correspondence (n.)

A term used in LINGUISTICS to refer to any similarity of FORM between WORDS or STRUCTURES in related LANGUAGES. For example, there is a stateable relationship between the sound structure of such words as fish and piscis (Latin); /f/ and /p/ can be shown to be in systematic correspondence, because of the nature of the sound changes which took place in the history of English.

A sub-theory within OPTIMALITY THEORY which focuses on the relationship between two forms. Correspondence relations and CONSTRAINTS on correspondence relations can obtain between any two REPRESENTATIONS, such as an INPUT and a CANDIDATE OUTPUT, or an input and a part of a candidate (such as a BASE or a FEATURE). Related forms are in correspondence when there is a MAPPING from one form to the other. Examples of correspondence constraints are: every feature or SEGMENT in the input has an identical correspondent in the output (MAXIMALITY) and segments should be in the same order in input and output representations (LINEARITY).

The notion is often encountered in SEMANTIC discussion, deriving from the common philosophical view of truth, that a PROPOSITION is true only if it denotes an actual state of affairs which verifies it. The classical correspondence theory of MEANING argued that there is a direct relationship between a linguistic form and the entity it denotes, as shown, for example, by the existence of onomatopoeic words (such as splash and murmur). Because the vast majority of the words in a language demonstrate only the arbitrariness of the relationship between ‘words’ and ‘things’, however, this view is often called the correspondence fallacy.