The Listener in Language Change

THE LISTENER IN LANGUAGE CHANGE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Simon John Todd June 2019 Abstract Language changes constantly, in ways that can be influenced by factors both language- internal, such as word frequency, and language-external, such as social organization and attitudes. A major challenge for linguistic theory is to give a unified explanation of these constraints on language change. In this dissertation, I argue that this challenge can be addressed by looking to spoken language perception, where passive but powerful perceptual biases give rise to many similar constraints on how listeners update the cognitive representations they draw upon for language use. I present an approach to language change in which perceptual biases in the listener play a central role. I ground this approach in an exemplar-based computational model, which is able to recreate empirically-observed general properties of sound change. I then test the approach by integrating experimentally-supported perceptual biases with computational modeling and novel corpus methods across two studies. In the first study, I apply the computational model to simulate word-frequency effects in sound change. I show that different word-frequency effects in different kinds of sound change follow from a single perceptual bias, whereby high-frequency words are recognized more easily than low-frequency words when acoustically ambiguous. In the second study, I extend the listener-based approach to the effect of improving interethnic social attitudes on the spread of lexical items across ethnic groups in New Zealand. Drawing on biases in the perception of òther-accented' words, I make specific predictions for the spread of the tag eh from indigenous M¯aorito White P¯akeh¯a, which I test with novel corpus methods. Taken together, these two studies highlight how passive but powerful perceptual biases in the listener can give a unified explanation of different constraints on language change. iv Acknowledgments The path to a PhD takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, and a lot of support. I am deeply indebted to everyone who has walked alongside me on parts of this path and helped me get to where I am today, and I am grateful to have this opportunity to thank them all for being there. Reader, beware: I have a lot of people to thank. Above all, I would like to thank my advisors: Dan Jurafsky, Meghan Sumner, and Jen Hay. Dan, thank you for your inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm, for knowing exactly how to distill extremely broad literatures, and for always telling me to take more time off. Meghan, thank you for your keen focus on the theoretical picture, for giving me sage advice even in difficult situations, and for always making me feel like an equal. Jen, thank you for introducing me to the exciting world of linguistic research, for always staying connected and welcoming me back home, and { together with Janet Pierrehumbert { for your long-lasting collaboration, which led directly to Chapters 2 and 3 of this dissertation. I consider myself lucky to have been able to learn so much from each of you over so many years, about how to be an effective linguist, an innovative researcher, and an all-round good and happy person. I am indebted to all those who contributed to this dissertation by attending vari- ous talks about it and asking interesting questions. My thanks to the attendees of my dissertation defense and practice job talk, to my labmates in the Stanford Phonetics Lab, and to audiences of: the Phonetics and Phonology, Sociolinguistics, and Cogni- tive Science Workshops at Stanford University; the Fellows' talk series at the Stanford Humanities Center; the CogNetwork and Phonetics and Phonology Workshops at the University of California, Berkeley; the seminar series at the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain, and Behaviour; and the linguistics colloquia at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, Santa Barbara. One of the things that I have found particularly enjoyable about my time at both the University of Canterbury and Stanford is a freedom of movement around an v intellectual community. They say it takes a village to raise a child; in my case, it took a department (or two!) to produce a scholar. I'd like to thank everyone that I had the pleasure of working with and learning from during my time in higher education. At the University of Canterbury, I am particularly grateful to the faculty and staff who were always happy to welcome me back as if I hadn't been away at all: Lynn Clark, Donald Derrick, Beth Hume, Jeanette King, Vica Papp, Emma Parnell, Heidi Quinn, and Kevin Watson. Special thanks go to Alex James, for introducing me to the world of mathematical and computational modeling and fighting for my right to exist in that world as a linguist. At Stanford, I am particularly grateful to those who met with me to discuss key projects and teaching opportunities, usually over extended periods of time: Arto Anttila, Joan Bresnan, Boris Harizanov, Paul Kiparsky, Rob Podesva, Chris Potts, and John R. Rickford. I'd also like to thank Dan Lassiter for involving me in the organization of the Cognition and Language Workshop, and I must give a special thanks to Beth Levin for going above and beyond the call of duty to manage so much of department life. Finally, I am also grateful to Judith Degen, for being an external member of my dissertation proposal and defense committees, and to Jay McClelland, for chairing my dissertation defense committee. My time at Stanford was made all the better by the amazing people I got to share it with, and all the ways they helped to balance out my life. I am deeply appreciative of my cohort, Daniel Galbraith, Olek G lówka, Sunwoo Jeong, Sara Kessler, Kate Lindsey, and Prerna Nadathur, without whom these past six years would have been depressingly empty. I will never forget our wine-fueled game nights, escape rooms, classic film screenings, adventures to San Francisco for kosher vegan Chinese food, white elephant Christmas parties, combined birthday celebrations, annual brownies, and, above all, daily lunches. Special thanks to Sunwoo, for constantly expanding my vocabulary; to Sara, for baking and saving the world with me at least every other week; to Kate, for being a great support on the job market, even when we were competing for the same jobs; to Prerna, for sharing an office with me for six years, complete with videos of dogs, elephant vocalizations, and countless D&Ms; and to all four of these wonderful friends, for being there for me when I was at my lowest. Life would also have not been the same without all of the other students in the Linguistics Department, especially those who shared in lunches, volleyball games, the Quiztel Meth trivia team, game nights, excursions to the local pub or further afield in San Francisco, and countless other social activities, and who came to visit me after surgery: Sam Bowman, CJ Brickhouse, Ignacio Cases, Branden Chan, Reuben vi Cohn-Gordon, Dora Demszky, Tim Dozat, Roey Gafter, Lelia Glass, Chantal Gratton, Sabrina Grimberg, Katherine Hilton, Masoud Jasbi, SK Kim, Ed King, Bonnie Krejci, Judy Kroo, Emily Lake, Daisy Leigh, Yiwei Luo, Zion Mengesha, Eva Portelance, Ciyang Qing, Nay San, Sebastian Schuster, Rob Voigt, Brandon Waldon, and Robert Xu. Nor would life have been the same without Manny (Marcel) Rincon-Cruz, who went beyond the expectations of a simple roommate to become a dear friend and vital lifeline when things got tough. I am `grateful as' to my fellow Stanford Kiwis (and co.), for sharing in regular celebrations of New Zealand culture and for continuing to expose me to refreshing renditions of the New Zealand accent long after I lost my own: Thil Arachchi, Sam Corbett-Davies, Max Ferguson, Oliver Hinder, CZ Lee, Sarah Poole, Priya Shekar, Robin Wilson, and Liz Wiltshire. Special thanks here to David Wright & Sarah Pratt, for formally registering us as a student group and thus entitling us to free barbecues and beer, and for liking me enough to follow me to the other side of the world after 10 years of shared high school and undergrad and 2 years of living together. Finally, I would like to thank all my fellow fellows at the Stanford Humanities Center in 2018-19, who have enriched my final year both intellectually and socially through countless presentations, shared lunches, and happy hour celebrations. Going to grad school meant leaving the nest { leaving my hometown for the first time. I am deeply appreciative of my family and friends and all they have done to make this separation easier over the years. I am lucky to have had almost all of my immediate family members travel halfway across the world to visit me during my time here, especially for graduation, and to have had them welcome me back home with open arms on every annual visit. My deepest appreciations to my parents, Derek Todd & Kerry Luke and Leonie Young & Nigel Baker, and to my brothers and their partners, Willie Todd & Chanel Johnson, Kahu Luke & L´ıannaFitzsimons, and Ranui Luke & Kris Wong, for always being there. My greatest thanks also to my extended family in New Zealand, especially my grandparents, Stuart & Jenny Young, for always being excited to host me and get updates on my life when I visited. I am also lucky to have had a large group of friends from high school and undergrad come together from far-flung places every year when I visit, and I am grateful to them all for never missing these chances to have fun as though nothing had changed in over 10 years: Steve Bates, Kerianne Butler, Michelle Chim, Emily Craig, Kate Dawkings, Will Douglas, Mason (Garry) Drew, Tynam McCulloch, Adrian McMurray, Shannon O'Brien, Chris Scott, David (Shippy) Shipton, Alex (Frank) Smith, Andrew (Fish) vii Wright, and Tomo Yee.

Load more