Computational Phonology

Computational phonology is the application of formal and computational techniques to the representation and processing of phonological information. It "deals with the changes in sound patterns that take place when words are put together" ^[1]. While phonological analysis defines formal models and systematically tests it against data, computer science would speed up task, i.e. by software which induces (computational) models. Computational help opens a gate for broader, abstract perspectives when the outcoming data combine with further media types. In phonology, it is a new way in storing, representing and making data accessible.

Data

The phonological data used are text, wordlists and paradigms.

Analysis

There are different forms of analysis -like the traditional string-based rewrite-rule analysis or the current prosodic declarative analysis- but differences between them are rather small. If there is a theory sufficiently modeling the sound pattern of a language then the first step to implement the theorie is to formalize it. The analysing process is undertaken by a device (program); i.e. a transducer mapping inputs to surface forms as output. A device also implements phonological rules.

History

Formerly, it was conducted manually on paper without any help of computers. The increasing development of technical support was helpful to phonology continuing its work a in a more specific way. One of the first publications concerning computational phonology was in 1968 about “Phonological Rule Tester” by Bobrow and Fraser

Current research

In nowadays research there are four approaches/key areas within analysis. Bird ^[2] calls them optimality theory, automatic learning, interfaces to grammar or phonetics and supporting phonological description.

References

↑ Sproat, Samuelsson, Chu-Carrol, and Carpenter, Computional Linguistics, in Mark Aronoff, Janie Rees-Miller, The Handbook of Linguistics, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003, 622-6.
↑ Steven Bird, Computational Phonology, in Ruslan Mitkov (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Book

Steven Bird, Computational Phonology: A Constraint-Based Approach, Studies in Natural Language Processing, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

External link

SIGPHON: Association for Computational Linguistics’ (ACL) special interest group in computational phonology

Computational Morphology and Phonology: SIL International

[1] Sproat, Samuelsson, Chu-Carrol, and Carpenter, Computional Linguistics, in Mark Aronoff, Janie Rees-Miller, The Handbook of Linguistics, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003, 622-6.

[2] Steven Bird, Computational Phonology, in Ruslan Mitkov (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2004.

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Computational Phonology

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