hiddieman: Minimal pears.
New Mission
Goal for immediate future is to research and compose an original writing sample for grad school applications since the last paper I wrote in theoretical phonology now strikes me as spirited and hearted in the right place but vulgarly naive in some of the specifics. Thus I’ve decided to review the literature surrounding the computational complexity of Optimality Theory (OT). OT is basically the “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” constraint-satisfaction theory of phonology where for a given underlying form, infinitely/indefinitely candidate surface forms are generated and filtered out according to an ordered list of constraints. Put another way, all possible outputs are run through a series of gauntlets and the one that comes out in the best shape is the winner and selected as the output.
The literature consists of proofs that OT is NP-complete and responses to the effect of “ur doing OT wrong”. We’re doing NP-complete proofs in my theory of computation class, so I get to capitalize on and reinforce my knowledge in complexity theory. The formal mathematical reasoning and fine-grained scholarship serve my ultimate rhetorical goal of trying to get accepted, but the exercise will not be trivial as I can study the intricacies of a theory maligned across the board in my linguistics department. So that’s good and I feel good about it. My main issue for writing therefore is coming up with something original to bring to the table. Right now, I’m considering a direction along the lines of “computational intractability is not the end of world; mental representation is.”
“Perhaps diagrams will make this clearer.” (J.E. Redden, Twi Basic Course, 1963)
Also, the squiggly arrowheads make me love living in the future.
![As my previous post suggests, today is a linguistics-and-LaTeX day for me. I’m writing about Akan, the language I “adopted” for study in my African linguistics class. The image above shows autosegmental derivations from the word /fʊnɔ/ (‘to be emaciated’) in three dialects of Akan. Depending on the dialect, /fɔnʊ/ can be realized as [fɔ̃n], [fɔ̃ŋ] or [fɔ̃ʊ̃]. The sound changes at work in these words are fairly simple but the dialectal divergence and variety here is kind of nuts. [Data via E. N. Abakah, “Phonological analysis of word-final consonants in Akan”, 2005.]](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_krv9ubTaWZ1qznraho1_500.png "As my previous post suggests, today is a linguistics-and-LaTeX day for me. I’m writing about Akan, the language I “adopted” for study in my African linguistics class. The image above shows autosegmental derivations from the word /fʊnɔ/ (‘to be emaciated’) in three dialects of Akan. Depending on the dialect, /fɔnʊ/ can be realized as [fɔ̃n], [fɔ̃ŋ] or [fɔ̃ʊ̃]. The sound changes at work in these words are fairly simple but the dialectal divergence and variety here is kind of nuts. [Data via E. N. Abakah, “Phonological analysis of word-final consonants in Akan”, 2005.]")
As my previous post suggests, today is a linguistics-and-LaTeX day for me. I’m writing about Akan, the language I “adopted” for study in my African linguistics class. The image above shows autosegmental derivations from the word /fʊnɔ/ (‘to be emaciated’) in three dialects of Akan. Depending on the dialect, /fɔnʊ/ can be realized as [fɔ̃n], [fɔ̃ŋ] or [fɔ̃ʊ̃]. The sound changes at work in these words are fairly simple but the dialectal divergence and variety here is kind of nuts. [Data via E. N. Abakah, “Phonological analysis of word-final consonants in Akan”, 2005.]
Once I found out that it’s going to cost me just as much to take four classes as it would to take five, I enrolled in Introduction to African Linguistics. The class promises to be a snoozefest as a linguistics primer, but the fun part is that we have to adopt a language, study it and report on it over the course of the semester. I asked the instructor what language has a tone system with lots of word-level phonology—I want to see some crazy awesome phonology—and he suggested Akan, a family of languages spoken in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
The above data comes from the Twi language, and I would like to call attention to the (apparent) minimal pair /dʑa/ ‘leave behind’ and /dʑɥa/ ‘peel’. The initial consonant on both of these words is a voiced palatal affricate (compare to English “j” in judge), but the second is differentiated by the labiopalatal approximate (so imagine rounding your lips and bringing your tongue closer to your hard palate while making the “j” sound). As far as I can tell (I have yet to view a real grammar of the language), these are contrastive phonemes—which is really cool! Imagine if lip-rounding made a difference in English, imagine having two “ch” and two “j” sounds, all four as distinct as /p/, /b/, /t/ and /d/—that’d be neat!
(Also, props to the careful reader who notices the nasal assimilation and coalescence/gemination in the second column.)
Fool Me Once Edit: When you think about it, “I could care less” is not really and not always delivered with this prosody and means the same thing as “I couldn’t care less”, so while an interesting and clever defense, the argument is specious. If we are to trust the argument, then we at least ought to expect there to be other cases of crucial prosodic meaning-making beyond this outlier example.
Knowledge Bomb
Latin dissimilates liquids (r’s and l’s), and by virtue of our partitioned lexicon of classical and Germanic roots and affixes, we English speakers also dissimilate liquids and we’ve gone our whole lives without knowing it.
Exhibit A: The normal -al affix
- radial, regional, hysterical, labial, digital, lateral, tribal
Exhibit B: The -ar words
- polar (pole), solar, angular, particular, vehicular, uvular, popular, cellular
What unites the B set is the fact that -lal is a funny way to end those words, so -lar is chosen instead. This is what is meant by dissimilated liquids: -lar is chosen over -lal. In contrast, the A set (once sufficiently extrapolated) will contain all and only the -al endings that are not -lal. There might be a couple exceptions—lunar is an analogy of the dissimilated solar—but if you encounter a random Latinish word that ends in /l/ and you need to make a quick adjective from it, you will instinctively choose -ar over -al.
yes! a phonological argument against behaviorism!
As part of my project of condensing and archiving my phonology notes into one super awesome moleskine, I reviewed the arguments for the dual-level hypothesis in Kenstowicz 1994, and I found a token mention of the disutility of extreme behaviorist empiricism in phonology. YES! I exclaimed. Most of generative linguistics’ anti-behaviorist (hence psychologically meaningful) arguments come from syntax, as though the field is the discipline’s golden child. Which is a shame because the study of sound systems is the only part of linguistics that deals with real things located in reality! Words and sentences are abstract bundles of—wait for it—acoustic sound (or sign) made by the gestures of the human vocal tract (or hands)!
The argument is as follows: Strict behaviorism posits that there is no such thing as mental states and that the only thing we can know or discuss is overt human behavior. So a behaviorist theory of speech sounds can only refer to observable phonetic detail. For the untrained speaker, observably distinct sounds may all be perceived as being the same sound. /t/ has seven distinct realizations in American English: s[t]em, [tʰ]in, a[ɾ]om, in[ɾⁿ]ernet (bad IPA, I know), ro[ʔ]en, ten[]s (tents). We perceive sounds that are not actually present or at all similar. Moreover, /t/ is not the only sound with a null allophone—e.g. ten[]s (tends)—so there is no unique intersecting acoustic characterization of the /t/ category because (1) it overlaps with other categories and (2) has a null realization (the category intersects the empty set!). These facts cannot be adequately explained by strict behaviorism; instead we need to talk about /t/ not as a mere set of sounds but also as a mental construct that behaves accordingly to rules and information in the speaker’s mind. Our instincts allow us to recover neutralized distinctions (/t/ and /d/ can be [ɾ] or []) with categorical certainty, and the strongest theory of phonology requires abstract mental states and objects in addition to observable phonetic detail. Another nail in the coffin!
![This is characteristic of most of my old phonology homework. I used to take two copies of an exercise: one for messily figuring out the problem (dead-ends and all), and one for presenting my elegant solution (seemingly divined from the language heavens).
I can see that I struggled with how to gracefully unite the following facts:
Voicing: /t/ becomes [d] before [b] but not [r,a,k,s]
Devoicing: /z/ becomes [s] before [s,k] but not [r,a,b]
Which is why the work is full of rule descriptions like /X/→[Y] / __[+a,-b]. I am trying to condense four descriptions into one single rule: Obstruents regressively match voicing across the morpheme boundary.
It probably looks really messy and foreign, but it’s like a logic or an insight puzzle, and in this respect, I find phonology problems very calming. I also find value in knowing that I describe a fact about Russian prepositions.](http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kolk833pSz1qznraho1_500.jpg "This is characteristic of most of my old phonology homework. I used to take two copies of an exercise: one for messily figuring out the problem (dead-ends and all), and one for presenting my elegant solution (seemingly divined from the language heavens).
I can see that I struggled with how to gracefully unite the following facts:
Voicing: /t/ becomes [d] before [b] but not [r,a,k,s]
Devoicing: /z/ becomes [s] before [s,k] but not [r,a,b]
Which is why the work is full of rule descriptions like /X/→[Y] / __[+a,-b]. I am trying to condense four descriptions into one single rule: Obstruents regressively match voicing across the morpheme boundary.
It probably looks really messy and foreign, but it’s like a logic or an insight puzzle, and in this respect, I find phonology problems very calming. I also find value in knowing that I describe a fact about Russian prepositions.")
This is characteristic of most of my old phonology homework. I used to take two copies of an exercise: one for messily figuring out the problem (dead-ends and all), and one for presenting my elegant solution (seemingly divined from the language heavens).
I can see that I struggled with how to gracefully unite the following facts:
- Voicing: /t/ becomes [d] before [b] but not [r,a,k,s]
- Devoicing: /z/ becomes [s] before [s,k] but not [r,a,b]
Which is why the work is full of rule descriptions like /X/→[Y] / __[+a,-b]. I am trying to condense four descriptions into one single rule: Obstruents regressively match voicing across the morpheme boundary.
It probably looks really messy and foreign, but it’s like a logic or an insight puzzle, and in this respect, I find phonology problems very calming. I also find value in knowing that I describe a fact about Russian prepositions.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
I bought a knock-off moleskine graph paper journal with the goal of condensing my phonology, advanced phonology and morphology notes into one handy place. Such an activity will serve as a refresher for grad school (APPLICATIONS DUE IN FOUR MONTHS).
But last night, as I was going through all of my old class stuff, I could not find the folder! This is the most important folder from school. It contains two notebooks, both tattered and in pieces from use and reference, and two embedded folder with stray papers, handouts, example problems, exams, exam review notes, and sheets of dead-ended brainstorming for my semester thesis on Optimality Theory. In short, it has everything. I was on the cusp of a genuine anxiety attack—what if I incidentally, naively wrote some random thought down which if reappreciated could be the innovative insight of my academic career! the ruin!!!—but the universe proved to be fair and I found it. That spasm of panic has given an important incentive to condense my notes beyond mere review: I need to back that shit up.
