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<Paper uid="W98-1301">
  <Title>The Proper Treatment of Optimality in Computational Phonology</Title>
  <Section position="7" start_page="10" end_page="10" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
6 Conclusion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> This novel formalization of optimality theory has several technical advantages over the previous computational treatments:  - No marking, sorting, or counting of constraint violations. - Application of optimality constraints is done within the finite-state calculus. - A system of optimality constraints can be merged into a single constraint network.  This approach shows clearly that optimality theory is very similar to the two older strains of finite-state phonology: classical rewrite systems and two-level models. In optimality theory, lenient composition plays the same role as ordinary composition in rewrite systems. The top-down sorialism of rule ordering is replaced by the left-to-right serialism of the constraint tableau.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> The new lenient composition operator has other uses beyond phonology. In the area of syntax, Constraint Grammar (Karlsson et el. \[13\]) is from a formal point of view very similar to optimality theory. Although constraint grammars so far have not been implemented as pure finlte-state systems, it is evident that the lenient composition operator makes it possible.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>