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Cited by 391

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 77 of the 77 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Natural and unnatural constraints in Hungarian vowel harmony

Open access
Hayes, Bruce, Zuraw, Kie, Siptár, Péter, Londe, Zsuzsa·2009·Language
DOI 10.1353/lan.0.0169
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Abstract

Phonological constraints can, in principle, be classified according to whether they are natural (founded in principles of universal grammar (UG)) or unnatural (arbitrary, learned inductively from the language data). Recent work has used this distinction as the basis for arguments about the role of UG in learning. Some languages have phonological patterns that arguably reflect unnatural constraints. With experimental testing, one can assess whether such patterns are actually learned by native speakers. Becker, Ketrez, and Nevins (2007), testing speakers of Turkish, suggest that they do indeed go unlearned. They interpret this result with a strong UG position: humans are unable to learn data patterns not backed by UG principles. This article pursues the same research line, locating similarly unnatural data patterns in the vowel harmony system of Hungarian, such as the tendency (among certain stem types) for a final bilabial stop to favor front harmony. Our own test leads to the opposite conclusion of Becker and colleagues': Hungarians evidently do learn the unnatural patterns. To conclude we consider a bias account—that speakers are able to learn unnatural environments, but devalue them relative to natural ones. We outline a method for testing the strength of constraints as learned by speakers against the strength of the corresponding patterns in the lexicon, and show that it offers tentative support for the hypothesis that unnatural constraints are disfavored by language learners.

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Metadata

Authors
Hayes, B., Zuraw, K., Siptár, P., & Londe, Z.
Venue
Language
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2009-12
Volume
85
Issue
4
Pages
822-863
ISSN
  • 0097-8507 (ISSN-L)
  • 1535-0665
DOI
10.1353/lan.0.0169
OpenAlex
W2051820083
Cited by
391
References
77
FWCI
20.49
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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