Abstract
Primary data in natural language contain various patterns that can be identified. Some patterns are “meaningful” in the sense that they lead to generalizations about the systematic makeup of the grammar. To take phonological alternations as an example, the prefix in- in English undergoes place assimilation to the following consonant: indisputable, improbable,immaterial, i[N]credible. Other patterns seem spurious: the sounds /h/ and /N/ are in complementary distribution in English, but it is not the case that they are allophones of the samephoneme. It is the task of the learner—and of the linguist—to extract contentful generalizations out of the various patterns in the data
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | NELS 46 |
| Subtitle of host publication | Proceedings of the Forty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society |
| Editors | Christopher Hammerly, Brandon Prickett |
| Publisher | Graduate Linguistics Student Association |
| Pages | 189-198 |
| Volume | 2 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781537513409 |
| Publication status | Published - 18 Oct 2016 |