John McCarthy writes:
Anne-Michelle Tessier, who received her doctorate from our department in 2007, will be visiting over the next two weeks. She is eager to talk with our current students. Below I've pasted a summary of her research interests from her web page, http://www.ualberta.ca/~annemich/.
To set up a meeting, please contact her directly at amtessier@ualberta.ca
From her webpage:
Research Interests
Note that all my papers and most of my handouts are downloadable in some
way on the Downloadable Papers page.
My research focuses for the most part on issues of formalism and
learning in phonological theory, usually in Optimality Theory. Here are
some of the research questions I am most interested in:
Phonological Acquisition and Grammar
:: What kinds of learning algorithms cn model attested intermediate
stages of acquisition? at what costs?
:: More generally, how does the choice of grammar affect the options for
learning?
:: Relatedly, what properties of observed language acquisition reveal
the nature of the grammar vs. the nature of learning mechanisms?
:: For example: is variation in child phonology a result of a variable
grammar, or a variable learner?
:: What about lexical exceptions, apparent regressions, and other quirky
data?
:: How does children's morphological awareness affect their phonological
acquisition?
Other Aspects of My Research
:: How and when do speakers generalize in artificial learning?
:: How are phonological speech errors related to phonological grammar -
conceptually, causally or otherwise?
:: How does or should a theory of phonological grammatical competence
make predictions about phonological performance?
