phonoloblog | all things phonology | camba.ucsd.edu/phonoloblog

[ Via LinguistList. ]

P-base is a searchable database of 8000+ sound patterns as reported in grammars of 628 varieties of 549 spoken languages, which represent all grammars found on the shelves in the libraries of The Ohio State University and Michigan State University during 2003 and 2004 (Library of Congress PA-PM).

The database was collected for my dissertation and will be distributed by Oxford with the book version of it. It will also remain freely downloadable. I am looking for people to provide feedback on the program and the data in it.

The beta version of the program can be downloaded from
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mielke/research/pbase.html

Please send questions and comments to

. Let me know how the database and interface could be made more useful to you in terms of features or content.

Thanks
Jeff Mielke

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In case you haven’t been following this virtual thread:

1. Bill Idsardi’s six-page paper “A simple proof that Optimality Theory is computationally intractable” appeared in the latest issue of LI (vol. 37, 271-275).
2. András Kornai has a one-page reply (”Is OT NP-hard?”) on ROA.
3. Idsardi has a three-page rejoinder (”Misplaced optimism”), also on ROA.
4. Update: And another by Kornai (”Guarded optimism”).

This is exactly the sort of thing that should be happening on ROA (and, I would hope, also here on phonoloblog).