<OT> New Posting: ROA-959

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 959-0308

Gradient Phonotactics and the Complexity Hypothesis

Arto Anttila <anttila at stanford.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=959


Abstract:
Lexical items can be more or less well-formed depending
on the phoneme combinations they contain. This phenomenon
is called gradient phonotactics. We propose an approach
to gradient phonotactics based on Optimality Theory (Prince
and Smolensky 1993/2004). At the heart of the proposal is
the Complexity Hypothesis that attributes the relative well-forme
dness of a lexical item to its relative grammatical complexity
measured in terms of ranking information: the more complex
the lexical item, the less well-formed it is. The theory
orders linguistic structures in an implicational hierarchy
that reflects their relative well-formedness. Some implications
are universal; others depend on language-specific rankings.
The Complexity Hypothesis is supported by phonotactic data
from Muna (Austronesian) as recently analyzed by Coetzee
and Pater (2008).

Comments: To appear in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
Keywords: gradient phonotactics, implicational universals, factorial typologies
Areas: Phonology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=959