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Can phonological universals be emergent? Modeling the space of sound change, lexical distribution, and hypothesis selection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Rebecca L. Morley
Rebecca L. Morley*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
*
Department of Linguistics 200 Oxley Hall 1712 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43210 [morley.33@osu.edu]
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Extract

This article is an analysis of the claim that a universal ban on certain (‘anti-markedness’) grammars is necessary in order to explain their nonoccurrence in the languages of the world. Such a claim is based on the following assumptions: that phonological typology shows a highly asymmetric distribution, and that such a distribution cannot possibly arise ‘naturally’—that is, without a universal grammar-based restriction of the learner’s hypothesis space. Attempting to test this claim reveals a number of open issues in linguistic theory. In the first place, there exist critical aspects of synchronic theory that are not specified explicitly enough to implement computationally. Second, there remain many aspects of linguistic competence, language acquisition, sound change, and even typology that are still unknown. It is not currently possible, therefore, to reach a definitive conclusion about the necessity, or lack thereof, of an innate substantive grammar module. This article thus serves two main functions: acting both as a pointer to the areas of phonological theory that require further development, especially at the overlap between traditionally separate subdomains, and as a template for the type of argumentation required to defend or attack claims about phonological universals.

Keywords

evaluation metricuniversal grammarsonority-based stressstatistical learningsound changecomputational models

Information

Type
Phonological Analysis
Information
Language , Volume 91 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. e40 - e70
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

This work was supported by an NSF IGERT grant to the Johns Hopkins Cognitive Science Department and a Department of Education Javits Fellowship. Further work was completed under the auspices of an internal TIE grant to the OSU Linguistics Department. I would like to thank Paul Smolensky and Colin Wilson, without whom this article would never have come about. Thanks to Simon Fischer-Baum and the members of Math City for their invaluable input. Thank you to Mary Beckman for her encouragement, and to Matt Goldrick for his generous assistance and advice. Thanks also go to Adam Albright for his extensive and extremely helpful comments. The members of CaCL and Lacqueys at OSU have my gratitude; Peter Culicover, in particular, was instrumental in helping me see the light at the end of the expository tunnel. I would also like to thank Eric Baković for his willingness to take on (what has turned out to be) such a controversial article.

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