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Linguistics

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University of Massachusetts Amherst

2008

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Phonological Inference And Word Recognition: Evidence From Korean, Joe Pater, Shinsook Lee Jan 2008

Phonological Inference And Word Recognition: Evidence From Korean, Joe Pater, Shinsook Lee

Joe Pater

Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson (1996) use data from cross-modal priming to show that word recognition involves phonological inference: listeners more readily recognize a word that is changed from its canonical form if that change is conditioned by a phonological process. Subsequent research has questioned whether word recognition does in fact involve phonological inference, based on evidence that perceptual compensation for assimilation can involve universal, rather than language-specific mechanisms (Gow 2003) and on evidence that changes are accepted even outside of the context in which they are phonologically conditioned (Wheeldon and Waksler 2004). We present new evidence for phonological inference based on …


The Serial Interaction Of Stress And Syncope, John J. Mccarthy Jan 2008

The Serial Interaction Of Stress And Syncope, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

Many languages respect the generalization that some or all unstressed vowels are deleted. This generalization proves elusive in classic Optimality Theory, however. The source of the problem is classic OT’s parallel evaluation, which requires that the effects of stress assignment and syncope be optimized together. This article argues for a version of OT called Harmonic Serialism, in which the effects of stress assignment and syncope can and must be evaluated sequentially. The results are potentially applicable to other domains where process interaction is best understood in derivational terms.


The Gradual Path To Cluster Simplification, John J. Mccarthy Jan 2008

The Gradual Path To Cluster Simplification, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

When a medial consonant cluster is simplified by deletion or place assimilation, the first consonant is affected, but never the second one: /patka/ becomes [paka] and not *[pata]; /panpa/ becomes [pampa] and not [panta]. This article accounts for that observation within a derivational version of Optimality Theory called Harmonic Serialism. In Harmonic Serialism, the final output is reached by a series of derivational steps that gradually improve harmony. If there is no gradual, harmonically improving path from a given underlying representation to a given surface representation, this mapping is impossible in Harmonic Serialism, even if it would be allowed in …