In certain papers on Optimality Theory (e.g. this paper by McCarthy, or this) the tableaus contain the notations *L and *W, as seen in the image below:
What is meant by these notations? The second paper I linked to used these examples if you want to see the kinds of contexts they're used in.
When a tableau is comparing two candidates, a W indicates that the constraint in that column favors the winning candidate, while an L indicates that it favors the losing candidate.
In the example above, Candidate A is the loser and Candidate B is the winner. FAITH(Neg) favors the winner, since the winner violates it zero times and the loser violates it once. On the other hand, *Neg favors the loser, since the loser violates it once while the winner violates it twice.
See page 7, paragraph 3 of the McCarthy paper for further explanation.
