Dissertation - Michael Becker

experiment 1 of Berent et al. 1999, and 50% of the stimuli in experiments 1 and 2 in Berentet al. 2002). Yet, with a modified second syllable in more than half the stimuli, all threeexperiments found a significant effect of similarity to real ot-takers. This contrasts withthe results of this study, which found the similarity effect to be strong with an unmodifiedsecond syllable.I conclude that similarity between novel items and existing items has a clear effecton speakers’ behavior, and yet the exact definition of this similarity is far from clear.For instance, the difference between the “similar” and “moderate” conditions reachedsignificance in Berent et al. (1999) but not in Berent et al. (2002). What effects the exactdegrees and locations of changes may have is still largely unanswered.To summarize, two robust effects emerge from the current study and from Berent et al.(1999, 2002). The first is the presence of [o] in the root, which elicited a significantly highernumber of –ot responses than roots without [o] in them. The location of the [o] in the rootwas not shown to have a significant effect on the speakers’ responses, and it is hoped thatfurther experimentation will be able to show this effect. The second is a similarity effect,where items that are similar to existing ot-takers elicited significantly more –ot responsesthan items that are not. The exact formulation of the similarity effect, however, is elusive,and would require further research.3.4 Using markedness constraints to learn lexical trendsThe lexicon study presented in §3.2 and the experimental results in §3.3 show thathaving [o] in the root is conducive to choosing the plural –ot. Additionally, in the lexicon,an [o] in the final syllable is more conducive to –ot than a non-final [o], although this effectwas regrettably not found in the current study. In this section, I offer an analysis of thiscorrelation in terms of markedness constraints.The analysis is based on Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004) with theRecursive Constraint Demotion algorithm (RCD, Tesar & Smolensky 1998, 2000; Tesar90