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Principles of Evaluation, Change and Related Issues

Martin Haspelmath's article brings to the forefront the currently muchdiscussed connection between grammatical structure and grammatical change, that especially in the last decades has proven again and again essential to a general theory of grammar. He is therefore to be commended for explicitly raising this topic of discussion. These issues, as the title shows, are discussed in the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). But unfortunately (and here the criticism begins), the author limits his perspective from beginning to end such that, aside from OT and parts of other generative theories, only certain functionalist approaches are taken into account. All so-called "natural" approaches to grammar, for example the natural phonology of Stampe (NPh) as well as the various versions of natural morphology (NM) and Vennemann's preference theory (PT), remain completely unexamined in terms of content. This is even more dismaying considering the fact that all these approaches have dealt in large part directly with these problems (the references given in this article are proof of this). If the proposals of these approaches contribute to the discussion of these theoretical issues in OT, one should not ignore them. This holds of course in particular for an article that the author himself terms "programmatic" (abstract). In this paper, I will discuss some central points of the theory Haspelmath proposes and the consequences for this theory in light of previous proposals made by non-OT "natural" theories of grammar, although the discussion will also generalize to the non-theory specific. Other interesting issues, among others the relationship between OT in general and the theory of markedness, cannot unfortunately be disscused here (cf. Hurch 1998 however).