Variation and mental
representation
Gregory R. Guy
New York University
Words in the mind
• Abstract representations, composed of strings
of phonemes.
• Morphological structure either stored in
representation or generated by derivation
and
/ænd/
band /bænd/
banned /bæn#d/
Words in speech
• Surface forms reflect allophony, phrasal
phonology, etc.
• Show variable realizations reflecting variable
phonological processes.
– e.g., final coronal stop deletion
and ~ an’
band ~ ban’
banned ~ ban’
What’s in the mental lexicon?
Variable processes are conditioned by:
• Lexical frequency
• Morphological structure
• Lexical exceptions
• Priming
I. Frequency effects on variation
• coronal stop deletion in English
• -ing/-in alternation in English
• coda –s lenition in Caribbean Spanish
Coronal stop deletion increases with lexical frequency
Guy, Hay & Walker 2008. p=.0005
-ing > -in: More frequent words show more
alveolar [ɪn] pronunciation
Figure 1. [ɪn] by lexical frequency
0.7
0.6
p [ɪn]
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
<8
Source: Laturnus,
de Vilchez, Chaves
& Guy, 2016.
9-10
log10 freq
11
12+
Spanish -s lenition (Erker 2008)
No significant frequency effect
• Correlation between frequency and:
– Spectral center of gravity
N=318
r = -.02
– Duration
N=453
r = .07
p = .74, n.s.
p = .136, n.s.
Bybee on lexical frequency effects
(Bybee 2000)
• “The more a word is used, the more it
is exposed to the reductive effect of
articulatory automation…”
• “Sound change affects stored
representations incrementally each
time a word is used…”
2. Morphological constraints on
variation
• coda –s deletion in Brazilian Portuguese
• -ing/-in alternation in English
• coronal stop deletion in English
Morphological constraint on coda /s/ deletion in
Brazilian Portuguese (Guy 1981)
Coda /s/ deletion in unstressed final syllables
N % deleted
Monomorphemes
1392 53%
e.g. menos
Nominal plurals*
e.g. eles, todos
*NB: first position in NP only
5247
5%
Morphological constraint on
–in/-ing alternation in English
Laturnus et al. 2016
N
% [n] weight
489
55%
.53
81
67%
.51
79
38%
.32
Lexical class
verbs
something,
nothing
nouns
12
Morphological constraint on coronal
stop deletion in English
N
% deleted
Monomorphemes 658
e.g., guest
Irregular Past
56
e.g., lost
Regular Past
181
e.g., guessed
(Guy 1992 corpus)
38.1%
33.9
16.0
Morphological structure interacts with lexical
frequency: coronal stop deletion (Myers & Guy 1997)
Monomorphemic words
Significant frequency effect
N Deletions % Del
Low frequency 151
28
18.5
High frequency 573 194
33.9
p < .01
Morphology interacts with frequency:
coronal stop deletion (Myers & Guy 1997)
Regular Past Tense Verbs
No significant frequency effect
N Deletions % Del
Low frequency 96
7
7.3
High frequency 220
18
8.2
chi-sq (1df) = .073, p > .70
Morphology interacts with frequency: coronal
stop deletion (Myers & Guy 1997)
Frequency effect by morphology
40
% -t,d deletion
35
30
25
monomorphemes
20
regular past
15
10
5
0
low freq
high freq
Lexical frequency
-t,d morphology: Fruehwald
(probabilities of /t,d/ retention)
Variation and morphology: conclusions
• Variable processes are sensitive to morphological
structure; they can be conditioned by derived
environments.
• Hence variable phonological processes ‘see’
mental representations that incorporate
morphological information, in addition to the
phonological content.
• Morphological constraints on phonology interact
with lexical frequency: derived forms are less
affected by frequency
Morphology and lexical frequency
• Bybee’s model of lenition fed by frequency is
phonetically motivated
• This should be independent of and orthogonal to
morphological constraints
• But other models make other predictions. Pinker
and others argue that regular derived forms are
generated by rule; only roots and irregular forms
are stored
• Hence, regular derived forms lack independent
mental representations to accumulate frequency
or collocational information
3. Lexical exceptions
• Coronal stop deletion in English:
exceptional and
• Coda /s/ deletion in Brazilian Portuguese:
exceptional 1pl morpheme –mos
• Coda /s/ deletion in Salvadoran Spanish:
exceptional entonces, digamos
• /ay/ monophthongization in Southern US
English: exceptional I, my
Lexical exceptions in variation
Many variable processes are known to exhibit
unusually high rates of occurrence in
particular lexical items.
-e.g., coronal stop deletion in English is
exceptionally frequent in ‘and’
(Exceptional because deletion occurs
significantly more often in and than in
phonologically comparable words like sand,
band, hand, etc.)
Exceptional and in the NZE corpus:
and
other words
N Deletion rate
597
80%
3348
29%
Lexical exceptions are not just high
frequency words
• The second-highest frequency word in the
ONZE corpus was just; it showed significant
following context effects and did not behave
like and
• Spanish menos is higher in frequency than
entonces and digamos, but does not behave
exceptionally
Following context effect in the NZE corpus
Following
Context:
__C
__V
Range:
Other words
N
% del
1339
1477
58.3
10.4
47.9%
(18 speakers from the ONZE corpus at U Canterbury)
and
N
% del
315
182
>
87.9
75.3
12.6%
Contextual effects on Brazilian
Portuguese –s deletion
• verbs ending in 1plural –mos suffix omit final
/s/ at exceptionally high rate.
• Coda /s/ deletion mainly occurs in
preconsonantal position, and is strongly
constrained by place manner and voicing of
the following C
• Do these constraints affect exceptional –mos
words just like other words?
Lexical exceptions in Brazilian Portuguese:
coda -s deletion [factor weights]
Features of following C
Non-exceptions Lexical exceptions
(-mos forms)
Voice/Manner: sonorant
.69
.49
voiced obstruent
.44
.58
voiceless obstruent
.36
.44
Range
.33
>
.14
Place:
labial
coronal
velar
Range
.32
.61
.44
.29
N:
5880
Goodness of fit (log likelihood) -704.8
>
.58
.53
.39
.19
1225
-791.5
Following context effect appears
significantly weaker in exceptional -mos
• Range of probabilities is smaller for both the
place effect and the manner/voicing effect
• The goodness of fit measure is significantly
worse for the exceptional forms, suggesting
that they aren’t as well explained by the
contextual conditions
Contextual effects on Salvadoran
Spanish –s deletion
• El Salvador has variable final –s deletion, like
other Caribbean dialects
• Hoffman 2004 finds strong constraint effects
on deletion; more deletion in stressed
syllables, more deletion before consonants,
than before vowels
• Three discourse markers show exceptionally
high rates of deletion: entonces, digamos,
pues
-s deletion in Salvadoran Spanish (Hoffman 2004)
Non-exceptional words
Following context:
sonorant
voiced obstruent
voiceless obstruent
vowel
pause
Range
Syllable Stress:
stressed
unstressed
Range
.60
.75
.33
.36
.44
.42
Lexical exceptions
(entonces, digamos, pues)
.63
.55
.38
.38
.56
>
.25
.38
.62
.24
.42
.58
.16
>
Another variable: monophthongal /ay/
in Southern American English (SoAmEng)
• The English diphthong /ay/ is variably
monophthongized to /a/ in Southern American
English
• More monophthongs are found in pre-voiced
contexts (ride vs. right), in phonetically shorter
syllables, and among lower status speakers
• I and my are lexical exceptions, with very high
rates of monophthongization, even before
voiceless consonants (cf: ‘my time’)
/ay/ monophthongization in SoAmEng:
following context effect (Woods 2008)
Other words
% monophthong
Fol. Context:
__C[+vce]
__V or G
__C[-vce]
Range:
I, my
34%
53%
.76
.41
.17
.59
(.51)
(.49)
(.48)
>
.03 (n.s.)
/ay/ monophthongization in Southern AmEng:
duration effect
Other words
Duration:
shorter
longer
Range:
I, my
.89
.49
.40
(Data from Woods 2008)
.68
.45
>
.23
Contextual effects are much weaker on
exceptional I, my in SoAmEng
• Following context effect is not significant for
I, my
• Duration effect is much weaker
• Monophthongization occurs much more often
in these two words, and is relatively
insensitive to context.
Conclusion: Exceptional words have
alternate mental representations
• Lexical exceptions to variable processes reveal
allomorphy in the mental representation
• They have additional lexical entries that
incorporate the output of the variable process.
– and ~ an’ or ‘n’
-I, my ~ [a], [ma]
– -mos ~ -mo
– -entonces, digamos ~ entonce, digamo
• When the ‘reduced’ allomorph is selected,
context has no effect, and apparent frequency of
occurrence of the variable phonological process is
increased.
4. Priming
• Specific variants tend to occur in clusters: e.g.,
in BP –s deletion, one deleted form is likely to
favor subsequent deleted forms, an undeleted
form favors subsequent undeleted forms.
-in/-ing alternation: priming
• Priming is a significant predictor
– Alveolars favor subsequent alveolars
– Velars favor subsequent velars
– But less than 40% of tokens occur in priming contexts
Priming
context
N
% [n]
weight
-n
129
79%
.64
-ŋ
119
21%
.27
∅
401
54%
.53
36
Priming: same or different?
prime form prime form no prime
[n]
[ŋ]
prime same as target
V to V, N to N
.70
.25
prime different from
target: V to N, N to V
.52
.25
no prime
.53
Goldvarb factor weights for /in/
Same or similar?
• The strongest priming effect is like-to-like (verb
to verb, noun to noun): .72 vs .25
• Cross-category priming (V to N, N to V) is also
strong: .52 vs .25
• No significant improvement in model by
distinguishing whether priming category is same
or different from target.
Summary
• Mental lexical representations
– accumulate frequency information
– variably incorporate morphological information
– permit allomorphy
– permit partial, overlapping identities
• i.e., they have quantified, continuous properties
The fuzzy lexicon
• Lexical entries are associated with probability
functions
• Stable components (segments or features) of the
morpheme are assigned high probabilities of
realization
• Components that are variably realized have
lowered probabilities.
• Exceptional allomorphs are entries in which the
probability of some component has reached zero.
Frequency
• Probability functions are updated with
experience
• This incorporates information about lexical
frequency without requiring storage of
exemplars
• Derived forms without lexical entries do not
accumulate frequency information.
• Frequency is an ‘elsewhere’ constraint
Probabilistic representations
banned:
ban + ed
band:
ban
and:
an ~ an
Thank you!
Gracias
Obrigado
Merci
Arigato
Dank je wel!