[Author Login]
Title:Deriving variation from grammar: A study of Finnish genitives
Authors:Arto Anttila
Abstract: Deriving variation from grammar



Arto Anttila

Stanford University

The claim is that variation, including probabilities, can be derived

from an optimality-theoretic grammar. Two specific questions are

discussed: (i) The locus of variation: Why are only certain forms

susceptible to variation? (ii) Degrees of variation: Why is one

variant preferred over the other?

The empirical data comes from Finnish morphology. Polysyllabic stems

such as /naapuri/ 'neighbor' have multiple genitive plurals such as

/naapurien/ and /naapureiden/ which are clearly distinct but

phonologically related. The variation is systematic and productive and

extends to recent loans and foreign names. Based on a 1.3 million word

on-line corpus, I show that categorical outputs, variable outputs and

statistical preferences follow from syllable prominence defined as a

combination of stress, weight and sonority. The key idea is that the

grammar is a partial order. The number of tableaux by which a variant

wins predicts its probability of occurrence. In the categorical cases,

the grammar converges on a single winner, i.e. one and the same

candidate wins in all the tableaux compatible with the partial

order. Variation arises if the partial order is too weak to select a

unique winner. Statistical preferences arise if the grammar biases the

numerical result in favor of some candidate.


Hard copies are available upon request to anttila@csli.stanford.edu.

Type:Paper/tech report
Article:Version 1