Dissertation - Michael Becker

I set out to empirically test the adequacy of accounting for lexical trends using markednessconstraints.At issue is what Albright & Hayes (2003) call source- vs. product-oriented generalizations.In the Hebrew case, one can state the correlation between a stem [o] and –ot in a source-oriented way, i.e. in terms of a relationship between singular and pluralforms, saying that nouns that have [o] in the singular are more likely to take –ot inthe plural. Alternatively, one can state the generalization in a product-oriented way, i.e.in terms of conditions on the plural forms only, saying that in the plural, noun stemsthat have [o] in them are more likely to show up with the suffix –ot.In OptimalityTheory, generalizations that are stated in terms of markedness constraints are productoriented,since markedness constraints only assess outputs, or products of derivations. Incontrast, rule-based theories express generalizations in terms of mappings between inputsand outputs, i.e. generalizations depend on the input to the derivation, so they are sourceoriented.The source-oriented and product-oriented generalizations are almost exactly equivalentwhen stated over the attested lexicon of Hebrew, since each and every noun that has an [o]in the final syllable of its plural stem also has an [o] in the singular 1 , and with the exceptionof five nouns 2 , every noun that has an [o] in its final syllable in the singular also has an [o]in the final syllable of the plural stem.I propose that evidence in favor of product-oriented knowledge of lexical trends can beadduced by Hebrew speakers’ behavior in an artificial language setting. I present such anexperiment, where speakers were taught a language that is just like Hebrew, but with twoadditional vowel-change rules that caused [o]’s to be present only in the singular stem oronly in the plural stem, but not in both. Speakers preferred to associate the selection of1 For nouns with the vowel pattern [o-e] in the singular, vowel deletion makes the [o] stem-final in theplural, e.g. Somér ∼ Somr-ím ‘guard, keeper’.2 Three nouns change the singular [o] to [u] (xók ∼ xukím ‘law’, tóf ∼ tupím ‘drum’ and dóv ∼ dubím‘bear’), and two nouns change the singular [o] to [a] (róS ∼ raSím ‘head’, yóm ∼ yamím ‘day’).75