP-hard. Our proofs rely on a close connection between OT and the intersection non-emptiness problem for finite automata, which is PSPACE-complete in general (Kozen 1977) and NL-complete when the number of automata is bounded (Jones 1975). Our analysis shows that constraint interaction is the main contributor to the complexity of OT: the ability to factor transformations into simple, interacting constraints allows OT to furnish compact descriptions of intricate phonological phenomena.