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Graf and Mayer (2018) analyze the process of Sanskrit /n/-retroflexion (nati) from a subregular perspective. They show that nati, which might be the most complex phenomenon in segmental phonology, belongs to the class of input-output tier-based strictly local languages (IO-TSL). However, the generative capacity and linguistic relevance of IO-TSL is still largely unclear compared to other recent classes like the interval-based strictly piecewise languages (IBSP; Graf, 2017, 2018). This paper shows that IBSP has a much harder time capturing nati than IO-TSL, due to two major shortcomings: namely, the requirement of an upper bound on relevant segments, and a lack of descriptive succinctness.
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Structure Sensitive Tier Projection: Applications and Formal Properties
The subregular approach has revealed that the phonological surface patterns found in natural language are much simpler than previously assumed. Most patterns belong to the subregular class of tier-based strictly local languages (TSL), which characterizes them as the combination of a strictly local dependency with a tier-projection mechanism that masks out irrelevant segments. Some non-TSL patterns have been pointed out in the literature, though. We show that these outliers can be captured by rendering the tier projection mechanism sensitive to the surrounding structure. We focus on a specific instance of these structure-sensitive TSL languages: input-local TSL (ITSL), in which the tier projection may distinguish between identical segments that occur in different local contexts in the input string. This generalization of TSL establishes a tight link between tier-based language classes and ISL transductions, and is motivated by several natural language phenomena.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1845344
- PAR ID:
- 10140842
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- FG 2019
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 35-50
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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