Cumulative markedness effects and (non-)linearity in phonotactics
Canaan Breiss, Adam Albright
March 2022 

How do grammars assess the well-formedness of words with multiple phonotactic violations? Certain models predict that as the strength of phonotactic restrictions decrease, forms that violate multiple restrictions should be less acceptable than expected, in a pattern we term super-linear cumulativity. We test this prediction using a series of Artificial Grammar Learning experiments, in which we vary the number of exceptions to phonotactic patterns in artificial languages. We find that super-linear cumulativity is indeed observed in the conditions with the weakest restrictions. Strikingly, participants exhibit super-linear cumulativity even when the trained language does not contain evidence for it.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005169 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Accepted at Glossa
keywords:	phonotactics, super-linear, super-additive, cumulative constraint interaction, artificial grammar learning, gang effect, null parse
previous versions:	v4 [February 2022] v3 [October 2021] v2 [November 2020] v1 [April 2020]
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