Arto Anttila, Linguistics Department, "Modeling Language Variation"
ABSTRACT:
Linguists have always recognized that languages exhibit variation: one meaning can be expressed in multiple ways. Variation is rarely completely free: one variant may be quantitatively preferred over another or the variants may have subtle differences in meaning. Variation may signal change in progress, but it can also linger for generations without much change. Variation is remarkably easy for humans, but a source of problems for natural language processing systems. Despite all its interesting properties, variation has played a surprisingly marginal role in the development of formal linguistic theory. In this talk, I will present an optimality-theoretic approach to language variation and show how it fares in the face of naturalistic usage data. The talk will feature some recent collaborative work with Curtis Andrus (Stanford Mathematics and Computer Science).