Automated reconstruction of ancient languages using probabilistic models of sound change

Today's paper is Automated reconstruction of ancient languages using probabilistic models of sound change by Alexandre Bouchard-Côté, David Hall, Thomas L. Griffiths, and Dan Klein. published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2013.

I've previously talked about the comparative method, which is quite a slow and painstaking method of reconstructing proto-languages. This paper, as the title suggests, demonstrates how using large numbers of daughter languages and some models of sound changes, Proto-Austronesian can be quite accurately reconstructed.

A Maximum Entropy Model of Phonotactics and Phonotactic Learning

Today's paper is A Maximum Entropy Model of Phonotactics and Phonotactic Learning by Bruce Hayes and Colin Wilson, published in Linguistic Enquiry in 2008.

Phonotactics is the grammar of phonemes: which sounds can combine together, and in which environments. There is a famous example (from Chomsky and Halle 1965) that in English, brick is an existing word, blick doesn't exist but is "well-formed" i.e. a perfectly possible new word, and bnick is "ill-formed" - it could never be an English word.

Hayes and Wilson's paper is about their phonotactic learner, which attempts to answer the question "What is necessary for humans to learn phonotactic rules?" by modelling input, initial knowledge and learnt components.