<OT> New Posting: ROA-683

[Rutgers Optimality Archive]

ROA 683-0904

Taking a Free Ride in Morphophonemic Learning

John J. McCarthy <jmccarthy at linguist.umass.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=683


Abstract:
As language learners begin to analyze morphologically complex words, 
they face the problem of projecting underlying representations from the 
morphophonemic alternations that they observe. Research on learnability 
in Optimality Theory has started to address this problem, and this 
article deals with one aspect of it. When alternation data tell the 
learner that some surface [B]s are derived from underlying /A/s, the 
learner must sometimes generalize by deriving *all* surface [B]s, even 
nonalternating ones, from /A/s. An adequate learning theory must 
therefore incorporate a procedure that allows nonalternating [B]s to 
take a 'free ride' on the /A/ -> [B] unfaithful map.

Comments: To appear in Catalan Journal of Linguistics 4 (special issue 
on Phonology in Morphology, edited by Maria-Rosa Lloret and Jesús 
Jiménez)
Keywords: learnability, opacity, chain shift
Areas: Learnability, Phonology
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=683