Workshop: The implications of Computation and Learnability for Phonological Theory

Crystallizing a feeling widespread in the field, Marc van Oostendorp (2013) writes: ''It is fair to say that we know much more about sound patterns in human language than people did at the beginning of the 20th Century. At the same time, many phonologists seem to feel that we have not yet reached the standards of some of the ‘hard’ sciences.'' An obstacle to progress seems to be the fact that competing phonological theories are underdetermined by sheer typological and linguistic data. Moving beyond descriptive adequacy, Alan Prince thus proposes that ''rational arguments about two theories’ comparative success […] depend on a broad assessment of their properties.'' Among the formal properties of a phonological theory which are crucial for its comparative assessment are its computability and learnability properties.  This workshop thus aims at investigating the implications of computation and learnability for phonological theory. The issues addressed include (but are not limited to):  the computability/intractability of phonological grammars and the debate among derivational, representational, and constraint-based frameworks;  learnability guarantees and the debate between competing modes of constraint interaction;  the characterization of phonological patterns within the sub-regular hierarchy and the expressive power of phonological formalisms;  the learnability filter and its implications for the evaluation of the typologies predicted by competing phonological theories;  methods for constraint induction and the phonetic grounding of the phonological constraints;  statistical methods, probabilistic grammars and the divide between categorical and gradient models of phonological competence;  the learnability of phonological processes conditioned by prosodic domains and its implications for the syntax/phonology interface.  The workshop adopts an inclusive perspective, open to any computational approach and any phonological framework.  Workshop program: Saturday April 18th, 2015  (info concerning the workshop location available here) 9:45—10:15 Welcome 10:15—10:45 Chair: Joe Pater Robert Daland Even though the sound of it is really quite atrocious: Finiteness and well-defined probabilities in phonotactic learning 10:45—11:15  Thomas Graf and Jeffrey Heinz Commonality in disparity: The computational view of syntax and phonology 11:15—11:45  Coffee break 11:45—12:15  Chair: Michela Russo Juliet Stanton The learnability filter and its role in the comparison of metrical theories 12:15—12:45  Stephanie Shih Super additive phonological similarity as constraint conjunction 12:45—13:15 Jane Chandlee, Jeffrey Heinz, and Adam Jardine Representing and learning opaque maps with strictly local functions 13:15—14:45 Lunch break 14:45—15:15 Chair: Jeffry Heinz Coral Hughto, Joe Pater, and Robert Staubs  Grammatical agent-based modeling of typology 15:15—15:45 Gaja Jarosz Phonotactic probability and sonority sequencing in Polish initial clusters  15:45—16:15  Ewan Dunbar, Gabriel Synnaeve, and Emmanuel Dupoux On the origin of features: Quantitative methods for comparing representations 16:15—16:45 Coffee break 16:45—17:15  Chair: Giorgio Magri Afton Coombs Gradient lengthening effects: evidence from Tagalog 17:15—17:45 Klaas Seinhorst Inductive biases in plosive inventories: an empirical approach 17:45—18:30  Invited speaker: Bruce Tesar Learnability and phonological maps  20:00—     Workshop party Workshop organizers: Joaquim Brandao de Carvalho, Mohamed Lahrouchi, Giorgio Magri, Michela Russo Financial support from the following institutions is gratefully acknowledged: