Optimality Theory and Phonetics-Phonology Interface

Štefan Beňuš
Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra

The book presents Optimality Theory (OT) as the most influential recent framework for theoretical phonological analyses, and proposes an OT model for analyzing the relationship between continuous and discrete aspects of the cognitive system of human speech. The first three chapters present the essential OT tools and practical descriptions of their use in data analysis. The fourth chapter is the core of the book. It starts with a detailed description of the phonological and phonetic properties of transparent vowels /i/ and /e/ in Hungarian vowel harmony. Then, it proposes extensions of the OT tools using the notions of non-linear dynamics. Finally, the chapter presents a formal OT model that accounts for the relationship between the phonetic and phonological characteristics of transparent vowels.

Štefan Beňuš has received PhD in linguistics from New York University and is currently an assistant professor at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia. His main research interests include laboratory phonology and the relationship between prosody and pragmatic functions of speech.

Contents

0. Preview

1. Introduction

2. Optimality Theory
2.1. Optimality Theory and real life decision making
2.2. OT and phonology
2.2.1. OT constraints: Faithfulness and markedness
2.2.2. Input-output mapping and other characteristics
2.3. OT vs. SPE

3. OT and the interface between phonetic-phonology
3.1. Discretization (chunking) of continuous phonetic dimensions
3.2. Representation of speech sounds

4. Integrating OT and dynamics: the case of Hungarian vowel harmony
4.1. Phonology and phonetics of Hungarian transparent vowels
4.1.1. Phonological description
4.1.2. Review of some formal analyses of transparency in palatal harmony
4.1.3. Phonetic observations
4.1.3.1. Articulatory characteristics of transparent vowels
4.1.3.2. Perceptual characteristics
4.2. Explaining the observed Hungarian patterns: Phonetic nature of Transparency
4.3. OT tools for the analysis of Hungarian
4.3.1. Dynamic definition of OT constraints and their evaluation
4.3.2. OT constraints for vowel harmony and their evaluation
4.3.3. Markedness constraint: AGREE
4.3.3.1. Stem-internal harmony
4.3.3.2. Stem-suffix harmony
4.3.4. Faithfulness IDENT constraints
4.3.5. Phonological categories and dynamic OT
4.3.6. Summary of the developed OT tools
4.4. OT analysis of Hungarian vowel harmony
4.4.1. Transparency
4.4.2. Opacity
4.4.3. Vacillation
4.4.4. Monosyllabic stems
4.5. Typological considerations
4.6. Summary of the OT model

5. Conclusions and future research

6. References

ISBN 9783895863950. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 40. 151pp. 2009.

The role and representation of minimal contrast and the phonetics-phonology interaction

Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza
Ohio State University

This study investigates the role of minimal contrast in phonetics and phonology. Two sounds are minimally contrastive when they differ in just one property. The main findings are that (i) minimal contrast can influence phonetic effects and (ii) phonological processes may single out minimally contrastive elements. A experiment tests the influence of minimal length contrast on the phonetic voicing effect, a pattern by which vowels are longer before voiced than before voiceless obstruents, in Lithuanian. In Lithuanian, only high and low vowels are minimally contrastive for length. The results indicate the voicing effect is more limited for those vowels that are minimally contrastive for length, showing a phonetic pattern sensitive to minimal contrast. Therefore, it is argued that the phonological representation must include information about minimal contrast. Minimal contrast is formalized with a contrast-coindexing function, which applies to minimally contrastive segments capable of distinguishing pairs of words.

Contrast-coindexing predicts that minimal contrast might also be active in the phonology. Evidence for this comes from vowel height harmony in Lena Asturian, where only vowels minimally contrastive for height can trigger harmony. The typology of vowel harmony from several varieties related to Lena further supports the active role of minimal contrast.

ISBN 9783 929075861. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 41. 273pp. 2009.

Temporal stability of linguistic typological features

Søren Wichmann & Eric W. Holman
Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

This book is about how to measure the relative stabilities of linguistic typological features. It discusses three alternative methods and tests their performance by applying them to simulated datasets having preset stabilities. The best metric is then applied to the data of The World Atlas of Language Stuctures (Haspelmath et al. 2005) to produce empirical estimates of stability for 134 features and 445 feature values.

The numerical results concur with many specific categorical statements in the typological literature, and also substantiate the general suggestion that stable features are more strongly interrelated than are unstable features. The results also show that features have approximately the same relative rates of change in different languages, even in widely separated geographical areas. Surprisingly, however, tendencies for features to diffuse vary among areas with no consistent differences among features. It follows that stability and diffusibility are separate dimensions rather than opposite ends of the same dimension.

ISBN 9783895865381. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 42. 94pp. 2009.

Development of Language through the Lens of Formal Linguistics

P. Karlík (ed.)
Masaryk University

Formal approaches to language are typically associated with synchronic linguistics whereas diachronic linguistics is connected with traditional philological methods. The goal of this book is to demonstrate that formal-linguistic analyses of diachronic language data can not only represent known facts in a new light, but also reveal new facts that have remained hidden to traditional philology. Particular studies, whose authors are linguists from distinguished European and American universities, analyze various phonological, morphological, syntactical and semantic phenomena, in typologically and genetically diverse languages.

Table of Contents

Preface

Strength of Analogy in the System of Indo-European Numerals
Václav Blažek (Masaryk University)

Lenition in Branching Onsets in French and in ALF Dialects
Guylaine Brun-Trigaud, Tobias Scheer (Université de Nice)

Nominal Expressions in Flux: The status of the universal quantifier in Old Bulgarian
Mila Dimitrova-Vulchanova, Giuliana Giusti, Valentin Vulchanov (NTNU – Trondheim / KVAB-VLAC, Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia)

History of Czech Negative Noun Phrases
Mojmír Dočekal (Masaryk University)

De Declinationibus Disputandum Est
Joseph Emond (University of Vienna, University College, London)

A Case of Linguistic Change: Infinitives as predicatives
Uwe Junghanns, Denisa Lenertová (University of Göttingen, University of Leipzig)

Two Tree Diagrams with Identical Semantic Interpretations: Is it the result of an undecided competition of different syntactic principles?
Petr Karlík (Masaryk University)

Interjection > Pronoun? The History of Czech Expletive on(o)
Roland Meyer (University of Regensburg)

Diachronic Impoverishment of the Auxiliary and Participle Movement in Slavic
Krzysztof Migdalski (University of Wrocław)

Imperative in Compounds: Implications for Historical and Evolutionary Studies
Ljiljana Progovac (Wayne State University)

ISBN 9783895865879 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 43. 200pp. 2010.

Language-Cognition Interface: State of the Art

Ramesh Kumar Mishra & Narayanan Srinivasan (eds.)
Centre for Behavioural and Cognitive Science (CBCS), University of Allahabad

Significant theoretical developments have taken place in language-cognition research in the last few decades. The collected chapters in this book provide extensive coverage of important areas of this research domain including bilingualism, sentence processing, and embodied cognition. The chapters written by experts provide the reader the most up to date discussion about issues and controversies while providing theoretical and empirical knowledge about these themes. In spite of the wide range of topics covered, there has been an attempt to make the collection thematically coherent providing the state of the art in language-cognition research.

The chapters have been written for both researchers as well as graduate students interested in basic issues in language-cognition research and their relevance for larger issues on language and cognition. The other most significant aspect of this volume is the emphasis on multi-disciplinary approaches and cross-cultural emphasis. The volume offers excellent material to researchers who wish to compare studies across languages and cultural boundaries. The basic purpose of the volume then is to present substantially the main arguments and research themes as well as methodological issues in the broad area of language-cognition research to a wider audience in linguistics, psycholinguistics, psychology, neurosciences and cognitive science.

Falk Huettig
The role of color during language-vision interactions

Patrick Sturt
The psycholinguistics of structural composition

Kirsten M. Tooley & Matthew Traxler
Syntactic Priming in Comprehension: A Dual Mechanism Account

Pascal Gygax & Ute Gabriel
Gender representation in language: More than meets the eye

Ramesh Mishra
Language-cognition interface: Issues and prospects

Bhoomika Kar, Vatsala Khare and Tanya Dash
Bilingualism and Cognitive Control: Is Bilingualism a Cognitive Advantage

D Vasanta
Verbs of Motion and Language Use: Reflections on Research Frameworks

Pritha Chandra
Redundant Agreement, Phases and Memory

Rick Dale, Nicholas D. Duran, & Jennifer Roche
Dynamics of Action During Language Processing

Rajesh Kumar & Rajiv Mishra
On Resolving Ambiguities Using Socially Contextualized Hierarchy

Andriy Machykov, Simon Garrod & Christof Scheepers
Perceptual priming of structural choice during English and Finnish sentence production

Rob Hartsuiker, Eva Van Assche, Evelyne Lagrou & Wouter Duyck
Can bilinguals use language cues to restrict lexical acces to the target language?

Xin Wang
The Bilingual Lexicon: Models and Implications

Probal Dasgupta
Some Milestones in Language and Cognition Studies

T Padma Subhadra, Sarika Cherodath, Latika Singh & Nandini Singh
Developmental profiles of language skills in bilingual children - assessments from speech production tasks

Claudia Scorolli
The meaning of Concrete and Abstract Words: role of sensori-motor and linguistic experience’

Sonali Nag
The akshara languages: What do they tell us about children’s literacy learning?

ISBN 9783862880010 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 44. 380 pp. 2010.

Adjectives at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Francesca Ramaglia
University of Roma Tre

This book explores the syntax of adjectives under the Generative framework of grammar. It makes a contribution to the theory of modification and predication, which is supported by a considerable amount of data from many typologically different languages.

The syntactic analysis it proposes can account for numerous interpretive properties that adjectives present in both their attributive and predicative function, which have drawn particular attention in the specialized literature of the last decades.

Numerous diagrams illustrate the structures proposed throughout the book, and the formal analysis is made clearer by means of detailed explanations and exemplifications. The comparative approach adopted, together with the assumption of a formal model of grammar, makes this study combine empirical investigation with the theoretical insights of the last years.

This book can be of interest for advanced students in syntax as well as for scholars and researchers concerned with the syntax-semantics interface. Given the exposition and analysis of a large amount of data taken from typologically different languages, it can also be important for people interested in the study of noun phrases in a comparative perspective.

Francesca Ramaglia is currently holding a postdoctoral research fellow position at the University of Roma Tre (Department of Linguistics). Among her main research interests are the nominal domain and the interface analysis of information-structurally marked constructions.

ISBN 9783862880393. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 45. 240pp. 2011.

SOBRE ESTADOS Y ESTATIVIDAD

Ángeles Carrasco Gutiérrez (ed.)
Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

Los trabajos que recoge este libro son versiones revisadas de las ponencias presentadas en el IV Seminario de Investigación sobre Tiempo y Aspecto (Facultad de Letras de Ciudad Real, España, 25-26 de noviembre de 2010). Los Seminarios de Investigación sobre Tiempo y Aspecto tienen carácter bianual. Se iniciaron en 2004 y han contado con la participación de prestigiosos especialistas tanto en cuestiones relacionadas con la temporalidad como en cuestiones relacionadas con la aspectualidad léxica y gramatical. El tema elegido para la cuarta edición fue la Estatividad.

Las contribuciones se disponen en el mismo orden en que intervinieron sus autores. No obstante, pueden hacerse dos agrupaciones. Hay un primer grupo de trabajos con el objetivo común de presentar pruebas para establecer distinciones en una clase aspectual en absoluto uniforme (Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera, Luís Filipe Cunha, Yuko Morimoto) o para incluir en ella predicados que no se consideran estativos de forma unánime (Rafael Marín). En el segundo grupo de trabajos se abordan algunos problemas de sintaxis: la existencia o no de un argumento eventivo asociado a los estados (María del Carmen Horno Chéliz), la neutralización de ser/estar en entornos de generación de eventos (Jukka Havu), la construcción de enunciados estativos a partir de verbos eventivos (Juan Cuartero Otal), la pérdida de la indicación de habitualidad de la perífrasis en combinación con predicados estativos y actitudinales en el español del País Vasco (Bruno Camus) y la posibilidad de subordinar predicados estativos en infinitivo a verbos de percepción visual (Ángeles Carrasco Gutiérrez y Raquel González Rodríguez).

Índice: JUAN CARLOS MORENO CABRERA: La aspectualidad fásica de los estados resultativos desde el punto de vista de la Semántica Relacional de Sucesos (SRS) - RAFAEL MARÍN: Casi todos los predicados psicológicos son estativos - LUÍS FILIPE CUNHA: Phase states and their interaction with individual-level and stage-level predicates - MARÍA DEL CARMEN HORNO CHÉLIZ Argumento eventivo, estados léxicos y enunciados estativos - JUKKA HAVU: El uso de los verbos copulativos ser yestar en predicados generados - JUAN CUARTERO OTAL: Pero, ¿cómo podemos reconocer los estados? - YUKO MORIMOTO: El control de los predicados estativos - BRUNO CAMUS BERGARECHE: Estados y habitualidad: el caso de - ÁNGELES CARRASCO Y RAQUEL GONZÁLEZ: La percepción visual de estados.

ISBN 9783862881604. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 46. 195pp. 2011.

Discourse Anaphora: A Cognitive-Functional Approach

Ming-Ming Pu
University of Maine, Farmington

Discourse anaphora has long been the focus of considerable research in such diverse fields as linguistics, psychology, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence because its study is fundamental to our understanding of the relationship among cognitive processes, discourse coherence, and information distribution. In discourse production and comprehension the speaker and hearer have separate and often conflicting processing needs, yet the hearer is able to quickly and uniquely identify various referents coded by given anaphora of the speaker’s choice with the statuses of the referents and their contexts ever-changing. Such a tacit agreement between the speaker and hearer must stem from a collaborative effort in building a congruent mental structure of discourse where referents are introduced, reinstated or discarded, and duly tracked.

This book proposes a cognitive-functional principle to account for how the construction of mental structure determines the use and resolution of discourse anaphora, and provides quantitative, cross-linguistic analyses of empirical and text data to demonstrate how the principle operates in discourse processing. The cross-linguistic study between two historically unrelated languages, Chinese and English, has revealed further that the occurrence and distribution of discourse anaphora is more universal in nature than language-specific.

ISBN 9783862881611. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 47. 239pp. 2011.

Papers on Prague School Linguistics

Oldřich Leška

Edited by Bohumil Vykypěl and Vít Boček

Czech originals translated by David Short

Oldřich Leška (1927–1997), was a member of the post-war generation of the Prague School of linguistics and the author of a series of texts published in journals and volumes in which he treated various aspects of the teachings of the Prague School and portrayed several of its prominent personalities. The present volume contains his texts which are less accessible, being written in Czech or published in not widely distributed journals or volumes.

ISBN 9783862883110. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 48. 149pp. 2012.

Jackendoff e a Arquitectura Paralela

Apresentação e discussão de um modelo de linguagem

Alexandra Soares Rodrigues
Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Universidade de Coimbra

Este livro oferece uma reflexão crítica acerca do modelo de linguagem “Arquitectura Paralela” de Ray Jackendoff, através do confronto deste modelo com diferentes visões de outros autores. Este volume não é uma mera apresentação ou resumo do modelo de Jackendoff. É antes um exercício de ponderação de várias questões relacionadas com a arquitectura da linguagem e com a sua definição evolutiva na espécie humana.

O trabalho de Ray Jackendoff revelou-se assaz influente no domínio das ciências que estudam a linguagem. A sua influência verifica-se não apenas em áreas pertencentes ou relacionadas com a linguística, como a psicolinguística, a semântica, a sintaxe, a teoria da linguagem, mas também em áreas em que essa relação não é aparentemente tão imediatista, como as neurociências e a biologia evolutiva.

No final de cada capítulo, incluímos algumas questões, que funcionam como súmulas dos principais aspectos focados, que podem ser alvo de discussão pelo leitor.

Devido à extensão de domínios focados por Jackendoff, este livro é dirigido não apenas a estudantes de linguística, mas também de antropologia, psicologia e, em suma, a todos aqueles que têm interesse acerca da linguagem e da espécie humana.

Alexandra Soares Rodrigues é Professora Adjunta do Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, onde lecciona disciplinas de Linguística. É membro do Centro de Estudos de Linguística Geral.

This book offers a critical reflection on the model of language “Parallel Architecture” by Ray Jackendoff comparing this model with different approaches of other authors. This volume is not a simple presentation or a summary of Jackendoff’s model. It is mainly an exercise of reflection on different questions related to the architecture of language and its evolutionary definition of the Human species.

The work of Ray Jackendoff has revealed itself to be very influential in the sciences that study language. Its influence is verified not only in scientific domains belonging to or related to linguistics, as is the case of psychology, semantics, syntax or language theory, but also in areas where that relation is apparently not so immediate, such as neurosciences and evolutionary biology.

At the end of each chapter we have included some questions that function as a summary of the main focused topics, which may be discussed by the reader.

Due to the extensive nature of the domains focused on by Jackendoff, this volume is aimed not only at linguistics students, but also at anthropology students, psychology students, and, in short, at all those that have an interest in language and the Human species.

Alexandra Soares Rodrigues is Associated Professor at the Escola Superior de Educação of the Instituto Politécnico de Bragança and researcher of the Centro de Estudos de Linguística Geral e Aplicada of the University of Coimbra.

ISBN 9783862885121. LINCOM Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 49. 154pp. 2012.