Dissertation - Michael Becker

and shouldn’t be made part of it by mis-cloning. If the least populated column, that ofC2, is chosen for cloning, only winner1 and winner2 will be listed with its clones, and theresulting grammar would be C2 winner2 ≫ C1 ≫ C2 winner1 . This gives the intended result,where only winner1 and winner2 are listed with clones, and winner3 remains a namelessplayer in the regular grammar.Correctly choosing a constraint to clone, then, can be crucial in some cases but notothers. In (139), either constraint can be correctly cloned, but only one correct optionis available in (149). It is the addition of another winner-loser pair that makes the choicecrucial in (149). This means that as the learner is exposed to more data about their language,the choice of constraint to clone can change from being free to being crucial; therefore, thelearner could make decisions about cloning that will turn out be wrong as more data isdiscovered. To avoid such problems, where an early decision causes a mistake down theroad, cloning must not be permanent. Constraints are cloned as necessary when RCD isrun, and a grammar is reached, but when a new winner-loser pair is added to the Support,RCD makes a fresh start with all the constraints in their pristine, pre-cloned state.Choosing the least populated column is a necessary condition on cloning, but one moremove is needed to clone correctly in cases of trends that are in general-specific relationship.This additional move is explained below.4.2.5 General-specific relations between trends; maskingWhen a language presents two lexical trends to the learner, the two trends can becompletely independent, as seen in (141), or they can overlap, as seen in (144). A thirdkind of relationship between trends involves one trend that is governed by a constraint thatassess a subset of the W’s and L’s that another constraint assesses, as seen in (150).155