<OT> New Posting: ROA-954

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 954-0308

Emergent ranking of faithfulness explains markedness and licensing by cue

Paul Boersma <paul.boersma at uva.nl>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=954


Abstract:
This paper derives observed universal rankings of faithfulness
constraints from biases in acquisition that result from
(1) frequency differences in the input and (2) imperfections
in the transmission channel. Computer simulations show that
in acquisition, the child's constraint rankings will more
or less end up where they yield a grammar that generates
the parents' language. But the ranking will diverge a bit,
as a result of the said frequency differences and imperfections.
Even if the parents' language has all faithfulness constraints
ranked at the same height, their children will gradually
rank them according to one of the universal rankings that
have been proposed in the literature (e.g. licensing by
cue, positional faithfulness, markedness by faithfulness).
All these rankings are therefore caused automatically by
a simple learning algorithm. None of the causes proposed
before, all of which were based on the assumption that speakers
have some sort of explicit or implicit linguistic or extralinguis
tic knowledge, are needed.

Comments: 
Keywords: parallelism,multi-level,licensing by cue,markedness,assimilation,neutralization,emergentism
Areas: Learnability,Phonology,Phonetics,Computation,Language Acquisition
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=954