{"id":14891,"date":"2022-09-12T06:04:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-12T10:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=14891"},"modified":"2022-09-09T20:08:52","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T00:08:52","slug":"24-964-fall-2022-topics-in-phonology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2022\/09\/12\/24-964-fall-2022-topics-in-phonology\/","title":{"rendered":"24.964 Fall 2022: &#8220;Topics in Phonology&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>24.964: Topics in Phonology<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Giorgio Magri<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Monday, 10-1, 32-D461<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Phonological theory has recently extended its empirical coverage from<br clear='none'\/>\ncategorical to quantitative probabilistic data. What is the proper<br clear='none'\/>\nmodel of probabilistic phonology? This question is difficult. In fact,<br clear='none'\/>\nwhile categorical phonology can be done with paper-and-pencil,<br clear='none'\/>\nprobabilistic phonology cannot. Sophisticated tools are needed to<br clear='none'\/>\nanalyze probabilistic grammars and spell out their phonological<br clear='none'\/>\npredictions. On the **practical side**, the goal of this class is to<br clear='none'\/>\ndevelop some of these tools, and thus to be able to do theoretical<br clear='none'\/>\nphonology in the probabilistic setting with the same degree of<br clear='none'\/>\nmaturity we have been doing categorical phonology up until now. The<br clear='none'\/>\nclass comes with a companion piece of software (CoGeTo, available at<br clear='none'\/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/cogeto.stanford.edu\/home\">https:\/\/cogeto.stanford.edu\/home<\/a>), that implements these tools and<br clear='none'\/>\nthus allows class participants to apply them on test cases of<br clear='none'\/>\ninterest.<\/p>\n<p>On the **theoretical side**, I will use these tools to defend a very<br clear='none'\/>\nspecific proposal about the right model of probabilistic phonology. I<br clear='none'\/>\nwill distinguish two classes of models. &#8216;Intrinsically&#8217; probabilistic<br clear='none'\/>\nmodels (such as maximum entropy; ME) postulate phonological grammars<br clear='none'\/>\nthat directly assign probabilities and are therefore very different<br clear='none'\/>\nfrom traditional categorical grammars. &#8216;Extrinsically&#8217; probabilistic<br clear='none'\/>\nmodels (such as stochastic harmonic grammar; SHG) instead rely on<br clear='none'\/>\ntraditional categorical grammars and derive the probabilistic behavior<br clear='none'\/>\nindirectly from the assumption that speakers are uncertain as to which<br clear='none'\/>\ncategorical grammar to use. The class will develop an argument (based<br clear='none'\/>\non inference and typological predictions) in favor of SHG and against<br clear='none'\/>\nintrinsically probabilistic models such as ME. If the argument goes<br clear='none'\/>\nthrough, it shows that probabilistic natural language phonology is<br clear='none'\/>\nintrinsically categorical, after all.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ComputationalLinguisticsVersion2022.pdf\">This paper<\/a>\u00a0(which is short, if you ignore the<br clear='none'\/>\nappendix) illustrates some of the tools that will be developed in the<br clear='none'\/>\nclass and sketches the theoretical argument that I will try to make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>24.964: Topics in Phonology Giorgio Magri Monday, 10-1, 32-D461 Phonological theory has recently extended its empirical coverage from categorical to quantitative probabilistic data. What is the proper model of probabilistic phonology? This question is difficult. In fact, while categorical phonology can be done with paper-and-pencil, probabilistic phonology cannot. Sophisticated tools are needed to analyze probabilistic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14895,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14891\/revisions\/14895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}