~ ROA Version, 8/2002. Essentially identical to the Tech Report, with new pagination (but the same footnote and example numbering); correction of typos, oversights & outright errors; improved typography; and occasional small-scale clarificatory rewordings. Citation should include reference to this version.

Overt or covert reference to the edges of constituents is a commonplace throughout phonology and morphology. Some examples include: •In English, Garawa, Indonesian and a number of other languages, the normal right-to-left

The study of phonotactics (e.g., the ability of English speakers to distinguish possible words like blick from impossible words like *bnick) is a central topic in phonology. We propose a theory of phonotactic grammars and a learning algorithm that constructs such grammars from positive evidence. Our grammars consist of constraints that are assigned numerical weights according to the principle of maximum entropy. Possible words are assessed by these grammars based on the weighted sum of their constraint violations. The learning algorithm yields grammars that can capture both categorical and gradient phonotactic patterns. The algorithm is not provided with any constraints in advance, but uses its own resources to form constraints and weight them. A baseline model, in which Universal Grammar is reduced to a feature set and an SPE-style constraint format, suffices to learn many phonotactic phenomena. In order to learn nonlocal phenomena such as stress and vowel harmony, it is necessary to augment the model with autosegmental tiers and metrical grids. Our results thus offer novel, learning-theoretic support for such representations. We apply the model to English syllable onsets, Shona vowel harmony, quantity-insensitive stress typology, and the full phonotactics of Wargamay, showing that the learned grammars capture the distributional generalizations of these languages and accurately predict the findings of a phonotactic experiment.

Abstract not found

This article, which emerges from my collaboration with Alan Prince on Prosodic Morphology, will explore the consequences of the Prosodic Morphology Hypothesis for a fairly complete account of the central regularities of canonical form in two Semitic root-and-pattern morphological systems, those of Arabic and Akkadian. We will see that the core of the Arabic nominal system is templatic in character, with templates that conform to (3). But two more specialized nominal constructions depart from (3) and are provably non-templatic. They are analyzed instead in terms of two other notions from Prosodic Morphology theory, prosodic circumscription and a-templatic prosodic morphology. The Arabic and Akkadian verb system is even more radically non-templatic; just a single template underlies all verb forms, and other morphological regularities are derived by rules of affixation, sometimes via prosodic circumscription.

Abstract not found

One of the many challenges to be faced in explaining language learning is the interdependence of the phonological mapping and the phonological underlying forms for morphemes (Albright and Hayes 2002; Hale and Reiss 1997; Tesar and Smolensky 2000; Tesar et al. 2003). The learner must attempt to infer both simultaneously, based on the surface forms of a language.

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.

When a medial consonant cluster is simplified by deletion or place assimilation, the first consonant is affected, but never the second one: /patka / becomes [paka] and not *[pata]; /panpa / becomes [pampa] and not [panta]. This article accounts for that observation within a derivational version of Optimality Theory called Harmonic Serialism. In Harmonic Serialism, the final output is reached by a series of derivational steps that gradually improve harmony. If there is no gradual, harmonically improving path from a given underlying representation to a given surface representation, this mapping is impossible in Harmonic Serialism, even if it would be allowed in classic Optimality Theory. In cluster simplification, deletion or Place assimilation is the second step in a derivation that begins with deleting Place features, and deleting Place features improves harmony only in coda position.

Optimality-Theoretic learning algorithms are only guaranteed to be successful if the data fed to them contain full structural descriptions of the surface forms, i.e. descriptions that include hidden structure like metrical feet. This is not realistic as a model of acquisition, because children are only exposed to overt forms, e.g. unstructured strings of syllables. Optimality-Theoretic learning algorithms that learn solely from overt forms turn out to sometimes succeed and sometimes fail (Tesar & Smolensky 2000). This possibility of failure is a property of both on-line learning algorithms that have been proposed for OT, namely Error Driven Constraint Demotion (EDCD; Tesar 1995) and the Gradual Learning Algorithm (GLA; Boersma 1997). The possibility of failure is not necessarily bad: one would want an algorithm to fail for languages that do not exist, and to succeed for languages that do exist. Latin exists (or existed). This paper compares the performance of the two learning algorithms for the metrical stress system of Classical Latin. It turns out that EDCD cannot learn this system from overt forms only, and that the GLA can. This suggests that the GLA may be a better model of acquisition than EDCD. The results