298 research outputs found

    Sonority and Constraint Interaction: the Acquisition of Complex Onsets by Spanish Learners of English

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    Tradicionalmente se ha prestado abundante atención a la adquisición de la estructura silábica de segundas lenguas. Las investigaciones se han centrado en dos temas principales dentro de esta área: por un lado, la fuente de los errores (¿universal o causada por la fonología de la L1?); por otro lado, los factores que determinan la elección de una estrategia u otra para ¿reparar¿ estructuras silábicas ilícitas. En nuestra investigación discutimos el concepto clave de ¿sonoridad¿ a la luz de los datos obtenidos de 5 aprendices de inglés hispanohablantes. Extraemos diferentes cabezas silábicas complejas, llegando a dos conclusiones principales. En primer lugar, que las secuencias de ¿s + oclusiva- les resultaban más difíciles que las de ¿s + líquida- a pesar de que ninguna de ellas está permitida por la fonología del español. Interpretamos este hecho en términos de Teoría de la Optimidad, discutiendo la naturaleza de dos diferentes restricciones de sonoridad (SONORITY y O SON) y justificando el comportamiento lingüístico de nuestros aprendices en su relación con la explicación del aprendizaje en Teoría de la Optimidad. En segundo lugar, contradecimos las afirmaciones de Hancin-Bhatt & Bhatt (1997) en el sentido de que las secuencias de ¿ oclusiva + semivocal- son un problema para los aprendices de inglés hispanohablantes. Sugerimos que la polémica referente a las cabezas silábicas de ¿ consonante + semivocal- y sus implicaciones para distintos modelos de sonoridad (Broselow & Finer 1991; Eckman & Iverson 1993) no puede arrojar resultados útiles a causa de la inestabilidad en el comportamiento silábico de las semivocales. Finalmente se discuten posibles alternativas al concepto tradicional de sonoridad y sus implicaciones para la investigación de la fonología de la L2

    Learning Local Phonological Processes

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    We present a learning algorithm for local phonological processes that relies on a restriction on the expressive power needed to compute phonological patterns that apply locally. Representing phonological processes as a functional mapping from an input to output form (an assumption compatible with either the SPE or OT formalism), the learner assumes the target process can be described with the functional counterpart to the Strictly Local (McNaughton and Papert 1971, Rogers and Pullum 2011) formal languages. Given a data set of input-output string pairs, the learner applies the two-stage grammatical induction procedure of 1) constructing a prefix tree representation of the input and 2) generalizing the pattern to words not found in the data set by merging states (Garcia and Vidal 1990, Oncina et al. 1993, Heinz 2007, 2009, de la Higuera 2010). The learner’s criterion for state merging enforces a locality requirement on the kind of function it can converge to and thereby directly reflects its own hypothesis space. We demonstrate with the example of German final devoicing, using a corpus of string pairs derived from the CELEX2 lemma corpus. The implications of our results include a proposal for how humans generalize to learn phonological patterns and a consequent explanation for why local phonological patterns have this property

    Loanword adaptation as first-language phonological perception

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    We show that loanword adaptation can be understood entirely in terms of phonological and phonetic comprehension and production mechanisms in the first language. We provide explicit accounts of several loanword adaptation phenomena (in Korean) in terms of an Optimality-Theoretic grammar model with the same three levels of representation that are needed to describe L1 phonology: the underlying form, the phonological surface form, and the auditory-phonetic form. The model is bidirectional, i.e., the same constraints and rankings are used by the listener and by the speaker. These constraints and rankings are the same for L1 processing and loanword adaptation

    Optimal coding and the origins of Zipfian laws

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    The problem of compression in standard information theory consists of assigning codes as short as possible to numbers. Here we consider the problem of optimal coding -- under an arbitrary coding scheme -- and show that it predicts Zipf's law of abbreviation, namely a tendency in natural languages for more frequent words to be shorter. We apply this result to investigate optimal coding also under so-called non-singular coding, a scheme where unique segmentation is not warranted but codes stand for a distinct number. Optimal non-singular coding predicts that the length of a word should grow approximately as the logarithm of its frequency rank, which is again consistent with Zipf's law of abbreviation. Optimal non-singular coding in combination with the maximum entropy principle also predicts Zipf's rank-frequency distribution. Furthermore, our findings on optimal non-singular coding challenge common beliefs about random typing. It turns out that random typing is in fact an optimal coding process, in stark contrast with the common assumption that it is detached from cost cutting considerations. Finally, we discuss the implications of optimal coding for the construction of a compact theory of Zipfian laws and other linguistic laws.Comment: in press in the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics; definition of concordant pair corrected, proofs polished, references update

    Aspekte der Charakterisierung phonologischer Sprachstörungen vs. verzögerter Spracherwerb bei jordanischem Arabisch sprechenden Kindern

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    Bader S'da SI. Issues in the characterisation of phonological speech impairment vs. delayed acquisition in Jordanian Arabic-Speaking children. Bielefeld (Germany): Bielefeld University; 2010.Eine Studie des Spracherwerbs des jordanischen Arabisch bei jungen Muttersprachlern.A study with children speaking or acquiring Jordanian Arabic with or without phonological impairments

    Incidentals that build fluency: Optimal word processing and its implications for vocabulary acquisition.

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    Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139797/1/OptimalWordProcessor.pd

    Book reviews

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    Daniel Currie Hall: The role and representation of contrast in phonological theory. University of Toronto, Toronto, 2007, 277 pp. ; David Odden: Introducing phonology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, 348 pp
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