Publishing Partner: Cambridge University Press CUP Extra Publisher Login
amazon logo
More Info

New from Cambridge University Press!

ad

From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

Write better papers faster with Questia!

Academic Paper


Title: Harmonic Grammar with linear programming: from linear systems to linguistic typology
Author: Christopher Potts
Institution: University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Author: Joseph V Pater
Email: click here to access email
Institution: University of Massachusetts
Author: Karen Jesney
Institution: University of Massachusetts
Author: Rajesh Bhatt
Email: click here to access email
Homepage: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~bhatt/
Institution: University of Texas at Austin
Author: Michael Becker
Institution: Harvard University
Linguistic Field: Phonology
Abstract: Harmonic Grammar is a model of linguistic constraint interaction in which well-formedness is calculated in terms of the sum of weighted constraint violations. We show how linear programming algorithms can be used to determine whether there is a weighting for a set of constraints that fits a set of linguistic data. The associated software package OT-Help provides a practical tool for studying large and complex linguistic systems in the Harmonic Grammar framework and comparing the results with those of OT. We first describe the translation from harmonic grammars to systems solvable by linear programming algorithms. We then develop a Harmonic Grammar analysis of ATR harmony in Lango that is, we argue, superior to the existing OT and rule-based treatments. We further highlight the usefulness of OT-Help, and the analytic power of Harmonic Grammar, with a set of studies of the predictions Harmonic Grammar makes for phonological typology.

CUP at LINGUIST

This article appears in Phonology Vol. 27, Issue 1, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST .



Back
Add a new paper
Return to Academic Papers main page
Return to Directory of Linguists main page