<OT> New Posting: ROA-1020

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 1020-0309

The Roles of Internal and External Factors and the Mechanism of Analogical Leveling: Variationist- and Probabilistic OT approach to Ongoing Language Change in Japanese Voice System

Shin-ichiro Sano <shinichirosano at gmail.com>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1020


Abstract:
This thesis presents an exhaustive research about ongoing
language variation and change in the Japanese voice system.
Through the analysis I identify the roles of internal and
external factors in human linguistic competence that govern
the language variation and change, and I construct a model
of grammar that inherently includes the language variation
and change. This work aims at the formal theoretical analysis
primarily built upon the empirical evidence: a huge amount
of spontaneous speech data.


Until now, a number of researches on language variation
and change have been done from various perspectives: The
sociolinguistic research, specifically from the perspective
of the variationist approach (Labov 1963 et seq., Weinreich
et al. 1968), has revealed much about language variation
and change, particularly with respect to phonological aspects,
focusing on various internal and external factors that govern
the phenomena by the quantitative method. However, the formalizat
ion of the mechanism of language variation and change is
insufficient; the generative grammatical approach (Chomsky
1957) can give a formal account of the phenomena based on
the grammatical theory. However, this approach has focused
on the language competence as the research subject, and
the language use has been overlooked. Thus, the approaches
have not cooperated and have not shared their insights.


In the grammatical category voice in Japanese, language
variation and change which reorganize the conjugation paradigm
are currently underway. The process includes three variations:
sa-Insertion, ra-Deletion and re-Insertion. The variation
and change in voice are related to the functional demand
and to morphophonology.


Based on these facts, I conducted the research from the
perspectives of a variationist approach (Labov 1963 et seq.;
Weinreich et al. 1968), and also Optimality Theory (henceforth
OT; Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004), specifically the Probabilist
ic OT (e.g. Boersma 1998; Boersma and Hayes 2001; Goldwater
and Johnson 2003; Jäger 2004; Jäger and Rosenbach 2006),
sharing the insights of both paradigms. I employ two large-scale
Japanese corpora: the on-line full text database of the
minutes of the Diet and the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese,
complementally taking advantage of the strong points of
each corpus for the exhaustive research about language variation
and change. The exhaustive research on the corpora brought
forth the data which amounts to a total of over 20,000 tokens
of the variations.


Specifically, I conduct the quantitative analysis employing
the spontaneous speech data and examine the roles of internal-
and external factors that govern the language variation
and change. The data are subject to the factor-by-factor
analysis followed by the multivariate analysis. Subsequently,
I conduct the grammatical analysis in terms of the Optimality
Theory. I set several OT constraints, reinterpreting the
results of the quantitative analysis. The Probabilistic
OT analysis includes the prediction of the change and the
verification of the analysis. Considering all the results
together, I discuss the locus of variation in human language
competence. In doing so, I uncover some detailed insights
about the roles of internal and external factors and this
in turn leads to the construction of a model of grammar
that accommodates the inherent variability.

	
In addition to the identification of the roles of factors
and the construction of the model, I propose that the three
variations are not discrete phenomena but a uniform and
exhaustive one which is driven by the common demand for
the optimization of the conjugation paradigm as well as
the reduction of the functional load of each form in the
Japanese voice system; the discrepancy in the manner of
the change is derived according to the particular meanings
or functions of each variation. I also show that the language
variation and change in question can be explained by the
interaction of a small set of constraints.

Comments: 
Keywords: Probabilistic OT, corpus, variation, language change, analogical leveling, internal factors, external factors, Dynamic Interaction Hypothesis
Areas: Phonology, Morphology, Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1020