Abstract for William Idsardi's talk

Making phonological decisions
William Idsardi (University of Maryland)
May 9, 2006 (Tuesday)
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM; Room 7102, The CUNY Graduate Center

In this presentation I will present some speculative attempts to reconcile statistical and symbolic approaches to phonological phenomena. Central to my approach is a decision-theoretic framework, in which statistics are collected in service of a decision to be made about a parameter/constraint/rule/law of grammar. The decisions constitute the speaker's Knowledge Of Language; the statistics constitute much of the speaker's Knowledge About Language. Much recent statistical work conflates these notions (and thereby extends broadly the reach of the 'grammar'). I will offer some skeptical comments on such trends.