Whamit!

Speaker: Juan Cancel (MIT)

Title: Cross-Categorial Syncretisms: Theoretical Predictions and Empirical Observations

Time: Thursday, December 4th, 5pm - 6pm

Location: 32-D769



Abstract: Syncretisms and their generalizations have been the topic of much discussion in the morphological literature for a few years already (ex: Caha 2009, Starke 2017, Zompì 2023, etc). Nonetheless, a kind of syncretism that hasn’t been addressed much in that same literature are syncretisms that span the paradigms of different lexical categories (ex: nouns and verbs). In this presentation, I will be looking at these ‘cross-categorial syncretisms’ in terms of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993), argue about why we should expect them to exist, and make note of what specific features we would expect to behave as such. Finally, I will go over various examples from language families such as Turkic, Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and Uralic in order to show not only that they indeed exist, but that they seem to behave in ways that comply with our theoretical frameworks as well.

Speaker: Tam Berulava (MIT)
Title: Case-Matching Effects in Long-Distance Wh-Questions in Georgian
Time: Tuesday, December 2nd, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: I will present an ongoing project on long-distance wh-questions in Georgian, focusing on the interaction between cross-clausal wh-movement and case. Building on recent claims that Georgian lacks true cross-clausal wh-movement and instead uses only proleptic question constructions, I argue that genuine wh-extraction from embedded clauses is in fact available, but its distribution is tightly constrained. In particular, I show that acceptability systematically tracks (i) the case configuration between the matrix subject and the extracted wh-phrase and (ii) the structural size of the embedded clause, giving rise to robust “case matching” effects in long-distance questions. These effects indicate that the extracted wh-phrase is, in some way, visible to the matrix-level case-assigning algorithm, raising the natural question of how—and why—such cross-clausal visibility is possible.

Speaker: Iva Kova? (Vienna/UMass Amherst)

Title: Scope in NPI licensing

Time: Wednesday, December 3rd, 12:30pm - 2pm

Location: 32-D461



Abstract: Licensing of weak NPIs like any is subject to at least three scope-related constraints: certain elements, such as every, may not take scope between the NPI and its licenser (Linebarger 1980, 1987), the NPI must scope below its closest licenser (Homer 2020, Barker 2022), and it must be c-commanded by its licenser on the surface (Ladusaw 1979, 1980). In this talk, I bring these three constraints together by drawing a connection between NPI licensing and conditions that apply to scope taking of regular quantifiers (Fox 1995, Mayr & Spector 2010) and their linear order (Bobaljik & Wurmbrand 2012). I propose that NPI licensing is computed incrementally and explore an implementation in terms of Quantifier Raising and an interplay between spell-out domains and interface (LF and PF) principles regulating copy choice. In brief, under certain clearly defined conditions, NPIs like any disambiguate scope relations by marking narrow scope (Barker 2018), but syntactic domains force them to do so locally. If on the right track, this approach provides an argument in favour of an architecture of grammar where PF and LF domains can be distinct and PF has access to LF.

Speaker: Johanna Alstott (MIT)

Title: A cautionary note on word learning paradigms and presupposition triggering

Time: Thursday, December 4, 12:30pm - 2pm

Location: 32-D461



Abstract: Cross-linguistically, predicates with both initial-state and change-of-state components tend to encode them as presupposition and assertion, respectively. Bade et al. (2024) argue on the basis of a series of artificial word learning experiments that this cross-linguistic tendency reflects conceptual biases privileging changes-of-state over initial-states. In their experiments, they gauged how participants encoded the initial-state and change-of-state entailments of a nonce verb wug, and they interpret their results as suggesting that participants generally encoded the initial-state entailment as a presupposition and encoded the change-of-state entailment as the assertion. This finding, they argue, favors their conceptual-bias hypothesis over competing accounts. In this talk (joint work with Athulya Aravind), we further test the validity of Bade et al.’s paradigm via an additional experiment where we both try to replicate their original effect and, in parallel, ascertain whether their results generalize to a nonce initial-state/change-of-state predicate other than the one that they test. We not only fail to extend Bade et al.’s results to our new nonce word but also fail to replicate their original effect: our participants overwhelmingly treated Bade et al.’s wug and our new nonce word as non-presuppositional. A closer look at Bade et al.’s original studies suggests that non-presuppositional construals were common there, too, and we discuss several reasons why this could have been the case. All told, our outlook is pessimistic: adult artificial word-learning tasks do not, in fact, illuminate the mechanisms of presupposition triggering.