Course Topic/Course Description: Gradience and Variation in Phonology
Phonological systems are comprised of both categorical and gradient patterns: some forms are wholly illegal and are simply prohibited, while other forms/patterns are unusual but are not completely disallowed. Gradience has often presented a challenge to phonological theories (Boersma and Hayes 2001; Frisch and Zawaydeh 2001; Hammond 2004), however: in both the traditional rule-based generative phonology framework and the original incarnation of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993), rigid phonotactic generalizations lead to a black- and-white assessment of forms as being absolutely grammatical or absolutely ungrammatical. The territory that we focus on in this class lies between these two extremes of grammatical and ungrammatical: the vast range of gray territory composed of forms that are more grammatical and less grammatical, sort of good and sort of bad rather than perfect or terrible. We will read about variation, gradient phenomena, and various theoretical frameworks such as Stochastic Optimality Theory (Boersma 1997; Boersma and Hayes 2001). Students will be expected to write a final paper focused on a topic related to variation or gradience.
Wk
Day/Date
Topic
Readings
INTRODUCTIONS & BACKGROUND
1
M Jan 11
Class overview & self intros (be prepared to talk briefly about your background, interests, and current projects if any)
W Jan 13
Preliminaries: prior to reading anything, how do we define variation, optionality, and gradience? What factors do we think affect variation and gradience?
2
M Jan 18
MLK DAY, No class
W Jan 20
Overview/Review of Optimality Theory
McCarthy, John J. What is Optimality Theory? Language and Linguistics Compass 1.4 (2007): 260-291. pdf hereDownload pdf here
3
M Jan 25
Experimentation in Theroetical Phonology
Kawahara, Shigeto. (2011.) Experimental Approaches In Theoretical Phonology. in van Oostendorp, Marc, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume and Keren Rice (eds). The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Blackwell Publishing, 2011. pp. 2283-2303. pdf hereDownload pdf here
Laboratory Phonology
Cohn, A. C. (2010). Laboratory Phonology: Past Successes and Current Questions, Challenges, and Goals. in C. Fougeron, B. Kühnert, M. D'Imperio, N. Vallée (Eds.), LabPhon10 (pp. 3-29). Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter Mouton. pdf hereDownload pdf here
W Jan 27
Sample LabPhon Approach: Investigating Optionality in Navajo
Berkson, K. (2013). Optionality and locality: Evidence from Navajo sibilant harmony. Laboratory Phonology, 4(2), 287-337. pdf hereDownload pdf here
VARIATION
4
Feb 1-3
Types of Variation: crosslinguistic & language-internal
Cho, Taehong, and Peter Ladefoged. Variation and universals in VOT: evidence from 18 languages." JPhon 27.2 (1999): 207-229. pdfDownload pdf
Stuart-Smith, J., Sonderegger, M., Rathcke, T., & Macdonald, R. (2015). The private life of stops: VOT in a real-time corpus of spontaneous Glaswegian. Laboratory Phonology, 6(3-4), 505-549. pdfDownload pdf
BACKGROUND: (Not necessary to read for class, but seminal. Worth reading if you’ve not before.) Abramson, Arthur S., and Leigh Lisker. "A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: Acoustical measurements." (1964): 384-422. pdfDownload pdf
5
Feb 8-10
Variation, Optionality, & Phonological Theory
Anttila, Arto (2007). Variation and optionality. In Paul de Lacy (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology. Cambridge Univ. Press, pp.519-536. pdfDownload pdf
Coetzee, Andries and Joe Pater (2011). The place of variation in phonological theory. In John Goldsmith, Jason Riggle, and Alan Yu (eds.), Handbook of phonological theory, 2nd Edition, pp. 401-434. Blackwell. pdfDownload pdf
Pająk, B., & Baković, E. (2010). Assimilation, antigemination, and contingent optionality: the phonology of monoconsonantal proclitics in Polish. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 28(3), 643-680. pdfDownload pdf
6
Feb 15,17
Gradient Phonotactics & Stochastic Phonology
Hammond, Michael. "Gradience, phonotactics and the lexicon in English phonology." IJES, International Journal of English Studies 4.2 (2004): 1-24. pdfDownload pdf
Hayes, Bruce, and Zsuzsa Cziráky Londe. "Stochastic phonological knowledge: The case of Hungarian vowel harmony." Phonology 23.01 (2006): 59-104. pdfDownload pdf
Hay, Jennifer, Janet Pierrehumbert, and Mary Beckman. "Speech perception, well-formedness, and the statistics of the lexicon." Phonetic Interpretation: Papers in Laboratory Phonology VI, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge(2004): 58-74. pdfDownload pdf
Bailey, Todd M., and Ulrike Hahn. "Determinants of wordlikeness: Phonotactics or lexical neighborhoods?" Jrnl of Memory and Language44.4 (2001): 568-591. pdfDownload pdf
BACKGROUND: Auer, Edward T., and Paul A. Luce. "Probabilistic phonotactics in spoken word recognition." The handbook of speech perception (2005): 610-630. pdfDownload pdf
7
Feb 22,24
Modeling variation in OT: Gradual Learning Algorithm, Maximum Entropy Grammar
Boersma, Paul and Bruce Hayes (2001). Empirical tests of the Gradual Learning Algorithm. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 45-86. pdfDownload pdf
Goldwater, Sharon, and Mark Johnson (2003). Learning OT constraint rankings using a maximum entropy model. In Jennifer Spenader, Anders Eriksson, and Osten Dahl (eds.), Proceedings of the Stockholm Workshop on Variation within Optimality Theory, pp. 111-120. Stockholm University, Stockholm. pdfDownload pdf
8
Feb 29, Mar 2
Variation case study: Spanish Aspiration (Guest: Valentyna Filiminova)
Frequency effects in the lexicon (we’ll select a subset of these)
Frisch, Stefan A., Janet B. Pierrehumbert, and Michael B. Broe (2004). Similarity avoidance and the OCP. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 22: 179-228. pdfDownload pdf
Frisch, Stefan A. and Bushra Zawaydeh (2001). The psychological reality of OCP-place in Arabic. Language 77.1: 91-106. pdfDownload pdf
Coetzee, Andries, and Joe Pater. "Gradient phonotactics in Muna and Optimality Theory." University of Michigan & U Mass Amherst (2005). pdfDownload pdf
Becker, M., Nevins, A., & Levine, J. (2012). Asymmetries in generalizing alternations to and from initial syllables. Language, 88(2), 231-268. pdfDownload pdf
Becker, M., Ketrez, N., & Nevins, A. (2011). The surfeit of the stimulus: Analytic biases filter lexical statistics in Turkish laryngeal alternations. Language, 87(1), 84-125. pdfDownload pdf
March 12-20: SPRING BREAK, NO CLASS
10
Mar 21,23
MONDAY: Kelly will review:
Frisch, Stefan A., Janet B. Pierrehumbert, and Michael B. Broe (2004). Similarity avoidance and the OCP. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 22: 179-228. pdfDownload pdf
Coetzee, Andries, and Joe Pater. "Gradient phonotactics in Muna and Optimality Theory." University of Michigan & U Mass Amherst(2005). pdfDownload pdf
NO CLASS ON WEDS. March 23
11
Mar 28,30
Frequency biases & learning variation in OT
Monday, 3/28, led by Olivia:
Zamuner, Tania S., LouAnn Gerken, and Michael Hammond. "Phonotactic probabilities in young children's speech production." Journal of child language 31.03 (2004): 515-536. pdfDownload pdf
Weds., 3/30, led by Young:
Coetzee, Andries and Shigeto Kawahara (2013). Frequency biases in phonological variation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31: 47-89. pdfDownload pdf
12
April 4,6
Phonetic gradience; integrating phonetic knowledge in phonological learning
Monday, 4/4, led by Sherman:
Kingston, John, and Randy L. Diehl. "Phonetic knowledge." Language(1994): 419-454. pdfDownload pdf
Weds., 4/6, led by Andrew:
Zuraw, Kie. "The role of phonetic knowledge in phonological patterning: corpus and survey evidence from Tagalog infixation." Language 83.2 (2007): 277-316. pdfDownload pdf
13
April 11,13
Thoughts on the phonetics-phonology relationship
Monday, 4/11, led by Stefon:
Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur. "Diachronic explanations of sound patterns."Language and Linguistics Compass 2.5 (2008): 859-893. pdfDownload pdf
Weds., 4/13, led by Chien Han:
Moreton, Elliott. "Analytic bias and phonological typology." Phonology 25.01 (2008): 83-127. pdfDownload pdf
14
M Apr. 18
Final Presentations
W Apr. 20
Final Presentations
15
M Apr. 25
Final Presentations
W Apr. 27
Final Presentations
Final Project is due by 5 PM on Monday, May 2.
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