What happens to large changes? Saltation produces well-liked outputs that are hard to generate

Abstract

Smolek, A. and Kapatsinski, V. 2018 What happens to large changes? Saltation produces well-liked outputs that are hard to generate. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 9(1): 10, pp. 1-27, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.93 lab l a phon . Recent research has argued that saltation is diachronically unstable and documented one possible cause of instability: Learners exposed to saltatory alternations may overgeneralize them to intermediate sounds. However, this research has trained participants to criterion or excluded participants who did not reach criterion accuracy on familiar sounds. In first language acquisition, learners of languages with saltatory patterns cannot hope to receive more exposure to the pattern than those learning non-saltatory patterns. For this reason, we examined learning of saltatory and non-saltatory patterns after a constant amount of training. We compared saltatory labial palatalization to non-saltatory alveolar and velar palatalization. Participants showed overgeneralization of saltatory palatalization in a judgment task. However, saltatory alternations did not result in increased rates of palatalizing similar sounds, compared to non-saltatory alternations. Instead, saltatory alternations were less likely to be produced than non-saltatory alternations. These results suggest that large, saltatory alternations may be diachronically unstable because they are harder to (learn to) produce. Instead of being overgeneralized to intermediate sounds, saltatory alternations may disappear from the language by losing productivity and being replaced with faithful mappings.

Morphology in a Parallel, Distributed, Interactive Architecture of Language Production

“…As a result, the following dissociation can be predicted: a speaker can evaluate a form as being well-motivated, but be unable to produce it, to the extent that its production requires a second-order schema. This dissociation was observed by Smolek and Kapatsinski (2018) in a miniature artificial language learning study, which exposed participants to an articulatorily large typologically rare stem change (p→t ) unattested in the participants' native language (English). The participants rated plurals with the stem change as being more acceptable than those without (e.g., but i was rated to be a more likely plural form than bupi, given the singular bup).…”

“…Feedback is shown to help account for phenomena that otherwise require paradigmatic associations, limiting the range of situations in which paradigmatic associations must come into play. This is a desirable result because experimental studies show paradigmatic associations to be difficult to learn or apply (e.g., Braine et al, 1990 ; Smolek and Kapatsinski, 2018 ). On the methodological side, accepting this architecture changes what constitutes evidence for knowledge of a source-oriented, paradigmatic mapping.…”

Interaction of phonological biases and frequency in learning a probabilistic language pattern

“…The finding that learners in our study sometimes avoided using niwhen it triggered a phonological rule is consistent with the view that learners favor paradigm uniformity, meaning that they prefer morphemes to have the same phonological form across the contexts in which they appear (Hayes, 2004;Steriade, 2000). Paradigm uniformity effects have been found in a number of artificial language experiments with adults (Kapatsinski, 2009(Kapatsinski, , 2010(Kapatsinski, , 2013McMullin & Hansson, 2019;Smolek, 2019;Smolek & Kapatsinski, 2018;Stave et al, 2013;White, 2013White, , 2014 and children (Tessier, 2012). Much of the previous research on paradigm uniformity has focused on the application of a phonological rule itself, that is, whether a rule is under-applied (alternation avoidance) or over-applied (overgeneralization) in order to make members of a paradigm more similar to one another (see Smolek, 2019 for discussion of these two paradigm uniformity effects).…”

“…For example, the final /t/ phoneme of the verb stem pat becomes 'flapped' in American English when the -ing suffix is added (patting). Previous studies have suggested that phonological alternations are initially disfavored by learners, in artificial language learning experiments with adults and children (Kapatsinski, 2009;Smolek, 2019;Smolek & Kapatsinski, 2018;Stave, Smolek, & Kapatsinski, 2013;Tessier, 2012;White, 2013White, , 2014 as well as in children's natural language acquisition (Do, 2018;Kerkhoff, 2007). The second factor we consider is homophony avoidance.…”

“…We additionally explore how these factors interact with the frequency with which learners encounter evidence for the phonological rule and its trigger in the input. A number of studies have examined these factors individually, but much less research has explored their interaction within a single experiment, with the notable exception of a line of research by Kapatsinski and colleagues (e.g., Kapatsinski, 2009Smolek, 2019;Smolek & Kapatsinski, 2018;Stave et al, 2013), discussed in more detail below.…”