Some Notes on the Formal Properties of Bidirectional Optimality Theory

In this paper, we discuss some formal properties of the model ofbidirectional Optimality Theory that was developed inBlutner (2000). We investigate the conditions under whichbidirectional optimization is a well-defined notion, and we give aconceptually simpler reformulation of Blutner's definition. In thesecond part of the paper, we show that bidirectional optimization can bemodeled by means of finite state techniques. There we rely heavily onthe related work of Frank and Satta (1998) about unidirectionaloptimization.