One-shot vs. competitions phonotactics in modeling constraing cumulativity

Previous literature often models probabilistic phonotactic patterns with all candidate forms in a single competition, while other phonotactic models structure candidates in separate competitions, each competing against a null candidate that violates an opposing constraint only once. This paper finds that the structure of the candidate competition in probabilistic phonological models such as MaxEnt (Hayes & Wilson, 2008) affect the way constraints interact in the grammar. Specifically, "one-shot" grammar structures wherein all candidates are in the same competition predict that additional violations may only take an increasingly smaller hit on probability relative to preceding violations, while "multiple competitions" grammar structures can predict that later violations may take a greater hit on probability relative to previous violations. Ultimately, these results shed light on the grammar structures necessary for capturing cumulative constraint interactions and on their consequences for phonotactics and phonotactic learning in general.