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Variation as accessing ‘non-optimal’ candidates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2007

Andries W. Coetzee
Andries W. Coetzee
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Abstract

This paper argues that rather than just select the best candidate, EVAL imposes a harmonic rank-ordering on the full candidate set. Language users have access to this enriched information, and it shapes their performance. This paper applies this idea to variation. The claim is that language users can access the full candidate set via the rank-ordering imposed by EVAL. In variation, more than one candidate is well-formed enough to count as grammatical. Consequently, language users will access more than just the best candidate from the rank-ordering. However, the accessibility of a candidate depends on its position on the rank-ordering. The higher the position a candidate occupies, the more likely it is to be selected. In a variable process, variants that appear higher on the rank-ordering (i.e. are more well-formed) will therefore also be the more frequent variants. This model is applied to variation in the phonology of Faialense Portuguese and Ilokano.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , December 2006 , pp. 337 - 385
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Pam Beddor, John Kingston, John McCarthy, Michael Marlo, Barbara Partee, Joe Pater, David Silva, the participants of Linguistics 792 (University of Michigan, Fall 2004) and the members of the UMass phonology group, as well as the audiences at the LSA Annual Meeting (2004, Boston) and MCWOP 10 (2004, Evanston) for discussion, suggestions and encouragement. An associate editor and several anonymous reviewers also contributed greatly to the improvement of this paper. Special thanks to the editors and the associate editor for their patience, encouragement and help. I am ultimately responsible for all views expressed in this paper.