Canaan M Brei

Biographic Data

ID4601878
NAMECanaan M Brei
GIVEN NAMESCanaan M
FAMILY NAMEBrei
SIGNATUREBREI C M
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of California, Los Angeles
ORCID0000-0002-6369-9635
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS9
TOTAL CITATIONS6
AUTHOR COUNT9
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2020
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX1

  • Modelling frequency-conditioned paradigm uniformity in Japanese voiced velar nasalisation

    Open AccessCanaan M Brei, Hironori Katsuda et al.ARTICLEPhonology2026

    Recent quantitative work on the variable [g]\~{}[ŋ] alternation in compounds of certain dialects of Japanese has revealed token frequency of the compound as a whole, and of the compound’s second member in its freestanding form, to be important predictors of the alternation. We propose a formal phonological analysis that integrates usage-based factors like frequency with the action of the phonological grammar, extending mechanisms of lexicon–gramm…

  • The acquisition of native language phonotactics: Integrating insights from machine learning, and adult and infant experiments

    Open AccessMegha Sundara, Canaan M Brei et al.ARTICLECognition2026

    Languages differ in their phonotactics - the restrictions on positions and sequencing of segments. Many phonotactic restrictions are specific to a given language, and therefore must be learned from the input infants receive. First, we used data from adult experiments to identify maximally contrastive segmental regularities in English. Then, in three infant experiments, we showed that sensitivity to segmental regularities is induced by 5 months of…

  • Token frequency modulates optional paradigm uniformity in Japanese voiced velar nasalisation

    Open AccessCanaan M Brei, Hironori Katsuda et al.ARTICLEPhonology2026

    This article explores the role of token frequency and global prosodic length in conditioning optional paradigm uniformity in Japanese voiced velar nasalisation, with data from two wug -tests carried out with speakers of Tōhoku Japanese. Experiment 1 demonstrates that frequency-conditioning observed in corpus data is reproduced in existing and novel compounds and holds at the level of the speaker. Experiment 2 focuses on a typologically unusual pa…

  • Modeling How Suffixes Are Learned in Infancy

    Open AccessCanaan M Brei, Bruce P Hayes et al.ARTICLECognitive Science2025References: 70

    Recent experimental work offers evidence that infants become aware of suffixes at a remarkably early age, as early as 6 months for the English suffix ‐ s . Here, we seek to understand this ability though the strategy of computational modeling. We evaluate a set of distributional learning models for their ability to mimic the observed acquisition order for various suffixes when trained on a corpus of child‐directed speech. Our best‐performing mode…

  • When bases compete: A voting model of lexical conservatism

    Open AccessCanaan M Brei, Canaan BreissARTICLELanguage2024

    This article examines lexical conservatism (Steriade 1997), a phenomenon whereby the distribution of stem allomorphs in a morphological paradigm influences the way that paradigm accommodates derived members. Specifically, a phonological alternation applies in a derived member only if an existing form is present elsewhere in the paradigm that offers the needed phonological material. Thus illústrable undergoes stress shift because the existing word…

  • Cumulative markedness effects and (non-)linearity in phonotactics

    Open AccessCanaan M Brei, Adam AlbrightARTICLEGlossa a journal of general…2022

    How do grammars assess the well-formedness of words with multiple phonotactic violations? Certain models predict that as the strength of phonotactic restrictions decrease, forms that violate multiple restrictions should be less acceptable than expected, in a pattern we term super-linear cumulativity. We test this prediction using a series of Artificial Grammar Learning experiments, in which we vary the number of exceptions to phonotactic patterns…

  • Constraint cumulativity in phonotactics: Evidence from artificial grammar learning studies

    Open AccessCanaan M BreiARTICLEPhonology2020

    An ongoing debate in phonology concerns the treatment of cumulative constraint interactions, or ‘gang effects’, and by extension the question of which phonological frameworks are suitable models of the grammar. This paper uses a series of artificial grammar learning experiments to examine the inferences that learners draw about cumulative constraint violations in phonotactics in the absence of a confounding natural-language lexicon. I find that l…

  • Phonological markedness effects in sentence formation: Supplemental Material

    Canaan M Brei, Canaan Breiss et al.ARTICLELanguage2020

  • Phonological markedness effects in sentence formation

    Canaan Brei, Canaan M Brei et al.ARTICLELanguage2020Cited by: 6

    Earlier research has found that phonological markedness constraints (for example, against stress clash or sibilant sequences) statistically influence speakers' choices between particular syntactic constructions and between synonymous words. In this study, we test phonological constraints not just in particular cases, but across the board. We employ a novel method that statistically models the distribution of word bigrams (consecutive two-word seq…