The Dynamic Interaction between Frequency and Internal Constraints: A Case Study of

(ING)

Jon Forrest

SVALP 2016 Blacksburg, VA

Introduction

•  The role of lexical frequency in linguistic variation and change

•  Hybrid models of phonology (Pierrehumbert 2016)

•  The importance of context of occurrence for word-specific experiences

Frequency and Lenition Bias

•  Physiologically-motivated sound changes affect more frequent words before less frequent words, and vice versa (Phillips 1984)

•  Lexical frequency has an effect on the rate of lenition processes (Bybee 2002; Dinkin 2008; Pierrehumbert 2001, 2002)

•  Further study of t/d deletion finds no frequency effect overall, only frequency in certain environments (Walker 2012)

Lenition, Frequency, and (ING)

•  (ING) found not to have frequency effects (Abramowicz 2007) –  Implementation of frequency

•  –ing to –in as (partially) a lenition process •  Vowel cues? (Forrest 2014; Yuan and

Lieberman 2011) •  /ŋ/ to /n/ as a leniting process (Abramowicz

2007)

Context of Occurrence

•  Word-specific effects of frequent environment of occurrence (Guy, Hay, and Walker 2009)

Context of Occurrence

•  Word-specific effects of frequent environment of occurrence (Guy, Hay, and Walker 2009)

[lɛft]

[lɛft]

[lɛft]

[lɛft]

[lɛf] [lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛf] [lɛf]

[lɛf] [lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛft]

[lɛf] [lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛf]

[lɛft]

[lɛft]

[lɛft]

Allexemplarsof“le.”

Exemplarsof“le.”inenvironmentsdisfavoringdele7on

Exemplarsof“le.”inenvironmentsfavoringdele7on

Research Questions

•  Does frequency play a role in the realization of (ING) (Abramowicz 2007)?

•  Do collocations explain either frequency effects or phonological/morphological effects (Bybee 2006; Seyfarth 2014; Walker 2012)?

•  Does frequency interact with year of birth, reflecting the change in rates of –in and –ing over time?

•  Does a word’s frequent occurrence in environments that (dis)favor –in have an effect independent of frequency (Guy, Hay, and Walker 2009)?

Data

•  121 European-American speakers from Raleigh, NC – Roughly balanced for Sex and Occupation – Dialect contact in Raleigh – Conversational interview from the Raleigh Corpus

•  12052 tokens of (ING) coded overall

Coding Methods

•  Impressionistically coded as –in or –ing – Coding following Forrest (2015)

•  Assimilated tokens (“gonna”, “tryna”), pronouns, and prepositions excluded

•  Following Place of Articulation (coronal, velar, coda, other)

•  Lexical Category (verbal, gerund, noun, adjective)

Coding of Frequency Variables

•  Word frequency measured two ways (both log10 transformed): –  SUBTLEX (Brysbaert and New 2009) –  Corpus frequency

•  Two other scaled frequency variables for each word measuring occurrence in specific environments –  Percent occurrence in high-IN grammatical environments

(verbal) –  Percent occurrence in low-IN phonological environments (pre-

velar and pre-pausal) •  Collinearity issues

–  .01 to .04 for grammatical measures –  .02 to .16 for phonological measures.

Statistical Methods

•  Logistic mixed-effects models with –in vs. –ing as outcome variable – Random intercept for word – Random slope for following place of articulation

by speaker •  Addition of frequency variables stepwise for

model fitting

Does frequency play a role in the realization of (ING)?

Model Comparison Statistics

1.  Base Model (Internal Constraints and Social Factors) 2.  Frequency 3.  Frequency/Age Interaction 4.  Grammatical Environment Frequency 5.  Phonological Environment Frequency 6.  Frequency/Grammatical Environment Interaction 7.  Frequency/Phonological Environment Interaction 8.  Frequency/Grammatical Environment/Phonological Environment Interaction

•  Model selection determined by AIC comparison

•  Models:

Word Frequency Distribution In all cases, SUBTLEX outperformed corpus measures

Full Model Results

Gerund 0.917**(0.328)Verbal 1.333***(0.333)Noun 0.485(0.365)FollowingPause -0.819***(0.121)FollowingCoronal 0.137(0.077)FollowingVelar -0.603***(0.181)Male 0.758*(0.369)DOB(Scaled) -1.192***(0.236)College -3.076***(0.712)Graduate -3.726***(0.813)NoCollege -1.714*(0.797)SUBTLEXFrequency(Logged) 0.581***(0.070)PercentHigh-INGramma7cal(Scaled) 0.126(0.144)PercentHigh-INPhonological(Scaled) -0.107*(0.049)Age/FrequencyInterac7on 0.114**(0.036)

Frequency/Gramma7calEnvironmentInterac7on 0.114*(0.057)

(Intercept) -1.394*(0.798)

ObservaNons 12,052LogLikelihood -4,627.739AkaikeInf.Crit. 9,311.478BayesianInf.Crit. 9,518.594

Note: *p<0.05;**p<0.01;***p<0.001

Are collocations responsible for either the frequency effect or other internal constraints

effects?

Variable Effects of Collocations

•  Four of top-10 most frequent words in corpus –  Three most common

following articulation environments

•  Frequency of the “verb-ing + to” collocation

•  Informaticity (Seyfarth 2014)

Does the effect of frequency interact with year of birth?

Frequency Matters Less for Older Speakers

•  Frequency: –  Mean = 3.56 –  SD = 1.01

•  Age: –  Mean = 1962 –  SD = 17.37 yrs

Does a word’s most frequent grammatical environment matter?

Frequency Matters More for Words in Verbal Environments

•  Percentage that a word occurs in a verbal context –  Mean = 50.77% –  Standard Dev. = 30.56%

Frequency Matters More for Words in Verbal Environments

•  Snowballing effect of exemplars in verbal environments

Discussion

•  Frequency plays a role in the realization of (ING)

•  Collocations do not primarily drive any of the frequency or internal constraint effects

•  Support for exemplar-based accounts of (ING) – Two things for age effects (lots of –in exemplars

around; ing becomes base form)

What’s changed with the following place of articulation constraints?

Full Model Results

Gerund 0.917**(0.328)Verbal 1.333***(0.333)Noun 0.485(0.365)FollowingPause -0.819***(0.121)FollowingCoronal 0.137(0.077)FollowingVelar -0.603***(0.181)Male 0.758*(0.369)DOB(Scaled) -1.192***(0.236)College -3.076***(0.712)Graduate -3.726***(0.813)NoCollege -1.714*(0.797)SUBTLEXFrequency(Logged) 0.581***(0.070)PercentHigh-INGrammaNcal(Scaled) 0.126(0.144)PercentHigh-INPhonological(Scaled) -0.107*(0.049)Age/FrequencyInteracNon 0.114**(0.036)

Frequency/GrammaNcalEnvironmentInteracNon 0.114*(0.057)

(Intercept) -1.394*(0.798)

ObservaNons 12,052LogLikelihood -4,627.739AkaikeInf.Crit. 9,311.478BayesianInf.Crit. 9,518.594

Note: *p<0.05;**p<0.01;***p<0.001

Following Place of Articulation by Speaker

•  Individually adjusted coefficients for following place of articulation –  Positive coefficients

favor –in, negative favor –ing

Conclusion

•  Frequency matters, and it matters in a complex way

•  Points towards a conception of variation as a combination of grammar constraint rules and word-specific knowledge – Underlying forms vs. word-specific phonetics?

•  Look at (ING) in terms of connected speech processes and articulatory movement (Temple 2014)

References

•  Abramowicz, Ł. (2007). Sociolinguistics meets exemplar theory: Frequency and recency effects in (ing). University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 13(2), 3.

•  Bybee, J. (2002). Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change. Language variation and change, 14(03), 261-290.

•  Bybee, J. (2006). From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language, 711-733. •  Dinkin, A. J. (2008). The real effect of word frequency on phonetic variation. University of

Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 14(1), 8. •  Hazen, K. (2011). Flying high above the social radar: Coronal stop deletion in modern Appalachia.

Language Variation and Change, 23(01), 105-137. •  Labov, W. (2011). Principles of Linguistic Change, Cognitive and Cultural Factors (Vol. 3). John

Wiley & Sons. •  Pierrehumbert, J. B. (2001). lenition and contrast. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic

structure, 45, 137. •  Pierrehumbert, J. (2002). Word-specific phonetics. Laboratory phonology, 7, 101-139. •  Tagliamonte, S., & Temple, R. (2005). New perspectives on an ol'variable:(t, d) in British English.

Language Variation and Change, 17(03), 281-302. •  Walker, J. A. (2012). Form, function, and frequency in phonological variation. Language Variation

and Change, 24(03), 397-415.

Full Model Comparison

ModelFitUsingCorpusFrequencyModels K AICc Delta_AICc LogLikelihood

Frequency/Phon.Env.InteracNon 29 9320.04 0 -4630.95

Frequency/Gram.Env.InteracNon 28 9322.78 2.75 -4633.32

Freq./Gram.Env./Phon.Env.InteracNon 31 9323.78 3.74 -4630.81

PhonologicalEnvironmentFrequency 27 9334.04 14 -4639.95

GrammaNcalEnvironmentFrequency 26 9337.24 17.2 -4642.56

Age/FrequencyInteracNon 25 9392.51 72.47 -4671.2

Frequency 24 9399.88 79.84 -4675.89

BaseModel 23 9441.54 121.5 -4697.72ModelFitUsingSUBTLEXFrequency

Models K AICc Delta_AICc LogLikelihood

Frequency/Phon.Env.InteracNon 29 9311.85 0 -4626.86

Frequency/Gram.Env.InteracNon 28 9311.98 0.13 -4627.92

PhonologicalEnvironmentFrequency 27 9313.78 1.92 -4629.83

Freq./Gram.Env./Phon.Env.InteracNon 31 9314.07 2.21 -4625.95

GrammaNcalEnvironmentFrequency 26 9315.92 4.06 -4631.9

Age/FrequencyInteracNon 25 9354.41 42.55 -4652.15

Frequency 24 9361.83 49.97 -4656.86

BaseModel 23 9441.54 129.68 -4697.72