Pater, Joe

Profile Picture
Email Address
Birth Date
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Job Title
Professor, Department of Linguistics
Last Name
Pater
First Name
Joe
Discipline
Linguistics
Expertise
Phonology, acquisition
Introduction
I work on phonology (the sound systems of language) and on the acquisition of phonology. My current research focuses on the use of weighted constraints for the modeling of phonology and its learning.
Name

Filters

Reset filters

Settings

Citations

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 16
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Canadian Raising with Language-Specific Weighted Constraints
    (2014) Pater, Joe
    The distribution of the raised variants of the Canadian English diphthongs is standardly analyzed as opaque allophony, with derivationally ordered processes of diphthong raising and of /t/ flapping. This paper provides an alternative positional contrast analysis in which the pre-flap raised diphthongs are licensed by a language-specific constraint. The basic distributional facts are captured with a weighted constraint grammar that lacks the intermediate level of representation of the standard analysis. The paper also provides a proposal for how the constraints are learned, and shows how correct weights can be found with a simple, widely used learning algorithm.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Emergent Systemic Simplicity (and Complexity)
    (2012) Pater, Joe
    Across phonology and syntax, the typological probability of one structure being present in a linguistic system often depends on other related aspects of that system. For example, voiced [g] is more probable in a language if it contains voiced [b] than if it does not, and a left-headed PP is more probable in a language that contains left-headed VPs than in one that has right-headed VPs. These dependencies can be seen as preferences for systemic simplicity, for uniform expression of laryngeal contrasts across place, and for uniform syntactic headedness. Both the systemic and the probabilistic nature of these generalizations pose deep challenges for linguistic theory. I provide an account of these and some other instances of systemic simplicity in terms of an emergent learning bias, which has a probabilistic effect on typology. Given an initial state with free variation, interacting learners with the right constraint sets tend to create systems that display systemic simplicity. I also show that the same learning theory leads to emergent complexity, in that under the right conditions, contrast spontaneously emerges from variation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Phonological Concept Learning
    (2015) Pater, Joe
    Linguistic and non-linguistic pattern learning have been studied separately, but we argue for a comparative approach. Analogous inductive problems arise in phonological and visual pattern learning. Evidence from three experiments shows that human learners can solve them in analogous ways, and that human performance in both cases can be captured by the same models. We test GMECCS (Gradual Maximum Entropy with a Conjunctive Constraint Schema), an implementation of the Configural Cue Model (Gluck & Bower, 1988a) in a Maximum Entropy phonotactic-learning framework (Goldwater & Johnson, 2003; Hayes & Wilson, 2008) with a single free parameter, against the alternative hypothesis that learners seek featurally simple algebraic rules (“rule-seeking”). We study the full typology of patterns introduced by Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins (1961) (“SHJ”), instantiated as both phonotactic patterns and visual analogs, using unsupervised training. Unlike SHJ, Experiments 1 and 2 found that both phonotactic and visual patterns that depended on fewer features could be more difficult than those that depended on more features, as predicted by GMECCS but not by rule-seeking. GMECCS also correctly predicted performance differences between stimulus subclasses within each pattern. A third experiment tried supervised training (which can facilitate rule-seeking in visual learning) to elicit simple rule-seeking phonotactic learning, but cue-based behavior persisted. We conclude that similar cue-based cognitive processes are available for phonological and visual concept learning, and hence that studying either kind of learning can lead to significant insights about the other.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Gradual Learning and Convergence
    (2008) Pater, Joe
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Constraint Conflict in Cluster Reduction
    (2003) Pater, Joe; Barlow, Jessica A.
    When children reduce onset clusters to singletons, a common pattern is for the least sonorous member of the adult cluster to be produced. Within OPTIMALITYTHEORY (Prince & Smolensky, 1993), this pattern has been accounted for in terms of a fixed ranking of onset constraints that evaluate a segment’s degree of sonority, whereby onset glides violate the highest ranked constraint, and onset stops the lowest. Not all children follow the sonority pattern, however. In this paper, we apply two fundamental principles of optimality theory to yield predictions about other children’s cluster reduction patterns. The first principle is that of FACTORIAL TYPOLOGY, according to which all rankings of constraints should yield possible languages. To produce the sonority pattern, all conflicting constraints must rank beneath the onset sonority constraints. If they rank above the onset sonority constraints, these other constraints will force deviations from the sonority pattern. In this paper, we show how divergences from the sonority pattern are caused by three well-motivated conflicting constraints: *FRICATIVE, *DORSAL, and MAX-LABIAL. This is documented in the speech of two normally developing children (about 1;6–2;3) and a child with a phonological delay (3; 8). The second principle we appeal to is that of EMERGENT CONSTRAINT ACTIVITY, according to which the effects of violated constraints can be observed when higher ranked conflicting constraints are not at issue. We show that even when the onset sonority constraints are outranked by the conflicting constraints, under the right circumstances the sonority pattern does emerge in the forms produced by these children
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access
    Phonotactics as Phonology: Knowledge of a Complex Restriction in Dutch
    (2012) Krager, René; Pater, Joe
    The Dutch lexicon contains very few sequences of a long vowel followed by a consonant cluster, where the second member of the cluster is a non-coronal. We provide experimental evidence that Dutch speakers have implicit knowledge of this gap, which cannot be reduced to the probability of segmental sequences or to word-likeness as measured by neighborhood density. The experiment also suggests that the ill-formedness of this sequence is mediated by syllable structure: it has a weaker effect on judgments when the last consonant begins a new syllable. We provide an account in terms of Hayes and Wilson's Maximum Entropy model of phonotactics, using constraints that go beyond the complexity permitted by their model of constraint induction.
  • Thumbnail Image
    PublicationOpen Access