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A data-oriented (empiricist) alternative to the currently pervasive (nativist) Principles and Pa-rameters approach to the acquisition of stress assignment is investigated. A similarity-based algorithm, viz. an augmented version of Instance-Based Learning is used to learn the system of main stress assignment in Dutch. In this nontrivial task a comprehensive lexicon of Dutch monomorphemes is used instead of the idealized and highly simplified description of the empirical data used in previous approaches. It is demonstrated that a similarity-based learning method is effective in learning the complex stress system of Dutch. The task is accomplished without the a priori knowledge assumed to pre-exist in the learner in a Principles and Parameters framework. A comparison of the system's behavior with a consensus linguistic analysis (in the framework of Metrical Phonology) shows that ease of learning correlates with decreasing degrees of marked-ness of metrical phenomena. It is also shown that the learning algorithm captures subregularities within the stress system of Dutch that cannot be described without going beyond some of the theoretical assumptions of metrical phonology.

this paper, I demonstrate that this is indeed the case. Section 1 provides an account of the regular patterns of pretonic stress, a necessary prerequisite to the analysis of stem stress preservation and lexical exceptionality in section 2, which incorporates prosodic faithfulness constraints (It, Kitagawa, and Mester 1996 and McCarthy 1996) into the hierarchy established in -3section

Abstract not found

Many languages respect the generalization that some or all unstressed vowels are deleted. This generalization proves elusive in classic Optimality Theory, however. The source of the problem is classic OT’s parallel evaluation, which requires that the effects of stress assignment and syncope be optimized together. This article argues for a version of OT called Harmonic Serialism, in which the effects of stress assignment and syncope can and must be evaluated sequentially. The results are potentially applicable to other domains where process interaction is best understood in derivational terms.

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This paper explores onset-sensitive stress from a typological, phonetic and phonological perspective. A phonetic study of three onset-sensitive stress systems suggests a close match between onset weight distinctions and a phonetic measure of perceptual energy, such that phonological weight criteria are the phonetically most effective ones. Perceptual considerations also offer an explanation for other typological observations, including the relative rarity of onset-sensitive stress, the greater weight of low sonority onsets, and the subordination of onset-sensitive weight distinctions to rimal based ones in languages with both types of weight distinctions. Onset-based weight criteria are effectively modelled using a skeletal slot model of the syllable referenced by a family of prominence constraints requiring that heavy syllables be stressed and that light syllables be unstressed. 1.

... Then, the model's learning component is used to acquire the grammar of each individual language. The outcome of the experiment reveals several problems in empirical coverage of the model, and relates some of them to inherent design choices.

Young children are able to segment words into syllables, even though there are no perceptual or acoustic cues that indicate syllable boundaries in the primary linguistic data. We show that information about word boundaries can be used to predict syllable boundaries by replicating the results of experiments done by Gillis and De Schutter (1996) with children who syllabified Dutch disyllabic monomorphemes with a single intervocalic consonant. Word boundary probabilities were statistically computed in child language corpora and used to predict syllable boundaries with a simple statistical model. The five- and six-year-olds ’ syllabification behavior could be simulated using word-boundary probabilities estimated from child language corpora. Similar results were obtained for three different corpora. In our simulations, we also investigate the question whether children acquire their knowledge of word boundaries from words from the input, from the intake, or from their own output.

this document was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant SBR9420424)