Professor of Phonetic Sciences   Institute of Phonetic Sciences University of Amsterdam   E-mail: paul.boersma@uva.nl Telephone: +31-20-5252385 (me) or 5253864 (secretary).

Teaching:  Fonetische transcriptie  |  Vorm  |  Speech Perception and Production  |  Experimental Phonetics

Software:  PRAAT: doing phonetics by computer

Research:  all my writings in chronological order

My current favourite subject is showing (by computer simulations) how the typologies of the world's languages are emergent rather than innate or synchronically functionalist.

For example, markedness is an emergent property that follows from frequency differences in the learner's input (and not from innate markedness constraints or from synchronically functionalist faithfulness rankings), and licensing by cue emerges from differences in auditory cue reliability in the learner's input (and not from innate specific-over-general faithfulness rankings or from synchronically listener-oriented faithfulness rankings):

As another example, auditory dispersion in inventories of phonemes emerges from the fact that learners use in production the same constraint rankings that have optimized their comprehension (and not from innate markedness constraints or synchronically functionalist dispersion constraints). The following two papers are the one- and two-dimensional cases, respectively:

As for the emergence of categories and constraints themselves, that is discussed in two places (to some extent):

Such simulations make it possible to track languages over the generations (for more, see sound change):

The above papers (if younger than 2005) rely heavily on the framework of Parallel Bidirectional Phonology and Phonetics, i.e. on the idea that you use the same constraint ranking as a listener and as a speaker and on the parallel multi-level evaluation of your phonology and your phonetics. Here is more information on that subject:

Most of the papers with simulations utilize the Gradual Learning Algorithm for Optimality Theory, which was defined in the following two papers:

Nowadays we routinely check how the simulations behave if we use Harmonic Grammar instead of Optimality Theory. The following paper describes a proof of the learning algorithm:

Writings by subject:

• Optimality-Theoretic modelling of bidirectional phonology and phonetics and their acquisition and evolution:
  • sound change (1989-2008), partly with Silke Hamann and Joe Pater
  • Gradual Learning Algorithm and other OT and HG learning algorithms (1997-2009), partly with Bruce Hayes, Clara Levelt and Joe Pater
  • linguistic processes:
    • prelexical perception:
      • categorization (1997-2008), partly with Paola Escudero and Rachel Hayes
      • OCP (1998-2003)
    • lexicon (word recognition, faithfulness ranking, lexical selection) (1999-2009), partly with Silke Hamann and Diana Apoussidou
    • production:
      • framework listener-oriented production (control loops, probabilistic faithfulness) (1997-2005), partly with Silke Hamann
      • framework Phonology and Phonetics in Parallel (2005-2011), partly with Silke Hamann and Diana Apoussidou
  • paralinguistic tasks:
    • grammaticality and prototypicality (2001-2008), partly with Bruce Hayes and Silke Hamann
  • representations:
    • features with Kateřina Chládková (2011)
  • applications:
    • Poverty of the Base (1997-2009)
    • nasal harmony (1998-2003)
    • loanword adaptation (2000-2009), partly with Silke Hamann
    • metrical phonology with Diana Apoussidou (2003-2004)
• Mostly on phonetics:
  • Praat (1993-2009), partly with David Weenink and Ton Wempe
  • Croatian folk singing with Gordana Kovacic (2003-2006)
  • statistics (2005-2010), partly with Paola Escudero and Kateřina Chládková
  • Portuguese and Spanish vowels (2009-2011), with Paola Escudero, Andréia Rauber, Kateřina Chládková and Ricardo Bion
  • the undersampling hypothesis with Kateřina Chládková (2009)
  • prototype searching with Titia Benders (2009)

Talks