Phonological Argumentation
Essays on Evidence and Motivation
Edited by: Steve Parker
Equinox Publishing
Series: Advances in Optimality Theory
Description
This volume presents a series of original papers focusing on phonological argumentation, set within the framework of Optimality Theory. It contains two major sections: chapters about the evidence for and methodology used in discovering the bases of phonological theory, i.e., how constraints are formed and what sort of evidence is relevant in positing them; and case studies that focus on particular theoretical issues within Optimality Theory, usually through selected phenomena in one or more languages, arguing in favor of or against specific formal analyses.
A noteworthy detail of this book is that all of the contributors are connected with the program in phonology and phonetics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, either as current professors or former graduate students. Consequently, all of them have been directly influenced by John McCarthy, one of the major proponents of Optimality Theory. This collection will therefore be of interest to anyone who seriously follows the field of Optimality Theory. The intended readership is primarily graduate students and those already holding an advanced degree in linguistics.
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Speaking of LabPhon…
In case you missed the announcement on Linguist List, there is now an Association for Laboratory Phonology “promoting the scientific study of all aspects of the phonetics and phonology of spoken and signed languages through scholarly exchange across disciplines”. It’s got a journal and everything. Check it out.
This was a nice talk from yesterday. I’ve attempted to write a shorter description, but more details can be found in the long abstract that the authors submitted. See http://www.unm.edu/~labfon12/program.html
The relationship between speech errors and prosodic phrase boundaries. (Choe & Redford).
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I’ve just finished a set of revisions to my paper previously entitled “Opacity deconstructed”, and now entitled “Opacity and ordering”. This new version is available in the same place as the earlier one, and the earlier one is still there as required by the lingBuzz archiving policies.
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Poster Session
NOTE: I’ve edited this post less than the last one, so it may be harder to read.
Do articulatory constraints play a role in speech errors? (Slis & Van Dies Hout) — Past research has shown that vowel context influences whether or not you get speech errors (by Goldstein and others). Using EMA data, the authors showed that there is tongue tip movement during production of /k/ and tongue dorsum movement in production of /t/, at least in words that contain both of these consonants. Let’s call these non-matching articulations. They then looked at nonmatching articulations in a variety of vowel contexts for English speakers. The amount of movement varied by vowel. The follow-up question is whether this variation is sometimes not normal and whether (as we expect based on past research by Goldstein and others) these not normal or aberrant articulations occur more often with some vowels versus others. For example, sometimes the amount of non-matching articulation is much greater than something like a standard deviation from typical non-matching articualtion. The basic idea is to have a system of automatic speech error recognition based on the kinematics and conforming to past research on errors being conditioned by vowels. This next step is currently ongoing and should be completed shortly.
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Hello All:
I thought I’d post my notes from this year’s LabPhon conference. These posts will be limited to what I have the time and energy to write about, but I hope they’re of some use.
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[ Via LINGUIST List. ]
8th Old World Conference in Phonology (OCP 8)
January 20-22, 2011
Marrakech, Morocco
Contact: Nabila Louriz <OCP8@gmail.com>
Call Deadline: Sept. 20, 2010
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…and we’re back. A couple of years ago, there was a lively discussion about phonological opacity that was split between Mr. Verb and phonoloblog. Mr. Verb has now posted a new installment — well, sort of. The post is mostly just a pointer to this MIT News piece on Morris Halle, but Mr. Verb references the earlier discussion (calling it the “Opacity Wars” in a later comment) and explicitly invites some reaction. This is mine.
(Before moving on, you may want to (re-)acquaint yourself with the earlier discussion, all the links to which can be found here. Mr. Verb says “start here and work back”, but that’s hardly helpful; the only link in that post is a totally useless one to phonoloblog‘s main page.)
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The linguistics department at CSU Long Beach is looking for an instructor for a graduate (M.A.-level) seminar in phonology and phonetics for the fall 2010 semester. The course meets once a week on Monday evenings, 5-8, and the instructor will also need to schedule an office hour. A PhD is preferred, but advanced graduate students in phonology or phonetics will also be considered.
To apply, send a letter of interest, CV, and three letters of recommendation to dept chair Malcolm Finney (mfinney@csulb.edu), and CC me (nhall2@csulb.edu). Dr. Finney can give an estimate of salary, which is dependent on degree level and teaching experience.
The position is open until filled.
OT-Help 2.0 is now available for free download from: http://web.linguist.umass.edu/~OTHelp/index.shtml.
OT-Help 2 provides new tools for studying language typology in Harmonic Serialism (serial OT) and serial Harmonic Grammar.
The serial components of OT-Help 2 allow users to define their own operations in Gen and constraints in Con. These operations and constraints are used to compute the typology for a list of inputs. New hypotheses about Gen and Con can be evaluated quickly and easily.
The development of OT-Help 2 was funded by grant BCS-0813829 from the National Science Foundation to the University of Massachusetts Amherst (co-PIs: John McCarthy and Joe Pater). Other work produced under that grant, including work that uses OT-Help 2 to investigate serial OT and HG, is available at: http://web.linguist.umass.edu/~mccarthy-pater-nsf/.