Spring 2012

May 2nd: Last meeting of the semester: discussion of this semester’s results and further research plans.

April 11th: Tamara Schembri presented work on the application of genetic algorithms to the problem of inducing and weighting constraints in a Harmonic Grammar framework.

April 4th: Michael Becker gave a tutorial on Experigen, a platform for web-based stimulus presentation in phonological experiments, using the materials for Kayly Tillman’s experiment (see below).

March 28th: Aleksei Nazarov presented work-in-progress on explaining phonological opacity by allowing phonological representations at various levels of abstraction to co-exist as independent entities.

March 11th: Robert Staubs presented work on “Harmonic Serialism with a record” – a variant of Harmonic Serialism which extends the framework towards a more principled account of phonological opacity.

February 29th: Joe Pater led a group discussion on the concept of lexically specific constraints.

February 22nd: Kayly Tillman presented her experiment which poses the question whether non-speakers of Boston English have intuitions about the contexts in which “r-intrusion” occurs in this dialect.

February 15th: First meeting of the semester: discussion of research plans.