16.432, Review: Phonology/Psycholing: Kager, Pater & Zonneveld

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-432. Sat Feb 12 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.432, Review: Phonology/Psycholing: Kager, Pater & Zonneveld

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1)
Date: 11-Feb-2005
From: Piotr Glowacki < hubris at poczta.fm >
Subject: Constraints in Phonological Acquisition 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 03:26:21
From: Piotr Glowacki < hubris at poczta.fm >
Subject: Constraints in Phonological Acquisition 
 

EDITORS: Kager, René; Pater, Joe; Zonneveld, Wim
TITLE: Constraints in Phonological Acquisition
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2385.html


Piotr Glowacki, Wroclaw University, Poland

INTRODUCTION

This book is a collection of ten papers presenting a broad overview of 
current issues in phonological acquisition, especially aiming at 
considering them within the paradigms of Optimality Theory (OT). The 
volume was inspired by the papers presented during the Third Biannual 
Phonology Workshop organized by Rene Kager and Wim Zonneveld in June 1998 
at the Research Department for Language and Speech of Utrecht University 
(Chapters 5, 6 and 9). They are accompanied by other papers, written on 
request. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Peter W. Jusczyk, who 
was one of the contributors.

SUMMARY

Chapter 1: 'Introduction: Constraints in phonological acquisition' by René 
Kager, Joe Pater and Wim Zonneveld
This chapter falls into four main parts and a conclusion. The first part 
presents an overview on previous research concerning the issues dealt with 
in this book. It begins with presenting the theoretical background - 
Jakobson's 'laws of irreversible solidarity' and Chomsky's concept of 
Universal Grammar (UG). As an application, N. V. Smith's case study of his 
son's language is presented (Smith 1973). Two issues are emphasized there, 
as they are relevant in the context of current phonological theory 
development: opaque rule interactions (resulting in counterfeeding rule 
ordering) and the nature of the underlying representations in child 
grammar. Exploration of the former topic leads to the explanation of 
Chomsky and Halle's theory of markedness. Then Stampe's criticism of the 
theory of markedness in the Natural Generative Phonology paradigm is 
presented, supported by the comparison of Danish and Tamil coronals 
behaviour. Yet another alternative view is presented, by Kiparsky and 
Menn, who treat Jakobson's and Stampe's theories as 'rather deterministic' 
and propose treating adult speech as a target at which a child aims in the 
process of language acquisition. They also stress the usefulness of output 
constraints. The focus now returns to Smith and his claim that child 
grammar's underlying representation are mainly built of adult surface 
forms, which is contrasted with Braine's 'partial perception hypothesis' 
and Menn's 'two-lexicon model'. Finally, Chomsky's Principles and 
Parameters Theory is presented on the example of Kaye's parametric theory 
of syllable structure.

The second part serves as a brief tutorial on OT, introducing its main 
concepts and notions, such as constraint ranking, Richness of the Base, 
Freedom of Analysis, division of constraints into markedness constraints 
and faithfulness constraints, Lexicon Optimization or Correspondence 
Theory. There is also very brief but condensed comparison of OT with 
classical Generative Phonology and Natural Phonology included, which I 
assume is very relevant. Then two learnability theories are briefly 
presented, Constraint Demotion Algorithm (CDA) by Tesar and Smolensky and 
Gradual Learning Algorithm (GLA) by Boersma and Hayes. 

The third and the fourth parts include summaries of the following chapters 
grouped thematically. 

Chapter 2: 'Saving the baby: Making sure that old data survive new 
theories' by Lise Menn
The paper begins with the author's subjective opinion on what a successful 
theory should be and how it should profit from the previous theories 
managing (or not managing) to deal with some issues (part 1). In part 2 
Menn analyses the ways in which output constraints were treated in 
phonology throughout the last fifty years. We can encounter here the 
theories of Stockwell, Jakobson (again), Jones (whose formalism Menn 
calls 'an intuition-killer), Ingram, Smith's puzzle-puddle (again), 
Menn's 'two-lexicon model' (again), Kisseberthian rule conspiracies 
(again), Stampe's Natural Phonology (again) and Menn's own views on output 
constraints throughout the years. She gives an exhaustive guide to the non-
OT bibliography on child phonology afterwards. Part 3 is a short 
introduction to the role of OT in phonological acquisition, after which 
(Part 4) Menn presents a 'Historical Annotated Inventory of Things We Know 
About Child Phonology', where she attempts to state if fourteen problems 
(which were highlighted before whilst presenting the history) can be dealt 
with by means of OT, and if not, what is the cause. Finally Menn advises 
that OT should not be made 'a Theory of Everything' and postulates having 
several good partial models of language.

Chapter 3: 'Markedness and faithfulness constraints in child phonology' by 
Amalia Gnanadesikan
This chapter is dealing with the analysis of a single child's grammar (the 
author's daughter Gitanjali), focusing mainly on the examples of the 
Emergence of the Unmarked. Gnanadesikan claims constraints are universal 
and innate and at the beginning of acquisition all markedness constraints 
outrank all faithfulness constraints and adopts Smith's (1973) view that a 
child's inputs are somewhat similar to adult outputs. She then presents a 
very brief outline of OT (again) and Correspondence Theory, and proceeds 
to the analysis afterwards. First she focuses on Gitanjali's syllable 
onsets, which cannot be longer than one consonant, and discusses how 
Gitanjali narrows multiple-consonant input onsets to her one-consonant 
output onsets. Gnanadesikan employs Universal Sonority Hierarchy here and 
compares Gitanjali's case to Sanskrit's reduction of onset clusters in the 
course of reduplication. Then she concentrates on Gitanjali's dummy 
syllable 'fi-' and the effect it has on the onset of the following 
syllable. The next part is concerned with the occurrence of coalescence 
within the two phenomena presented earlier. Next comes the analysis of the 
interaction of OCP (Obligatory Contour Principle - a constraint which 
prohibits adjacent identical elements (Archangeli 1997:122)) with other 
constraints regarding Gitanjali's syllable onsets. The paper finishes with 
a very brief comparison of the results with standard rule-based theory and 
the conclusion, which includes some remarks about the theories of Smith 
and Stampe.

Chapter 4: 'Input elaboration, head faithfulness, and evidence for 
representation in the acquisition of left-edge clusters in West Germanic' 
by Heather Goad and Yvan Rose
The problem considered here is connected with the previous chapter; unlike 
there, here it is not an analysis of one-child grammar. The authors claim 
that the adult inputs are fully prosodified, and, whether children's 
inputs are similar to adult ones or not, they reduce their onset clusters 
following one of two patterns which the authors call 'sonority pattern' 
and 'head pattern'. The data presented comes from a number of sources 
concerning English, Dutch and German. Goad and Rose first analyse the 
construction of onset clusters in those three languages (indicate the 
difference between a branching onset and appendix + onset construction) 
and then focus on different inputs in sonority pattern and head pattern. 
The next step is presenting constraints which are going to be used in the 
tableaux coming next. Then the alternative way of explaining this 
phenomenon is discussed (constraint re-ranking instead of different 
inputs) and rejected. A discussion concerning the need for having 
constituent heads follows.

Chapter 5: 'Phonological acquisition in Optimality Theory: the early 
stages' by Bruce Hayes
Hayes begins with a very short introduction describing his aim - to show 
that current phonological theory can work very closely with the 
experimental line of acquisition research. He then defines his view of 
phonological acquisition as including 'the child's internalised conception 
of the adult language' (p. 159). Presenting an overview of experiment 
results (Eimas's 'feature detectors', Kuhl's 'perceptual magnet', Werker's 
losses in phonetic abilities at the age of 10 months) serves as an 
introduction to discussing the three kinds of phonological knowledge, as 
described by OT (contrast, legal structures (phonotactics) and 
alternations). Because the experiments show that the children first 
acquire phonotactics and then learn alternations, Hayes addresses the 
former problem first. The aim is to develop an algorithm which 'given 
input data and constraint inventories, can locate appropriate constraint 
rankings' and which leaves legal input forms unaltered, but alters illegal 
input forms in the output. He starts with the explanation of Tesar and 
Smolensky's Constraint Demotion Algorithm (CD) (Tesar and Smolensky 1993) 
and its application to the data from Pseudo-Korean (a language similar to 
Korean, but containing only vowels and stops contrasting for aspiration). 
CD generates legal output from legal input, but it fails when it is fed 
with illegal input. Hayes therefore presents his altered version of CD, 
called Low Faithfulness CD, which performs much better on the same data. 
Yet Low Faithfulness CD is not perfect, and its limitations are mentioned. 
Then Hayes moves on to the learning of alternations. Basing his argument 
on the strongly emphasized belief that phonology is conspirational, he 
points out the importance of output-to -output correspondence and a 
particular stage of children's acquisition when they are vulnerable to 
dialect contamination. 

Chapter 6: 'Syllable types in cross-linguistic and developmental grammars' 
by Clara C. Levelt and Ruben van de Vijver
The authors begin with explaining their starting point and the theoretical 
assumptions. Then they present Blevins's (1995) 'Syllable Type 
Inventories' and four markedness constraints, which, along with one 
unspecified faithfulness constraint, are used to build a factorial 
typology of Blevins's syllables. This is compared with the learning path 
which Dutch language learners take to acquire the most complex type of 
Dutch syllable. Levelt and van de Vijver guide us then through the 
learning paths and attempt to explain why these ways, and not the other, 
were taken by the learners. They take into account, apart from typology, 
also the frequency with which children hear particular syllables.

Chapter 7: 'Bridging the gap between receptive and productive development 
with minimally violable constraints' by Joe Pater
The author's aim, exposed in the introductory section, is to employ OT to 
shed some light on the differences between language perception and 
production in children's grammar. He claims that a gap arises 'when the 
perceptual representations are more marked than the representations 
evinced in production' (p. 220). His solution is to employ a 'perception 
specific faithfulness constraint'. The next section is devoted to 
presenting and explaining briefly two experiments: 
habituation/dishabituation procedure by Werker et al. (1998, 2000) and 
Headturn Preference Procedure by Jusczyk et al. (1999). Then Pater takes a 
part of the latter experiment and makes it example to illustrate his 
theory. He labels the standard OT notions of 'input' and 'output' as 'S' 
if it is a perceived surface form and 'L' if it is a stored lexical form, 
and, depending on if it is perception or production, each 'S' and 'L' can 
appear as either input or output. He also proposes Max(SL) and Max(LS) 
constraints, which make use of the notions presented before. Section 4 
compares Pater's model with other approaches - Smolensky's (1996), 
Pater's 'mixed model' and 'dual lexicon model' by Menn and Mathei. Section 
5 presents the conclusions.

Chapter 8: 'Learning phonotactic distributions' by Alan Prince and Bruce 
Tesar
This chapter is, similarly to Chapter 5, an attempt to improve Tesar and 
Smolensky's Constraint Demotion Algorithm (CD). The focus of the 
introductory section is set on the Subset Problem (Angluin 1980) - that a 
learner using only positive evidence can make overgeneralizations apart 
from errors - and the attempts of solving it. Then the authors discuss the 
properties of the target grammar. Section 3 presents Recursive Constraint 
Demotion algorithm (RCD) - Tesar's (1995) modification of Tesar and 
Smolensky's (1993) CD. In the next section the authors propose modifying 
RCD in such a way that it would prefer markedness to faithfulness 
constraints, to make it more compatible with their position that the 
Markedness >> Faithfulness relationship helps coping with the Subset 
Problem. Their version is called Biased Constraint Demotion (BCD). 
Sections 5 and 6 focus on further issues connected with BCD, namely 
faithfulness gangs, markedness cascades, and subset relations between 
constraints.

Chapter 9: 'Emergence of Universal Grammar in foreign word adaptations' by 
Shigeko Shinohara
Shinohara's aim is to show that Universal Grammar's unmarked patterns 
arise in foreign word adaptations even if they contradict the native 
constraint system. The author uses data obtained from Tokyo Japanese 
speakers proficient in French. He analyses three main cases: assibilation 
of the alveolar plosives, accentuation of loanwords from French and 
English and problems with syllabification of loanwords into Japanese.

Chapter 10 'The initial and final states: theoretical implications and 
experimental explorations of Richness of the Base' by Lisa Davidson, Peter 
Jusczyk and Paul Smolensky
The paper includes two experiments: concerning the initial state of the 
grammar (infant speech) and the final state (adult speech). The former 
experiment tests the presence of the initial Markedness >> Faithfulness 
ranking in infant grammar. The technique used is the Headturn Preference 
Procedure and the data used is nasal assimilation in English. The latter 
experiment examines the ability of English speakers to pronounce word-
initial consonants clusters which are not tolerated by English 
phonotactics. The authors propose employing 'floating constraints' (e.g. 
Reynolds 1994) and a new, almost-one-page-long, definition of Extended 
Richness of the Base.

Chapter 11: 'Child word stress competence: an experimental approach' by 
Wim Zonneveld and Dominique Nouveau
The authors examine the word stress competence of 3 and 4 year old 
children by giving them existing and nonsense words to pronounce. These 
tests are accompanied with basically the same tests performed on adults - 
as a comparison. They divide the stress patterns into four types: regular 
cases (A), exceptional cases (B), very irregular (C) and prohibited (P). 
Then a VERY detailed analysis of the experiment results is presented using 
OT framework, including even the NO-CLASH constraint, which has its roots 
in Metrical Phonology (Liberman and Prince 1977). 

CRITICAL EVALUATION

Chapter 1 presents a strong, detailed historical description of the 
studies on phonological acquisition. It is quite lucid, written in a 
formal language (except for 'Smith's original hunch' p. 12), clearly 
stating what each presented theory is concerned with and, in most cases, 
supporting the description with some examples. The explanation of OT 
begins with a note, which I assume is very helpful, indicating the books 
where a reader can find general, but less brief, introductions to OT. 

Chapter 2 is written in a less formal way than Chapter 1, using much less 
formal language (e.g. "[W]hat kind of creature is the child such 
that 'guck' may be easier than 'duck'" p.57). Menn presents her own views, 
her own thoughts of other theories (e.g. calling Jones's formalism 'an 
intuition-killer'), or even her own theory ('The term 'two lexicons' is 
somewhat misleading' p. 57). Yet in my opinion it is the editors' task to 
avoid repeating the same information in two different chapters. Menn says 
at the beginning of her paper: '[W]hat I have been requested to do is to 
provide a historical perspective on OT as a theory of phonological 
development' (p. 55). Therefore I am wondering why the editors did the 
same job again writing the first chapter. The only reason I can think of 
is that Menn presented history in a subjective way and Kager et al. did it 
rather objectively and in greater detail. However, I suppose that 
repeating the same citation (Ch. 1, p.1 and Ch. 2, p. 59) should have been 
dealt with by the editors.

Chapter 3 is a well-planned investigatory paper with much language data 
and many tableaux. Gnanadesikan presents both the data and the conclusions 
very clearly. Yet I find the definitions of constraints a little vague. 
There is a short, concise introduction stating directly the author's views 
and beliefs, including a brief 'outline of OT' (p. 18 and 75), with a 
similar example tableau (p.19 and 75). I think that part 7, where 
Gnanadesikan compares her results with standard rule-based theory could 
have been discussed in greater detail.

Chapter 4 is written in a very scientific language. Once a reader gets 
used to it, the understanding ceases to be a problem. Numerous tables and 
charts (especially those dealing with the internal structure of onset 
clusters) are very helpful. Constraints are defined very clearly and in 
great detail. 

Chapter 5 is in my opinion the most reader-friendly chapter in this book. 
Hayes divides it into many parts and sub-parts, which make the paper very 
lucid. The language is rather formal, but in my opinion the author has 
some kind of gift which keeps the reader really awake during reading (and 
it is not the first work by Hayes I have read). Hayes carefully explains 
the reader what he is doing when and why. And thank him for note 6 ('For 
reasons of space, I cannot provide a summary of OT' - p. 196)! Another 
case of space limitations is carefully solved by directing the reader to 
Hayes' own Web page, where one can find full descriptions of the 
simulations which results are discussed here, software helping to conduct 
such simulations, and, among others, this very paper (!).

Chapter 6 is my favourite. Concise, lucid and to the point from the very 
beginning to the very end. Ezra Pound would be proud of it - almost every 
word is necessary there! The authors do not worry to remind the reader 
that they do not present The Only Truth ('One explanation [i]s that we do 
not have enough acquisition data yet. Awaiting a larger study, an 
alternative explanation is explored below' p. 212). In my opinion, this 
paper is a masterpiece. 

Chapter 7 is, in my opinion, not very clear. Pater seems to be talking 
about several different topics at once, not linking them together well. It 
may be so because the chapter is an altered version of ROA-296, 'From 
phonological typology to the development of receptive and productive 
phonological competence: Applications of minimal violation'. The main 
difference between the papers is that the ROA version follows the Parse-
Fill theory, and the 2004 version employs Correspondence Theory. The text 
has been changed very much, even by deleting some chapters and writing new 
ones, yet some portions have been left unaltered. That makes the discourse 
less comprehensible - for me the ROA version was much more informative and 
easier to read. 

Chapter 8 is very well-planned. The authors guide the reader through the 
intricacies of learning algorithms. I especially liked presenting 
algorithms in a 'generic pseudocode', which looks like a kind of 
programming language (and has comments!). It helps to understand the 
algorithm very much. The constraints used are explained very clearly and 
three appendices show additional problems and further research areas.

Chapter 9 presents a fair argument. Shinohara has much data and shows many 
examples to the reader. He delivers a strong theoretical basis for his 
research as well. In my opinion the problem he touches is extremely 
interesting, especially when one has ever tried to talk with a Japanese 
person in English.

Chapter 10 touches the very core of OT and sheds some new light on the 
understanding of the theory. With proposing the new definition of Richness 
of the Base, the authors claim all work done under standard Richness of 
the base 'to be the study of base grammars, which are determined by the 
inventory of native forms' (p. 341). Yet I have some doubts if using 
Headturn Preference Procedure is really a good measuring device for 
infants. In note 4 the authors inform us that "[a]dditional infants [...] 
were tested but not included for reasons of excessive fussiness or crying, 
FAILING TO ORIENT PROPERLY TO THE TEST APPARATUS, experimenter error, 
or parental interference" (my emphasis). It means that for experiment 5 only 
16 from 30 results were included! However, the question we should ask is 
WHY the children failed to orient properly. There are many other factors 
that can distract the children and alter the results significantly - even 
a child's own hand. The results obtained using this method do not persuade 
me. Having analysed the results of the experiments I conclude that they 
provide too weak a basis for any conclusions. Mean looking times do not 
differ much; moreover, if we look at Standard Deviation, we can see that 
the results overlap in the worst case! The number of children tested (16) 
was too small in my opinion, and the experiment should be redone and the 
results compared.

Chapter 11 utilises the experimental results to the maximum. The analysis 
is very detailed, yet all the time clear. The experiment itself was very 
simple, easy to perform and did not need elaborate machinery, hence the 
results should be quite reliable. The authors present their reasoning in a 
lucid, 'user-friendly' way. It is a wonderful dessert at the end of the 
meal.

GENERAL COMMENTS

The book is very well produced, there are only a few typos (I found four) 
and after days of intensive reading it is still in one piece. The topics 
of chapters partially overlap, which makes the book more coherent; 
however, it causes repetition, most clearly visible in the chapters 1 and 
2. The book was in preparation for a very long time - that is why most of 
the papers were written in the last century (but fortunately revised 
recently). Not all papers benefited from revision - Chapter 7 was much 
more comprehensible in the earlier version, which I found on the Web - as 
well as all but two chapters (Ch. 2 and Ch. 11) - very easily and for 
free. Most of Web versions differ from their book variants only very 
slightly (except Ch. 7). 'Constraints in Phonological Acquisition' follow 
the trend in the current phonological literature of publishing in print 
older papers which most phonologists have read and know, but which have 
never been published in print before.

REFERENCES

Angluin, D. (1980). Inductive inference of formal languages from positive 
data. Information and Control 45. 117-135.

Archangeli, D. and D. T. Langendoen (eds.) (1997). Optimality Theory: an 
Overview. Oxford: Blackwell.

Blevins, J. (1995). The syllable in phonological theory. In: Goldsmith, J. 
(ed.) The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Jusczyk, P., D. Houston, and M. Newsome (1999). The beginnings of word 
segmentation in English-learning infants. Cognitive Psychology 39. 159-207.

Reynolds, W. (1994). Variation and Phonological Theory. Ph.D. 
dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Smith, N. V. (1973). The Acquisition of Phonology: a Case Study. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smolensky, P. (1996). On the comprehension/production dilemma in child 
language. [ROA-118, http://roa.rutgers.edu].

Tesar, B. (1995). Computational Optimality Theory. Ph.D. dissertation, 
University of Colorado, Boulder. [ROA-90, http://roa.rutgers.edu]. 

Tesar, B. and P. Smolensky (1993). The learnability in Optimality Theory: 
An algorithm and some basic complexity results. [ROA-2, 
http://roa.rutgers.edu] 

Werker, J., L. Cohen, V. Lloyd, M. Casasola and C. Stager (1998). 
Acquisition of word-object associations by 14-month old infants. 
Developmental Psychology 34. 1289-1309. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Piotr Glowacki is an MA student at English Philology Institute, Wroclaw 
University. His research interests include phonetics and phonology, 
especially acoustic phonetics and Optimality Theory. He is currently 
writing his MA thesis focusing on Optimality Theory.





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