Abstract This study investigates native German speakers’ and bilingual Turkish/German sensitivity to constraints on verbal agreement with pseudo-partitive subjects such as eine Packung Tabletten (“a pack of pills”). Although number the first noun phrase (headed by a container noun) is considered be norm, second (containee) also possible. We combined scalar acceptability ratings stochastic const...

This paper is concerned with the question of quantifying gradient degrees of acceptability by introducing the notion of Density in the context of constructional constraint language processing. We first present here our framework for language processing, where all linguistic knowledge is represented by means of constraints. The grammar itself is a constraint system. A constraint is a relation am...

The monophthongization of /ay/ in the Southern United States is disfavored by following voiceless consonants (PRICE) relative to voiced or word-final environments (PRIZE). If monophthongization is the trigger for the Southern Shift (Labov, 2010) and chain shifts operate as predicted by a modular feedforward phonological theory (cf. Bermúdez-Otero, 2007), this implies PRICE and PRIZE must be two...

Lexically specific constraints are indexed versions of constraints that apply only when a morpheme that bears that index is evaluated by the grammar. They have been used in Optimality Theory to deal with exceptions (e.g. Hammond 1995, Kraska-Szlenk 1997, Pater 2000), and have also been applied to the lexical strata of Japanese and other languages (Fukuzawa 1999, Itô and Mester 1999, 2001, Gelba...

In this article we investigate German complex clauses containing a subject gap using the empirical method of Magnitude Estimation. We will present evidence for the fact that subject gaps in coordinative structures can be characterized by (i) gradience and (ii) regional distinctiveness. Against the background of the recent critical discussion of Magnitude Estimation (e.g. Featherston 2008), we s...

In this paper, we explore the relationship between phonetics and phonology, in an attempt to broaden the search for possible sources of complexity that arise in sound patterns and sound systems. We propose that complexity may be better understood if one considers phonetics and phonology together in their multi-faceted interaction. Our goal here is to present an overview of the relevant issues i...

In this paper, we deal with the issue of variability in different measures of linguistic acceptability. It has been argued that acceptability, when measured with the magnitude estimation method (ME), reveals the underlying gradience of linguistic judgments, while other measures, like Likert-scale judgments (e.g. on a 7-point scale) do not provide the same amount of information about the gradien...

(1) i. HG is (perhaps surprisingly) restrictive, due to inherent limitations on the types of languages that can be generated by an optimization system (Bhatt et al. 2007; Pater et al. 2007) ii. HG is compatible with a simple correctly convergent gradual learning algorithm, the Perceptron algorithm of Rosenblatt (1958) (Boersma and Pater 2007; Pater 2007a; see Jäger 2006, Soderstrom et al. 2006 ...

the distribution of the allophones of /?/in certain contexts involves free variation and gradient preferences. an organized survey was conducted to elicit the judgments of 37 native persian speakers concerning the well-formedness of /?/allophonic behavior in five different phonological positions. the results showed that the differences in judgment between the various categories are not just t...