This is the first course in a two-semester sequence on phonological theory, the second of which (Ling 606) will be taught by Kristine Yu in the spring.

The primary aim of this sequence is to prepare you to do research in phonology, and we will be taking a largely forward looking approach. Part of that involves working on phonological analysis with currently evolving formalisms of generative phonology, in particular those of OT and its variants, and teasing apart the predictions that different theories make for phonological typology. We will also spend time discussing the theoretical assumptions of different approaches to phonology, as there is a broad diversity of viewpoints that guides current practice, even within work in the generative tradition. Finally, we will pay special attention to the modeling of phonological learning, which is taking an increasingly central place in phonological theory itself.

We do recognize that not all of you plan a career in phonology. We hope that you will find value in the formal approaches to the modeling of grammar and its learning that we discuss, which are often quite distinct from those typically used in current syntax and semantics, but also overlap with them in important ways. We will also spend time discussing the interaction of phonology with morphology, syntax, semantics and phonetics.

What follows is a general outline of the topics we will cover in each semester. These are subject to change, especially due to your input.

Semester 1

Phonological phenomena: Stress, syllable structure, local segmental processes, prosodic morphology, morphological conditioning, opacity and cyclicity, variation in phonology

Theoretical concepts: Metrical theory with violable and inviolable constraints, correspondence theory in OT, scales and sonority, rule ordering, OT with derivations (Harmonic Serialism, Stratal OT), OT with weighted constraints (Harmonic Grammar), “naturalness” in phonology (inductive bias), ranking and weighting conditions (batch learning), on-line learning, learning with hidden structure, probabilistic grammar and its learning

Semester 2

Phonological phenomena: Tone, intonation, long-distance segmental processes (vowel and consonant harmony, non-local dissimilation), more opacity, metrics, syntactic conditioning, phonetic gradience and phonology

Theoretical concepts: Features, tiers, autosegmental representations and feature geometry, rules vs. constraints in long-distance processes, models of intonational phonology, direct access to syntax vs. prosodic mediation, complexity and mathematical models for description and learning of phonological patterns, Finite State Grammars and the Chomsky hierarchy, category learning, real and discrete systems and probabilistic grammars