A MaxEnt learner for super-additive counting cumulativity

Abstract

Whereas most previous studies on (super-)gang effects examined cases where two weaker constraints jointly beat another stronger constraint (Albright 2012; Shih 2017; Breiss and Albright 2020), this paper addresses gang effects that arise from multiple violations of a single constraint, which Jäger and Rosenbach (2006) referred to as counting cumulativity. The super-additive version of counting cumulativity is the focus of this paper; cases where multiple violations of a weaker constraint not only overpower a single violation of a stronger constraint, but also surpass the mere multiplication of the severity of its single violation. I report two natural language examples where a morphophonlogical alternation in a compound is suppressed by the existence of marked segments in a super-additive manner: laryngeally marked consonants in Korean compound tensification and nasals in Japanese Rendaku. Using these two test cases, this paper argues that these types of super-additivity cannot be entirely captured by the traditional MaxEnt grammar; instead, a modified MaxEnt model is proposed, in which the degree of penalty is scaled up by the number of violations, through a power function. This paper also provides a computational implementation of the proposed MaxEnt model which learns necessary parameters given quantitative language data. A series of learning simulations on Korean and Japanese show that the MaxEnt learner is able to detect super-additive constraints and find the appropriate exponent values for those constraints, correctly capturing the probability distributions in the input data.

Rendaku is not blocked by two nasal consonants: A reply to Kim (2022)

“…Flemming 2021;Hayes 2022;Hayes & Wilson 2008), in which the effects of constraint violations are scaled by the number of violation marks using a power function. In short, Kim (2022) has identified a hitherto unnoticed generalization about Rendaku, a phenomenon that has been studied extensively in the literature (Vance 2022), which is thus in and of itself important; in addition, this new finding has important theoretical consequences, as it would require a non-trivial modification to a widely-used theoretical framework such as MaxEnt Harmonic Grammar.…”

“…( In a recent paper, Kim (2022) has proposed a novel generalization about Rendaku: the presence of two nasal consonants in E2-but not that of one nasal consonant-probabilistically lowers the applicability of Rendaku. If this claim is true, it implys that two segments can "gang-up" to block a phonological process, a case which Kim (2022) refers to as "super-additive counting cumulativity" (in addition to Kim 2022, see also Breiss 2020, Breiss & Albright 2022, Jäger & Rosenbach 2006and Kawahara & Breiss 2021 on general discussion on the issues surrounding cumulativity and additivity). In order to account for this pattern, Kim (2022) proposes a modification to MaxEnt Harmonic Grammar (e.g.…”

“…If this claim is true, it implys that two segments can "gang-up" to block a phonological process, a case which Kim (2022) refers to as "super-additive counting cumulativity" (in addition to Kim 2022, see also Breiss 2020, Breiss & Albright 2022, Jäger & Rosenbach 2006and Kawahara & Breiss 2021 on general discussion on the issues surrounding cumulativity and additivity). In order to account for this pattern, Kim (2022) proposes a modification to MaxEnt Harmonic Grammar (e.g. Flemming 2021;Hayes 2022;Hayes & Wilson 2008), in which the effects of constraint violations are scaled by the number of violation marks using a power function.…”

Lyman’s Law can count only up to two

“…On the one hand, the standard view about the role of sonorants in triggering Lyman's Law is that they do not, and 9 We are grateful to Seoyoung Kim for sharing her raw data. See Kim (2022) for a renewed analysis of the two nasal effect using the Rendaku database (Irwin, Miyashita, Russel, & Tanaka, 2020). See also Kawahara and Kumagai (2023) for a detailed reexamination of this reanalysis presented in Kim (2022).…”

“…See Kim (2022) for a renewed analysis of the two nasal effect using the Rendaku database (Irwin, Miyashita, Russel, & Tanaka, 2020). See also Kawahara and Kumagai (2023) for a detailed reexamination of this reanalysis presented in Kim (2022).…”