2024/06/24 by Giorgio Magri
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Evolutionary Algorithms and Applications #Language and cultural evolution #RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms #maximum entropy grammars #noisy harmonic grammars
paper · doi:10.7275/scil.2143
openalex publication_date 2024/06/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
All constraint-based probabilistic phonological typologies considered in the recent literature consist of uncountably many different grammars. Yet, what if two grammars that differ only slightly are coarsely counted as only one grammar when assessing the finiteness of a probabilistic typology? This paper formalizes various notions of coarse identity between probabilistic grammars and corresponding notions of coarse finiteness. It then shows that typologies of maximum entropy grammars can remain stubbornly infinite even when their grammars are counted coarsely. A companion paper shows that ypologies of noisy or stochastic harmonic grammars are instead always coarsely finite. Coarse finiteness thus provides further evidence that maximum entropy is a richer, less restrictive framework.