When lexical statistics and the grammar conflict: learning and repairing weight effects on
stress
Guilherme Duarte Garcia
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004712
August 2019
In weight-sensitive languages, stress is influenced by syllable weight. As a result, heavy syllables should attract, not repel, stress. The Portuguese lexicon, however, pr
esents a case where weight seems to negatively impact stress: antepenultimate stress is more frequent in light antepenultimate syllables than in heavy ones. This pattern i
s phonologically unexpected, and appears to contradict the typology of weight and stress: it is a case where lexical statistics and the grammar conflict. Portuguese also c
ontains gradient, not categorical, weight effects, which weaken as we move away from the right edge of the word. In this paper, I examine how native speakers’ grammars cap
ture these subtle weight effects, and whether the negative antepenultimate weight effect is learned or repaired. I show that speakers learn the gradient weight effects in
the language, but do not learn the unnatural negative effect. Instead, speakers repair this pattern, and generalize a positive weight effect to all syllables in the stress
domain. This study thus provides empirical evidence that speakers may not only ignore unnatural patterns, but also learn the opposite pattern.

On sound symbolism in baseball player names
Stephanie Shih, Deniz Rudin
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004689
July 2019
Recent work has argued that sound symbolism plays a much larger part in language than previously believed, given the assumption of the arbitrariness of the sign. A slate of recent papers on Pokémonastics, for example, has found sound symbolic associations to be rampant in Pokémon names cross-linguistically. In this paper, we explore a real-world dataset that parallels Pokémon, in which human players similarly have physical attributes of weight, height, and power: Major League Baseball. We investigated phonological correlations between baseball player statistics and their given first names, chosen baseball-official first names, and baseball nicknames. We found numerous sound symbolic associations in player-chosen names and nicknames, where conscious design plays a role in choosing a name that may communicate an attribute. These associations were often mediated by language-specific hypocoristic formation processes. We conclude that sound symbolism occurs in real-world naming practices, but only when names are chosen agentively in cognizance of the relevant attributes.

Précis of The grammar of Chinese characters
James Myers
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004682
July 2019
The title of Myers (2019) [The grammar of Chinese characters, Routledge] is meant literally: Chinese characters really do seem to have a mentally active and productive grammar, with striking similarities to the morphology and phonology of signed and spoken languages. This paper simply sketches out the key points made in the book, one section per chapter. Section 1 outlines previous analyses of Chinese characters, which already reveal grammar-like properties. Section 2 argues that characters have morphological operations akin to affixation, compounding, and reduplication. Section 3 argues that characters also have phonology (of a silent sort, as in sign languages), which describes abstract formal regularities in strokes and overall character shape. Section 4 provides corpus-based evidence for the productivity of many of the above regularities, and Section 5 provides experimental evidence. Section 6 first considers possible explanations for character grammar and then sketches out how the idea might be useful beyond theoretical linguistics.

Size matters: auxiliary formation in the morpho-syntax and morpho-phonology
Paula Fenger
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004674
July 2019
This paper investigates the limits on word formation by looking at periphrastic (V+aux) and agglutinating (V+suffix) verb patterns. I propose that creating syntactic words is limited by phase boundaries and that language variation comes from (i) whether Tense/Mood/Aspect elements can or cannot be part of the verbal phase and (ii) the availability of post-syntactic rebracketing, creating syntax-phonology mismatches. This is investigated on the case of Turkish and to some extent Japanese verbal morphology, by looking at phonological processes (i.e., stress assignment, pitch accent, vowel harmony) and syntactic processes (ie., coordination, movement).

Equiprobable mappings in weighted constraint grammars
Arto Anttila, Scott Borgeson, Giorgio Magri
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004670
June 2019
We show that MaxEnt is so rich that it can distinguish between any two different mappings: there always exists a nonnegative weight vector which assigns them different MaxEnt probabilities. Stochastic HG instead does admit equiprobable mappings and we give a complete formal characterization of them. We compare these different predictions of the two frameworks on a test case of Finnish stress.

The Asymmetry and Antisymmetry of Syntax: A Relational Approach to Displacement
Justin Mal?i?
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004661
March 2019
In both syntax and phonology, it has long been observed that significant restrictions exist on displacement. One such restriction ensures that displacement leads to sequences of elements which are in some sense contiguous, formalised in syntax in the concept of Feature Geometry-based Relativised Minimality by Starke (2001) and Contiguous Agree by Nevins (2007), and in Autosegmental Phonology by the Line-Crossing Prohibition (originating in the Well-formedness Condition in Goldsmith 1976). I argue that effects of this type, which have been called Contiguity Effects, are best captured by taking displacement to involve total weak orders of elements in the sense of Order Theory. Building on work taking the LCA to hold throughout the derivation, I argue that precedence relations may be the basis of phrase structure, though without claiming that linearisation is necessary for LF (as for example suggested in Kayne 2013). I then develop this approach to show that Order Theory provides useful axioms for both phrase structure and displacement, and that the existence of displacement is expected given the use of Order Theory.

Miller’s Monkey Updated: Communicative Efficiency and the Statistics of Words in Natural Language
Spencer Caplan, Jordan Kodner, Charles Yang
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004660
June 2019
Is language designed for communicative and functional efficiency? G. K. Zipf famously argued that shorter words are more frequent because they are easier to use, thereby resulting in the statistical law that bears his name. Yet, G. A. Miller showed that even a monkey randomly typing at a keyboard, and intermittently striking the space bar, would generate “words” that follow the same statistical distribution. Recent quantitative analysis of human language lexicons, with special focus on the phonological and semantic ambiguities of words (Piantadosi, Tily, & Gibson, 2012), has revived Zipf’s functional hypothesis. In this study, we first report our replication effort, including the identification of a spurious result in that study which undercuts the communicative efficiency hypothesis. Second, an update to Miller’s thought experiment that incorporates the phonotactic structure of language shows that lexicons generated without recourse to functional considerations in fact exhibit the statistical properties of words attributed to communicative efficiency. Finally, the statistical distribution of the English words that emerged since 1900 shows that the attested process of lexicon formation is consistent with the updated monkey model but does not support the claim of communicative efficiency. We conclude by arguing for the need to go beyond correlational statistics and to seek direct evidence for the mechanisms that underly principles of language design. (Spencer Caplan and Jordan Kodner are co-first authors and listed alphabetically)

The Algorithmic Method for Translating MS408 (Voynich).
Gerard Cheshire
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004653
June 2019
This paper is to demonstrate the algorithmic method for translating MS408 (Voynich). It translates an entire page to demonstrate clearly that the translation concurs with the image and that the overall content has legible meaning. Thus, anyone else will be able to use this instruction for translating other pages from the manuscript.

Poverty of the Stimulus Without Tears
Lisa Pearl
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004646
June 2019
Poverty of the Stimulus (PovStim) has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what PovStim is and how it’s been interpreted, which is traditionally where the tears have come in. I discuss PovStim from the perspective of language development, highlighting how PovStim relates to expectations about learning and the data available to learn from. I describe common interpretations of what PovStim means when it occurs, and approaches for determining when PovStim is in fact occurring. I close with illustrative examples of PovStim in the domains of syntax, lexical semantics, and phonology.