Variation and mental representation Gregory R. Guy New York University
Words in the mind • Abstract representations, composed of strings of phonemes. • Morphological structure either stored in representation or generated by derivation and /ænd/ band /bænd/ banned /bæn#d/
Words in speech • Surface forms reflect allophony, phrasal phonology, etc. • Show variable realizations reflecting variable phonological processes. – e.g., final coronal stop deletion and ~ an’ band ~ ban’ banned ~ ban’
What’s in the mental lexicon? Variable processes are conditioned by: • Lexical frequency • Morphological structure • Lexical exceptions • Priming
I. Frequency effects on variation • coronal stop deletion in English • -ing/-in alternation in English • coda – s lenition in Caribbean Spanish
Coronal stop deletion increases with lexical frequency Guy, Hay & Walker 2008. p=.0005
-ing > -in: More frequent words show more alveolar [ɪn] pronunciation Figure 1. [ ɪn ] by lexical frequency 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 p [ ɪn] 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 <8 9-10 11 12+ Source: Laturnus, log10 freq de Vilchez, Chaves & Guy, 2016.
Spanish -s lenition (Erker 2008) No significant frequency effect • Correlation between frequency and: – Spectral center of gravity N=318 r = -.02 p = .74, n.s. – Duration N=453 r = .07 p = .136, n.s.
Bybee on lexical frequency effects (Bybee 2000) • “ The more a word is used, the more it is exposed to the reductive effect of articulatory automation … ” • “ Sound change affects stored representations incrementally each time a word is used … ”
2. Morphological constraints on variation • coda – s deletion in Brazilian Portuguese • -ing/-in alternation in English • coronal stop deletion in English
Morphological constraint on coda /s/ deletion in Brazilian Portuguese (Guy 1981) Coda /s/ deletion in unstressed final syllables N % deleted Monomorphemes 1392 53% e.g. menos Nominal plurals * 5247 5% e.g. eles, todos *NB: first position in NP only
Morphological constraint on – in/-ing alternation in English Laturnus et al. 2016 N % [n] weight Lexical class verbs 489 55% .53 something, 81 67% .51 nothing nouns 79 38% .32 12
Morphological constraint on coronal stop deletion in English N % deleted Monomorphemes 658 38.1% e.g., guest Irregular Past 56 33.9 e.g., lost Regular Past 181 16.0 e.g., guessed (Guy 1992 corpus)
Morphological structure interacts with lexical frequency: coronal stop deletion (Myers & Guy 1997) Monomorphemic words Significant frequency effect N Deletions % Del Low frequency 151 28 18.5 High frequency 573 194 33.9 p < .01
Morphology interacts with frequency: coronal stop deletion (Myers & Guy 1997) Regular Past Tense Verbs No significant frequency effect N Deletions % Del Low frequency 96 7 7.3 High frequency 220 18 8.2 chi-sq (1df) = .073, p > .70
Morphology interacts with frequency: coronal stop deletion (Myers & Guy 1997) Frequency effect by morphology 40 35 30 % -t,d deletion 25 monomorphemes 20 regular past 15 10 5 0 low freq high freq Lexical frequency
-t,d morphology: Fruehwald (probabilities of /t,d/ retention)
Variation and morphology: conclusions • Variable processes are sensitive to morphological structure; they can be conditioned by derived environments. • Hence variable phonological processes ‘see’ mental representations that incorporate morphological information, in addition to the phonological content. • Morphological constraints on phonology interact with lexical frequency: derived forms are less affected by frequency
Morphology and lexical frequency • Bybee’s model of lenition fed by frequency is phonetically motivated • This should be independent of and orthogonal to morphological constraints • But other models make other predictions. Pinker and others argue that regular derived forms are generated by rule; only roots and irregular forms are stored • Hence, regular derived forms lack independent mental representations to accumulate frequency or collocational information
3. Lexical exceptions • Coronal stop deletion in English: exceptional and • Coda /s/ deletion in Brazilian Portuguese: exceptional 1pl morpheme – mos • Coda /s/ deletion in Salvadoran Spanish: exceptional entonces, digamos • /ay/ monophthongization in Southern US English: exceptional I, my
Lexical exceptions in variation Many variable processes are known to exhibit unusually high rates of occurrence in particular lexical items. -e.g., coronal stop deletion in English is exceptionally frequent in ‘ and ’ (Exceptional because deletion occurs significantly more often in and than in phonologically comparable words like sand, band, hand , etc.)
Exceptional and in the NZE corpus: N Deletion rate and 597 80% other words 3348 29%
Lexical exceptions are not just high frequency words • The second-highest frequency word in the ONZE corpus was just ; it showed significant following context effects and did not behave like and • Spanish menos is higher in frequency than entonces and digamos , but does not behave exceptionally
Following context effect in the NZE corpus Other words and Following N % del N % del Context: __C 1339 58.3 315 87.9 __V 1477 10.4 182 75.3 Range: 47.9% > 12.6% ( 18 speakers from the ONZE corpus at U Canterbury)
Contextual effects on Brazilian Portuguese – s deletion • verbs ending in 1plural – mos suffix omit final /s/ at exceptionally high rate. • Coda /s/ deletion mainly occurs in preconsonantal position, and is strongly constrained by place manner and voicing of the following C • Do these constraints affect exceptional – mos words just like other words?
Lexical exceptions in Brazilian Portuguese: coda -s deletion [factor weights] Features of following C Non-exceptions Lexical exceptions (- mos forms) Voice/Manner: sonorant .69 .49 voiced obstruent .44 .58 voiceless obstruent .36 .44 Range .33 > .14 Place: labial .32 .58 coronal .61 .53 velar .44 .39 Range .29 > .19 N: 5880 1225 Goodness of fit (log likelihood) -704.8 -791.5
Following context effect appears significantly weaker in exceptional -mos • Range of probabilities is smaller for both the place effect and the manner/voicing effect • The goodness of fit measure is significantly worse for the exceptional forms, suggesting that they aren’t as well explained by the contextual conditions
Contextual effects on Salvadoran Spanish – s deletion • El Salvador has variable final – s deletion, like other Caribbean dialects • Hoffman 2004 finds strong constraint effects on deletion; more deletion in stressed syllables, more deletion before consonants, than before vowels • Three discourse markers show exceptionally high rates of deletion: entonces, digamos, pues
-s deletion in Salvadoran Spanish (Hoffman 2004) Non-exceptional words Lexical exceptions Following context: ( entonces, digamos, pues ) sonorant .60 .63 voiced obstruent .75 .55 voiceless obstruent .33 .38 vowel .36 .38 pause .44 .56 Range .42 > .25 Syllable Stress: stressed .38 .42 unstressed .62 .58 Range .24 > .16
Another variable: monophthongal /ay/ in Southern American English (SoAmEng) • The English diphthong /ay/ is variably monophthongized to /a/ in Southern American English • More monophthongs are found in pre-voiced contexts ( ride vs. right ), in phonetically shorter syllables, and among lower status speakers • I and my are lexical exceptions, with very high rates of monophthongization, even before voiceless consonants (cf: ‘my time’ )
/ay/ monophthongization in SoAmEng: following context effect (Woods 2008) Other words I, my % monophthong 34% 53% Fol. Context: __C[+vce] .76 (.51) __V or G .41 (.49) __C[-vce] .17 (.48) Range: .59 > .03 (n.s.)
/ay/ monophthongization in Southern AmEng: duration effect Other words I, my Duration: shorter .89 .68 longer .49 .45 Range: .40 > .23 (Data from Woods 2008)
Contextual effects are much weaker on exceptional I, my in SoAmEng • Following context effect is not significant for I, my • Duration effect is much weaker • Monophthongization occurs much more often in these two words, and is relatively insensitive to context.
Conclusion: Exceptional words have alternate mental representations • Lexical exceptions to variable processes reveal allomorphy in the mental representation • They have additional lexical entries that incorporate the output of the variable process. – and ~ an’ or ‘n’ - I, my ~ [a], [ma] – -mos ~ -mo – - entonces, digamos ~ entonce, digamo • When the ‘reduced’ allomorph is selected, context has no effect, and apparent frequency of occurrence of the variable phonological process is increased.
4. Priming • Specific variants tend to occur in clusters: e.g., in BP – s deletion, one deleted form is likely to favor subsequent deleted forms, an undeleted form favors subsequent undeleted forms.
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