Linguistics 219:  Phonological Theory III 

as taught by Bruce Hayes Dept. of Linguistics UCLA Spring 2020 Spring 2018

Maybe the work we are doing now will be remembered in 2500 years but probably not.

This is the third course of the UCLA graduate sequence in phonological theory. As such it is the most open-ended, directed to helping you find research topics as well as commanding the research literature. See List of Topics at end of syllabus for what I hope to cover.

2020

I used the UCLA "CCLE" facility for the 2020 offering of the course.  However, you can download the syllabus here, and complete set of lecture handouts here.

2018

Syllabus

Week 1

Monday 4/2/2018

Lecture 1:  Goals; Maxent I

Required reading:  Bruce Hayes and Zsuzsa Londe (2006) "Stochastic phonological knowledge:  the case of Hungarian vowel harmony".   Phonology 23:59-104.

Optional reading (more on maxent mechanics):  Bruce Hayes and Colin Wilson (2008). A maximum entropy model of phonotactics and phonotactic learning.  Linguistic Inquiry 39, 379-440.

Wednesday 4/4/2018

Lecture 2:  Interpreting Results; Consonant Cluster Analysis; The Framework Bazaar  

Reading:  Kie Zuraw and Bruce Hayes (2017) Intersecting constraint families: an argument for Harmonic Grammar. Language 93:497-548

handout

First assignment is due April 16 in class.  Feel free to consult me with queries.  Here is a spreadsheet with my own efforts on Warlpiri clusters.

Week 2

Monday 4/9/2018

Lecture 3:  More on Frameworks; Bias I

Reading:  Michael Becker, Andrew Nevins, and Jonathan Levine (2012) Asymmetries in generalizing alternations to and from initial syllables. Language 88:2, pp. 231–268.

Wednesday 4/11/2018

Lecture 4:  Bias II; model evaluation (Wilson and Obdeyn 2009)

Reading:   Colin Wilson and Marieke Obdeyn (2009)  Simplifying subsidiary theory:  statistical evidence from Arabic, Muna, Shona, and Wargamay

Week 3

Monday 4/16/2018

Lecture 5:  Model evaluation II; Knobs

Reading:  Andries W. Coetzee and Shigeto Kawahara (2013) Frequency biases in phonological variation.  NLLT 31:47-89.

Background reading:  sociolinguistics helping to establish the style "knob": William Labov (1972) "The isolation of contextual styles", from his book Sociolinguistic Patterns

Homework, due Mon. 4/23/18 in class:  Biased modeling of generality effects in maxent.  Here is the spreadsheet you need.

Background reading:  the Albright Hayes wug test study referred to:   Adam Albright and Bruce Hayes (2003) Rules vs. analogy in English past tenses:  a computational/experimental Study.  Cognition 90:119-161.

Wednesday 4/18/2018

Lecture 6:  Knobs II:  How to make constraints behave in lockstep under changes of style or other factors

Reading:  Lise Menn  (1983) Development of articulatory, phonetic, and phonological capabilities. In Brian Butterworth, Language Production vol. 2. Academic Press.

Week 4

Monday 4/23/2018

Lecture 7:  Acquisition I:  Children have two lexicons and two phonologies

Reading:  Intro. and Chapter 1 of Neilson Smith (1973) The Acquisition of Phonology, Cambridge University Press.  

Homework #3 (acquisition), due in class April 30.  You will need a copy of the data appendix to Smith.

Wednesday 4/25/2018

Lecture 8:  Acquisition II:  OT as a model of child phonology; morphology; learning parental pattern I

Reading:  Megha Sundara, Yun-Jung Kim, James White & Adam J. Chong (2013) There is no pat in patting: Acquisition of phonological alternations by English-learning 12-month-olds. BUCLD slides.  

Homework #3 (above) is due in class Monday April 30. 

Week 5

Monday 4/30/2018

Lecture 9:  Acquisition III:  Learning the parental phonology

Reading:  Sharon Goldwater, Thomas L. Griffiths, and Mark Johnson (2009) A Bayesian framework for word segmentation:  Exploring the effects of context. Cognition 112:21-54.

Lecture 10:  Paradigm Uniformity I:  examples

Reading:  Bruce Hayes and James White (2015) Saltation and the P-map.  Phonology 32:267-302.: 

Week 6

Monday 5/7/2018

Lecture 11:  Paradigm Uniformity II:  examples from historical linguistics; framework

Reading:  Steriade, Donca (2000) “Paradigm uniformity and the phonetics-phonology boundary,” in Papers in Laboratory Phonology 5, ed. Broe and Pierrehumbert.

Homework #4, on historical change by paradigm uniformity is handed out, due in class Monday 5/14/18.

Lecture 12:  Paradigm Uniformity III:  phonotactic liberality, experimental work, hierarchy of prosodic ranks

Reading: Steriade, Donca and Igor Yanovich, Igor. 2015. Accentual allomorphs in East Slavic: An argument for inflection dependence. in Eulalia Bonet, Maria-Rosa Lloret, Joan Mascaro (eds.) Understanding Allomorphy, Equinox Press, pp. 254-313.

Week 7

Monday 5/14/2018

Lecture 13:  Paradigm Uniformity IV:  what to be faithful to

Reading: Gordon, Matthew (2005) A perceptually-driven account of onset-sensitive stress, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 23, 595-653. 

Lecture 14:  Syllable weight and phonetics

Reading: Kie Zuraw (2010) A model of lexical variation and the grammar with application to Tagalog nasal substitution. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory (2010) 28: 417–472.

Homework #5:  Cyclic stress in Indonesian.  Due in class Wed. May 30.  This spreadsheet may be helpful.

Week 8

Lecture 15:  Guest lecture by Kie Zuraw, on lexically irregular phonology.  Handout.

Reading TBA

Wednesday 5/23/2018

Lecture 16:  Guest lecture by Kie Zuraw, on lexically irregular phonology (same handout as before)

Week 9

Monday 5/28/2018

no class, Memorial Day

Wednesday 5/30/2018

Lecture 17:  More on syllable weight:  Ryan's Law for gradient contexts.  Homework #5 is due.

Reading:  Kevin Ryan,  “Quantitative meter”, Chap. 4 of his book-in-progress Prosodic weight: categories and continua

Week 10

Monday 6/4/2018

Lecture 18:  Generative phonetics I:  widely spaced targets in FO

Reading:  Mark Liberman and Janet Pierrehumbert (1984) “Intonational invariance under changes in pitch range and length”, in Stephen Anderson and Paul Kiparsky, A festschrift for Morris Halle

Wednesday 6/6/2018

Lecture 19:  Generative Phonetics II:  crowded targets with maxent; course summary

Reading:  Edward Flemming and Hyesun Cho (2017) The phonetic specification of contour tones: evidence from the Mandarin rising tone. Phonology 34 (2017) 1–40.

Last assignments:  do appointment with me with handout by 6/13, Wed. of Finals Week; term paper itself is due 6/15, Friday of Finals Week.