Cover not available
Part of
Perspectives on Phonological Theory and Development: In honor of Daniel A. Dinnsen
Edited by Ashley W. Farris-Trimble and Jessica A. Barlow
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 56] 2014
► pp. 199–222

A faithfulness conspiracy

The selection of unfaithful mappings in Amahl’s grammar

| Simon Fraser University
Children frequently reduce marked target structures to unmarked outputs. However, multiple reduction strategies are often available, and pinpointing a principle that unifies them can be difficult. This paper examines several markedness-reducing processes in Amahl’s developing phonology (Smith 1973), showing that seemingly unrelated repairs actually had a coherent objective: to avoid the accumulation of multiple repairs. This finding is significant on two levels: first, the pattern challenges analyses that rely on ranked constraints, in which violations cannot accumulate across constraints; second, it appears that multiple phonological processes (unfaithful by definition) conspire to preserve faithfulness. This pattern is defined as a faithfulness conspiracy, and the concept is fleshed out with other examples from Amahl’s development as well as cases from fully-developed languages.
Published online: 29 April 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.56.16far
References
Beckman, J.
1998 Positional Faithfulness. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.Google Scholar
Boersma, P.
1998  Functional Phonology: Formalizing the Interaction Between Articulatory and Perceptual Drives . The Hague: HAG.Google Scholar
Boersma, P. & Hayes, B.
2001 Empirical tests of the gradual learning algorithm. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 45–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clements, G.N.
1990 The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology, 1: Between the Grammar and Physics of Speech , J. Kingston & M. Beckman (eds), 283–333. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Dinnsen, D.A.
2011 On the unity of children’s phonological error patterns: Distinguishing symptoms from the problem. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 25: 968–974. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dinnsen, D.A. & Barlow, J.A.
1998 On the characterization of a chain shift in normal and delayed phonological acquisition. Journal of Child Language 25: 61–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dinnsen, D.A., O’Connor, K.M. & Gierut, J.A.
2001 The puzzle-puddle-pickle problem and the Duke-of-York gambit in acquisition. Journal of Linguistics 37: 503–525. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farris-Trimble, A.W.
2008 Cumulative Faithfulness Effects. PhD dissertation, Indiana University at Bloomington.Google Scholar
2009 Weighted constraints and faithfulness cumulativity in phonological acquisition. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development , J. Chandlee, M. Franchini, S. Lord & G.-M. Rheiner (eds), 151–162. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
2010 Nothing is better than being unfaithful in multiple ways. In Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 44, M. Bane, J.J. Bueno Holle, T. Grano, A.L. Grotberg & Y. McNabb (eds), 79–93. Chicago IL: Chicago Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Gnanadesikan, A.
2004 Markedness and faithfulness constraints in child phonology. In Fixing Priorities: Constraints in Phonological Acquisition, R. Kager, J. Pater & W. Zonneveld (eds), 73–108. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Jesney, K.
2011 Cumulative Constraint Interaction in Phonological Acquisition and Typology. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jesney, K. & Tessier, A-M.
2011 Biases in Harmonic Grammar: The road to restrictive learning. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29: 251–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kirchner, R.
1996 Synchronic chain shifts in optimality theory. Linguistic Inquiry 27: 341–350.Google Scholar
Kisseberth, C.
1970 On the functional unity of phonological rules. Linguistic Inquiry 1: 291–306.Google Scholar
Legendre, G., Miyata, Y. & Smolensky, P.
1990a Harmonic Grammar—A formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: Theoretical foundations. In Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 388–395. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
1990b Harmonic grammar —a formal multi-level connectionist theory of linguistic well-formedness: An application. In Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society , 884–891. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Legendre, G., Sorace, A. & Smolensky, P.
2006 The Optimality Theory–Harmonic Grammar connection. In The Harmonic Mind: From Neural Computation to Optimality-Theoretic Grammar, P. Smolensky & G. Legendre (eds), 903–966. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Łubowicz, A.
2002 Derived environment effects in optimality theory. Lingua 112: 243–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marantz, A.
1982 Re reduplication. Linguistic Inquiry 13: 435–482.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A.
1995 Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. In University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18: Papers in Optimality Theory , J. Beckman, L. Walsh Dickey & S. Urbanczyk (eds), 249–384. Amherst MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J.
2002  A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
McMurray, B., Cole, J.S. & Munson, C.
2011 Features as an emergent product of computing perceptual cues relative to expectations. In Where Do Phonological Features Come From? [Language Faculty & Beyond 6], G.N. Clements & R. Ridouane (eds), 197–236. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McMurray, B. & Jongman, A.
2011 What information is necessary for speech categorization? Harnessing variability in the speech signal by integrating cues computed relative to expectations. Psychological Review 188: 219–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moreton, E. & Smolensky, P.
2002 Typological consequences of local constraint conjunction. In Proceedings of the 21st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics , L. Mikkelsen & C. Potts (eds), 306–319. Cambridge MA: Cascadilla Press (Available on Rutgers Optimality Archive, ROA-525).Google Scholar
Pater, J.
1999 Austronesian nasal substitution and other NC effects. In The Prosody Morphology Interface , H. van der Hulst, R. Kager, & W. Zonneveld (eds), 310–343. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2001 Austronesian nasal substitution revisited. In Segmental Phonology in Optimality Theory: Constraints and Representations , L. Lombardi (ed.), 159–182. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pater, J. & Barlow, J.
2003 Constraint conflict in cluster reduction. Journal of Child Language 30: 487–526. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prince, A. & Smolensky, P.
1993/2004  Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar . Malden MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Smith, N.V.
1973  The Acquisition of Phonology: A Case Study . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Smolensky, P.
1995 On the structure of the constraint component Con of UG. Ms, University of California at Los Angeles. ROA 86.Google Scholar
1996 The initial state and ‘‘richness of the base’’ in Optimality Theory. Technical report JHU-CogSci-96–4, Department of Cognitive Science, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD.Google Scholar
2006 Optimality in phonology II: Harmonic completeness, local constraint conjunction, and feature domain markedness. In The Harmonic Mind: From Neural Computation to Optimality-Theoretic Grammar, P. Smolensky & G. Legendre (eds), 27–160. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Toscano, J. & McMurray, B.
2010 Cue integration with categories: Weighting acoustic cues in speech using unsupervised learning and distributional statistics. Cognitive Science 34: 434–464. DOI logoGoogle Scholar