Arto Anttila
Biographic Data
| ID | 1498016 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arto Anttila |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arto |
| FAMILY NAME | Anttila |
| SIGNATURE | ANTTILA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7353-2265 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Paradoxes of MaxEnt markedness
Over the past two decades, theoretical linguistics has taken a probabilistic turn. Maximum entropy (ME) has been endorsed as a model of probabilistic phonology because of its classical guarantees for grammatical inference. Yet, little is known about the basic organizing principles of ME phonology beyond circumstantial evidence of ME’s ability to fit specific patterns of empirical frequencies. The study of ME typologies is difficult because they c…
Tone and morphological level ordering in Dagaare
Dagaare is a language of northern Ghana and adjoining areas of Burkina Faso. There are two tones, H and L, and contrastive downstep H ! H that involves a non-automatic pitch drop between two H tones. The challenge is to explain the extensive morphological conditioning of tonal processes, including dissimilation, downstep and spreading. Our solution involves level ordering: tones are introduced at different morphological levels (stems, words and p…
To Predict or to Memorize
The assignment of phrasal prominence has been variously attributed to syntactic structure, part of speech, predictability, informativity, and speaker's intent. A recent account asserts that prominence is memorized on a by-word basis as Accent Ratio (AR), the likelihood that a word is accented (Nenkova et al. 2007). We examined whether AR outperforms the traditional predictors, in particular syntax and informativity, and if not, whether the tradit…
On the Phonology and Semantics of Deaccentuation
The deaccentuation of given and/or repeated elements is familiar from many dialects of English. We propose that deaccentuation is essentially an optional postlexical phonological process of stress retraction triggered by two constraints: *Stress-Copy, which assigns a violation to a stress peak on a word with a segmentally identical copy in the left context, and Rightmost, which assigns a violation to every word between a stress peak and the right…
Does MaxEnt Overgenerate? Implicational Universals in Maximum Entropy Grammar
A good linguistic theory should neither undergenerate (i.e., it should not miss any attested patterns) nor overgenerate (i.e., it should not predict any “unattestable” patterns). We investigate the question of overgeneration in Maximum Entropy Grammar (ME) in the context of basic syllabification (Prince and Smolensky 2004) and obstruent voicing (Lombardi 1999), using the theory’s T-order as a measure of typological strength. We find that ME has n…
Locality and variation in Finnish structural case
Phonological and Metrical Variation across Genres
In this study, we asked whether standard phonological and metricalconstraints proposed by phonologists and metricists are useful inidentifying arbitrary lines of text as metered verse vs. unmeteredprose, focusing on five English-language and five Finnish-languageauthors. To analyze the dataset we used Prosodic (Heuser, Falk, andAnttila 2010), a software package that provides a phonologicalanalysis and a metrical scansion for raw text. We discover…
Phonological Effects on Syntactic Variation
It is well known that syntax matters to phonology, but does phonology matter to syntax? This question is controversial, partly because judging whether a phenomenon is syntactic or phonological is not always straightforward, and partly because the relevant data (e.g., well-formedness judgments) are often noncategorical, yet grammatically structured in ways that elude performance explanations. This review discusses examples of phonologically constr…
On structural case in Finnish and Korean
Variation and opacity in Singapore English consonant clusters
Singapore English consonant clusters undergo phonological processes that exhibit variation and opacity. Quantitative evidence shows that these patterns are genuine and systematic. Two main conclusions emerge. First, a small set of phonological constraints yields a typological structure (T-order) that captures the quantitative patterns, independently of specific assumptions about how the grammar represents variation. Second, the evidence is consis…
Gradient phonotactics and the Complexity Hypothesis
Variation and optionality
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Variation and Opacity
Variation, ambiguity, and noun classes in English
Morphologically conditioned phonological alternations
Variation and change in optimality theory
This paper puts forward an optimality-theoretic explanation for the structure-dependence of synchronic variation and diachronic change. The approach is illustrated by modelling two well-documented phonological changes in detail. The model combines invariant regularities, variable regularities and statistical preferences in a seamless fashion by means of partially ordered constraint sets. Diachronic change is visualized in terms of grammar lattice…
Deriving Variation from Grammar
Variation and change in optimality theory
This paper puts forward an optimality-theoretic explanation for the structure-dependence of synchronic variation and diachronic change. The approach is illustrated by modelling two well-documented phonological changes in detail. The model combines invariant regularities, variable regularities and statistical preferences in a seamless fashion by means of partially ordered constraint sets. Diachronic change is visualized in terms of grammar lattice…
Variation and Opacity
Gradient phonotactics and the Complexity Hypothesis
Variation, ambiguity, and noun classes in English
Phonological Effects on Syntactic Variation
It is well known that syntax matters to phonology, but does phonology matter to syntax? This question is controversial, partly because judging whether a phenomenon is syntactic or phonological is not always straightforward, and partly because the relevant data (e.g., well-formedness judgments) are often noncategorical, yet grammatically structured in ways that elude performance explanations. This review discusses examples of phonologically constr…
On structural case in Finnish and Korean
Locality and variation in Finnish structural case
Deriving Variation from Grammar
Variation and change in optimality theory
This paper puts forward an optimality-theoretic explanation for the structure-dependence of synchronic variation and diachronic change. The approach is illustrated by modelling two well-documented phonological changes in detail. The model combines invariant regularities, variable regularities and statistical preferences in a seamless fashion by means of partially ordered constraint sets. Diachronic change is visualized in terms of grammar lattice…
Morphologically conditioned phonological alternations
Variation, ambiguity, and noun classes in English
Variation and Opacity
Variation and optionality
A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Variation and opacity in Singapore English consonant clusters
Singapore English consonant clusters undergo phonological processes that exhibit variation and opacity. Quantitative evidence shows that these patterns are genuine and systematic. Two main conclusions emerge. First, a small set of phonological constraints yields a typological structure (T-order) that captures the quantitative patterns, independently of specific assumptions about how the grammar represents variation. Second, the evidence is consis…
Gradient phonotactics and the Complexity Hypothesis
On structural case in Finnish and Korean
Phonological and Metrical Variation across Genres
In this study, we asked whether standard phonological and metricalconstraints proposed by phonologists and metricists are useful inidentifying arbitrary lines of text as metered verse vs. unmeteredprose, focusing on five English-language and five Finnish-languageauthors. To analyze the dataset we used Prosodic (Heuser, Falk, andAnttila 2010), a software package that provides a phonologicalanalysis and a metrical scansion for raw text. We discover…
Phonological Effects on Syntactic Variation
It is well known that syntax matters to phonology, but does phonology matter to syntax? This question is controversial, partly because judging whether a phenomenon is syntactic or phonological is not always straightforward, and partly because the relevant data (e.g., well-formedness judgments) are often noncategorical, yet grammatically structured in ways that elude performance explanations. This review discusses examples of phonologically constr…
Locality and variation in Finnish structural case
Does MaxEnt Overgenerate? Implicational Universals in Maximum Entropy Grammar
A good linguistic theory should neither undergenerate (i.e., it should not miss any attested patterns) nor overgenerate (i.e., it should not predict any “unattestable” patterns). We investigate the question of overgeneration in Maximum Entropy Grammar (ME) in the context of basic syllabification (Prince and Smolensky 2004) and obstruent voicing (Lombardi 1999), using the theory’s T-order as a measure of typological strength. We find that ME has n…
To Predict or to Memorize
The assignment of phrasal prominence has been variously attributed to syntactic structure, part of speech, predictability, informativity, and speaker's intent. A recent account asserts that prominence is memorized on a by-word basis as Accent Ratio (AR), the likelihood that a word is accented (Nenkova et al. 2007). We examined whether AR outperforms the traditional predictors, in particular syntax and informativity, and if not, whether the tradit…
On the Phonology and Semantics of Deaccentuation
The deaccentuation of given and/or repeated elements is familiar from many dialects of English. We propose that deaccentuation is essentially an optional postlexical phonological process of stress retraction triggered by two constraints: *Stress-Copy, which assigns a violation to a stress peak on a word with a segmentally identical copy in the left context, and Rightmost, which assigns a violation to every word between a stress peak and the right…
Tone and morphological level ordering in Dagaare
Dagaare is a language of northern Ghana and adjoining areas of Burkina Faso. There are two tones, H and L, and contrastive downstep H ! H that involves a non-automatic pitch drop between two H tones. The challenge is to explain the extensive morphological conditioning of tonal processes, including dissimilation, downstep and spreading. Our solution involves level ordering: tones are introduced at different morphological levels (stems, words and p…
Paradoxes of MaxEnt markedness
Over the past two decades, theoretical linguistics has taken a probabilistic turn. Maximum entropy (ME) has been endorsed as a model of probabilistic phonology because of its classical guarantees for grammatical inference. Yet, little is known about the basic organizing principles of ME phonology beyond circumstantial evidence of ME’s ability to fit specific patterns of empirical frequencies. The study of ME typologies is difficult because they c…
Linguistics (15 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Mathematics (12 works) · Phonology (11 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (10 works) · Optimality theory (10 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (10 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (10 works) · Natural language processing (9 works)