Andrew B Wedel

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Scholarly Contributions

Chapters

• Wedel, A. B. (2015). Simulation as a investigative tool in historical phonology. In Handbook of Historical Phonology.
  More info

  This is a pedagogical and research review chapter on the use of computational simulation as a tool for understanding language change patterns in the context of historical language data.;

Journals/Publications

• Wedel, A. B. (2019). Crosslinguistic evidence for a strong statistical universal: Phonological neutralization targets word-ends over beginnings.. Language, 95(4), e428-e446.
• Wedel, A. B. (2019). Greater Early Disambiguating Information for Less-Probable Words: The Lexicon Is Shaped by Incremental Processing. Open Mind, 1-12. doi:https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00030
• Ussishkin, A. P., Ussishkin, A. P., Dawson, C., Dawson, C., Wedel, A. B., Wedel, A. B., Schluter, K., & Schluter, K. (2015). Auditory masked priming in Maltese spoken word recognition. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(9), 1096-1115. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1005635
• Wedel, A. B., & Winter, B. (2015). Commentary: Desiccation and tone within linguistic theory and language contact research. Journal of Language Evolution, 1(1), 80-82.
• Wedel, A. B., & Winter, B. (2015). The Co‐evolution of Speech and the Lexicon: The Interaction of Functional Pressures, Redundancy, and Category Variation. Topics in Cognitive Science, 8(2), 503 512.
• Wedel, A. B., & Winter, B. (2015). The co-evolution of speech and the lexicon: The interaction of functional pressures, redundancy and category variation. Topics in Cognitive Science.
• Wedel, A. B., Hume, B., Hall, K., Ussishkin, A., Adda-Decker, M., & Gendrot, C. (2014). Anti-markedness patterns in French epenthesis: An information-theoretic approach. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 37(1), 104-123.
• Wedel, A. B., Jackson, S., & Kaplan, A. (2013). Functional load and the lexicon: Evidence that syntactic category and frequency relationships in minimal lemma pairs predict the loss of phoneme contrasts in language change. Language and Speech/Sage, 56, 395-417.
  More info

  All languages make systematic use of individually meaningless, contrastive categories incombination to create distinct words. Despite the central role that phonemic category contrastsplay in the transmission of information in language use, contrasts can be lost over the course oflanguage change. The century-old functional load hypothesis proposes that phoneme contrast losswill be inhibited in relation to the â€;Your Role: Primary Author;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Faculty at other institutions;
• Wedel, A. B., Kaplan, A., & Jackson, S. (2013). Lexical contrast constrains phoneme merger: a corpus study. Cognition/Elsevier, 128, 179-186.
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  For nearly a century, linguists have suggested that diachronic merger is less likely betweenphonemes with a high functional load - that is, phonemes that distinguish many words inthe language in question. However, limitations in data and computational power havemade assessing this hypothesis difficult. Here we present the first larger-scale study of thefunctional load hypothesis, using data from sound changes in a diverse set of languages.Our results support the functional load hypothesis: phoneme pairs undergoing mergerdistinguish significantly fewer minimal pairs in the lexicon than unmerged phoneme pairs.Furthermore, we show that higher phoneme probability is positively correlated withmerger, but that this e↵ect is stronger for phonemes that distinguish no minimal pairs.Finally, within our dataset we find that minimal pair count and phoneme probability betterpredict merger than change in system entropy at the lexical or phoneme level.;Your Role: Primary Author;Other collaborative: Yes;Specify other collaborative: Faculty at other institutions;

Presentations

• Ussishkin, A. P., & Wedel, A. B. (2018, Summer). Phonological grammars evolve to preserve information at word beginnings. LabPhon 16 Satellite Workshop: The role of predictability in shaping human sound systems. University of Lisbon, Portugal: LabPhon 16.
• Hammond, M., Anderson, S., Archangeli, D. B., Bell, E., Brooks, H. L., Carnie, A. H., Ohala, D. K., Ussishkin, A. P., Webb-Davies, P., & Wedel, A. B. (2017, july). Grant ar dreigladau’r Gymraeg: adroddiad interim (Interim report on the grant on the mutations of Welsh). Seminar Ieithyddiaeth y Gymraeg Gregynog. Newtown, Wales.
• Webb-Davies, P., Hammond, M., Bell, E., Anderson, S., Archangeli, D. B., Brooks, H. L., Carnie, A. H., Ohala, D. K., Ussishkin, A. P., & Wedel, A. B. (2016, Summer). The Arizona-Wales mutation grant: introducing the project. 23ain Seminar Ieithyddiaeth y Gymraeg, Gregynog.
• Webb-Davies, P., Webb-Davies, P., Hammond, M., Hammond, M., Bell, E., Bell, E., Anderson, S., Anderson, S., Archangeli, D. B., Archangeli, D. B., Brooks, H. L., Brooks, H. L., Carnie, A. H., Carnie, A. H., Ohala, D. K., Ohala, D. K., Ussishkin, A. P., Ussishkin, A. P., Wedel, A. B., & Wedel, A. B. (2016, ?). The Arizona-Wales mutation grant: introducing the project. 23ain Seminar Ieithyddiaeth y Gymraeg, Gregynog.
• Wedel, A. B. (2016, Fall). Functional pressure from the lexicon shapes phoneme inventory evolution. Colloquium. Berkeley, CA: U Berkeley Linguistics Dept..
• Wedel, A. B. (2015, August). Sound Change and Speech Evolution. ICPhS Symposium on Sound Change. Glasgow, UK: UCPhS.
• Wedel, A. B. (2015, June). Cognitive Biases, Logical Fallacies and the Scientific Method. Invited Workshop. York, UK: University of York.
• Wedel, A. B. (2015, June). Lexical contrast as a driver of sound change: Synchronic hyperarticulation of words, diachronic evolution of inventories. U. Newcastle Colloquium. Newcastle, UK: University of Newcastle, UK.
• Wedel, A. B. (2015, June). The message shapes the signal: Accounting for strong and weak patterns in phonology. Invited Colloquium. Edinburgh, Scotland: University of Edinburgh.
• Wedel, A. B. (2015, June). The message shapes the signal: Accounting for strong and weak patterns in phonology. Invited Colloquium. York, UK: University of York.
• Wedel, A. B. (2015, October). Biased variation shapes sound system change: Integrating data from modeling, experiments and corpora. Workshop on Modeling Variability in Speech. Stuttgart, Germany: Universität Stuttgart.
• Wedel, A. B., & Jackson, S. (2015, January). Lexical functional load predicts the direction of phoneme system change. Linguistics Society of America, Annual Meeting. Minneapolis, MN: Linguistics Society of America.
• Wedel, A. B., & Winter, B. (2015, August). Simulating the interaction of functional pressure, redundancy and category variation in phonetic systems. International Conference on Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, UK: ICPhS.
• Wedel, A. B., & Winter, B. (2015, July). The interaction of functional pressure, redundancy and category variation in phonetic systems. Workshop on Computational Morphology and Phonology 2015, LSA Summer Institute. University of Chicago: LSA Summer Institute 2015.
• Wedel, A. B. (2014, December). The signal adapts to the message: Language sound systems evolve to preserve word distinctions. U of A/ASU Cognitive Science Conclave. ASU: U of A/ASU.
• Wedel, A. B. (2014, January). Phonology responds to the lexicon: Functional Load and Sound Change. Symposium on Historical Phonology. Edinburgh, UK: U. Edinburgh.
• Wedel, A. B. (2014, January). The lexicon as a dynamical system: The drive to keep words distinct and the evolution of phoneme inventories. Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience MeetingUniv. Arizona.
• Wedel, A. B. (2014, March). A LABORATORY MODEL OF SUBLEXICAL SIGNAL CATEGORY EVOLUTION. Evo-Lang. Vienna, Austria: Univ. Vienna.
• Wedel, A. B. (2014, October). The message shapes the signal: Accounting for strong and weak patterns. Colloquium. Salt Lake City: Univ. Utah.
• Wedel, A. B. (2014, October). The message shapes the signal: Accounting for strong and weak patterns. Colloquium. University of Madison: Dept. of Linguistics University of Madison.
• Wedel, A. B., & Jackson, S. (2014, April). Lexical functional load predicts the direction of phoneme system change. SCIHS Berkeley 2014. Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley Linguistics Department.

Other Teaching Materials

• Wedel, A. B., & Winter, B. (2015. The Data Goldrush: exploiting freely available web resources for language research. LSA Summer Institute.
  More info

  http://www.linguisticsociety.org/e-learning/data-goldrushhttps://lsa2015.uchicago.edu/courses/data-gold-rush-exploiting-freely-available-web-data-linguistic-research