Extended Abstract

Place and Position are Computationally Different

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Abstract

Pater & Moreton (2012) argue that learning biases against complex patterns lead to underrepresentation of such patterns cross-linguistically. Here, complexity is reduced to featural complexity: the fewer features needed to describe a pattern, the simpler it is. However, computational features do not map cleanly onto the classic sets of phonological features. Intuitively, an inherent featural property of a segment like place of articulation is different than a contextually derived property like its syllable position. Typological data shows that the observed typology shows that these two properties cannot be treated identically, but constraints from previous literature make the correct distinction.

Keywords: computational phonology, agent based modeling, MaxEnt, phonological learning, place of articulation, syllable position, complexity bias

How to Cite:

O\'Hara, C., (2019) “Place and Position are Computationally Different”, Society for Computation in Linguistics 2(1), 342-345. doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/2jhc-dx44