About

Diana B. Archangeli is a professor whose research explores the fundamental concepts of how phonological systems are organized and the concrete ways in which sounds are used and produced in language. Her conceptual work, known as Emergent Phonology or Minimalist Phonology, investigates the extent to which phonological acquisition depends on innate, language-specific capabilities versus the human ability to extract similarities and generalizations from limited input data. This approach diminishes the role of 'Universal Grammar' in phonology, leading to new perspectives on lexical representations and their relations, and addressing complex phonological issues such as abstract underlying representations and opaque surface patterns. Her research also includes basic documentation and experimental work in various regions, including Scotland, Assam (India), and Lombok (Indonesia), as well as studies of English in the United States. These efforts focus on determining the articulation of specific sounds in local languages through ultrasound techniques and documenting sound systems of lesser-studied languages. Her primary collaborators in this area include Jeff Mielke from North Carolina State University and Jon Yip from the University of Hong Kong.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• World Wide Web
• Psychology
• Visual arts
• Communication
• Archaeology
• Geography
• Philosophy
• Art
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Emergent Phonology

  Elsevier eBooks · 2025-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Hungarian Emerging

  Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca Julio de Urquijo · 2025-01-29

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Phonological theories tend to focus on the end point of learning, the adult grammar, assuming some innate linguistic component determines the nature of the grammar that is acquired. In Emergent phonology, we explore the hypothesis that adult grammars take the shapes they have because they can be acquired; we go further and propose that there is no innate linguistic component for phonological acquisition. Given these hypotheses, grammars are acquired piecemeal and learners rapidly generalise over subparts of the lexicon. One prediction is that we expect languages to have regularities with widely differing effect – both general patterns and subpatterns that exist but only in a narrow domain. We test this hypothesis against Hungarian vowel harmony, a harmony pattern that is often described as involving both [back] harmony and [round] harmony, despite the fact that the language has nonharmonic suffixes, suffixes with limited harmony, disharmony, antiharmony, and both transparency and opacity. In particular, we discuss patterns of suffix alternation involving harmony. The patterns, morphologically determined, range from no alternation, to alternating only along the front-back dimension, to alternating in terms of both backness and rounding, to alternating in terms of backness, rounding and height.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vowel Harmony In Emergent Phonology

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Linguistics
  • Communication
  • Psychology

  Abstract This chapter explores how a stripped-down theory of phonology can account for complex patterns of phonological distribution and alternation found in vowel harmony. The hypothesis is that the complex patterns found in phonological systems arise from general human cognition, learning language from the bottom up—Emergent Grammar. Without innate predispositions, lexical items are represented as sets of surface morphs, replacing the unique underlying representations posited in much of generative grammar. Harmony is characterized by well-formedness conditions which prohibit certain feature sequences, a formalization of asymmetries in directly observed distributions. Through examination of harmony in four languages, we demonstrate Emergent analyses of root-restricted harmony (Kɔɖa), root and word harmony (Dàgáárè), opacity and directionality (Fula), non-canonical harmony (Nata), and lexical disharmony (Kinande). The Emergent analyses relate transparently to surface forms, yet express generalizations about phonological and morpho-phonological patterns with analyses that very directly characterize the properties of the harmony systems themselves.

  PublisherDOI

• Emergent phonology

  2022-01-11

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  To what extent do complex phonological patterns require the postulation of universal mechanisms specific to language? In this volume, we explore the Emergent Hypothesis, that the innate language-specific faculty driving the shape of adult grammars is minimal, with grammar development relying instead on cognitive capacities of a general nature. Generalisations about sounds, and about the way sounds are organised into meaningful units, are constructed in a bottom-up fashion: As such, phonology is emergent. We present arguments for considering the Emergent Hypothesis, both conceptually and by working through an extended example in order to demonstrate how an adult grammar might emerge from the input encountered by a learner. Developing a concrete, data-driven approach, we argue that the conventional, abstract notion of unique underlying representations is unmotivated; such underlying representations would require some innate principle to ensure their postulation by a learner. We review the history of the concept and show that such postulated forms result in undesirable phonological consequences. We work through several case studies to illustrate how various types of phonological patterns might be accounted for in the proposed framework. The case studies illustrate patterns of allophony, of productive and unproductive patterns of alternation, and cases where the surface manifestation of a feature does not seem to correspond to its morphological source. We consider cases where a phonetic distinction that is binary seems to manifest itself in a way that is morphologically ternary, and we consider cases where underlying representations of considerable abstractness have been posited in previous frameworks. We also consider cases of opacity, where observed phonological properties do not neatly map onto the phonological generalisations governing patterns of alternation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Articulatory Strategies for Place Contrasts of Unreleased Final Stops on Preceding Vowels: Evidence from Ultrasound Imaging

  Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology · 2021-05-01

  articleOpen access

  This ultrasound study examines the gestural coordination involved in vowel-to-consonant sequences concerning unreleased final stops, which are more susceptible to reduction than their released counterparts. Thus, coarticulatory information on the preceding vowel is important to signal place contrasts of post-vocalic stops. The gestural coordination of vowel-consonant sequences of monosyllabic words in Cantonese represents a testing case for having preserved phonemic contrasts of six unreleased final stops in a range of vowel contexts. Preliminary results from smoothing spline ANOVA and linear mixed-effect regression show that coarticulatory patterns depend on vowel height, that is, non-high vowels are undergoing gradual coarticulation whereas high vowels are phonologising the lingual properties of the unreleased final stops on the preceding vowels.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Forthcoming: Emergent phonology

  2021-06-28

  article1st authorCorresponding

  To what extent do complex phonological patterns require the postulation of universal mechanisms specific to language? In this volume, we explore the  Emergent Hypothesis, that the innate language-specific faculty driving the shape of adult grammars is minimal, with grammar development relying instead on cognitive capacities of a general nature. Generalisations about sounds, and about the way sounds are organised into meaningful units, are constructed in a bottom-up fashion: As such, phonology is emergent. We present arguments for considering the Emergent Hypothesis, both conceptually and by working through an extended example in order to demonstrate how an adult grammar might emerge from the input encountered by a learner.  Developing a concrete, data-driven approach, we argue that the conventional, abstract notion of unique underlying representations is unmotivated; such underlying representations would require some innate principle to ensure their postulation by a learner. We review the history of the concept and show that such postulated forms result in undesirable phonological consequences. We work through several case studies to illustrate how various types of phonological patterns might be accounted for in the proposed framework. The case studies illustrate patterns of allophony, of productive and unproductive patterns of alternation, and cases where the surface manifestation of a feature does not seem to correspond to its morphological source. We consider cases where a phonetic distinction that is binary seems to manifest itself in a way that is morphologically ternary, and we consider cases where underlying representations of considerable abstractness have been posited in previous frameworks. We also consider cases of opacity, where observed phonological properties do not neatly map onto the phonological generalisations governing patterns of alternation.

  Publisher

• Northern Welsh

  Journal of the International Phonetic Association · 2021 · 2 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • World Wide Web

  Northern Welsh is one of two main dialect families of Welsh (cym, ISO 693-3) spoken in Wales, the other being Southern Welsh. The Welsh counties of Anglesey, Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire, and Wrexham in the United Kingdom are considered to comprise the unofficial region of North Wales shown in Figure Within this area there are further dialectal differences that are beyond the scope of this analysis, which considers the general features of Northern Welsh as a whole. However, see

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Indonesian Bajau (East Lombok)

  Journal of the International Phonetic Association · 2019-10-15

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Bajau is spoken as the primary language from the Philippines to Borneo to eastern Indonesia, by both nomadic and settled communities. It is also known as Badjaw, Badjo, Bajao, Bajo, Bayo, Gaj, Indonesian Bajaw, Orang Laut, Sama, and Terijene; see Simons & Fennig 2017. Glottolog.org lists ‘Indonesian Bajau’ as a language spoken on the south-eastern coast of Sulawesi, glottocode indo1317 and ISO 639-3 bdl. Clifton (2010) claims the population of Bajau speakers is 700,000–900,000, with around 150,000–230,000 in eastern Indonesia (Sather 1997) and 92,000 in Sulawesi (Mead & Lee 2007). There are also Bajau-speaking populations in the Philippines and Borneo (Jun 2005); see Figure 1. Bajau is classified as a threatened Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian language (Simons & Fennig 2017). It has been proposed that the language originated in the Zamboanga-Basilan area in southern Philippines (Jun 2005 citing Pallesen 1985).

  PublisherDOI

• Assamese vowels and vowel harmony

  Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics · 2019-09-01 · 83 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Based on impressionistic and acoustic data, Assamese is described as having a phonological tongue root harmony system, with blocking by certain phonological configurations and over-application in certain morphological contexts. This study explores physical properties of the patterns using ultrasonic imaging to determine whether the impressionistic descriptions match what speakers actually do. Principal components analysis (PCA) determines that most participants produce a contrast in tongue root position in the appropriate contexts, though there is less of an impact on tongue root with greater distance from the triggering vowel. Analysis uses the root mean squared distance (RMSD) calculation to determine whether both blocking and over-application take effect. The blocking results conform to the impressionistic descriptions. With over-application, [e] and [o] are expected; while some speakers clearly produce these vowels, others articulate a vowel that is indeterminant between the expected [e]/[o] and an unexpected [ɛ]/[ɔ]. No speaker consistently showed the expected tongue root position in all contexts, and some speakers appeared to have lost the contrast entirely, yet all are considered to be speakers of the same dialect of Assamese. Whether this (apparent) loss is a consequence of crude research methodologies or accurately reflects what is happening within the language community remains an open question.

  PublisherDOI

• The field is not the lab, and the lab is not the field: Experimental linguistics and endangered language communities

  2018-03-19

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Douglas Pulleyblank

  University of British Columbia

  15 shared

• Michael Hammond

  14 shared

• Andrew Carnie

  14 shared

• Jeff Mielke

  North Carolina State University

  11 shared

• Muriel Fisher

  9 shared

• Jonathan Yip

  University of Hong Kong

  9 shared

• Ian Clayton

  7 shared

• Adam Baker

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  6 shared