There is an active debate within the field of phonology concerning the cognitive status of substantive phonetic factors such as ease of articulation and perceptual distinctiveness. A new framework is proposed in which substance acts as a bias, or prior, on phonological learning. Two experiments tested this framework with a method in which participants are first provided highly impoverished evidence of a new phonological pattern, and then tested on how they extend this pattern to novel contexts and novel sounds. Participants were found to generalize velar palatalization (e.g., the change from [k]asinkeep to [t�ʃ]asincheap) in a way that accords with linguistic typology, and that is predicted by a cognitive bias in favor of changes that relate perceptually similar sounds. Velar palatalization was extended from the mid front vowel context (i.e., before [e]asincape) to the high front vowel context (i.e., before [i]asin keep), but not vice versa. The key explanatory notion of perceptual similarity is quantified with a psychological model of categorization, and the substantively biased framework is formalized as a conditional random field. Implications of these results for the debate on substance, theories of phonological generalization, and the formalization of similarity are discussed.

It is well known that Russian consonants contrast in palatalization. Also well known are certain allophonic rules connected to this palatalization contrast. One such rule requires that the phoneme /i/ be realized as high central unrounded [Y] after non-palatalized consonants, and [i] elsewhere, e.g., b j it j 'to beat' from /b j it j / versus bYt j 'to be' from /bit j /. Another concerns velar consonants, which (as traditionally viewed) do not contrast in palatalization: velars can be followed only by [i] and not by [Y], e.g., x j itrYj 'clever' from /xitrij/, cf. *xYtrYj. (In addition, velars before [i] are allophonically palatalized, as shown.) This latter rule arose due to a sound change occurring between the twel

This study examines the movement trajectories of the dorsal tongue movements during symmetrical /VCa /-sequences, where /V / was one of the Hungarian long or short vowels /i,a,u / and C either the voiceless palatal or velar stop consonants. General aims of this study were to deliver a data-driven account for (a) the evidence of the division between dorsality and coronality and (b) for the potential role coarticulatory factors could play for the relative frequency of velar palatalization processes in genetically unrelated languages. Results suggest a clear-cut demarcation between the behaviour of purely dorsal velars and the coronal palatals. Morevover, factors arising from a general movement economy might contribute to the palatalization processes mentioned. 1

This paper questions the validity of various assumptions central to treatments of featural processes such as vowel and consonant harmony, namely that features are universal, that constraints are

New methods for studying UG in phonology • The search for principles of Universal Grammar and for evidence to support them has broadened to include experimental work. • I argue for an approach that combines experimentation with the use of implemented learning models. 2. Traditional methods of studying UG • Typological study—study multiple languages, and develop a theory that � encompasses what’s “out there” � makes non-trivial predictions about what is not. • Examples: � Hayes’s (1995) parametric theory of stress systems, with an asymmetrical foot inventory � OT studies using factorial typology (Prince and Smolensky 1993, ch. 3): Kaun