Today, Saturday, Sept. 22nd, the Department of Linguistics at Stanford University and the Stanford Humanities Center is hosting a one-day workshop dedicated to exploring the typological limits of probabilistic phonological grammars. The program is here: https://sites.google.com/site/analyzingtypologicalstructure/.

The workshop is partially funded by the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies as part of the project The Mathematics of
Language Universals.

Where: Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University, 424 Santa Teresa Street, Stanford, CA 94305

Invited speakers: Bruce Hayes (UCLA) and Jeffrey Heinz (Stony Brook)

Organizers: Arto Anttila (Stanford) and Giorgio Magri (CNRS)

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1763_giorgio_magri_1.pdf

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1764_giorgio_magri_1.pdf

The expressivity of segmental phonology and the definition of weak determinism
Adam McCollum, Eric Bakovic, Anna Mai, Eric Meinhardt
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004197
September 2018
Jardine (2016) asserts a computational distinction between segmental and tonal phonology, arguing that certain tonal patterns require the strictly more expressive computational power of non-deterministic regular functions while segmental patterns require at most the power of weakly deterministic regular functions. We advance two claims bearing on this assertion. Empirically, we show that non-deterministic segmental patterns are in fact attested, focusing on the vowel harmony pattern found in Tutrugbu (McCollum and Essegbey 2018) and citing several others. We submit that these patterns are non-deterministic in exactly the same essential way as the tonal patterns discussed by Jardine (2016). Formally, we show that the definition of weakly deterministic regular functions offered by Heinz and Lai (2013) is incapable of distinguishing between non-deterministic patterns and the less complex weakly deterministic patterns it is intended to delimit. We offer a revised definition of weakly deterministic functions that makes the correct distinctions, subsuming the conditions imposed by Heinz and Lai (2013) under a proposed definition of ‘interaction’ between composed functions. We also conjecture that the inverse relationship between complexity and observed frequency is explainable by domain-general principles of learnability rather than a categorical cap on the complexity of a phonology-specific learning mechanism, contra Heinz and Idsardi (2011, 2013).

Prosodically-driven morpheme non-realization in the Minorcan Catalan DP
Clàudia Pons-Moll
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004171
August 2018
This paper focuses on a case of prosodically-driven morpheme non-realization found in Minorcan Catalan kinship restrictive appositional phrases, in which the personal article en is realized before masculine personal names starting with a consonant, but not before masculine personal names starting with a vowel, or before feminine personal names starting in either a vowel or a consonant. From a strictly syllabic point of view, this pattern is unexpected, since a preconsonantal coda is generated in the former cases, and an onset-less syllable and a hiatus are generated in the second. Following work by Selkirk (2001), we propose that this asymmetric behavior is mainly driven by the constraint ALIGN(PWd, L; Lex), according to which the left edge of the prosodic word must be aligned with a lexical category. We show that, whereas it is possible to satisfy this constraint without challenging basic syllabification constraints (i.e. *C.V, ONSET) when the personal name starts with a consonant, this is not possible when the personal name starts with a vowel. The effects of the alignment constraint are inhibited by the need to realize phonologically the morph corresponding to a morpheme when the information it carries is not recoverable, and this explains the realization of the personal article in isolated constructions. The interaction of ALIGN(PWd, L; Lex) with standard right-alignment requirements, finally, accounts for the lack of realization of the feminine personal article before feminine personal names in these appositional phrases. The data taken into consideration and the subsequent formal analysis allow us to explore the nature and the typology of morpheme realization constraints, and to assess the theoretical consequences for the phonology-morphosyntax interface and for the architecture of grammar.

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1759_torrestamarit_1.pdf

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1760_ponsmoll_1.pdf

Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2018. In defence of underlying representations: Latin rhotacism, French liaison, Romanian palatalization. Probus 30 (2), 171-214.

direct link: https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2017-0006

Abstract
The surface realization of a linguistic expression can often be predicted from the form of paradigmatically related items that are not contained within it: in Latin, the nominative singular of a noun can often be inferred from the genitive; in French, the final consonant of a prenominal masculine adjective in liaison can typically be predicted from the feminine; in Romanian, the plural form of a noun determines whether its stem will exhibit palatalization before the derivational suffix /-ist/. Such instances of phonological paradigmatic dependence without containment have been claimed to challenge cyclic models of the morphosyntax-phonology interface. In this article, however, they are shown to be established indirectly through the acquisition of underlying representations. This approach correctly predicts that phonological paradigmatic dependencies are never systematically extended to new items if they involve suppletive allomorphy rather than regular alternation, whilst those surface phonological properties of derivatives that are under strict phonotactic control evade paradigmatic dependence on the inflectional forms of their bases. Theories relying on surface-to-surface computation fail to recover these empirical predictions because they are inherently nonmodular, positing generalizations that promiscuously mix phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical information. Underlying representations, therefore, remain indispensable as a means of establishing a necessary modular demarcation between regular phonology and suppletive allomorphy.

Keywords: cyclic containment, lexical conservatism, modularity, paradigmatic dependence, predictability, regular phonology, suppletive allomorphy, surface-to-surface computation, underlying representation