Interaction between phonology and syntax in Icelandic Arguments for a strongly parellel OT-analysis

1
Interaction between phonology and syntax in
IcelandicArguments for a strongly parellel
OT-analysis

• A Phonological Workshop
• University of Iceland
• May 16, 2008
• Anton Karl Ingason
• University of Iceland

2
Introduction

• Generative grammar
• Generally serial and modular design
  (rules/transformations within modules such as
  syntax and phonology)
• Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky.
  1993/2002) is more parellel, but usually within
  serially connected modules (syntax still happens
  before phonology)
• In such a model syntax can affect phonology but
  phonology can not affect syntax
• But what if there is evidence of the latter?
• Linguistic behaviour/performance
• Not what real linguistics should deal with?
• But what if variation has structure that can be
  predicted using an already existing model?

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Icelandic case variation

• Variation in case marking of subjects of
  impersonal verbs, dative substitution (dative
  sickness)
• Native speakers are not consistent in judgements
  of the grammaticality of subject case marking for
  certain verbs
• Effects of post-syntactic phenomena generally not
  considered
• Syntactic and semantic forces considered entirely
  responsible
• Which predicts that syntactically and
  semantically equivalent subjects should behave
  identically with respect to case marking
• New hypothesis
• Speakers who show variation in their judgements
  will not have syntactic preference for either
  accusative or dative case
• And will prefer the prosodically better case,
  ideally the least marked prosodic word, a trochee
  (ss)

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Experiment

• 54 speakers judge the grammaticality of the
  following sentences
• Hvers vegna vantar Jón þessa nagla?
• Why needs Jón-ACC-(s) those nails?
• Guðmund vantar nýjan jakka.
• Guðmund-ACC-(ss) needs a new jacket.
• Það er ljóst að Jóni vantar betri hugmynd.
• It is clear that Jóni-DAT-(ss) needs a better
  idea.
• Vantar ekki Guðmundi bara stærri jeppa?
• Needs not Guðmundi-DAT-(sss) just a bigger jeep?
• Not syntactic minimal pairs, but since dative
  sickness is a well known phenomena it is
  necessary to disguise the experiment if possible
• All comments from participants were about case
  marking
• Current literature on syntax does not predict
  that the names Jón and Guðmundur will behave
  differently with respect to case in those
  examples
• If prosody affects judgements and (ss) is the
  least marked PrWd there should be a tendency to
  accept Jóni-DAT-(ss) rather than Jón-ACC-(s) and
  Guðmund-ACC-(ss) rather than Guðmundi-DAT-(sss)

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Positive judgements about grammaticality of
accusative subjects
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Positive judgements about grammaticality of
dative subjects
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Modelling variation in OT

• Different dialects and social registers
• Constraint reranking works well and seems logical
  if the grammar is indeed different
• Variation within a fixed system
• Variation as accessing non-optimal candidates
  (Coetzee 2004 2006)
• Extra information generated by OT used to make
  predictions about variation
• Candidates are ordered by relative grammaticality

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Coetzeean variation model

• Relative grammaticality
• Predictions
• Better candidates are more frequent
• Possible variation patterns
• (C1,C2,C3), (C1,C2,C3), (C1,C2,C3)
• Impossible variation patterns
• (C1,C2,C3), (C1,C2,C3), (C1,C2,C3),
  (C1,C2,C3)

Const1 Const2 Const3
?1 Cand 1
?2 Cand 2
?3 Cand 3
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Strongly parellel OT

• Using an entirely parellel grammar, with only one
  EVAL function syntax and phonology are processed
  in the same step (Teeple 2007)
• Syntax can still outrank phonology (Golston 1995)
  but when two syntactic options are equally
  grammatical phonology can decide which one is
  better
• Instead of serially connected modules we have
  layers of constraints where any constraint can
  interact with any other constraint

SYNTAX PHONOLOGY
?1 (ss) /?
?2 (sss) /?
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Trochee sickness?
S P
?1 (ss) /?
?2 (sss) /?
Possible variation pattern (ss) /
(sss) Impossible variation pattern (ss) / (sss)

• 29 out of 54 participants were inconsistent in
  their judgements about grammaticality of dative
  subjects
• All of those had the same judgement pattern
• Current literature on syntax does not predict one
  pattern to be more frequent than the other
• Informal experiment using syntactic minimal pairs
  confirms the result
• Explains some of the results of Kristín Edda
  Búadóttir (2007)

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Conclusion

• Serial and modular grammar can not account for
  phonology affecting syntax
• Strongly Parellel OT can
• Instead of serially connected modules we have
  layers of constraints (syntax, phonlogy) where
  any constraint can interact with any other
  constraint
• Syntax can still outrank phonology
• A Coetzeean model of variation can account for
  patterns in linguistic performance while still
  predicting the optimal competence output (?1)
• Brings up questions
• Previous research on dative substitution asks
  questions like how common is dative sickness for
  the verb x? (Given what subject?)
• Is it a good idea to design grammar as a one
  directional algorithm if there is evidence of two
  way interaction between phonology and syntax?
• Do similar patterns occur in other cases of
  variation?

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References

• Búadóttir, Kristín Edda. 2007. Þágufallshneigð.
  Dative substitution. Mímisþing. March 17, 2007.
• Coetzee, Andries W. 2004. What it Means to be a
  Loser. Non-Optimal Candidates in Optimality
  Theory. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
  ROA 687.
• Coetzee, Andries W. 2006. Variation as Accessing
  Non-Optimal Candidates A Rank-Ordering Model
  of Eval. Phonology 23337385. Also ROA 863.
• Golston, Chris. 1995. Syntax outranks phonology
  evidence from Ancient Greek. Phonology
  12343368.
• Prince, Alan and Paul Smolensky. 1993/2002.
  Optimality theory Constraint Interaction in
  generative grammar. Manuscript. Rutgers
  University and University of Colorado at Boulder.
  (Updated version of the Technical Report from
  1993) ROA 537.
• Teeple, David. 2007. Prosody Can Outrank Syntax.
  WCCFL 26, Berkeley, April 27-29, 2007. University
  of California, Santa Cruz.