Publications

Books

Tesar, Bruce. (2014). Output-Driven Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tesar, Bruce, & Paul Smolensky. (2000). Learnability in Optimality Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Journal Articles

Nyman, Alexandra, & Bruce Tesar. (2019). Determining underlying presence in the learning of grammars that allow insertion and deletion. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 4(1), 37. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.603

Tesar, Bruce. (2016). Phonological learning with output-driven maps. Language Acquisition 24:2. 148-167. https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2016.1223079

Tesar, Bruce. (2006). Faithful contrastive features in learning. Cognitive Science 30:5. 863-903. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog0000_84

Tesar, Bruce. (2004). Using inconsistency detection to overcome structural ambiguity in language learning. Linguistic Inquiry 35:2. 219-253. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438904323019057

Tesar, Bruce, & Paul Smolensky. (1998). Learning Optimality-Theoretic grammars. Lingua 106. 161-196.

Tesar, Bruce, & Paul Smolensky. (1998). Learnability in Optimality Theory. Linguistic Inquiry 29:2. 229-268. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438998553734

Tesar, Bruce. (1998). An iterative strategy for language learning. Lingua 104. 131-145.

Chapters in Edited Volumes

Tesar, Bruce. (2007). Learnability. In Paul de Lacy, ed., The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology, Cambridge University Press. 555-574.

Tesar, Bruce. (2006). Learning from Paradigmatic Information. In Eric Bakovic, Junko Ito, and John McCarthy (eds.), Wondering at the Natural Fecundity of Things: Essays in Honor of Alan Prince. Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz. 293-310. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7jt3z39w

Smolensky, Paul, Géraldine Legendre, & Bruce Tesar. (2006). Optimality Theory: The structure, use, and acquisition of grammatical knowledge. In Paul Smolensky & Géraldine Legendre, The Harmonic Mind, Chapter 12. MIT Press. 453-544.

Smolensky, Paul, & Bruce Tesar. (2006). Symbolic computation with activation patterns. In Paul Smolensky & Géraldine Legendre, The Harmonic Mind, Chapter 7. MIT Press. 235-270.

Prince, Alan, & Bruce Tesar. (2004). Learning phonotactic distributions. In Rene Kager, Joe Pater, and Wim Zonneveld (eds.), Fixing Priorities: Constraints in Phonological Acquisition. Cambridge University Press. 245-291. ROA-353.

Tesar, Bruce, & Paul Smolensky. (2003). Learnability in Optimality Theory. In McCarthy, John (ed.), Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Book of Readings. Blackwell. 118-140. Excerpted reprint of Tesar & Smolensky (1998a) Learnability in Optimality Theory.

Tesar, Bruce. (2003). Computing optimal forms in Optimality Theory: Basic syllabification. In McCarthy, John (ed.), Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Book of Readings. Blackwell. 101-117. Excerpted reprint of Tesar (1995).

Tesar, Bruce. (2003). Learnability: Learning Theory and Grammars. In Frawley, William (ed.), The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2nd Edition). Oxford University Press. 434-437.

Tesar, Bruce. (2000). On the roles of optimality and strict domination in language learning. In Joost Dekkers, Frank van der Leeuw, and Jereon van de Weijer (eds.), Optimality Theory: Phonology, Syntax, and Acquisition. Oxford University Press. 592-620.

Tesar, Bruce, Jane Grimshaw, & Alan Prince. (1999). Linguistic and cognitive explanation in Optimality Theory. In Ernest Lepore & Zenon Pylyshyn (eds.), What is Cognitive Science? Blackwell. 295-326.

Tesar, Bruce. (1998). Error-driven learning in Optimality Theory via the efficient computation of optimal forms. In Pilar Barbosa, Danny Fox, Paul Hagstrom, Martha McGinnis, & David Pesetsky (eds.), Is the Best Good Enough? Optimality and Competition in Syntax. MIT Press and MITWPL. 421-435.

Refereed Conference Proceedings

Tesar, Bruce. (2014). When worst is best: Grammar construction in phonological learning. Proceedings of the Forty-Third Conference of the North East Linguistics Society (2012). 167-180. ROA-1185.

Tesar, Bruce. (2012). Learning phonological grammars for output-driven maps. Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Conference of the North East Linguistics Society (2008). 785-798. https://doi.org/10.7282/T39G5JR3

Merchant, Nazarré, & Bruce Tesar. (2008). Learning underlying forms by searching restricted lexical subspaces. Proceedings of the Forty-First Conference of the Chicago Linguistic Society (2005), vol. II: The Panels. 33-47. ROA-811.

Tesar, Bruce, & Alan Prince. (2007). Using phonotactics to learn phonological alternations. Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Conference of the Chicago Linguistics Society (2003), vol. II: The Panels. 209-237. ROA-620.

Tesar, Bruce. (2006). Learning from paradigmatic information. Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Conference of the North East Linguistics Society (2005). 619-638.

Alderete, John, Adrian Brasoveanu, Nazarré Merchant, Alan Prince, & Bruce Tesar. (2005). Contrast analysis aids in the learning of phonological underlying forms (PDF). Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (2005). 34-42. http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/24/paper1204.pdf

Tesar, Bruce, John Alderete, Graham Horwood, Nazarré Merchant, Koichi Nishitani, & Alan Prince. (2003). Surgery in language learning. Proceedings of the Twenty-Second West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (2003). 477-490. ROA-619.

Tesar, Bruce. (2002). Enforcing grammatical restrictiveness can help resolve structural ambiguity. Proceedings of the Twenty-First West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (2002). 443-456. https://doi.org/10.7282/T3SN0BRS

Tesar, Bruce. (1999). Robust interpretive parsing in metrical stress theory. Proceedings of the Seventeenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (1998). 625-639.

Tesar, Bruce. (1998). Using the mutual inconsistency of structural descriptions to overcome ambiguity in language learning. Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Conference of the North Eastern Linguistic Society (1997). 469-483.

Tesar, Bruce. (1997). An iterative strategy for learning metrical stress in Optimality Theory. Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Boston University Conference on Language Acquisition (1996). 615-626. https://doi.org/10.7282/T3QR4V59

Tesar, Bruce. (1996). Computing optimal descriptions for Optimality Theory grammars with context-free position structures. Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (1996). 101-107.

Tesar, Bruce, & Paul Smolensky. (1994). The learnability of Optimality Theory. Proceedings of the Thirteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (1994). 122-137.

Tesar, Bruce, & Paul Smolensky. (1994). Synchronous firing variable binding is a tensor product representation with temporal role vectors. Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (1994). 870-75.

Tesar, Bruce, John Kapenga, & Robert Trenary. (1989). A Boltzmann Machine solution to the Traveling Salesperson Problem: Towards a parallel implementation. Proceedings of the IEEE TENCON ’89 Conference (1989). Bombay, India. 142-44.