<OT> New Posting: ROA-1000

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 1000-1108

Learning Lexical Indexation

Andries W Coetzee <coetzee at umich.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1000


Abstract:
Morphological concatenation often triggers phonological
processes. For instance, addition of the plural suffix /- at n/
to Dutch nouns causes vowel lengthening in some nouns ([xat]
vs. [xa:.t at n] 'hole') due to the weight-to-stress principle.
These kinds of processes often apply only to a subset of
words -- not all Dutch nouns undergo this process ([kat]
vs. [ka.t at n] 'cat'). Nouns need to be lexically indexed
as either undergoing this process or not. I investigate
how phonological grammar and lexical indexation are learned
when learners are confronted with data like this. Based
on learnability considerations, I hypothesize that learners
acquire a grammar with default non-alternation, so that
novel items are treated as non-alternating. I report the
results of artificial language learning experiments compatible
with this hypothesis, and model these results in a version
the Biased Constraint Demotion Algorithm (Prince and Tesar 2004).

Comments: To appear in Phonology sometime in 2009
Keywords: Learnability, Exceptions
Areas: Phonology,Learnability,Morphology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1000