Speaker: Heidi Durresi (MIT)
Title: Phonetic and phonological sound changes in an agent-based model
Time: 5pm – 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831
Abstract: At this Phonology Circle I will discuss Gubian et al. (2023), an exemplar-based agent model of phonetic and phonological sound change. Speech data from populations of speakers is used to implement computational agents, the interaction of which can predict shifts and mergers. The design of individual agents is grounded in principles of exemplar theory (Johnson 1997, Pierrehumbert 2001), in which phonological categories emerge in learners from the mapping between words and phonetic exemplars. I will also discuss some examples comparing the predictions of the model and real sound change data, including that of Gheg Albanian (Kapia and Riverin-Coutlée 2024).