The Scope of Generalization in Phonology

Gregory R. Guy

New York University

VGFP Workshop, Stanford, July 07

Generalization in Phonology

• Identify (and explain?) phonological patterns that are prevalent across some domain

Maximum generality: phonological universalsFor all human speakers (of all languages),

in all linguistic contexts,

in all lexical items,

x is always true.

Non-universal generalizations

Involve limits on either – the SCOPE of one of domains

(the ‘all’ quantifiers)

OR

– the PREVALENCE of the pattern (the ‘always’ quantifier)

or both

Scope: Social domain, contextual domain, lexical domain

Prevalence: frequency or probability

For all human speakers (of all languages),

in all linguistic contexts,

in all lexical items,

x is always true.

Quantifying social scope(e.g. language-specific generalizations)

For speakers in some social domain i

e.g., a speech community, dialect, language,

OR

a social group defined by age, class, gender, ethnicity, etc.

Quantifying contextual scope: e.g., context-sensitive generalizations, gradience

….. in some linguistic context j ……

Quantifying lexical scope: e.g., lexical frequency, lexical exceptions

….. in some lexical domain k …..

Quantifying prevalence: e.g., variable, stochastic, or probabilistic

generalizations

….. x is true with a probability p.

Quantified Generality

For speakers in some social domain i,

in some linguistic context j,

in some lexical domain k,

x is true with a probability p

….. where, typically, p is a function of i, j, k

Social scope

For speakers in some social domain i…

Social proximity implies linguistic similarity

• Speech community members share grammatical properties

• Contrasting Constraints Hypothesis: Different speech communities may have contrasting values for the probabilistic constraints on variable processes.

• Shared Constraints Hypothesis: The members of a speech community share common values for the probabilistic constraints on variable processes.

Contrasting constraints

Communities differ: Following context effect on coronal stop

deletion in two cities

Speech % speakers with Community

Community constraint ranking: preference:

C>V C>0 V>0

Philadelphia 89 100 95 C>V>0 (N=19)

New York 100 50 0 C=0>V (N=4)

C=consonant, V=vowel, 0=pause

Communities differ: Final -s deletion in four Brazilian cities

Metrical effect on -s deletion

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

stressed

poly

monosyl unstrss

poly

Stress and word length

% deletion

POA

PAN

FLC

SBO

Shared constraints

Within communities: speakers share constraint rankings and values

In a study of coronal stop deletion in 16 Philadelphian speakers, looking at 8 constraints (3 morphological and 5 phonological), individual results are distributed as follows:

Shared constraint rankings: Coronal stop deletion in 16 Philadelphians

number of speakers (%)

deviations from --number of tokens per speaker-- random

community order: >170 100-170 <100 distribution

0 5 (100%) (0.1%)

1 3 (60%) 1 (17%) (2.8%)

2 2 (40%) 4 (67%) (17.4%)

3 (39.8%)

4 (25.0%)

5 1 (17%) (8.5%)

6 (5.7%)

all 8 (0.1%)

Shared values: with sufficient data, speakers converge

Variation in constraint effects by data quantity

05

1015

2025

3035

4045

50

0 100 200 300 400 500 600

-t,d tokens

factor weights: mean dif. from community values

Contextual scope

… in some linguistic context j …

Contextual scope: gradient effects on variable processes

• OCP (Obligatory contour principle) is a general phonological constraint against sequences of adjacent identical elements.

• In many languages it categorically prohibits certains sequences.

• e.g., English affix allomorphy: cats vs. glasses, backed vs. batted

OCP effects are gradient in variable processes

Place effect on deletion of final coronal [+cor, -ant] consonants in three languages

Percent deleted Factor Weight Place Port Span Eng Port Span Eng

Coronal[+cor], [+ant] 21 31 44 .66 .57 .65 Labial[-cor], [+ant] 14 32 } .53 .56 } Velar[-cor], [-ant] 6 16 } 34 .31 .38 } .35

English coronal stop deletion by preceding context (Guy & Boberg 1995)

Preceding Context N % Factor weightIdentity with deletion target

/t,d/ [+cor, -son, -cont] (categorical absence, i.e., 1.00)Two shared features

/s,z,∫,z/ [+cor, -son] 276 49 .69/p,b,k,g/ [-son, -cont] 136 37 .69/n/ [+cor, -cont] 337 46 .73

One shared feature/f,v/ [-son] 45 29 .55/l/ [+cor] 182 32 .45/m,/ [-cont] 9 11 .33

No shared features/r/ 86 7 .13vowels (nearly categorical retention, i.e., 0.00)

Conclusion: OCP is gradient

The disharmony of an OCP violation increases in proportion to the phonological similarity between adjacent elements.

Lexical scope

….. in some lexical domain k …..

Lexical issues for phonology

• Lexical exceptions• Lexical frequency• Historical borrowings with distinct

phonology (e.g., Latinate vocabulary of English, Chinese-origin vocabulary of Japanese)

• Recent borrowings• Proper names

Defining lexical scope: generalizations over part of

the lexicon

Two strategies for handling lexically-restricted properties:

• Tweak the phonology

• Tweak the underlying representations

Tweaking the phonology

• Exception features: co-index phonological rules with lexical items they apply to (cf. Chomsky & Halle)

• Co-phonologies, lexical classes: different constraints or constraint rankings for different subsets of the lexicon (cf. Inkelas, Ito & Mester…)

Tweaking underlying representations

• The (lexically partial) generalization is already encoded in the UR, not generated by the phonology

• Items that fail to show some generalization get URs that block that outcome

• Variable lexical class membership (cf. Coetzee, this afternoon)

Example: English plurals with f-v alternations

Regular pattern: final C is invariant in plural:

cat-cats, chief-chiefs, puff-puffs, etc.

Exceptional pattern: final f>v in plural

leaf-leaves, wife-wives, loaf-loaves, etc.

• Tweak the phonology:

– Special rule for f>v in plurals– Exception feature specifies all the words

that undergo this rule

• Tweak the lexicon:– URs of leaves, wives, loaves have /v/– URs of leaf, wife, loaf, etc. are under-

specified for voice, with appropriate conventions to fill in specification.

Lexical exceptions in variationMany variable processes are known to

exhibit unusual frequencies of occurrence in particular lexical items.e.g., coronal stop deletion in English is exceptionally frequent in ‘and’ (Exceptional because deletion occurs significantly more often in and than in phonologically comparable words like sand, band, hand, etc.)

The two strategies applied to lexical exceptions to variable processes

• Phonological tweak: exceptional lexical items have a feature that raises or lowers the probability of a given phonological process occurring in that word.– e.g., ‘and’ is associated with an exception

feature that raises the probability of coronal stop deletion.

• Lexical tweak: exceptional lexical items

have alternate entries that pre-encode the output of the process.

– e.g., ‘and’ has an alternate entry an’. When this form is selected, it always surfaces without a final /d/, thereby boosting the apparent rate of coronal stop deletion.

• (cf. rock ‘n’ roll, an orthographic representation of this underlying form?)

Testing the strategies:“Variation as a window into phonological organization”

• The two strategies for handling lexical exceptions may not be decidable on obligatory/categorical data because of absence of constraint interaction

• But variation data, showing constraint interaction, allows a test of the models.

The two strategies make different quantitative predictions

• Exception feature approach simply boosts the overall probability of deletion in ‘and’, leaving other constraint effects unchanged. – Hence, effect of following C vs. V should

be the same in exceptional and unexceptional words:Cheese ‘n’ crackers is always deleted more than ham ‘n’ eggs

• The lexical entry approach achieves elevated surface rates of -d absence in ‘and’ by selection of UR an’, which does not undergo coronal stop deletion, and is therefore insensitive to constraints on that process.– Hence, lexical exceptions show reduced

effect of following C vs V:• Cheese ‘n’ crackers is as likely as ham ‘n’ eggs

The specific quantitative effect:

A surface corpus of exceptional words is a mixture of two sets of foms:

-some are derived from underlying full forms (e.g. ‘and’) and show the effects of constraints on the process,

-others are derived from underlying reduced forms (an’) and are not affected by constraints on the process

The mixture of the two sets has the

quantitative effect of attenuating the effect of constraints on the process.

-in a multivariate analysis, this attenuation should be manifested as a smaller range of values for a factor group measuring a constraint on the process (e.g., the following segment effect on coronal stop deletion).

Predictions

• Exception feature approach: constraint effects should be equivalent in exceptional and nonexceptional corpora

• Multiple underlying entries: constraint effects should appear to be weaker in exceptional than nonexceptional corpora.

Data: English coronal stop deletion and exceptional ‘and’

Non-exceptional Exception (and) words

N % del N % del

__C 572 39.3 441 95.7__V 495 15.8 312 82.1

Range: 23.5% > 13.6%(Source: Neu 1980)

Lexical exceptions in Brazilian Portuguese -s deletion

Features of following C Non-exceptions Lexical exceptions (-mos forms)

Voice/Manner: sonorant .69 .49 voiced obstruent .44 .58

voiceless obstruent .36 .44Range .33 > .14

Place: labial .32 .58 coronal .61 .53 velar .44 .39Range .29 > .19

N: 5880 1225Log likelihood -704.8 -791.5

-s deletion in Salvadoran Spanish (Hoffman 2004)

Non-exceptional words Lexical exceptions Following context: (entonces, digamos, pues)

sonorant .60 .63voiced obstruent .75 .55voiceless obstruent .33 .38vowel .36 .38pause .44 .56

Range .42 > .25Syllable Stress:

stressed .38 .42unstressed .62 .58

Range .24 > .16

Summary: In 5 constraints (factor groups) on 3 processes in 3 languages:

• Magnitude of constraint effect is always weaker for exceptional lexical items

• This is consistent with predictions of the lexical entry (lexicon tweaking) strategy; contradicts exception feature (phonology tweaking) strategy.

Conclusion: Speakers tweak the lexicon

• Lexical exceptions to variable processes are accomplished by alterations to the underlying representation and the existence of multiple representations

(cf. Kiparsky’s treatment of -t,d deletion in stratal OT).

Another prediction

• Exception feature approach permits both positive and negative exceptions (lexical items that undergo a process at a higher or lower probability than other words)

• Underlying form approach allows only positive exceptions, with higher probabilities (can’t block -t,d deletion)

Impressionistic confirmation

• All lexical exception cases in variation studies I am familiar with involve elevated rates of occurrence of a variable process, never reduced rates.

• This confirms the prediction of the lexical entry approach.

The Paninian nature of partial generalizations

• Variation involves the quantification of prevalence

• Non-universal generalization involves quantification of scope, in social, contextual, and lexical domains.