Dissertation - Michael Becker

when they clone a specific constraint and list words with the clones, they also ignore anyW’s or L’s that a more general constraint assigns to these listed words. In the case of(51), the learner needs to notice that IDENT(voice) is more general than IDENT(voice) σ1(as determined by the fact that IDENT(voice) assigns a superset of the W’s and L’s thatIDENT(voice) σ1 assigns), and ignore (or “mask”) the W’s and L’s that IDENT(voice) assignsto the nouns that are listed by IDENT(voice) 9 σ1 . The correct tableau, with the masking ofthe W that IDENT(voice) assigns to saÙ-ı and the L that it assigns to taÃ-ı, is in (53).(53)IDENT IDENT σ1saÙ IDENT σ1taÙ *VÙVa. saÙ-ı ≻ saÃ-ı W⊘ W Lb. taÃ-ı ≻ taÙ-ı L⊘ L Wc. anaÙ-ı ≻ anaÃ-ı W Ld. amaÃ-ı ≻ amaÙ-ı L WGiven the tableau in (53), the column of IDENT(voice) has the fewest W’s and L’s,so IDENT(voice) will be chosen for cloning. The learner will clone IDENT(voice) andsuccessfully list just the poly-syllables with it. The resulting grammar will be the one in(54). This grammar achieves the intended partitioning of the lexicon: The Ù -final nounsare divided into mono-syllables and poly-syllables, and within each category, the nouns arefurther divided into alternators and non-alternators.(54) IDENT(voice) σ1saÙ ≫ IDENT(voice) anaÙ ≫ *VÙV ≫IDENT(voice) σ1taÙ , IDENT(voice) amaÙ9 The masking operation can also be defined to operate only on L’s, since the W’s will be removed by theinstallation of a clone of the specific constraint, and masking of W’s will turn out to be vacuous.55