Exploring variant definitions of pointer length in MDL

Abstract

Within the information-theoretical framework described by (Rissanen, 1989; de Marcken, 1996; Goldsmith, 2001), pointers are used to avoid repetition of phonological material. Work with which we are familiar has assumed that there is only one way in which items could be pointed to. The purpose of this paper is to describe and compare several different methods, each of which satisfies MDL's basic requirements, but which have different consequences for the treatment of linguistic phenomena. In particular, we assess the conditions under which these different ways of pointing yield more compact descriptions of the data, both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective.