Prof. Adam Jardine will be giving a talk at the Princeton Phonology Forum (PɸF) on March 19, 2021. The theme for this year’s workshop is `Tone and phonological theory’. To join Adam at this workshop, please register here.
The title and abstract are as follows:
“Tone: computation, representation, and learning” :
Hyman (2011) states that “anyone who is interested in the outer limits of what is possible in phonology would … be well-served to understand how tone systems work.” Tone is thus an important empirical target for theoretical computational phonology, which studies the computational laws that delineate possible phonological patterns from impossible ones (Heinz 2018). In this talk, I survey results showing that computationally, tone is distinct from segmental phonology. I then show that, in understanding this difference, we find new arguments for melodic representations of tone, including their necessity for learning tone patterns. In sum, computational phonology has much to learn from, and much to contribute to, the study of tone.