<OT> New Posting: ROA-957

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 957-0308

Mutation and learnability in Optimality Theory

Matthew Wolf <mwolf at linguist.umass.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=957


Abstract:
Learners face potential superset traps when presented with
a target language which allows some marked phonological
structure only when that structure occurs as the outcome
of a morphological mutation process. For example, the vowel-tensi
ng ablaut which marks elatives in Javanese can create tense
vowels in closed syllables, even though such vowels are
otherwise not allowed in the language. In this paper, I
show that restrictive final grammars will be learned in
these situations, under the assumptions that mutation processes
result from special faithfulness to floating-feature affixes
(Zoll 1996) and that learners have a Specific-F >> General-F
bias (Smith 2000). I also show that such languages create
a paradox for a purely declarative account of affixation:
end-state restrictiveness in Javanese requires morpheme-realizati
on constraints to be biased towards a ranking above IO-Faith,
in tension with arguments by Adam & Bat-El (to appear) that
data from child Hebrew require the opposite bias. I also
show that the tension between the Javanese and Hebrew facts
disappears under an item-based theory of morphology, where
all affixation (including of the mutation variety) results
from faithfulness to underlying structures.

Comments: To appear in the Proceedings of NELS 38
Keywords: learnability, mutation, morpheme realization, Javanese, Hebrew
Areas: Phonology,Morphology,Learnability
Type: Conference Proceedings Chapter

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=957