Workshop on Computing and Phonology
A small workshop on computational aspects of phonology is held at the
University of Groningen (RUG), the Netherlands,
on December 8, 2006. The workshop is open to anyone, but we kindly ask you
to register not later than December 4.
Should you have any question, please feel free to contact Tamás Bíró at
birot @ nytud.hu
Location:
Harmony Building, H13.309 (Multimediazaal)
Oude Kijk in't Jatstraat 26, 9712 EK Groningen.
View all abstracts
Program:
| Chair: Dicky Gilbers |
| 9:30 | Opening: John Nerbonne |
| 9:40 | Tamas Biro (ACLC, Universiteit van Amsterdam): |
| Simulated Annealing for Optimality Theory: A performance model for phonology |
| Similarly to other fields in linguistics in the last forty years, phonological models
have focused on linguistic competence, whereas performance has not been considered as
belonging to the realm of linguistics. The traditional Chomskyan dichotomy between
competence and performance has, however, been questioned in the last decade by an
increasing number of scholars. Certain performance phenomena, such as variation,
conditional corpus frequencies and gradient grammaticality judgments, have been shown in
many cases to be related to factors that unquestionably belong to linguistics. Models
accounting for these phenomena have led to an ongoing discussion on whether and how to
draw the borderline between competence and performance, or between the realm of
linguistics and extra-linguistic factors.
I shall present the Simulated Annealing for Optimality Theory Algorithm (SA-OT) as a
possible compromise. The main idea is to replace the Chomskyan dichotomy with a
three-level structure: the static knowledge of the language in the brain, the
computation performed by the brain, and the extra-linguistic level. While a traditional
OT-grammar is a model for the static knowledge of the language, its implementation --
such as SA-OT -- models the first part of the language production process. By being
related to the linguistic model, but also prone to make errors under different
conditions (such as time constraints), it is claimed to be an adequate model for
certain, linguistically motivated performance phenomena.
Close abstract |
| 10:20 | Bart Cramer and John Nerbonne (CLCG, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen): |
| Scaling Minimal Generalization |
| View abstract |
| 11:00 | Coffee |
Chair: Petra Hendriks |
|
11:30 | Gerhard Jäger (Universität Bielefeld): |
| Exemplar dynamics and George Price's General Theory of Selection |
| View abstract |
| 12:10 | Paul Boersma (ACLC, Universiteit van Amsterdam): |
| The emergence of markedness |
| View abstract |
| 13:00 | Lunch |
Chair: Gosse Bouma |
| 14:30 | Adam Albright (MIT, Cambridge, MA): |
| Modeling gradient phonotactic well-formedness as grammatical competence |
| View abstract |
| 15:30 | Closing and coffee |
Registration:
If you intend to participate in the workshop, please register before
December 4, in order to facilitate organisation.
Further information:
Information Science/Humanities Computing
Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG)
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG)
From Wilbert Heeringa's page:
A list of hotels in Groningen (please note that the prices are outdated).
Travel information
Thanks to Gerlof
Bouma for the design.