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CHAPTER 4 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK other, striving to become the actual output realization, the optimal candidate complying with the rule of well-formedness. Ihe number of potential competing candidates (inputs) is infinite. However, through the derivational process, their number is reduced to only one, which ends up as the optimal candidate, the actual surface realization. The actual surface realization is the candidate that complies the most optimally with the universal rule of wellformedness. The evaluative part of universal grammar (EVAL) evaluates the competing candidates, the potential output representations. The candidates are inputs with a corresponding output representation. The output representation is selected out of the set of all possible output representations or candidates. The competing candidates have to undergo a set of violable and hierarchically ranked constraints, and the EVAL part of generative grammar will select, out of an indefinite number of inputs, the optimal one. The optimal candidate is the one that violates the lowest ranked constraint(s) but not the highest one. There is a strict hierarchy in each language, meaning that the order of constraints cannot be changed in a given language, and the higher ranked constraint has absolute priority over the lowest ranked one(s). However, since not necessarily all constraints are activated in a given linguistic situation, only the relevant ones are arranged into hierarchy. The derivational speech production process, through which the particular underlying representation is turned into the corresponding surface realization, activates only the relevant constraints. The constraints are violable because even the optimal candidate, the actual output representation, may violate some of them. The only inviolable rule in terms of the constraints is that a candidate violating the highest ranked constraint activated in the relevant speech production process cannot be the optimal one. The constraints of well-formedness are universally applicable, but their actual ranking is always language specific. Hence, it is the actual language specific ranking of constraints that determines the optimal candidate. Fora language specific ranked set of constraints, a candidate A is more harmonic than candidate B if A is more harmonic with respect to the highest ranked constraint on which the two candidates differ. The optimal candidate (the selected output) is the candidate that is more harmonic than all the others with respect to the ranked constraints. There is no cumulative effect of constraints, which means that no matter how many lower-ranked constraints one candidate violates if it does not violate the highest ranked constraint, it will end up as the optimal candidate. The ranking of constraints is based on an algorithmic computational process applied on empirical data. Although there are linguistic characteristics rendering particular languages more salient toward a specific ranking, the + 40 +
