<i>Quanto è naturale la fonologia? Osservazioni sulla teoria dell'Ottimalità</i>

Abstract

This paper tackles the subject of naturalness in phonology by means of a discussion about Optimality Theory (OT), a theory that, for reasons that are extensively illustrated, is considered a "natural theory of phonology". After introducing the theoretical tools and functioning of OT and illustrating the possible reasons of its appeal on scholars, the discussion unfolds as to reveal that a theory of phonology cannot afford to be "natural" if it aims at attaining explanatory adequacy. Paradoxically OT, a theory that lays its foundations on "naturalness", is a good model of artificial intelligence but not of human cognition. In addition, because it aims at describing in a simple way what is natural, namely what is crosslinguistically common, it lacks the means to categorically exclude what is never attested in languages. In other words it is a "natural" theory that cannot derive on principled grounds what is believed to be unnatural and impossible in languages.