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While the vast majority of linguistic processes apply locally, consonant harmony appears to be an exception. In this phonological process, consonants share the same value of a phonological feature, such as secondary place of articulation. In sibilant harmony, [s] and [ʃ] ('sh') alternate such that if a word contains the sound [ʃ], all [s] sounds become [ʃ]. This can apply locally as a first-order or non-locally as a second-order pattern. In the first-order case, no consonants intervene between the two sibilants (e.g., [pisasu], [piʃaʃu]). In second-order case, a consonant may intervene (e.g., [sipasu], [ʃipaʃu]). The fact that there are languages that allow second-order nonlocal agreement of consonant features has led some to question whether locality constraints apply to consonant harmony. This paper presents the results from two artificial grammar learning experiments that demonstrate the privileged role of locality constraints, even in patterns that allow second-order non-local interactions. In Experiment 1, we show that learners do not extend firstorder non-local relationships in consonant harmony to second-order nonlocal relationships. In Experiment 2, we show that learners will extend a consonant harmony pattern with second-order long distance relationships to a consonant harmony with first-order long distance relationships. Because second-order non-local application implies first-order non-local application, but firstorder non-local application does not imply second-order non-local application, we establish that local constraints are privileged even in consonant harmony.Locality constraints have played an important role in characterizing linguistic processes. In syntax, morphology and phonology, local processes tend to be privileged over non-local processes (Chomsky, 1981;Culicover & Wilkins, 1984). In phonology, the bias for local processes is based on phonetic restrictions. Many phonological processes are a result of coarticulation, which is the process of overlapping gestures of sounds (e.g., the [i] in [bin] carries some of the nasal properties of the final [n] consonant). Because coarticulation is likely to decrease over distance, phonologization of coarticulation is likely to be based on adjacent sounds (e.g., nasalization of the [i] but not the [b] in [bin], as coarticulation will not carry all the way to the first consonant) (Hyman, 1976;Ohala, 1994).In addition to phonetic principles, locality restrictions in language may have non-linguistic roots. For example, constraints on perception and memory may serve as a source for constraints on locality in language. General cognitive processes such as categorization and memory are often based on locality. Two objects are more likely to be placed in the same category if they are grouped closer together in space than a third object that is farther away. In memory, people use adjacency as part of memory aids, such as 'chunking' (e.g., phonePublisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publica...

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Traditional flat-structured bigram and trigram models of phonotactics are useful because they capture a large number of facts about phonological processes. Additionally, these models predict that local interactions should be easier to learn than long-distance ones since long-distance dependencies are difficult to capture with these models. Long-distance phonotactic patterns have been observed by linguists in many languages, who have proposed different kinds of models, including feature-based bigram and trigram models, as well as precedence models. Contrary to flat-structured bigram and trigram models, these alternatives capture unbounded dependencies because at an abstract level of representation, the relevant elements are locally dependent, even if they are not adjacent at the observable level. Using an artificial grammar learning paradigm, we provide additional support for these alternative models of phonotactics. Participants in two experiments were exposed to a long-distance consonant harmony pattern in which the first consonant of a five-syllable word was [s] or [∫] ('sh') and triggered a suffix that was either [−su] or [−∫u] depending on the sibilant quality of this first consonant. Participants learned this pattern, despite the large distance between the trigger and the target, suggesting that when participants learn long-distance phonological patterns, that pattern is learned without specific reference to distance.

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