Directionality Effects and Exceptions in Learning Phonological Alternations

The present study explores learning vowel harmony with exceptions using the artificial language learning paradigm. Participants were exposed to a back/round vowel harmony pattern in which one affix (either prefix or suffix, depending on the condition) alternated between /me/ and /mo/ depending on the phonetic feature of the stem vowels. In Experiment 1, participants were able to learn the behaviors of both alternating and non-alternating affixes, but were more likely to generalize to novel affixes for non-alternating items than alternating items. In Experiment 2, participants were exposed to training data that contained non-alternating affixes in prefix position while alternating affixes were all suffixes, or vice versa. Participants were able to extend the non-alternating affixes to the novel direction, suggesting that participants inferred a non-directional harmony pattern. Overall, the patterns of alternating affixes are harder to learn than patterns of exceptions that do not alternate, which aligns with previous findings supporting a non-alternation bias. Our study raises the question of how biases towards exceptionality and directionality interact in phonological learning

Thoughts on analogy and some problems in interpreting phonological experiments

An inconclusive pilot study in Danish phonology gives rise to questions about testible differences between explanation by analogical algorithm versus rules. The literature on analogy shows its resistance to valid limitations on its operation in terms of markedness, similarity, or on the basis of purely conceptual or grammatical considerations. It is argued that being the less constrained mechanism, it is inferior as a working hypothesis to rules. It is suggested that the convincing instances of synchronic analogy are special cases where a speaker resorts to a more basic cognitive strategy as ill-defined and hence powerful as our ability to recognize similar aspects of nonidentical complexes

Phonology in the Twentieth Century

The original (1985) edition of this work attempted to cover the main lines of development of phonological theory from the end of the 19th century through the early 1980s. Much work of importance, both theoretical and historiographic, has appeared in subsequent years, and the present edition tries to bring the story up to the end of the 20th century, as the title promised. This has involved an overall editing of the text, in the process correcting some errors of fact and interpretation, as well as the addition of new material and many new references

Naturalness bias in palatalization: An experimental study

In the present study, we report on an artificial language learning experiment aiming to test the idea that it is easier to learn palatalization before a front vowel than it is to learn depalatalization in the same context. The motivation for the study comes from recent work by Czaplicki (2013), who provides a detailed analysis of palatalization-related effects in Polish, showing that they have no phonological basis. The conclusion he reaches is that ‘phonological naturalness does not play a role in linguistic computation’ Czaplicki (2013:32). It is nevertheless the case that palatalization is cross-linguistically much more common than depalatalization. If naturalness plays no role in computation, the typological asymmetry must arise from elsewhere, for example, from biases in learning difficulty. Our results provide provisory evidence that there is a small but statistically significant advantage for learning palatalization over depalatalization for adult Hungarian speakers

On the Structure and History of Russian. Selected Essays

The essays comprised in this volume fall naturally into two groups, one treating synchronic facets of Russian (and some further Slavic) linguistic structure, the other elucidating diachronic aspects of Russian - or, more generally, East Slavic - linguistic evolution

The Status of Coronals in Standard American English . An Optimality-Theoretic Account

Coronals are very special sound segments. There is abundant evidence from various fields of phonetics which clearly establishes coronals as a class of consonants appropriate for phonological analysis. The set of coronals is stable across varieties of English unlike other consonant types, e.g. labials and dorsals, which are subject to a greater or lesser degree of variation. Coronals exhibit stability in inventories crosslinguistically, but they simultaneously display flexibility in alternations, i.e. assimilation, deletion, epenthesis, and dissimilation, when it is required by the contradictory forces of perception and production. The two main, opposing types of alternation that coronals in SAE participate in are examined. These are weakening phenomena, i.e. assimilation and deletion, and strengthening phenomena, i.e. epenthesis and dissimilation. Coronals are notorious for their contradictory behavior, especially in alternations. This type of behavior can be accounted for within a phonetically grounded OT framework that unites both phonetic and phonological aspects of alternations. Various sets of inherently conflicting FAITHFULNESS and MARKEDNESS constraints that are needed for an OT analysis of SAE alternations are intoduced

On the Structure and History of Russian. Selected Essays

The essays comprised in this volume fall naturally into two groups, one treating synchronic facets of Russian (and some further Slavic) linguistic structure, the other elucidating diachronic aspects of Russian - or, more generally, East Slavic - linguistic evolution

Constraining lexical phonology: evidence from English vowels

Standard Generative Phonology is inadequate in at least three respects: it is unable to curtail the abstractness of underlying forms and the complexity of derivations in any principled way; the assumption that related dialects share an identical system of underlying representations leads to an inadequate account of dialect variation; and no coherent model for the incorporation of sound changes into the synchronic grammar is proposed. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that a well-constrained model of Lexical Phonology, which is a generative, derivational successor of the Standard Generative model, need not suffer from these inadequacies. Chapter 1 provides an outline of the development and characteristics of Lexical Phonology and Morphology. In Chapters 2 and 3, the model of Lexical Phonology proposed for English by Halle and Mohanan (1985) is revised: the lexical phonology is limited to two levels; substantially more concrete underlying vowel systems are proposed for RP and General American; and radically revised formulations of certain modern English phonological rules, including the Vowel Shift Rule and j-Insertion, are suggested. These constrained analyses and rules are found to be consistent with internal data, and with external evidence from a number of sources, including dialect differences, diachrony, speech errors and psycholinguistic experiments. In Chapters 4-6, a third reference accent, Scottish Standard English, is introduced. In Chapter 4, the diachronic development and synchronic characteristics of this accent, and the related Scots dialects, are outlined. Chapters 5 and 6 provide a synchronic and diachronic account of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR). I argue that SVLR represents a Scots-specific phonologisation of part of a pan-dialectal postlexical lengthening rule, which remains productive in all varieties of English, while SVLR has acquired certain properties of a lexical rule, and has been relocated into the lexicon. In becoming lexical, SVLR has neutralised the long/short distinction for Scots vowels, so that synchronically, the underlying vowel system of Scots/SSE is organised differently from that of other varieties of English. It is established that a constrained lexicalist model necessitates the recognition of underlying dialect variation; demonstrates a connection of lexical and postlexical rules with two distinct types of sound change; gives an illuminating account of the transition of sound changes to synchronic phonological rules; and permits the characterisation of dialect and language variation as a continuum

Studies in the linguistic sciences. 08 (1978)

MLA international bibliography of books and articles on the modern languages and literatures (Complete edition) 0024-821

Opacity and Transparency in Phonological Change

Modern High German final obstruent devoicing is usually thought to descend from Middle German devoicing without any chronological break, despite the fact that the graphic representation of final devoicing ceased in the Early Modern period. However, an alternative account holds that the spelling change reflects the actual loss of the devoicing rule, and that therefore the modern rule has an independent origin. In particular, apocope of final schwa has been suggested as the cause of the loss of devoicing in Early Modern German. According to this theory, loss of devoicing occurred because schwa apocope rendered the devoicing rule opaque, and hence hard to learn. If true, we expect to see some evidence for opaque devoicing during the period that apocope was in progress. In accordance with this prediction, we found a statistically significant correlation between apocope and absence of final devoicing in a number of German texts of the 14th and 15th centuries. After the 15th century, devoicing is lost across the board, which correlates with the completion of schwa apocope and the loss of the opaque devoicing rule. This confirms our theoretical predictions. If apocope had not rendered devoicing opaque, we would have to conclude that Early Modern German schwa apocope was an instance of rule insertion. However, the structural description of neither apocope nor devoicing leads us to expect insertion. Instead, Modern German final devoicing appears to be an instance of rule re-affirmation, which entails that the devoicing rule, though opaque, remained productive in some dialects