Laboratory Phonology 11, 30 June - 2 July 2008, Wellington, New Zealand The Gradient Phonotactics of English CVC Syllables Olga Dmitrieva & Arto Anttila Department of Linguistics, Stanford University Introduction Factors affecting the well-formedness of English CVC syllables: OCP-place: gradient prohibition against homorganic consonants in C1 and C2 (e.g. gag vs. gap). HYPOTHESIS: Syllables with C1 and C2 of the same place of articulation are underrepresented. Prominence alignment between stress, vowel height, and consonant place: HYPOTHESIS: Syllables that violate prominence alignment are underrepresented. Methods Material: CMU pronunciation dictionary and CELEX lemma lexicon. Stress: primary stress vs. no stress. Consonants: coronal, dorsal, labial. Vowels: high (= high or reduced) and low (= low or mid). Effect size evaluation: Observed frequency/Expected frequency ratio (O/E ratio): P(dorsal-V-dorsal) = P(onset=dorsal) * P(coda=dorsal) E(dorsal-V-dorsal) = P(dorsal-V-dorsal) * Total Multiple regression. Results Regression OT Analysis Conclusions 3. Syllables violating consonant-vowel alignment are underrepresented:1. Syllables that violate OCP-place are underrepresented: CMU CELEX CMU Onset-coda cooccurrences (O/E values): 2. Syllables that violate consonant-stress alignment are underrepresented: a. Labials and dorsals in unstressed syllables. b. Coronals in stressed syllables. CMU CELEX 4. Syllables that violate vowel-stress assignment are underrepresented: a. Low vowels in unstressed syllables. b. High vowels in stressed syllables. CMU CELEX R = (F(6, 35) = , p < 0.001) R = (F(6, 35) = , p < 0.001) 25,888 CVC syllables from CELEX 83,798 CVC syllables from CMU [rI] repeat [pit] O/E ratio > 1.00 overrepresentation O/E ratio < 1.00 underrepresentation Cases: 36 syllable types: 3 onset place * 3 coda place * 2 stress * 2 vowel height e.g. LLHS - labial-labial, high vowel, stressed In CMU significant factors: Vowel-stress alignment OCP No labial/dorsal in unstressed syllables In CELEX significant factors: Vowel-stress alignment OCP No labial/dorsal with high vowels CMU CELEX A set of unranked OT constraints generate implicational universals that reflect relative phonotactic markedness: More marked forms entail less marked forms. More marked forms surface less frequently. Sample universal: If a language allows gag (violates OCP) it also allows gap. Gap is always more frequent than gag. The implicational universals can be described graphically as a partial order. Precision (how many of the predicted relationships are correct):CMU 0.85 CELEX 0.86 Gradient OCP-place is active in all CVC syllables (not just monosyllabic words, cf. Berkley 1994). Prominence alignment in CVC syllables: The best stressed syllable has low or mid vowels. The best unstressed syllable has high or reduced vowels and coronal consonants. Positional neutralization and augmentation for vowels. Only positional neutralization for consonants. References: Anttila, A. (2008). Gradient phonotactics and the Complexity Hypothesis. To appear in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Anttila, A. & Andrus, C. (2006). T-Orders. Ms., Stanford University. Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & Gulikers, L. (1995). The CELEX Lexical Database (Release 2). Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania [Distributor]. Berkley, D. (1994). Variability in Obligatory Contour Principle effects. CLS 30, pp Coetzee, A., & Pater, J. (2008). Weighted constraints and gradient restrictions on place co-occurrence in Muna and Arabic. To appear in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Weide, R. (1998). The CMU pronunciation dictionary (Release 0.6). Carnegie Mellon University. Available online at Constraints (significant regression factors): OCP Avoid homorganic C1 and C2 *x/a Avoid unstressed low vowels *X/I Avoid stressed high vowels *x/p_ Avoid labial/dorsal C1 in unstressed syllables *x/_p Avoid labial/dorsal C2 in unstressed syllables *p_/I Avoid labial/dorsal C1 + high vowel *i/_p/ Avoid high vowel + labial/dorsal C2 Faith Do not change input segments Graphic representation of implicational relationships in CELEX data. Dependent variable: Log of the observed frequency. Independent variable: Log of the expected frequency. Binary coded phonotactics factors: 1 – violates, 0 – does not violate. a. Low vowels with coronals. b. High vowels with labials or dorsals. stressed > unstressed low vowel > high vowel labial/dorsal > coronal