Weighted Constraints in Generative Linguistics

Pater, Joe

doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01047.x

Cited by 188 publications

(198 citation statements)

References 75 publications

(122 reference statements)

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“…In other words, devoicing does not happen when Japanese speakers borrow these loanwords, but it does after they borrow them. c. dagu → *daku 'Doug' Since Nishimura (2003), the patterns in (1)-(3) have received much attention in the theoretical literature (Coetzee and Pater, to appear;Crawford, 2009;Farris-Trimble, 2008;Haraguchi, 2006;Hayes, 2009;Itô and Mester, 2008;Kaneko and Iverson, 2009;Kawahara, 2005Kawahara, , 2006Kawahara, , 2008McCarthy, 2008;Nishimura, 2006;Pater, 2009;Pycha et al, 2006;Rice, 2006;Steriade, 2004;Tanaka, 2010;Tateishi, 2002;Tesar, 2007). To briefly summarize the debates concerning…”

Section: The Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aspects of Japanese loanword devoicing

Kawahara

2011

J East Asian Linguist

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Nishimura (2003) first pointed out that in Japanese loanwords, voiced geminates devoice optionally when they co-occur with another voiced obstruent i.e. when they violate OCP(voice) (e.g. /baggu/ → [bakku] 'bag'). This devoicing of geminates has been used to make several theoretical claims in the recent phonological literature. However, these claims have so far largely been based on intuition-based data provided by Nishimura (2003) and Kawahara (2006). Kawahara (in press) addressed this problem by conducting a rating study. The first aim of this study, building on Kawahara (in press), is to further support the empirical foundation of these theoretical claims by way of a large-scale rating study. The current study shows that (i) the OCP and geminacy each affect naturalness rating of devoicing, and (ii) that there is nevertheless something special about the combination of the OCP and geminacy.The second aim is to test an assumption behind the recent literature on this phenomenon.The assumption is that this devoicing pattern is monolithic-i.e. all voiced geminates uniformly undergo devoicing in a certain phonological environment. The current experiment shows that this assumption is too simplistic. In particular it shows (i) speakers rate the devoicing of affricates as natural as that of stops, (ii) speakers find devoicing of items that merge with other lexical items less natural, (iii) speakers rate devoicing as more natural when there are multiple triggers, (iv) speakers find devoicing of [dd] more natural than that of [gg], and (v) speakers find devoicing of more frequent items more natural.2

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Section: The Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aspects of Japanese loanword devoicing

Kawahara

2011

J East Asian Linguist

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“…1 One complication, however, is that singletons do not seem to undergo devoicing even when they violate OCP(voice)-compare (1) and (3). Since Nishimura (2003) identified the patterns in (1)-(3), they have received much attention in the literature (Coetzee & Pater, to appear;Crawford, 2009;Farris-Trimble, 2008;Haraguchi, 2006;Hayes, 2009;Itô & Mester, 2008;Kaneko & Iverson, 2009;Kawahara, 2006Kawahara, , 2008McCarthy, 2008;Pater, 2009;Pycha et al, 2006;Rice, 2006;Steriade, 2004;Tanaka, 2010;Tateishi, 2002;Tesar, 2007). One debate focuses on the difference between singletons and geminateswhy do Japanese speakers devoice only geminates under the influence of OCP(voice) (Kawahara,1 OCP(voice) in Japanese is also known as Lyman's Law (Lyman, 1894).…”

Section: The Phenomenamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another set of work focuses on the seemingly cumulative behavior of devoicing: neither geminacy nor OCP(voice) alone can coerce devoicing (see (2) and (3)); only when both of the factors are relevant, does devoicing become possible (Coetzee & Pater, to appear;Farris-Trimble, 2008;Hayes, 2009;Pater, 2009;Tesar, 2007). This cumulative behavior may bear on a general theory of constraint interaction.…”

Section: The Phenomenamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such a behavior is impossible to model in a strict ranking-based theory of constraint interaction, such as Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993, unless there is a constraint that is violated only when both OCP(voice) and a constraint against voiced geminates are violated (Nishimura, 2003), or unless we posit different faithfulness constraints for singletons and geminates (Kawahara, 2006(Kawahara, , 2008. However, a theory with weighted, rather than ranked, constraints can model the cumulative pattern without positing a complex markedness constraint or differentiated faithfulness constraints (Pater, 2009).…”

Section: The Phenomenamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Japanese loanword devoicing revisited: a rating study

Kawahara

2011

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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In Japanese loanword phonology, geminates optionally devoice when there is another voiced obstruent within the same stem, i.e., geminates may optionally devoice when they violate OCP(voice). This devoicing of OCP-violating geminates has received much attention in the recent phonological literature. However, the debates centering around this phenomenon have relied primarily on intuition-based data, and no systematic wellformedness judgment experiments have been performed. This paper fills that gap. The experiment reported in this paper shows that Japanese speakers do find devoicing of geminates natural when there is another voiced stop within the same word, i.e., when the geminates violate OCP(voice). The experiment moreover finds other interesting aspects of devoicing: (i) the naturalness of devoicing of OCP-violating geminates correlates positively with the lexical frequencies of the words in question, (ii) the naturalness of devoicing of OCP-violating geminates is not significantly affected by place of articulation, (iii) speakers find (context-free) devoicing of geminates more natural than devoicing of OCP-violating singletons, and (iv) speakers find the devoicing of OCP-violating singletons more natural in word-medial position than in word-initial position.

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“…MaxEnt differs first in that the constraints are weighted (assigned real number values), not ranked. This means that MaxEnt is a type of Harmonic Grammar (HG; Legendre et al, 2006;Pater, 2009), and is therefore subject to cumulativity effects. MaxEnt is distinguished from some other HG theories in that candidates are assigned probabilities-there is not just a single winner and a set of losers.…”

Section: Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%