Phonology Talks | Juliet Stanton

13 February 2017

Time: 12:00am
Venue: ArtsOne Lecture Theatre. Time: 16:00-16:45

Title: 

The midpoint pathology as a learnability problem

Abstract:

To analyze the typology of metrical window systems, foot-free theories of stress (e.g. Gordon 2002) employ contextual anti-lapse constraints, which ban sequences of stressless syllables from occupying a word edge.  However, grammars that contain contextual lapse constraints overgenerate: in particular, inclusion of contextual lapse constraints predicts the existence of patterns in which the stressable window contracts to a single word-internal syllable in some words but not others (dubbed the midpoint pathology by Kager 2012).  Kager (2012) argues that, in order to avoid this unwanted prediction, we must exclude contextual anti-lapse constraints from the grammar.  In this talk I outline an alternative: that midpoint systems are unattested not because they are ruled out by the grammar, but because they are difficult to learn.  This study belongs to a growing body of work exploring the idea that phonological typology is shaped by considerations of learnability.