These are some tips about how to make Optimality Tableaux in LaTeX.

These notes are very incomplete, and they may never get much better. Of course, if someone would like to write a better version, just mail me ...

Marlies Kluck (Utrecht University) suggests a very simple approach, just using a normal tabular environment:

\begin{tabular}
       {|lc|c|c|c|}\hline   
      & \textbf{Input}  & Cnstrnt 1  &  Cnstrnt 2& Cnstrnt 3\\ \hline\hline
      & candidate 1     & *!         &           &          \\ \hline
      & candidate 2     &            &  *        &          \\ \hline
\hand & candidate 3     &            &           &  *       \\ \hline
\end{tabular}

The `hand' command can be obtained in various ways:

• load the pifont package, and use \ding{43}; i.e. in the preamble put:

   \usepackage{pifont}
   \newcommand{\hand}{\ding{43}}
   

• load the pzdr font, and use \mbox{\db +}:

   \newfont{\db}{pzdr}
   \newcommand{\w}{\mbox{\db +}}
  

Actually, what Marlies Kluck suggests is a bit more complicated:

\begin{center}
\begin{tabular*}{0.95\textwidth}
    {@{\extracolsep{\fill}}|rl||c|c|c|}\hline   
      & \textbf{Input} & Constraint 1 & Constraint 2 & Constraint 3 \\ \hline\hline
      & candidate 1    & *!           &              &              \\ \hline
      & candidate 2    &              &  *           &              \\ \hline
\hand & candidate 3    &              &              &  *           \\ \hline
\end{tabular*}
\end{center}

Michael T Hammond hammond@U.Arizona.EDU suggests pstricks and colortab. Here's an example:

\usepackage{pstricks,colortab}

\begin{tabular}[t]{r|c|c|c|}
\cline{2-4}
      & /qi/  & qi    & qi         \\
\LCC 
      &       &       & \lightgray \\ \cline{2-4}
\hand & [qi]  &       & *          \\ \cline{2-4}
      & [*qi] & *!    &            \\ \cline{2-4}
\ECC
\end{tabular}

Zsuzsanna Nagy nzsuzsa@rci.rutgers.edu also recommends the color and colortab packages. Here is sample code for a tableau with shaded cells:

\begin{tabular}{|l||c|c|} \hline
          &VO          &OV         \\ \hline\hline
\LCC
          &            &\lightgray \\ \hline
prefixing &Tagalog     &Ma'a       \\ \hline
\ECC
\LCC
           &\lightgray &            \\ \hline
suffixing  &Kwakwala   &Japanese    \\ \hline
\ECC
\end{tabular}

The idea is that you surround the code for the row in which you want to shade some cells with \LCC and \ECC, and insert a "dummy" row with just the color information in the appropriate cell(s) before the row(s) with the actual content.