Similarity Avoidance and the OCP. Frisch, S A, Pierrehumbert, J B, & Broe, M B Nat Lang Ling Theory, 22(1):179–228, 2004. abstract bibtex It has long been known that verbal roots containing homorganic consonant pairs are rare in Arabic, motivating the existence of an OCP-Place constraint (Obligatory Contour Principle on place of articulation) in the phonological grammar. We explore this constraint using an on-line lexicon of Arabic roots. The strength of the constraint is quantified by the ratio of the observed number of examples of each consonant pair to the number that would be statistically expected under random combination of phonemes. We show that the strength of the effect over all pairs is a gradient function of the similarity of the consonants in the pair. A similarity metric based on natural classes is developed, which solves the formal difficulties of contrastive underspecification theory while preserving the insight that contrastiveness plays an important role in perceived similarity. This metric is applied in an explicit model of the gradient OCP constraint, which achieves a better fit to the regularities and sub-regularities of the Arabic verbal lexicon than any prior approach. Lastly, we review evidence for the psychological reality of the constraint, for its existence in related forms in other languages, and for its cognitive/phonetic foundations in the speech processing system. We argue that the total body of evidence supports a model in which phonetic and cognitive pressures incrementally affect the lexicon, and phonotactic constraints are abstractions over the lexicon of phonological forms.
@ARTICLE{FrischPierrehumbertBroe2004,
author = {S A Frisch and J B Pierrehumbert and M B Broe},
title = {Similarity Avoidance and the {OCP}},
journal = {Nat Lang Ling Theory},
year = {2004},
volume = {22},
pages = {179--228},
number = {1},
abstract = {It has long been known that verbal roots containing homorganic consonant
pairs are rare in Arabic, motivating the existence of an OCP-Place
constraint (Obligatory Contour Principle on place of articulation)
in the phonological grammar. We explore this constraint using an
on-line lexicon of Arabic roots. The strength of the constraint is
quantified by the ratio of the observed number of examples of each
consonant pair to the number that would be statistically expected
under random combination of phonemes. We show that the strength of
the effect over all pairs is a gradient function of the similarity
of the consonants in the pair. A similarity metric based on natural
classes is developed, which solves the formal difficulties of contrastive
underspecification theory while preserving the insight that contrastiveness
plays an important role in perceived similarity. This metric is applied
in an explicit model of the gradient OCP constraint, which achieves
a better fit to the regularities and sub-regularities of the Arabic
verbal lexicon than any prior approach. Lastly, we review evidence
for the psychological reality of the constraint, for its existence
in related forms in other languages, and for its cognitive/phonetic
foundations in the speech processing system. We argue that the total
body of evidence supports a model in which phonetic and cognitive
pressures incrementally affect the lexicon, and phonotactic constraints
are abstractions over the lexicon of phonological forms.}
}
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