Abstract
In constraint-based phonological models, it is hypothesized that learning phonotactics first should facilitate the learning of phonological alternations. In this paper, we investigate whether alternation learning is impeded if static phonotactic generalizations and dynamic generalizations about alternations mismatch as in derived-environment patterns. English speakers were trained on one of two artificial languages, one in which static and dynamic generalizations match (Across-the-board), the other where they did not (Derived-environment). In both languages, there was an alternation that palatalized [ti] and [di] to [ʧi] and [ʤi] respectively across a morpheme boundary. In the Across-the-board language, the constraint motivating this (*Ti) was true across-the-board, whereas words with such sequences within stems were attested in the Derived-environment language. Results indicate that alternation learning in both languages was comparable. Interestingly, learners in the Across-the-board language failed to infer the *Ti constraint despite never hearing words with such sequences in training. Overall, our results suggests that alternation learning is not hindered by a static phonotactic mismatch in this type of experimental paradigm and that learners do not readily extend a generalization about legal heteromorphemic sequences to analogous sequences within a morpheme.
Highlights
It has been observed that phonological alternations that arise due to morpheme concatenation often reflect static phonotactic restrictions that hold true of the lexicon
The results indicate that learners picked changed plurals significantly more often when the stemfinal consonant was [t, d] than when it was [p, b] or [ʧ, ʤ]. This means that participants successfully learned the alternation, and importantly their success did not differ depending on the language which they were trained on
Across two artificial grammar learning experiments, we examined the relationship between phonotactics and phonological alternations in learning
Summary
It has been observed that phonological alternations that arise due to morpheme concatenation often reflect static phonotactic restrictions that hold true of the lexicon. Phonological alternations in multimorphemic words serve to ensure that a surface string conforms to the phonotactic restrictions that hold of monomorphemic words. This observation is often called the ‘duplication problem’ (Kenstowicz & Kisseberth 1977). This same constraint triggers phonological alternations across a morpheme boundary as in (3) and (4) (from Martin 2011). The prefix /-s-/ agrees in anteriority with the sibilant in the root, alternating in (3) to harmonize with /ʒ/ in the root. In Navajo, what is true of the lexicon holds of phonological alternations
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