<OT> New Posting: ROA-1006

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 1006-1208

Emergent optimal vowel systems

Jan-Willem van Leussen <jwvanleussen at gmail.com>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1006


Abstract:
An interesting aspect of vowel systems is that they seem
to balance between articulatory ease and auditory contrast.
This tension is often proposed as the cause of the remarkable
overlap between the organization of vowels in various languages.
This thesis aims to integrate self-organizational, agent-based
models of vowel dispersion with an existing Optimality Theoretic
model of non-teleological phoneme dispersion. To this end,
a computer simulation combining both approaches was developed.
Simulation results show that dispersed vowel systems still
emerge in the artificial language of the agents, although
its predictions with respect to vowel quality are not entirely
accurate. The ability of the model to account for the diachronic
process of chain shifts caused by vowel splits or mergers
is also explored. The results confirm that innate constraints
are not needed to model vowel dispersion and that these
types of simulations may be helpful in investigating synchronic
and diachronic phonological phenomena. However, the model
described in this thesis needs to be enriched with more
levels of representation to increase its explanatory power.

Comments: Includes appendix with Java code
Keywords: vowels,agents,simulation
Areas: Computation,Phonology,Phonetics
Type: Masters Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1006