Dissertation - Michael Becker

Similarly for the Ù -final nouns, once the speaker encounters Ù -final nouns that do anddo not alternate, they will clone *VÙV, and eventually reach the grammar in (15).(15) *VÙV 15 items ≫ IDENT(voice) ≫ *VÙV 26 itemsFor the Ù -final nouns, there are only 15 items listed with the clone of *VÙV that ranksabove IDENT(voice), compared to the 18 t-final nouns listed above IDENT(voice), but these15 nouns make more than 40% of the total number of Ù -final nouns, making the likelihoodof an alternating [Ù] higher than the likelihood of an alternating [t].One of the responsibilities of the grammar is to estimate the relative likelihood of thevarious behaviors that it allows, letting speakers build on their knowledge of the lexiconwhen asked to use a novel item. The use of constraint cloning, as shown here, allowsspeakers to identify the existence of irregular patterns and also extract their relative strengthfrom the lexicon.The grammars in (14) and (15) are compatible with each other, as shown in (16), wherethey are combined. The two clones of *VtV list t-final nouns, while the two clones of*VÙV list Ù -final nouns.(16) *VtV 18 items , *VÙV 15 items ≫ IDENT(voice) ≫ *VtV 102 items , *VÙV 26 itemsThe grammar in (16) ensures that the listed items behave as expected, e.g. that thepossessive form of taÙ always comes out as taÃ-1 and never as *taÙ-1.Furthermore,the same grammar ensures that a novel t-final noun will probably keep its [t] voicelessin the possessive form, while a novel Ù -final noun will be more likely to respect *VÙV byalternating the [Ù] with a [Ã]. In other words, the same grammar derives the categoricalbehavior of listed items, and projects the trends that the listed items create onto novel itemsstochastically.16