9 Modeling analogy as probabilistic grammar

Albright, Adam

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199547548.003.0009

Cited by 61 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 202 publications

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“…For two or more forms in an analogical relationship the following holds: if these forms are similar in one property, then they are similar in another property or other properties, too (e.g. Albright 2009;Blevins et al 2009b;Bybee 2001). Paradigm uniformity is a pertinent example (Kenstowicz 2005;Rebrus 2012;Rebrus and Törkenczy 2005;Steriade 2000, among others): if word forms are similar in that they have the same lexical meaning (i.e.…”

Section: Monotonicity and Similaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony

Rebrus

Törkenczy

2015

Theoretical Linguistics

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In this paper, we analyse the surface patterns of suffix harmony in front/back harmony systems as the harmonic values front and back being assigned to harmonic contexts consisting of strings of syllables combining front, back and neutral nuclei. We claim that the harmonic contexts can be arranged in a fixed (universal) scale, the frontness/backness scale, with reference to which the possible (i.e. attested) front/back harmony systems can be characterised in a simple way: only those systems are possible where the assignment of values to the harmonic contexts is monotonic, which makes sure that only contiguous (non-interrupted) sequences of harmonic values are assigned to the harmonic contexts. We give formal definitions of monotonicity in terms of ordering and similarity and discuss predictions about possible harmony systems that follow from monotonicity (which we claim are borne out). These predictions are typological: harmony systems can show disharmonic behaviour, but in a principled way: only those systems exist (at least in front/back harmony) that exhibit a monotonic pattern. In the second half of the paper, we discuss variation in harmony and analyse in detail variation in anti-harmony and transparency in Hungarian, which is thus an example of a variable harmony pattern. We argue that variable front/back harmony patterns assign a "variable" value to some harmonic contexts in addition to the front and back values and can be shown to be constrained by monotonicity, whose definition is naturally extendable to patterns with variation. We discuss both the ordering-based and the similarity-based definitions and the predictions about possible variable harmony systems that follow from the definitions. One of the main predictions of the paper is a consequence of monotonicity: the locus of the variation in a pattern occurs only "in between" non-variable subpatterns. We explore a possible way of quantification in which we identify the harmonic values with the relative token frequency of the forms where the number associated with a variable value is p such that 0

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Section: Monotonicity and Similaritymentioning

confidence: 99%

Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony

Rebrus

Törkenczy

2015

Theoretical Linguistics

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“…Once dependent wh-relatives with nonargument gaps are established, they may spread with the help of whichever biases underpin analogical extension, a topic which has been investigated in some depth with respect to phonological and morphological acquisition (Hare and Elman 1995, Gildea and Jurafsky 1996, Albright and Hayes 2003, Albright 2009), but should be equally relevant to syntax as conceived of here. The intuition is as follows: initially, certain wh-forms can appear in dependent relatives, but wh-forms are conceived of as a natural class because they tend to behave in similar ways.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where do relative specifiers come from?

Gisborne¹,

Truswell²

2017

Micro-Change and Macro-Change in Diachronic Syntax

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Headed relative clauses with filled Spec,CP positions are cross-linguistically rare, but have emerged repeatedly in Indo-European languages. We explore this unusual typological fact by examining the emergence and spread of English headed wh-relatives. The major claims developed in this chapter are: (1) aspects of the diachrony of headed wh-relatives must be reduced to competing specifications of the behaviour of a given lexical item, rather than to competition among multiple forms associated with a given function; (2) headed wh-relatives spread gradually from form to form, rather than spreading gradually up the Accessibility Hierarchy as assumed in much earlier work. We suggest that the unusual typology of headed relatives with filled specifiers can then be understood in terms of inheritance of a stable set of lexical items from Proto-Indo-European, and biases affecting acquisition of the syntactic properties of these items.

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“…Baayen et al, 2003;Albright, 2002), thus suggesting that analogy is a more widespread phenomenon than is commonly believed, and underlining the weight of probabilistic principles in the organization of morphology (cf. Baayen et al, 2003;Albright, 2009;Plag, 2009, among others).…”

Section: The Storage Of Lexical Unitsmentioning

confidence: 98%

The lexical representation of nouns and ajectives in romance languages

Montermini

2010

rlv

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9 Modeling analogy as probabilistic grammar

Cited by 61 publications

References 202 publications

Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony

Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony

Where do relative specifiers come from?

The lexical representation of nouns and ajectives in romance languages

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