<OT> New Posting: ROA-830

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 830-0506

Underphonologization

Elliott Moreton <moreton at unc.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=830


Abstract:
The most straightforward theory of how phonologization interacts
with Universal Grammar to determine typology is that UG
defines the cognitively possible grammars ('hard' typology),
while phonologization determines how frequent they are ('soft'
typology). This paper argues instead that some soft typology
has a cognitive source, and proposes a formal explanation.
Phonological patterns relating tone to tone are shown to
be more common than those relating tone to voicing and aspiration
(14 families on 5 continents versus 5 families on 3 continents).
This soft typological fact cannot be derived from differential
robustness of the phonetic precursors, which have similar
magnitude (survey of 24 studies of 17 languages).  A learning
algorithm is proposed in which the learner chooses between
constraint sets based on how probable they make the training
data ('Bayesian Constraint Addition').  This biases the
learner towards phonologizing processes driven by 'modular'
markedness constraints (ones that interact with few other
constraints).  Its application to the tone case is illustrated
by simulation.

Comments: 
Keywords: phonologization, learning, tone
Areas: Phonology,Phonetics,Learnability
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=830