| ROA: | 959 |
| Title: | Gradient Phonotactics and the Complexity Hypothesis |
| Authors: | Arto Anttila |
| Comment: | To appear in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory |
| Length: | 36 |
| Abstract: | Lexical items can be more or less well-formed depending on the phoneme combinations they contain. This phenomenon is called gradient phonotactics. We propose an approach to gradient phonotactics based on Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004). At the heart of the proposal is the Complexity Hypothesis that attributes the relative well-formedness of a lexical item to its relative grammatical complexity measured in terms of ranking information: the more complex the lexical item, the less well-formed it is. The theory orders linguistic structures in an implicational hierarchy that reflects their relative well-formedness. Some implications are universal; others depend on language-specific rankings. The Complexity Hypothesis is supported by phonotactic data from Muna (Austronesian) as recently analyzed by Coetzee and Pater (2008). |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | Phonology |
| Article: | This article has been withdrawn. |
