Patterned Exceptions in Phonology - UCLA Department of Linguistics

any particular input, but rather it constrains the space of possible inputs and outputs in a
probabilistic manner.” (p. 92) The mental system represented by the Stochastic
Constraint Model would have to exist alongside the system for mapping inputs to outputs.
This dissertation proposes a model in which the same system that maps inputs to outputs
can encode lexical regularities and patterns in the distribution of exceptions to those
regularities.
1.3. Preview of the proposal
It is conceivable that knowledge of lexical regularities resides outside the grammar—or
even that no discrete knowledge of the regularities exists at all. Speaker behavior that
appears to reflect such knowledge could merely be the result of some on-line procedure
such as consultation of a sample of the lexicon or matching to associative memory. These
two strategies are discussed at greater length in Chapter 6 and shown to be ill suited to
the regularities discussed in this dissertation. As argued there, the speaker must possess
knowledge that is abstracted away from the lexicon itself. The only linguistic subsystem
commonly proposed that contains such knowledge is the grammar. Therefore, the
approach taken here will be to incorporate knowledge of lexical regularities directly into
the grammar.
To accomplish that goal, this dissertation proposes a model of grammar that
allows the primacy of listed information to coexist with knowledge of lexical regularities.
Existing words’ behavior is encoded in their lexical entries; that information is preserved
through high-ranking faithfulness constraints and constraints that force listed information
to be used if available. Lexical regularities are encoded through low- and variably ranked
constraints, which are irrelevant for existing words, but determine the pronunciation of
novel words.
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