Whamit!

Speaker: Eric Bakovi? (UC San Diego)

Title: A computational typology of vowel harmony patterns

Time: , 3:30pm - 5pm

Location: 32-141



Abstract: We propose a typology of vowel harmony patterns using Boolean Monadic Recursive Schemes (BMRS; Bhaskar et al. 2020, Chandlee & Jardine 2021). BMRS describe input-output maps as logical transductions using conditional IF…THEN…ELSE… syntax, and unite computational universals from formal language theory with substantive universals from phonological analysis. We identify how different computational structures (extension) and basic predicate types (intension) systematically derive distinct harmony patterns. Our typology emerges from varying the presence, type, and scope of redundancy conditions within BMRS harmony functions. When potential targets fail to receive or propagate harmonic features, redundancy conditions override harmony in predictable ways by blocking feature reception, halting feature propagation, or preventing both reception and propagation, depending on their type and scope within the function. This proposal builds upon recent work relating phonological generalizations to specific BMRS structures, offering a unified computational account of typological variation in vowel harmony without the representational assumptions of traditional approaches.

Elora Cromarty: Tánsi Káhkinaw! My name is Elora Cromarty, and I am one of the incoming students in the MITILI program! I was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada, and am a member of Kinoséw Sípí, or Norway House Cree Nation, located in Northern Manitoba. I’m Muskego-Ininéw (Swampy Cree) and an L2 learner/speaker of Ininímowin (Swampy Cree/ N-dialect of Cree). My dialect has around 3,000 speakers with an average age of 50, and my community has around 500 L1 speakers. I just finished my BA in Linguistics from the University of Manitoba, and my interests are in morphology, syntax, morphosyntax, sociolinguistics, and language acquisition. Outside of academics, I’ve worked with several non-profit/grassroots/community-based organizations and have supported programming with the 7 different Indigenous languages spoken in my province. I’m really interested in seeing how linguistics can support revitalization and documentation practices in a way that ultimately supports our communities. Finally, in my free time I like to bead, sew, play video games, and go sightseeing! Ékosáni!

Aya Halabi: I am originally from Nablus, the largest city in the northern West Bank, Palestine. I earned my BA in English Language & Literature and my MA in Applied Linguistics and Translation in Palestine before moving to the U.S., where I completed an MA in Linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. My research lies in syntax and its interface with morphology, with a particular focus on agreement, case, and their interactions—especially in ergative languages. I am also interested in broader questions of allomorphy, locality, and spell-out domains in complex words. Empirically, I work on endangered (and moribund) Semitic languages and conduct fieldwork with these communities. Beyond linguistics, I enjoy reading fiction, cooking, and taking long walks.

Eyal Marco: My name is Eyal (I visited the department last year, so some of you may know me). I come from Tel Aviv University, where I worked at Ezer Rasin’s phonological computation lab. My theoretical phonological work at the lab was primarily informed by original fieldwork on two endangered Jewish varieties of Arabic. In a different line of research, I’ve been evaluating theories of phonological representation based on their predictions regarding learning. Before joining the lab, I spent many years in the Israeli music industry. I’m also a devoted Arsenal fan and always enjoy discussing Premier League football.

Amanda Michel: Hi, my name is Mandy! I grew up in Northern Virginia (around Washington D.C.) and completed my Bachelor’s at the College of William & Mary in Linguistics and Computer Science. My linguistic interests lie in theoretical and computational phonology; so far, I’ve done work modeling variation in Norwegian stress patterns using MaxEnt models. When I’m not incessantly asking friends and family to repeat things because they have unknowingly done something of phonological interest, I enjoy reading (fantasy and sci fi, in particular), crocheting (or knitting… or embroidering… or sewing…), and going to live music shows.

Vsevolod (Seva) Masliukov: I come from Ivanovo, a regional center in the European part of Russia. I received a B.A. in linguistics at Lomonosov Moscow State University. I am primarily interested in the semantics of aspect & event/argument structure. Most of my research to date was done through fieldwork and was focused on Uralic languages (especially Northern Khanty and Forest Nenets). Outside of linguistics, I enjoy cinema, reading fiction and trivia, traveling around the globe and some occasional origami. 

Ro’nikonhkátste Norton: Kwe kwe, my name is Ro’nikonhkátste Norton, I am wolf clan of the Kanien’kehá:ka nation. I come from Kahnawà:ke, located just across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. I began actively learning Kanien’kéha as a second language 13 years ago and have since been heavily involved in its revitalization, primarily as a language instructor for the past 11 years. While my formal background is in education, having earned a B.Ed. from McGill University, my interest naturally lies in linguistics. I am looking forward to starting the MITILI program and gaining knowledge and experience that I can bring back to my communities. As someone trying to reclaim my entire language, my areas of interest in linguistics are pretty broad and all-encompassing. I’ll have to narrow that down and choose something at some point during my time here at MIT. Otherwise, I enjoy reading good books, watching good television, and cooking (and eating) good food. I recently began lifting. I am also prone to doing whatever it is that my daughter would like to do. One fun fact about her (and me, I suppose) that I’m quite proud of is that I successfully bridged the intergenerational gap between L1 speakers, between my grandmother and her.

Thomas Truong: Hi I’m Thomas, I’m from Orlando, Florida and I got my BA in Linguistics and Philosophy from UMass Amherst. I enjoy learning about many topics in semantics and syntax, such as modality, tense/aspect, polarity, and comparatives/superlatives. Non-linguistics subjects I like include math and philosophy and art history. I like getting museum fatigue in random exhibits and traveling to see cool things. I also like trying new foods- especially strange and uncommon dishes from any cuisine. Recently I enjoy bouldering but I want to try and learn new sports.

Karolin Kaiser: I’m Karolin from Berlin. I am interested in semantics, especially comparison constructions, additivity, and at times disjunction. The internet in all its forms is my main hobby (especially texting). I do enjoy reading and politics. I don’t particularly enjoy board games. 

Nima Bahrami

James Morley

On 5th August, 4th year student Yurika Aonuki gave an invited talk with the title “Differential measure phrases and comparatives in Gitksan” in a workshop held at Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan.

On 25-27 June, 2025, the Society of Pidgin and Creole Language presented its summer conference (SPCL), hosted by The University of the West Indies, Mona, under the theme “Pidgin and Creole Studies in the Era of Big Data and AI”. 5th-year student Christopher Legerme gave an oral presentation, titled Intermodular Spell-Out and the Distribution of Ye in Haitian Creole. His talk discussed how the copular morpheme ye in Haitian Creole emerges to satisfy prosodic requirements at PF, linking its distribution to broader patterns in Haitian Creole like verbal apocope.

4th year student Juan Cancel presented a paper entitled “A reanalysis of syllabic and rhythmic gradation in Nganasan as a single consonant gradation process” at the 31st Manchester Phonology Meeting last May.

In addition, Juan also gave a talk, titled “Metrical Incoherence or Opacity: A Stratal OT Analysis of Rhythmic Gradation in Nganasan”, at the Congressus XIV Internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum (CIFU) held in Tartu. You can read the abstract here.

Below are two photos of the beautiful campus of University Manchester (left) and University of Tartu (right):

Course announcements in this post:

• Topics in Semantics (24.979)
• Topics in Phonology (24.964)

24.979: Topics in Semantics

• Instructor: Amir Anvari & Martin Hackl & Viola Schmit
• Time: Thursday, 2pm-5pm
• Room: 32-D461

The very basic observation that expressions can refer to semantic objects raises two general questions. The first concerns the mapping, i.e., how a particular expression with a given conventional meaning actually gets to pick a particular semantic object (an entity, a function, etc.)? This issue is raised, for example, by pronouns, but also by expressions without overt pro-forms whose values seem to be (partially) dependent on the context. The second question concerns the status of the semantic objects that are being picked out themselves. We often take them to be given (as in standard model theoretic semantics), setting aside e.g. issues concerning how the context might contribute to individuating these objects. The seminar will consist of various explorations and case studies, which we hope will bring these foundational issues into sharper focus. Issues we hope to discuss include:  What are grammatically relevant notions of identity or similarity and distinctness? When do we take two expressions to refer to the same semantic object? When can we use expressions that intuitively relate to identity, like pronouns or operators like same? When do we take two expressions to refer to different objects? And when are those grammatical devices licensed that intuitively seem to relate to distinctness, like different, plurals or numerals?

• Instructor: Adam Albright
• Time: Wednesday, 10am-1pm
• Room: 32-D461

On August 29th, Omri Doron successfully and eloquently defended his dissertation, titled Another look at the typology of number: the mystery of the missing singular! Congratulations, Omri!! You can read the abstract below:

The typology of nominal number marking features, in addition to languages like English, in which all nouns in argument position are singular or plural, languages in which nouns can appear in the general number form (Andrzejewsky, 1960) - a form which is semantically unspecified for number. In my dissertation, I discuss two challenges that these languages pose to theories that assume that plural nouns are born inclusive (containing both atomic and plural individuals), and get their multiplicity inferences from competition with their singular alternative. First, languages like Bayso (Cushitic, East Africa), in which nouns come in either the singular, the plural or the general form, raise the question of why the plural form gives rise to multiplicity inferences but the general form does not. Second, languages like Indonesian, in which nouns seem to come only in the plural and the general form, raise the additional question of how multiplicity inferences arise from the plural form in the lack of a singular alternative to compete with. I propose a solution for these two problems, and show that it provides us with a parsimonious account of the typological picture, and naturally exntends to the pattern of plural marking on wh-words in languages like Spanish (Maldonado 2020, Elliott et al. 2022, Alonso-Ovalle & Rouillard 2023).

Here are photos of Omri and three members in his committee (from left to right: Danny, Kai, Omri and Viola). In addition, Martin joined the defense via Zoom:

On July 16th, Adele Mortier successfully and briliantly defended her dissertation Oddness under Discussion! Here is Adele’s abstract:

At a broad level, this dissertation’s main claim is that many cases of pragmatic oddness, do not stem from assertions alone, but rather from their interaction with the questions they implicitely evoke. Felicitous assertions, must evoke felicitous questions. To operationalize this claim, a model of compositionally derived implicit question is devised, along with conditions of their well-formedness, drawing from familiar concepts in pragmatics, such as Redundancy and Relevance. This model assigns a central role to the degree of specificity, or granularity, conveyed by assertions.

At a more narrow level, this dissertation argues that disjunctions and conditionals fundamentally differ in terms of the questions they evoke, and that this difference has direct consequences on the oddness/felicity profiles of sentences involving these operators. Disjunctions are shown to be prone to Redundancy issues, while conditionals are shown to be prone to Relevance issues. In other words, disjunctions and conditionals typically display distinct flavors of oddness. This is supported by three main classes of sentences. First, sentences that can be seen as equivalent, but which combine conditionals and disjunctions in distinct ways, display varying felicity profiles. This will be the focus of the public presentation. Second, “pure” disjunctions and conditionals that can be seen as isomorphic, if not equivalent, display varying felicity profiles. This will be partially covered during the public presentation. Third, some differences between these disjunctions and conditionals remain when additional pragmatic phenomena, in particular scalar implicatures, are at play, and such differences shift in a way predicted by our approach. This will not be covered in the public presentation.

This dissertation therefore supports the use of a more elaborate model of (implicit) questions, which, when fed to the pragmatic module, is characterized by a better empirical accuracy on challenging data, than previous model solely based on assertive content.

Congratulations, Adele!! Here are some photos of Adele and members in her committee (from left to right: Martin, Danny, Adele, Amir, Athulya):

 

Congratulations to Giovanni Roversi, who successfully defended his fascinating dissertation on Locality: a case study from Äiwoo on July 15th!! Here is Giovanni’s abstract:

This dissertation focuses on the notion of locality in syntactic theory, using as its empirical base a case study from Äiwoo (Solomon Islands; Oceanic < Austronesian).

In this language, word order is variable, yet strict. Depending on a variety of factors, every (transitive) clause can look a number of different ways, with different verbal mophology and the two arguments surfacing in different positions. However, these are not optional alternatives: for any clause, only one order is ever grammatically possible. Moreover, this variation in word order and verbal morphology is partially correlated with a restriction on which argument(s) may or may not be ?-extracted from any type of clause, but there is no one-to-one mapping between word order, verbal morphology, and ?-extraction possibilities.

I try to disentangle these aspects of Äiwoo syntax by building a model that generates all and only the attested clause types, with a principled account of their respective extraction profiles. This will provide us with a fine-grained view on a number of issues in syntactic theory, all ultimately revolving around locality. I argue that the typical locality properties of A- and ?-movement (respectively, strictly local vs. not) are solely derivable from featural Relativized Minimality without adding any new mechanisms to our theoretical apparatus, and that therefore, locality is actually independent from the A/?-distinction altogether. This correctly predicts the existence of exceptions in both directions, that is, instances of movement that break with our expectations (surprisingly non-local A-movement, and surprisingly strictly local ?-movement) – which we do indeed find in Äiwoo. I show that these are only“exceptions”prima facie, and they can receive a principled account based on Relativized Minimality. Furthermore, my model of Äiwoo clausal syntax will also have theoretical consequences for the morphosyntactic properties of Austronesian voice systems, and for the external and internal syntax of different categories of nominals.

See below for some photos of Giovanni after the defense with the three committee members (from left to right: Norvin, David, Omri, Amy Rose Deal, Athulya):

    

On July 10th, Yash Sinha successfully and excellently defended his dissertation, titled Plurals of politeness and the morphosyntax of number! Congratualtions, Yash!! You can read the abstract below:

Many languages use plural pronouns to address (and refer to) single individuals with politeness or honorification. In some languages, these plurals of politeness (PoPs) show mixed agreement, triggering plural agreement on some agreement targets and singular on others. In this dissertation, I use PoPs to investigate the internal structure of DPs, focusing on how number features are represented within them. 

Starting first with pronominal DPs, I adopt the view that these contain two phrases: (i) a noun phrase (NP) headed by a silent noun (Postal 1966 and subsequent work), and (ii) an index phrase (idxP), realized by the pronoun, which occupies the specifier of the DP and introduces a referential index (Jenks 2022; see also Choi 2014, Giusti 2015). My novel claim is that both the NP and the idxP bear their own number features. In most cases, this is not detectable because the number features of the NP and idxP typically match. I argue, however, that this is not the case for PoPs, which allows us to see that these two number features are in fact distinct. Specifically, I show that the agreement patterns of PoPs are best accounted for by treating them as consisting of a plural idxP with a singular NP (i.e., a plural pronoun with a silent singular noun). This analysis not only derives the mixed agreement of PoPs seen in some languages, but also explains certain cross-linguistic restrictions on the distribution of singular agreement with them. 

I also extend this analysis to account for nominal PoPs, a type of nominal DP found in a subset of languages with pronominal PoPs. These nominal PoPs have the same semantics and the same agreement patterns as their pronominal counterparts, but crucially, the morphology on the noun in nominal PoPs is singular and not plural.  I argue that these similarities and differences can be explained by positing that idxPs are present in nominal DPs as well, but are not realized overtly.

Here are photos of Yash with three members of his committee and opening the traditional post-defence champagne:

Speaker: Yiannis Katochoritis (MIT)
Title: Long-distance agreement on Procrustes’ bed: a revival of spec-head
Time: , 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Long-distance agreement (LDA) refers to the phenomenon where a matrix verb may (optionally) agree in ?-features with an embedded argument of its complement clause, otherwise showing default agreement with the entire complement clause. Spanning a clausal boundary and appearing to involve no displacement of the embedded goal, LDA has been one of the core empirical arguments in favor of the operation Agree, which dissociates agreement from movement.

This talk has a double aim: first, to present a previosuly unnoticed observation; that is, (almost) all geographically diverse LDA languages share fundamental typological properties: they are verb-final, with a (full or split) ergative alignment, and with default SOV order; moreover, LDA-transparent embedded clauses are always either restructuring VPs or nominalized/participial TP/CPs; and once a potential LDA goal somehow overtly fronts to the left of the matrix verb, LDA (usually) becomes obligatory.

Second, I attempt to account for this empirical picture through little bits of Kayne’s (1994) Antisymmetry, Bobaljik’s (2008) m-case hierarchy, and the magic power of pied-piping. Specifically, I will suggest a unified analysis of LDA as local feature-checking in a (covert) spec-head configuration, which may allow for iterative feature-copying under recursive merge. Depending on two parameters, the specifier of the agreeing verbal head is filled either directly by the moving DP goal or by the complement clause that pied-pipes the goal at its edge. Hence, LDA is derived via Merge, not Agree. This will eventually yield a typology of (at least) four types of LDA systems, among which I will (struggle to) intergrate the outlier named Algonquian.

The analysis hinges on two crucial premises: one, LDA often features movement properties/constraints; two, the optionality of LDA is only apparent, as it obligatorily interacts with scope and/or information-structure, reducing to the reflex of independently motivated syntactic processes. Thus, I will distinguish between two types of agreement: narrow-syntactic agreement feeds LF or further syntactic operations, and involves downwards valuation by some interpretable feature, (plausibly) under spec-head. This contrasts with uninterpretable agreement, which is pushed post-syntactically, at early PF, and may operate from a distance, via upwards valuation (though still c-command-based).

Two pieces of great news about our recent alums Danfeng Wu (PhD 2022) and Michelle Yuan (PhD 2018).

We’ve just received the great news that Danfeng Wu has accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at the University of Geneva (en français: “professeure assistante avec prétitularisation conditionnelle”). A specialist in syntax and semantics, and especially their interaction with prosody, Danfeng has been a “Fellow by Examination” for the past three years at Magdalen College, Oxford, since completing her degree here at MIT.  Congratulations, Danfeng!! Congratulations, Geneva!!

And we have also learned that Michelle Yuan has been awarded tenure and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at UCLA.  Congratulations, Michelle, and congratulations, UCLA!!