Asymmetric Generalisation of Harmony Triggers

Authors

  • Wendell Kimper University of Manchester

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v3i0.3662

Keywords:

artificial grammar, phonetic grounding, vowel harmony

Abstract

In vowel harmony systems, certain classes of segments may be preferred as triggers; in particular, Kaun (1995) notes that rounding harmony is preferentially triggered by non-high vowels. There is a plausible phonetic explanation for this: non-high vowels manifest F2 contrasts less prominently (Linker, 1982; Terbeek, 1977) and therefore benefit more from the boost in perceptual salience that harmony affords. In this paper, I present the results of an artificial grammar experiment suggesting, following Wilson (2006), that learners are systematically biased towards phonetically natural generalisations. Learners trained on a harmony system triggered by high vowels extended the generalisation to mid vowels, but learners trained on mid vowels varied in the breadth of their generalisation. I also show that a Maximum Entropy learner can successfully mimic the behaviour of human subjects if biases are included for both generality and phonetic naturalness.

Author Biography

  • Wendell Kimper, University of Manchester
    Lecturer, Linguistics and English Language

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Published

2016-06-21