@inproceedings{hong-2026-lexical,
    title = "Lexical exceptionality in paradigm-specific learning: modeling stem-final obstruent alternations in {K}orean verbs and adjectives",
    author = "Hong, Stella Eunsoo",
    editor = "Voigt, Rob  and
      Warstadt, Alex  and
      Feldman, Naomi  and
      Linzen, Tal",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics 2026",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "San Diego, CA",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.scil-main.47/",
    pages = "496--512",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-412-5",
    abstract = "Korean stem-final conjugations illustrate the interaction between lexical exceptionality and heterogeneous phonological processes. When /p/-, /t/-, and /s/-final stems occur before vowel-initial suffixes, the irregular classes in these paradigms undergo intervocalic lenition, each exhibiting a distinct alternation pattern. Learners must therefore not only identify which roots trigger lenition, but also determine the corresponding repair strategy. This study investigates how lexically-specific phonological patterns are acquired when multiple repair strategies are available. We employ a lexically scaled MaxEnt model (Linzen et al., 2013; Hughto et al., 2019) to learn these paradigm-specific alternations and run simulations under two learning scenarios: (1) when repair strategies occur at equal frequencies and (2) when one strategy significantly outnumbers the others. Results show that the model favors a \textit{least-cost} solution by treating statistically dominant morpheme classes as the general pattern. We conclude by discussing the model{'}s sensitivity to lexical statistics, predictions for empirical testing, and implications for language acquisition."
}