Melody learning and long-distance phonotactics in tone

TY - JOUR

T1 - Melody learning and long-distance phonotactics in tone

AU - Jardine, Adam

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020, Springer Nature B.V.

PY - 2020/11/1

Y1 - 2020/11/1

N2 - This paper presents evidence that tone well-formedness patterns share a property of melody-locality, and shows how patterns with this property can be learned. Essentially, a melody-local pattern is one in which constraints over an autosegmental melody operate independently of constraints over the string of tone-bearing units. This includes a range of local tone patterns, long-distance tone-patterns, and their interactions. These results are obtained from the perspective of formal language theory and grammatical inference, which focus on the structural properties of patterns, but the implications extend to other learning frameworks. In particular, a melody-local learner can induce attested tone patterns that cannot be learned by the tier projection learners that have formed the basis of work on learning long-distance phonology. Thus, melody-local learning is a necessary property for learning tone. It is also shown how melody-local learners are more restrictive than learning directly over autosegmental representations.

AB - This paper presents evidence that tone well-formedness patterns share a property of melody-locality, and shows how patterns with this property can be learned. Essentially, a melody-local pattern is one in which constraints over an autosegmental melody operate independently of constraints over the string of tone-bearing units. This includes a range of local tone patterns, long-distance tone-patterns, and their interactions. These results are obtained from the perspective of formal language theory and grammatical inference, which focus on the structural properties of patterns, but the implications extend to other learning frameworks. In particular, a melody-local learner can induce attested tone patterns that cannot be learned by the tier projection learners that have formed the basis of work on learning long-distance phonology. Thus, melody-local learning is a necessary property for learning tone. It is also shown how melody-local learners are more restrictive than learning directly over autosegmental representations.

KW - Computational phonology

KW - Learnability

KW - Representation

KW - Tone

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85082848577

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85082848577#tab=citedBy

U2 - 10.1007/s11049-020-09466-y

DO - 10.1007/s11049-020-09466-y

M3 - Article

SN - 0167-806X

VL - 38

SP - 1145

EP - 1195

JO - Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

JF - Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

IS - 4

ER -