Dissertation - Michael Becker

(150)C1 C2 C3a. winner1 ≻ loser1 W W Lb. winner2 ≻ loser2 L L Wc. winner3 ≻ loser3 W Ld. winner4 ≻ loser4 L WCases like this were encountered in Turkish (§2.4.3) and in Hebrew (§3.4.3). In Hebrew,speakers learn that [o] in the final syllable of a noun is most conducive to selecting the pluralsuffix [-ot], and that an [o] in the penultimate syllable is less so. That is, they learn twoseparate trends. The two trends can be captured by a specific constraint that prefers a pluralsuffix with [o] in it when adjacent to a stem [o], and a more general constraint that prefersa plural suffix with [o] no matter how far it is from the [o] of the stem. The more specificconstraint, which demands adjacency, can be used to list the nouns with an [o] in the finalsyllable of their stems, leaving the nouns with a non-final [o] to the care of the more generalconstraint. There is no need for the theoretically undesirable constraint that prefers a pluralsuffix with [o] only when the stem has an [o] that is not adjacent to the plural suffix.A simple inspection of (150) reveals that C1 is more specific than C2, since C1 assignsa proper subset of the W’s and L’s that C2 assigns. The least populated column in (150)that contains both W’s and L’s is that of C1, so C1 is chosen for cloning.However, simply cloning C1 will not allow the learner to correctly learn the lexicaltrends of the language. To see this, consider the result of cloning C1, shown in (151), withthe first clone of C1 installed, and the first winner-loser pair crossed out.156