Title
Bidirectional phonology & phonetics

Paul Boersma

Course

Date:  12.11.2007

Time:  12:00

Venue:  Other

Description
Room B-1004

Monday 1200-1400 & 1500-1700
Tuesday 1200-1400
Wednesday 1400-1600

I present a model of both the listener and the speaker, of both the phonology and the phonetics, and of both the child's acquisition and the development of the language over the generations. The model uses simple connections (constraints) between two phonological representations, two phonetic representations, and the lexicon. The big assumption is that speakers use in their production the same constraints, with the same strengths, as had previously optimized their comprehension during the acquisition period. Computer simulations show that this simple assumption mechanically explains several large theoretical issues: auditory dispersion, markedness, licensing-by-cue, and lexical-selection-as-optimization.

Paul