An OT-ET Analysis of Polish Singular-Plural Pairs

Optimality Theory (OT) and Exemplar Theory (ET) are two enchanting theories to many scholars, but each still faces criticism and remaining persistent problems. Application of both theories to areas in linguistics where conflicts may arise has been attempted, but still the suitability of combining the two theories to resolve contradictions awaits further analysis and verification. This article takes Polish singular-plural pairs as the object of study and argues in favor of an OT-ET combined model of analyzing the linguistic phenomenon. First, an underlying representation is identified to be the input in an OT analysis. Then two main changes are recognized between the input and output, and are regarded as instances of positional neutralization, and their relevant constraints and constraint hierarchies are presented. Following this, challenges are posed to OT despite its merits. It turns out that the combined OT-ET model works well, with historical development, underspecification, constraint hierarchy, and resemblance to existing word clouds, among others, all playing relevant parts. The current study adds to the extensiveness of language data analyzed for or against combining OT and ET, and sketches the analysis pattern of thus doing, with a view to offering more real-life language materials for an OT-ET combined model.

The future of dialects and the dialectology of the future : Some considerations, with special attention to the Dutch language area

The days when dialectology was a quiet island in the (sometimes rough) ocean of modern linguistics seem to be over. Since the so-called social turn and the integration of quantitative methods into the study of urban as well as rural dialects, the barriers between early ‘Labovian’ sociolinguistics and dialectology have gradually been broken down. Of late, the study of dialect variation has become more and more an integral part of mainstream formal theory as ‘micro-variation’. Even more recently, constructivist approaches (such as Usage-based Phonology and Exemplar Theory for phonetics as well as ethnographic perspectives) are entering and enriching the field.Apart from these various developments, at least in the Old World, the object appears to be changing more and more rapidly, giving rise to the erosion of traditional dialect landscapes and the emergence of supra-local koinai as well as dialect/standard continua.This paper addresses some of the main aspects of these tendencies. We will discuss questions such as: how can the new types of language variety be studied; can dialectology be enriched with other than the traditional data and methods; how far-reaching is the innovative impact of the various disciplinary, inter-subdisciplinary and inter-disciplinary cross-fertilisations?

Similarity, analogy and development in radical exemplar theory: A commentary on Ambridge (2020)

During language acquisition children generalise at multiple layers of granularity. Ambridge argues that abstraction-based accounts suffer from lumping (over-general abstractions) or splitting (over-precise abstractions). Ambridge argues that the only way to overcome this conundrum is in a purely exemplar/analogy-based system in which generalisations are based on similarity to individual exemplars. However, to move our understanding forward, radical exemplar theory must include clearly specified mechanisms for analogy and similarity computation, and must account for changes in children’s generalisations across development.

Exemplar-based learning probably requires learning abstractions: A commentary on Ambridge (2020)

Exemplar-based learning requires (i) a segmentation procedure for identifying the units of past experiences that a present experience can be compared to, and (ii) a similarity function for comparing these past experiences to the present experience. This article argues that for a learner to learn a language these two mechanisms will require abstractions such as linguistic features. Moreover, because the segmentation procedure will vary depending on the language, a radical exemplar theory is likely to require linguistic abstractions for learning.

Concepts and Categories of Art: A Very Brief Primer

Chapter 3 expands on the discussion of categories of art. The chapter evaluates four models for a theory of concepts for categories of art: a classical account derived from traditional, definitional theories of art; a prototype theory derived from Kendall Walton’s canonical discussion of categories of art; an exemplar theory derived from Morris Weitz’s anti-essentialism; and a knowledge-based account derived from Arthur Danto and Noël Carrol’s cognitivist theories of art. The chapter continues with a discussion of artworks and artifact concepts and concludes by arguing that a knowledge-based account of concepts provides the best model for understanding the structure of categories of art. and their role in our engagement with artworks.

Breaking the epistemic pornography habit

Purpose This paper aims to analyze some of the epistemically pernicious effects of the use of the internet and social media. In light of this analysis, it introduces the concept of epistemic pornography and argues that epistemic agents both can and should avoid consuming and sharing epistemic pornography. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on research on epistemic virtue, cognitive biases, social media use and its epistemic consequences, fake news, paternalistic nudging, pornography, moral philosophy, moral elevation and moral exemplar theory to analyze the epistemically pernicious effects of the internet and social media. Findings There is a growing consensus that the internet and social media activate and enable human cognitive biases leading to what are here called “failures of epistemic virtue.” Common formulations of this problem involve the concept of “fake news,” and strategies for responding to the problem often have much in common with paternalistic “nudging.” While fake news is a problem and the nudging approach holds out promise, the paper concludes that both place insufficient emphasis on the agency and responsibility of users on the internet and social media, and that nudging represents a necessary but not sufficient response. Originality/value The essay offers the concept of epistemic pornography as a concept distinct from but related to “fake news” – distinct precisely because it places greater emphasis on personal agency and responsibility, and following recent literature on moral elevation and moral exemplars, as a heuristic that agents might use to economize their efforts at resisting irrational cognitive biases and attempting to live up to their epistemic duties.

Whole-word phonology

This chapter provides a historical overview of the ideas underlying ‘whole-word phonology’, from the 1970s to the present. The importance of a prosodic (syntagmatic) analysis is grounded in the ideas of Firth, as adapted to early child language (Waterson, 1971). Other studies have proposed ways in which ideas based on analyses of early child data, such as lexical primacy (Ferguson & Farwell, 1975) or Radical Templatic Phonology (Vihman & Croft, 2007), are relevant for adult as well as child language. Key ideas included in the overview are developmental reorganization (Macken, 1979), template matching and the two-stage model (Menn, 1983), and exemplar theory and usage-based models (Menn et al., 2013). The principles of Dynamic Systems Theory (Thelen & Smith, 1994) are related to early phonological and lexical development.

Phonological Templates in Development

Based on cross-linguistic data from several children each learning one of eight languages and grounded in the theoretical frameworks of usage-based phonology, exemplar theory, and Dynamic Systems Theory, this book explores the patterns or phonological templates children develop once they are producing 20–50 words or more. The children are found to begin with ‘selected’ words, which match some of the vocal forms they have practised in babbling; this is followed by the production of more challenging adult word forms, adapted—differently by different children and with some shaping by the particular adult language—to fit that child’s existing word forms. Early accuracy is replaced by later recourse to an ‘inner model’ of what a word can sound like; this is a template, or fixed output pattern to which a high proportion of the children’s forms adhere for a short time, before being replaced by ‘ordinary’ (more adult-like) forms with regular substitutions and omissions. The idea of templates developed in adult theorizing about phonology and morphology; in adult language it is most productive in colloquial forms and pet names or hypocoristics, found in informal settings or ‘language at play’. These are illustrated in some detail for over 200 English rhyming compounds, 100 Estonian and 500 French short forms. The issues of emergent systematicity, the roles of articulatory and memory challenges for children, and the similarities and differences in the function of templates for adults as compared with children are central concerns.

Modelling multi-modal integration -- The case of the McGurk effect

The McGurk effect is a well known perceptual phenomenon in which listeners perceive [da], when presented with visual instances of [ga] syllables combined with the audio of [ba] syllables. However, the underlying cognitive mechanisms are not yet fully understood. In this study, we investigated the McGurk effect from the perspective of two learning theories – the Exemplar theory and Discriminative Learning. We hypothesized that the McGurk effect arises from distributional differences of the [ba, da, ga] syllables in a lexicon of a given language. We tested this hypothesis using computational implementations of these theories, simulating learning on the basis of lexica in which we varied the distributions of these syllables systematically. These simulations support our hypothesis. For both learning theories, we found that the probability of observing the McGurk effect in our simulations was greater, when lexica contained a larger percentage of [da] and [ba] instances. Crucially, the probability of the McGurk effect was inversely proportional to the percentage of [ga], what ever the percentage of [ba] and [da]. To validate our results, we inspected the distributional properties of [ba, da, ga] in different languages for which the McGurk effect was or was not previously attested. Our results mirror the findings for these languages. Our study shows that the McGurk effect – an instance of multi-modal perceptual integration – arises from distributional properties in different languages and thus depends on language learning.