<OT> New Posting: ROA-952

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ROA 952-0208

Phonological Variation and Lexical Frequency

Andries W Coetzee <coetzee at umich.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=952


Abstract:
Lexical usage frequency is known to influence the application
rate of some variable processes. Specifically, variable
lenition processes typically affect frequent lexical items
more often than infrequent lexical items. For instance,
variable t/d-deletion in English is more likely to apply
to a frequent word (just) than to an infrequent word (bust).
Existing grammatical models of phonological variation do
well at accounting for the influence of grammatical factors
on variation, but these models cannot account for the contributio
n of non-grammatical factors such as lexical frequency.
In this paper, I propose a model of phonological variation
that can simultaneously account for the influence of both
these factors on variation. I assume an Optimality Theoretic
grammar with lexically indexed faithfulness constraints.
Variation arises as a result of variable lexical indexation
-- a single lexical item can be assigned to different lexical
classes on different evaluation occasions, and will hence
not always be evaluated by the same faithfulness constraints.
Each lexical item is associated with a probabilistic distribution
function that determines the likelihood of it being assigned
to each of the lexical classes. The shape of a lexical item's
distribution function is determined by its usage frequency,
so that frequency influences the likelihood of the lexical
item being assigned to specific lexical classes, and hence
the likelihood of it being evaluated by specific faithfulness
constraints. I apply the proposed model to variable t/d-deletion
in English, and show that it succeeds in accounting for
the way in which usage frequency influences this process.


In two appendices, I show how the model can be implemented
by interpreting the lexical distribution functions as instantiati
ons of the beta distribution (Evans et al. 2000). This implementa
tion of the model is then used to determine the expected
t/d-deletion rates in a corpus of American English. I also
use this implementation to model the acquisition path of
a variable process, showing that the model predicts more
variation during earlier acquisitional stages.

Comments: 'Short version' will appear in the proceedings of NELS 38.
Keywords: Variation, lexical frequency, acquisition
Areas: Phonology,Formal Analysis,Learnability,Sociolinguistics
Type: Conference Proceedings Chapter

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=952