Whamit!

This week, Peter Graff will present the background/design of an experiment that he is proposing to run (abstract below).

The format is intended to be like a lab meeting for discussing experimental work in progress, and is the kick-off of what we hope will be more regular meetings of this sort. Since we already have a full docket of regular talks throughout the semester, we will discuss on Monday the scheduling of future lab meeting sessions.

Speaker: Peter Graff

Title: Evolutionary vs. Phonetically Driven Phonology: An Iterative Learning Experiment

Time: 10/5 5pm, 32-D461

In this talk, I will propose an iterative learning experiment trying to test the predictions of Evolutionary Phonology (Blevins, 2006) and Phonetically Driven Phonology (Hayes and Steriade, 2004). Both hypotheses about phonological learnability and knowledge predict phonological systems to be optimized for transmission. The crucial difference is that Phonetically Driven Phonology hypothesizes phonetic optimization of phonology to be speaker driven, while Evolutionary Phonology attributes phonetic optimality to unbiased or “innocent” misperception and production independent of the grammar of the speaker. I will suggest simulating diachronic transmission in iterative learning and propose ways in which to manipulate speaker driven optimization to see whether such manipulation affects the course of simulated linguistic history as might be predicted by certain conceptions of Phonetically Driven Phonology.

Join us for this week’s Ling-lunch talk:

Speaker: Norvin Richards

Time: Thurs 10/8, 12:30-1:45

Place: 32-D461

Title: TBA

Speaker: Jim McCloskey (UC Santa Cruz)

Title: Further Reflections on Movement and Resumption

Time: Friday, October 9, 2009, 3:30pm

Place: 32-141

The syntax of apparently unbounded dependencies in Irish has for
long been viewed as providing evidence for the (successive) cyclic
view of long WH-movement, and also as making available a rich set of
puzzles by which the nature of such movement operations could be
probed. In Irish, this set of puzzles is further enriched by the
relatively free availability of resumption as an additional option
for forming A-bar binding relations. This paper (a progress report
in a long-running struggle) is concerned with a couple of
inter-related questions in this area: (i) how we should understand
the choice between resumption and movement and what the availability
of that choice implies (ii) how the choice, once made, is reflected
in the morphosyntax of the language. At stake ultimately is the
fundamental question of how we should understand locality requirements
in syntax.