Monthly Archives: August 2016

Alderete and Tupper to appear: Connectionist approaches to generative phonology

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1563_alderete_1.pdf

ROA: 1290
Title: Connectionist approaches to generative phonology
Authors: John Alderete, Paul Tupper
Comment: To appear in A. Bosch and S.J. Hannahs (eds.), The Routledge handbook of phonological theory
Length: 32 pages
Abstract: While connectionist models are ubiquitous in psycholinguistic approaches to language processing, they are less well-known as generative models of grammar. This work surveys a literature in which connectionist models have been developed to address problems central to generative phonology. The focus is on explaining to the newcomer how precisely these models work, and how they grapple with locality, gradience, opacity, and learnability in phonology. An understanding of connectionist phonology gives both a deeper understanding of past developments in phonological theory and a glimpse into its future.
Type: Paper/tech report
Keywords: phonology, connectionism, constraints, neural networks, locality, gradience, learnability

 

Rosen (2016): Predicting the unpredictable: capturing the apparent semi-regularity of rendaku voicing in Japanese through Gradient Symbolic Computation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1559_rosen_1.pdf

ROA: 1289
Title: Predicting the unpredictable: capturing the apparent semi-regularity of rendaku voicing in Japanese through Gradient Symbolic Computation
Authors: Eric Rosen
Comment: To appear in Clem, Emily, Geoff Bacon, Andrew Cheng, Virginia Dawson, Erik Hans Maier, Alice Shen, & Amalia Horan Skilton (eds.). 2016. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Length: 15
Abstract: Semi-regular phonological processes occur often in natural language. For example, rendaku voicing in Japanese fails to occur in a seemingly random fashion among roughly 16% of certain classes of compounds. This presents an analytical challenge for generative theories with exceptionless rules or categorical constraints: irregularity of any kind must arise within lexical representations, not the grammar. For example, the compound kuma (‘bear’) + te (‘hand’) -> kuma-de (‘rake’) voices. But yama (‘mountain’) + te (‘hand’) -> yama-te (‘mountainside’) doesn’t. There is no known phonological distinction between kuma and yama that enables a rule or constraint to explain the difference. The necessity of listing exceptional surface forms like yama-te undermines rendaku’s status as a systematic phonological process (Kawahara 2015, Vance 2014).

 

This work proposes a new analysis of rendaku that solves this problem, allowing the correct output forms to be generated without specifying voicing for particular, “exceptional” compounds. I adopt the framework of Gradient Symbolic Computation (Smolensky and Goldrick 2015, henceforth GSC), a type of Harmonic Grammar (Legendre, Miyata and Smolensky 1990) that allows weighted constraints and features with continuous activation levels. In this analysis, rendaku voicing occurs by the coalescence of two stem-specific, partially activated [+voi] features that occur as attributive affixes on compound-forming stems: a variation of the junctural morpheme for rendaku proposed by Ito and Mester 1998. Only when the additive combination of these features exceeds some threshold t does voicing occur. In the above examples, [+voi]_kuma + [+voi]_te > t > [+voi]_yama + [+voi]_te. The contribution of both conjuncts to voicing captures not only the well-known gradient continuum of voicing preference/dispreference among second conjuncts (Irwin 2015) but also a lesser-known gradient effect of first conjuncts on voicing.

 

Adopting the principle of Minimum Description Length (Goldsmith 2011) I show that GSC can provide a better model of this semi-regular phenomenon than other frameworks by reducing the degree of lexicalization with minimum cost to the grammar. Moreover, computer-simulated algorithms show that this proposed grammar is learnable. This analysis holds promise that the GSC model can shed new light on the lexicalization vs. grammaticalization question with respect to other semi-regular processes.

Type: Paper/tech report
Keywords: phonology, gradient symbolic computation, semi-regularity, Japanese rendaku voicing, minimum description length

Looking for unpublished Artificial Grammar studies

We’re working on a statistical meta-analysis of studies investigating phonetic naturalness bias in artificial grammar learning, and we’re looking for unpublished studies (to attempt to correct for publication bias).  If you or your students have such a study, we would be most grateful if you could send us the manuscript or handout (with information about the design, and enough data analysis that we can calculate standard effect size measures).  We’re looking for both adult studies and child studies, as well as studies that do and do not control for structural complexity.  In general, we’d rather receive studies that need to be excluded based on the criteria of our meta-analysis than miss studies that could have been included.

We would greatly appreciate if you could send your studies to wendell.kimper@manchester.ac.uk before 1st October 2016.

Thanks so much!
Wendell Kimper and Anna Greenwood

Kastner (2016) – Templatic morphology as an emergent property: Roots and functional heads in Hebrew

Templatic morphology as an emergent property: Roots and functional heads in Hebrew
Itamar Kastner
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003103
August 2016
Modern Hebrew exhibits a non-concatenative morphology of consonantal “roots” and melodic “templates” that is typical of Semitic languages. Even though this kind of non-concatenative morphology is well known, it is only partly understood. In particular, theories differ in what counts as a morpheme: the root, the template, both, or neither. Accordingly, theories differ as to what representations learners must posit and what processes generate the eventual surface forms. In this paper I present a theory of morphology and allomorphy that combines lexical roots with syntactic functional heads, improving on previous analysis of root-and-pattern morphology. Verbal templates are here argued to emerge from the combination of syntactic elements, constrained by the general phonology of the language, rather than from some inherent difference between Semitic morphology and that of other languages. This way of generating morphological structure fleshes out a theory of morphophonological alternations that are non-adjacent on the surface but are local underlyingly; with these tools it is possible to identify where lexical exceptionality shows its effects and how it is reigned in by the grammar. The Semitic root is thus analogous to lexical roots in other languages, storing idiosyncratic phonological and semantic information but obeying the syntactic structure in which it is embedded.

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003103
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Submitted, comments welcome
keywords: allomorphy, hebrew, roots, templatic morphology, morphology, syntax, phonology

Reiss (2016) – Substance Free Phonology

Substance Free Phonology
Charles Reiss
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003087
August 2016
Imagine a theory of phonology that makes no reference to well-formedness, repair, contrast, typology, variation, language change, markedness, `child phonology’, faithfulness, constraints, phonotactics, articulatory or acoustic phonetics, or speech perception. What remains in such a phonological theory constitutes the components of the Substance Free Phonology (SFP) model I will sketch here. My task thus involves not only justifying the exclusion of all those domains, but also arguing that something remains that is worthy of the name `phonology’. In support of the latter task, I’ll provide some positive examples of recent research in SFP.

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003087
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: To appear in Routledge Handbook of Phonolofgical Theory
keywords: phonology, substance free, innateness, features, optimality theory, rules, phonotactics, contrast, competence, performance, markedness, search, quantification, phonology

Goodhue & Wagner (2016) – Intonation, yes and no

Intonation, yes and no
Daniel GoodhueMichael Wagner
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003082
July 2016

English polar particles yes and no seem to be interchangeable in response to negative sentences, that is, either can be used to convey both positive and negative responses. While some recent research has been devoted to explaining this phenomenon (Kramer & Rawlins, 2009; Cooper & Ginzburg, 2011; Krifka, 2013b; Roelofsen & Farkas, 2015; Holmberg, 2016), questions remain. Primary among them is whether intonation differs depending on whether the response is positive or negative, and whether intonation can affect the interpretation of polar particle responses. In a series of experiments, we demonstrate that the contradiction contour (Liberman & Sag, 1974) is an intonation that is only produced on positive responses to negative polar questions, and that it influences how hearers interpret bare particle responses. Our experimental results also confirm the phenomenon of interchangeability, and add new evidence regarding speakers’ preferences for using yes and no in response to negative polar questions. We discuss theories of polar particles and intonation, and how the experimental results bear on them, and conclude by considering uses of polar particles that are not easily explained by existing theories.

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003082
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:
keywords: polar particles, yes, no, intonation, prosody, contradiction contour, negative questions, semantics, syntax, phonology