Plant Series, No. 2. Manuscript MS408.
Gerard Cheshire
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004845
October 2019
The plants individually described in Manuscript MS408 have all been identified as species from the environs of the Mediterranean Basin, in accordance with the location of origin for the manuscript. This series of papers presents each plant species separately with a translation of its accompanying text and any relevant cross-reference information. In addition to the linguistic value, there is plenty of historical, cultural and scientific knowledge to be gleaned from each of these manuscript pages, so they will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines.

Sound Structure and Sound Change: A modeling approach
Rebecca Morley
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004842
September 2019
Research in linguistics, as in most other scientific domains, is usually approached in a modular way – narrowing the domain of inquiry in order to allow for increased depth of study. This is necessary and productive for a topic as wide-ranging and complex as human language. However, precisely because language is a complex system, tied to perception, learning, memory, and social organization, the assumption of modularity can also be an obstacle to understanding language at a deeper level. The methodological focus of this work is on computational modeling, highlighting two aspects of modeling work that receive relatively little attention: the formal mapping from model to theory, and the scalability of demonstration models. A series of implemented models of sound change are analyzed in this way. As theoretical inconsistencies are discovered, possible solutions are proposed, incrementally constructing a set of sufficient properties for a working model. Because internal theoretical consistency is enforced, this model corresponds to an explanatorily adequate theory. And because explicit links between modules are required, this is a theory, not only of sound change, but of many aspects of phonological competence.

Transparency, locality, and contrast in Uyghur backness harmony
Adam McCollum
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004839
October 2019
Theories of vowel harmony have wrestled with the formal challenges of transparency, notably the increased expressivity of non-local dependencies. However, experimental work has demonstrated on a number of occasions that ‘transparent’ vowels actually undergo harmony (e.g. Gick, Pulleyblank, Campbell, & Mutaka, 2006), re-establishing the role of locality in the analysis of harmony. Transparency has also been shown to be constrained by count effects – a single token of a vowel may be transparent but multiple tokens are not (Hayes & Londe, 2006; Ringen & Kontra, 1989). However, existing work on backness harmony in Uyghur argues that harmony truly skips the high front vowel /i/ and is unaffected by multiple tokens of transparent /i/. This paper examines the distribution of [i] and [ɯ] within roots and suffixes to assess their phonological status, as well as their participation in harmony. Results indicate there are no transparent vowels in Uyghur, as [i] and [ɯ] regularly alternate for harmony. This finding is interpreted as further support for the role of locality in harmony more generally.

Metrical Grids and Generalized Tier Projection
Sophie Hao
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004837
October 2019
This paper formalizes metrical grid theory (MGT, Prince, 1983; Hayes, 1995) and studies its expressive power. I show that MGT analyses of a certain form can describe stress systems beyond the input tier-based input strictly local functions proposed by Hao and Andersson (2019), but conjecture that such analyses do not describe systems beyond the input tier-based strictly local languages of Baek (2018). These results reveal fundamental differences between the three formalisms.

Phonotactic learning with neural language models
Connor Mayer, Max Nelson
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004834
October 2019
Computational models of phonotactics share much in common with language models, which assign probabilities to sequences of words. While state of the art language models are implemented using neural networks, phonotactic models have not followed suit. We present several neural models of phonotactics, and show that they perform favorably when compared to existing models. In addition, they provide useful insights into the role of representations on phonotactic learning and generalization. This work provides a promising starting point for future modeling of human phonotactic knowledge.

Learning Complex Segments
Maria Gouskova, Juliet Stanton
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004815
July 2019
Languages differ in the status of sequences such as [mb, kp, ts]: they can pattern as complex segments or as clusters of simple consonants. We ask what evidence learners use to figure out which representations their languages motivate. We present an implemented computational model that starts with simple consonants only, and builds more complex representations by tracking statistical distributions of consonant sequences. We demonstrate that this strategy is successful in a wide range of cases, both in languages that supply clear phonotactic arguments for complex segments and in languages where the evidence is less clear. We then turn to the typological parallels between complex segments and consonant clusters: both tend to be limited in size and composition. We suggest that our approach allows the parallels to be reconciled. Finally, we compare our model with alternatives: learning complex segments from phonotactics and from phonetics.

Meter, prosody and performance: evidence from the Faroese ballads
Daniel Galbraith
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004802
March 2019
In this paper, I argue that the folk ballad tradition of the Faroe Islands, to date never examined in detail by metrists, offers substantial empirical support for the necessity of maintaining the classic metrical template, as well as the distinction between metrical and prosodic structure: meter is an abstraction which can neither be collapsed into phonology, nor fundamentally detached from it (Kiparsky 2006, Blumenfeld 2015, pace Hayes & MacEachern 1998, Fabb & Halle 2008). The ballad performances also reveal a unidirectional correspondence from strong metrical positions to strong dance steps and strong musical beats, indicating that metrical prominence plays a significant role in determining rhythm. The Faroese tradition thus provides a window into the relation between metrical structure and performance. In support of my conclusions I draw upon both the ballad texts and audio-visual recordings of sections of sample ballads I made on the Faroe Islands.

Tonal Interactions in Nuer Nominal Inflection
Siri Gjersøe
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004801
September 2019
This dissertation is on the tonal system of nouns in Nuer, a Western Nilotic language. Tone in Nuer is an understudied topic and has mostly been ignored in previous studies. This dissertation demonstrates that tone has a primary role in nominal morpho-phonology involving tonal interactions of three components: lexical tone, L tone restrictions, and inflectional tone. I offer a stratal OT analysis of this based on a new assumption of bidirectional affectiveness. The empirical parts of this dissertation give evidence of tone in Nuer and its phonetic cues.