Linguistics 201A:  Phonological Theory II

as taught by Bruce Hayes Dept. of Linguistics UCLA Winter 2023

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

Welcome to the course website for Linguistics 201A, Winter 2023.  You  may obtain pdfs of all lecture notes, handouts, homeworks, and readings here.

Syllabus

Class 1, Tues. 1/10/23:  OT review, factorial typology

Read:  Kaun paper, and write 1/2 page summary, to be handed in Wed.

Signup sheet (fill out and hand in, if you missed in class)

Class 2, Thurs. 1/12/23:  common ranking types, Richness of the Base

Read:  McCarthy discussion of Rich Base (clicking will take you to the password-protected readings page; email me for the password if you didn't get it in class).  Read this before next class; no summary required. 

Homework:  Ilokano.  Due Thursday Jan. 19 in class (please print out your answer)

Before you do the Ilokano problem, please read this specification for the course on how to write up phonology problems.

Handout for class

Ilokano problem is due on Thursday.

Read:  Bakovic, Eric, 2011. Opacity and ordering. The handbook of phonological theory, pp. 40-67. (clicking will take you to the password-protected readings page; email me for the password if you didn't get it in class) No summary required.

I've made a spreadsheet illustrating step-by-step how we found the right ranking of Finnish; download here.

Handout for class

Ilokano homeworks are due.

For Tues, 1/19/2023:  read:
Menn, Lise (1983). Development of articulatory, phonetics, and phonological capabilities. In Brian Butterworth (ed.) Language production, vol. 1. London: Academic Press. 3-47
Please do a one-half page summary with just the high points, due Tuesday 1/24 in class.

Handout for class

New homework: Modern Hebrew, due 2/1/23 in class. You will need to use OTSoft2.6.  You can also use these startup files, bundled into a zip file:  HebrewStart.zip

Read for Thurs., 1/26/2023:  Jarosz, Gaja (2019) Computational modeling of phonological learning. Annual Review of Linguistics. Download it from the password-protected page.

Handout for class

Modern Hebrew homework (above) is due in class Thursday Feb. 2.

New reading for Tues. 1/31: William Labov (1972) “The isolation of contextual styles”, Chapter 3 of his Sociolinguistic Patterns, University of Pennsylvania Press. On course web site.
Do a half-page summary, due Tues. Jan 31.

Handout for class

Modern Hebrew homework (above) is due in class Thursday Feb. 2.

New reading for Thurs. 2/1: Bruce Hayes (2022) “Deriving the Wug-shaped curve: A criterion for assessing formal theories of linguistic variation”, Annual Review of Linguistics 8:474-494. Download it from the password-protected page.
No summary required

Handout for class

Here is the spreadsheet put together in class.; you can use it as a template later on.

Hand in Modern Hebrew homework

For Tues. 2/7: read: Kie Zuraw and Bruce Hayes (2017) Intersecting constraint families: an argument for Harmonic Grammar. Language 93: 497-548. No summary required.

Think about a term paper topic and come talk with me. The official deadline for this is Friday Feb. 10.

Handout for class

Here is the Japanese spreadsheet, updated with the Likelihood Ratio Test.

Class 9, Tues. 2/7/23:  Variation II; Phonotactic Analysis

For Tues. 2/7: read:  Becker, Michael, Andrew Nevins, and Jonathan Levine. "Asymmetries in generalizing alternations to and from initial syllables." Language (2012): 231-268.  Download from Readings Page. No summary required.

Homework #3, Phonotactic Analysis, is due Thurs. Feb. 16.  Here is a sample spreadsheet to follow.

Think about a term paper topic and come talk with me. The official deadline for this is Friday Feb. 10.

Handout for class

Library of articles

I don't necessarily assign all these articles in any particular offering of 201A and some of them are meant as background reading.  There are also things I assign not on this list.

• Albright, Adam (2008) "Explaining universal tendencies and language particulars in analogical change," in Jeff Good (ed.) Language Universals and Language Change. Oxford University Press.

• Albright, Adam (ms.) A Restricted Model of UR Discovery: Evidence from Lakhota.

• Albright, Adam (2010) Base-driven leveling in Yiddish verb paradigms, NLLT
• Anttila, Arto (1997) "Derivation variation from grammar"
• Bochner, Harry (1981) The l --> o rule in Serbo-Croatian.  In G. N. Clements, ed., Harvard Studies in Phonology, Vol 2.

• Boersma, Paul and Bruce Hayes (2001) "Empirical tests of the Gradual Learning Algorithm," Linguistic Inquiry 32: 45-86.

• Bresnan, Joan, Anna Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina, and R. Harald Baayen (2005) Predicting the Dative Alternation.  Maxent (here a.k.a. "logistic regression") applied to syntax.

• Ernestus, Mirjam & R. Harald Baayen (2003). Predicting the unpredictable: Interpreting neutralized segments in Dutch. Language 79, 5-38.

• Flemming, Edward (2004) Contrast and Perceptual Distinctiveness" in Bruce Hayes, Robert Kirchner, and Donca Steriade, eds., Phonetically-Based Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Hayes, Bruce (1989) "The prosodic hierarchy in meter", in Paul Kiparsky and Gilbert Youmans, eds., Rhythm and Meter.  Orlando, Florida:  Academic Press.  Read only pp. 201-220.

• Hayes, Bruce and Donca Steride (2004) Introduction: the phonetic bases of phonological markedness, in Hayes/Kirchner/Steriade (2004) Phonetically Based Phonology, Cambridge University Press.

• Labov, William (1972) "The isolation of contextual styles", Chapter 3 of his Sociolinguistic Patterns, University of Pennsylvania Press

• McCarthy, John (2008) The gradual path to cluster simplification.  Phonology 25:271-319.

• Moreton, Elliott (2008). Analytic bias and phonological typology. Phonology 25:83-127.

• Potts, Christopher, Joe Pater, Karen Jesney, Rajesh Bhatt, and Michael Becker. 2009. Harmonic Grammar with Linear Programming: From linear systems to linguistic typology. Appeared in Phonology.

• Prince, Alan S. (2007) "The pursuit of theory"
• Riggle, Jason (2006), Infixing reduplication in Pima and its theoretical consequences (published NLLT)

• Steriade, Donca (1997) "Lexical conservatism and the notion base of affixation"

• Steriade, Donca (2001) Directional asymmetries in place assimilation.  In E. Hume and K. Johnson (eds.) Perception in Phonology, Academic Press
• Extract from Bruce Tesar and Paul Smolensky (2000) Learnability in Optimality Theory, MIT Press.

• Wilson, Colin (2006) Learning Phonology With Substantive Bias:  An Experimental and Computational Study Cognitive Science 30: 945–982.

Optimality Theory Software

Go to OT software page

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Links related to writing

Brackets around features (how to make in MS Word

Links for phonology in general

• Kie Zuraw's guide:  How to read a phonology article
• The Rutgers Optimality Archive (hundreds of papers, mostly on phonology and mostly using OT)
• Some material covering features (spreadsheet, exercises)

Bruce Hayes's Home Page (research, other courses)