Rule Reliability and Productivity: Velar Palatalization in Russian and Artificial Grammar
Vsevolod M. Kapatsinski · 2008
Russian velar palatalization (k→tS, g→Z, x→S) presents an intriguing case of a morphophonological alternation that is exceptionless for a given suffix, yet not fully productive in natural loanword adaptation with some of the suffixes. In particular, while the process is shown to be only partially productive before –i and –ik but fully productive before –ok and –ek, contrary to the naturalness of the suffixes as triggers of palatalization. A model of rule induction and weighting (the Rule-based Learner, developed by Albright and Hayes 2003) is trained on the lexicon of Russian verbs, in which velar palatalization is exceptionless (always applying before the stem extension –i), and tested on new borrowings and nonce probes from elicited production tasks. Despite the fact that velar palatalization is exceptionless in the training set, it is correctly predicted to often fail with novel words based on information in the lexicon. When a foreign verb is borrowed into Russian, it must be assigned a stem extension, e.g., upload → /√plod+i+t j /, duck → /d√k+a+t j /, lock → /lotS+i+t j /. The two most productive stem extensions in modern