OTKit Tools for Optimality Theory

OTKit is a set of tools for Optimality Theory, a linguistic model widely used today. (Being) developed by Tamás Biró, currently a postdoc researcher at the University of Amsterdam, it aims at supporting both research and education in the field of linguistics and computational linguistics.

It contains

• the OTKit user interface (requiring Java Runtime Environment) and
• a Java library (for programmers).

Current version: 1.2.0 (15 Jun 2010)

To run the OTKit interface, you need Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.6. Most probably, it is already installed on your computer. Yet, if OTKit does not run, click here to download it. It (should) work on any platform with Java (including Windows, Linux/Unix and Macintosh).

• Click here to try out OTKit, or to download the latest version. Choose "Open".
  Or choose "Save", and then launch it by clicking on the icon on your computer.
  From command line, type java -jar OTKit.jar to launch the user interface, or java -jar OTKit.jar -h for command line options.
• OTKit manual, also available from within the interface.
• Example universe files, and example scripts: more to come.
• Icon file, in case you would like to (and can) associate it with OTKit.jar.
• Earlier versions of the user interface.

For Java programmers, download the OTKit library:

• Latest version of the OTKit library.
• Earlier versions of the OTKit library.
• Javadoc documentation of the OTKit package.
• Example source codes.
• DTD of OTKit's xml format.

Feedback, suggestion and criticism are very welcome to OTKit [at] birot . hu.!

News:

• June 15, 2010: Version 1.2 includes factorial typology, and a number of 'subfactorial tricks' to handle a larger number of constraints. Also available as a script command. New Gen scheme (and, correspondingly, new Gen and MapForm examples in the Java library): composition of two, previously defined gens.
• June 7, 2010: Article by Lauri Karttunen ('The Insufficiency of Paper-and-Pencil Linguistics: the Case of Finnish Prosody', ROA-818) implemented. Load the script file to OTKit, which automatically will load the xml file.

• June 3, 2010: Version 1.1 published. Metrical phonology (foot structure and stress) included: Gen, Base, Robust Interpretive Parsing (RIP), constraints on foot types and (gradient and quantized) alignment, etc. Downloadable example universe for metrical stress in the help menu and metrical phonology-related options. Please let me know what else you need (such as weight-dependent iambic/trochaic constraints, binarity based on moraic structure?). Poster presented on TABU Day, in Groningen.

• January 22, 2010: Version 1.0 published. Also available on the Rutgers Optimality Archive as ROA-1067. Published on Linguist List.