Finding the Right Words

Implementing Optimality Theory with Simulated Annealing

PhD thesis at the University of Groningen (RUG)

Finding the Right Words: Implementing Optimality Theory with Simulated Annealing. Phd-thesis. GroDiL 62. ISBN 90-367-2876-2 (printed version), 90-367-2877-0 (electronic version). ROA-896. Submitted in 2006, defended on December 7, 2006 in Groningen. Awarded the Anéla/AVT dissertation prize.

Downloads and links:

• full text (pdf, approx. 2 Mbyte),
• the "stellingen" (pdf, 21 kbyte),
• summary in English,
• summary in Dutch,
• summary in Hungarian,
• electronic version on the RuG website (including a picture of the cover; downloadable chapter-by-chapter),
• catalogue of the RUG University Library
• catalogue of the Yale University Library

SA-OT Demo: a demonstration of the Simulated Annealing for Optimality Theory Algorithm developed in my dissertation (implemented in PHP).

My thesis was awarded the Anéla-AVT dissertation prize, as the best thesis written in the Netherlands in linguistics, during the Taalgala (November 16, 2007, in Utrecht, Netherlands):

• short summary presented at the Taalgala,
• two versions of the poster presented at the Taalgala:
  • intended for linguists
  • intended for computational linguists
• report of the jury (in Dutch)

Background: I was a PhD student (AiO, Assistant in Opleiding, Research Assistant) at the department for Humanities Computing (old web site), Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands. My research project belonged to to BCN and to CLCG. The title of my project was: Implementation and machine learning for Optimality Theory. It was around 2002-2003 that I wrote the following summaries:

• Official description.
• Informal description of my research topic written in those days, strictly for non linguists!
• Description of the same research in Hungarian.

On the shelf of the University of Amsterdam library (Bungehuis), with Noam Chomsky and others.