<OT> New Posting: ROA-945

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ROA 945-0108

Grammaticality and Ungrammaticality in Phonology

Andries W Coetzee <coetzee at umich.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=945


Abstract:
In this paper, I make two theoretical claims: (i) For some
form to be grammatical in language L, it is not necessary
that the form satisfy all constraints that are active in
L, i.e. even grammatical forms can violate constraints.
(ii) There are degrees of ungrammaticality, i.e. not all
ungrammatical forms are equally ungrammatical. I first show
that these claims follow straightforwardly from the basic
architecture of an Optimality Theoretic grammar. I then
show that the surface sound patterns used most widely in
formal phonology cannot be used to test the truth of these
two claims, but argue that results from speech processing
experiments can. Finally, I discuss three experiments on
the processing of non-words of the form [stVt], [skVk] and
[spVp] in English that were designed to test these claims,
and show that both claims are confirmed by the results of
the experiments.

Comments: To appear in Language 84
Keywords: phontactics, word-likeness, lexical decision, speech processing
Areas: Psycholinguistics, Phonology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=945