Dissertation - Michael Becker

Given the assumption of /nat^/ as the UR of the root, the learner gets conflictingevidence for the ranking of IDENT(voice) relative to IDENT(asp). Constraint cloning willfollow, resulting in a learner that keeps track of the number of root-final aspirated coronalsand voiced coronals:(187) IDENT(voice) {113+160 items} ≫ IDENT(asp) ≫ IDENT(voice) {1+17 items}The lexical trend that is created by the existing nouns of Korean predicts that speakerswill prefer coronals that become aspirated in the accusative 94% of the time, and coronalsthat become voiced only 6% of the time.The mapping of /t^/ to [s] can also be attributed to the ranking of plausible markednessconstraints. Assibilation, a process that turns stops into fricatives, is widely attested crosslinguisticallybefore high vowels (Kim 2001). I use the constraint *TI, which penalizesstops before high vowels. Roots that surface with a stop of any kind in the accusative rankfaithfulness to the continuancy of the base over *TI (188), while *TI outranks faithfulnessin nouns that map the /t^/ to [s] (189).(188) /nat^+ 1l/ → [nat h 1l], [naÙ h 1l], [nad1l], [naÃ1l]requires IDENT(cont) ≫ *TI(189) /nat^+ 1l/ → [nas1l]requires *TI ≫ IDENT(cont)The conflicting ranking conditions cause the cloning of IDENT(cont), which allowsthe speaker to learn that the mapping of /t^/ to [s] affects 56% of the t-final nouns in thelanguage.(190) IDENT(cont) {113+160+1+17 items} ≫ *TI ≫ IDENT(cont) {375 items}The learner’s work is not quite done. In a fair number of nouns, a final /t^/ maps to [Ã]or [Ù h ]. Are there plausible constraints that will map /nat^+ 1l/ to [naÃ1l] or [naÙ h 1l]? Note199