Papers › Simple induction of (deterministic) probabilistic finite-state automata for...
Simple induction of (deterministic) probabilistic finite-state automata for phonotactics by stochastic gradient descent
Huteng Dai, Richard Futrell
We introduce a simple and highly general phonotactic learner which induces a probabilistic finite-state automaton from word-form data. We describe the learner and show how to parameterize it to induce unrestricted regular languages, as well as how to restrict it to certain subregular classes such as Strictly k-Local and Strictly k-Piecewise languages. We evaluate the learner on its ability to learn phonotactic constraints in toy examples and in datasets of Quechua and Navajo. We find that an unrestricted learner is the most accurate overall when modeling attested forms not seen in training; however, only the learner restricted to the Strictly Piecewise language class successfully captures certain nonlocal phonotactic constraints. Our learner serves as a baseline for more sophisticated methods.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections