Abstract
In this paper, we computationally implement and compare grammars of Samoan stress patterns that refer to feet and that refer only to syllables in Karttunen’s finite state formalization of Optimality Theory, and in grammars that directly state restrictions on surface stress patterns. The grammars are defined and compared in the high-level language of xfst to engage closely with specific linguistic proposals. While succinctness (size of the grammar) is not affected by referring to feet in the direct grammars, in the OT formalism, the grammar with feet is clearly more succinct. Moreover, a striking difference between the direct and OT grammars is that the OT grammars suffer from scaling problems.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Because they are defined with non-identity transductions, the foot-based “grammars” are not grammars as defined by Formal Language Theory. But the phonological literature calls phonological transductions—input-output mappings from underlying forms to surface forms—like these “grammars”, and we’ll follow that convention.
- 3.
The foot-based accounts also introduce (, ), and X as symbols, where X is an unparsed syllable, but: (i) it’s not clear these should be included in the alphabet since they come in only in the calculation of stress, (ii) if they are included, they make a negligible difference.
- 4.
This ignores [47]’s evidence from LLLLL loan words showing that an initial weak-strong-weak (WSW) pattern can occur if the first vowel in the word is epenthetic.
- 5.
We set up the initial generation of stress patterns like Gen in Standard OT [36, Sects. 2.2, 5.2.3.3] for the direct accounts as well as the OT accounts. We do this for convenience; we could also generate in some other way for the direct accounts.
- 6.
We assume that syllable splitting feet do not occur [15, Sect. 5.6.2, p. 121].
- 7.
LSmoDirFt can also be composed with a transduction that replaces W in unparsed syllables with X, to match notation for the OT footed account in Sect. 2.4.
- 8.
HL-final sequences are allowed in [17]’s acceptor for Fijian stress (http://phonology.cogsci.udel.edu/dbs/stress/language.php?id=109), based on [15]’s basic description of Fijian stress, but [15, p. 145, Sect. 6.1.5.2]’s more detailed description suggests that they should not be accepted.
- 9.
All OTSoft input and output files are in the github repository.
- 10.
But there’s an inconsistency in [27]’s definitions of Parse; it should be defined as \(\tilde{\,}\textsf {\$["X["];}\) and not \(\tilde{\,}\textsf {[\$"X["];}\) in Figs. 8 and 16.
- 11.
We abbreviate ParseSyll as ParseS for space; see github repository for definitions of ParseSyllN for \(N>2\).
- 12.
See the github code repository for definitions of No3Clash (61 symbols) and No4Clash (131 symbols) and the NoNLapse constraint family.
- 13.
Although our accounts define the same transduction, that does not mean that the transducers LSmoDirFt, LSmoDirSyl, LSmoMonoFtOT are identical at the machine-level. While any finite-state acceptor can be determinized and minimized to a unique, canonical acceptor [21, Sect. 4.4], the same is not true for finite-state transducers. First, not all finite-state transducers are determinizable [40, p. 587]. Second, minimization of a finite-state transducer does not in general result in a unique transducer [34, p. 29].
- 14.
See the github repository for graphs of the transducers defined for each of the four accounts.
References
Allauzen, C., Riley, M.: A pushdown transducer extension for the OpenFst library. In: Moreira, N., Reis, R. (eds.) CIAA 2012. LNCS, vol. 7381, pp. 66–77. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31606-7_6
Allauzen, C., Riley, M., Schalkwyk, J., Skut, W., Mohri, M.: OpenFst: A general and efficient weighted finite-state transducer library. In: Holub, J., Žd’árek, J. (eds.) CIAA 2007. LNCS, vol. 4783, pp. 11–23. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-76336-9_3
Bailey, T.: Nonmetrical constraints on stress. Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota (1995)
Beesley, K.R., Karttunen, L.: Finite State Morphology. CSLI, Stanford, CA (2003)
Berwick, R.C.: Mind the gap. In: Gallego, A., Ott, D. (eds.) 50 Years Later, MITWPL77, pp. 1–12. MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2015)
Bird, S., Ellison, T.M.: One level phonology: autosegmental representations and rules as finite automata. Comput. Linguis. 20, 55–90 (1994)
Chomsky, N.: Three descriptions of language. IRE Trans. Inf. Theory 2(3), 113–124 (1956)
Chomsky, N., Halle, M.: The Sound Pattern of English. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1968)
Eisner, J.: Efficient generation in primitive optimality theory. In: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (1997)
Frank, R., Satta, G.: Optimality theory and the generative complexity of constraint violability. Comput. Linguist. 24(2), 307–315 (1998)
Gainor, B., Lai, R., Heinz, J.: Computational characterizations of vowel harmony patterns and pathologies. In: Choi, J., et al. (eds.) WCCFL 29, pp. 63–71. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA (2012)
Goldsmith, J.A.: Autosegmental phonology. Ph.D. thesis, MIT (1976)
Gordon, M.: A factorial typology of quantity insensitive stress. NLLT 20, 491–552 (2002)
Hartmanis, J.: On the succinctness of different representations of languages. SIAM J. Comput. 9, 114–120 (1980)
Hayes, B.: Metrical Stress Theory. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1995)
Hayes, B., Tesar, B., Zuraw, K.: Otsoft 2.4. Software package (2016). www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft/
Heinz, J.: On the role of locality in learning stress patterns. Phonology 26(02), 303–351 (2009)
Heinz, J.: Learning long-distance phonotactics. LI 41(4), 623–661 (2010)
Heinz, J.: Computational phonology - part I: foundations. Lang. Linguist. Compass 5(4), 140–152 (2011)
Heinz, J.: The computational nature of phonological generalizations. In: Hyman, L.M., Plank, F. (eds.) Phonological typology. De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin/Boston (2018)
Hopcroft, J.E., Motwani, R., Ullman, J.D.: Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation. Pearson Education, Boston (2007)
Hulden, M.: Finite state syllabification. In: Yli-Jyrä, A., Karttunen, L., Karhumäki, J. (eds.) FSMNLP 2005, pp. 120–131. Springer, Berlin (2006)
Hyde, B.: Non-finality and weight sensitivity. Phonology 24(2), 287–334 (2007)
Johnson, C.D.: Formal aspects of phonological description. Mouton (1972)
Kager, R.: Rhythmic licensing theory: an extended typology. In: Proceedings of the 3rd Seoul International Conference on Phonology, pp. 5–31 (2005)
Kaplan, R.M., Kay, M.: Regular models of phonological rule systems. Comput. Linguist. 20(3), 331–378 (1994)
Karttunen, L.: The proper treatment of optimality in computational phonology. In: FSMNLP 1998 (1998)
Kenstowicz, M.: Cyclic vs. non-cyclic constraint evaluation. Phonology 12, 397–436 (1995)
Kiparsky, P.: Word formation and the lexicon. In: Ingemann, F. (ed.) Proceedings of the 1982 Mid-America Linguistics Conference, pp. 3–29. University of Kansas, Lawrence (1982)
Kornai, A.: Formal phonology. Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University (1991)
McCarthy, J.J.: OT constraints are categorical. Phonology 20(1), 75–138 (2003)
McCarthy, J.J., Prince, A.S.: Generalized alignment. In: Booij, G., Van Marle, J. (eds.) Yearbook of Morphology, pp. 79–153. Springer, Dordrecht (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3712-8_4
Meyer, A., Fischer, M.: Economy of description by automata, grammars, and formal systems. In: SWAT 1971, pp. 188–191 (1971)
Mohri, M.: Finite-state transducers in language and speech processing. Comput. Linguist. 23, 1–42 (1997)
Nespor, M., Vogel, I.: Prosodic Phonology. Foris Publications, Dordrecht (1986)
Prince, A., Smolensky, P.: Optimality theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. ROA version, 8/2002, Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science (1993)
Prince, A., Smolensky, P.: Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Blackwell Publishing, Malden (2004)
Rasin, E., Katzir, R.: On evaluation metrics in Optimality Theory. LI (To appear)
Rissanen, J.: Stochastic Complexity in Statistical Inquiry Theory. World Scientific Publishing Co. Inc., River Edge (1989)
Sakarovitch, J.: Elements of Automata Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009). Translated by Reuben Thomas edn.
Salomaa, A.: Formal Languages. Academic Press, New York (1973)
Selkirk, E.: Prosodic domains in phonology: Sanskrit revisited. In: Aronoff, M., Keans, M.L. (eds.) Juncture. Anma Libri, Saratoga, California (1980)
Selkirk, E.O.: Phonology and Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge (1986)
Stabler, E.P.: Two models of minimalist, incremental syntactic analysis. Top. Cogn. Sci. 5(3), 611–633 (2013)
Wagner, M., Watson, D.G.: Experimental and theoretical advances in prosody: a review. Lang. Cogn. Processes 25, 905–945 (2010)
Zuraw, K.: Prosodic domains for segmental processes?, June 2009. https://www.mcgill.ca/linguistics/files/linguistics/Handout_RevisedForMcGill.pdf
Zuraw, K., Yu, K.M., Orfitelli, R.: The word-level prosody of Samoan. Phonology 31(2), 271–327 (2014)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany
About this paper
Cite this paper
Yu, K.M. (2018). Advantages of Constituency: Computational Perspectives on Samoan Word Prosody. In: Foret, A., Muskens, R., Pogodalla, S. (eds) Formal Grammar . FG 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10686. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56343-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-56343-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-56342-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-56343-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)