The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics
Phonology Circle will not meet this week due to the Patriots Day holiday. We resume next week with a talk by Jae Yung Song of Brown University.
Upcoming talks:
Access real-time updates, on-line via the web (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or through iCal
Due to the Tuesday holiday, there will be no Syntax Square this week. If you would like to lead a discussion, there are two available dates remaining: April 27 and May 4. Please email Claire (halpert@mit.edu) to volunteer for a spot.
WHO: Paolo Santorio (MIT Philosophy)
TITLE: Modals are monsters: On indexical binding in English (SALT Practice Talk)
WHEN: April 21st, Wednesday, 4PM - 5:30PM
WHERE: tentatively, 32-D461; if we are not there - there will be a note on the door
WHAT EXACTLY (abstract): click here
Speaker: Shigeru Miyagawa
Title: Primacy of Person Agreement: Revisiting Jaeggli and Safir’s Morphological Uniformity for Pro-drop
Time: Thurs 4/22, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Pro-drop is typically correlated with rich agreement (Jespersen 1924, Perlmutter 1971, Rizzi 1978, Taraldsen 1978). However, languages such as Chinese evidence pro-drop without any overt agreement (Huang 1984). To account for both types, Jaeggli and Safir (1989) propose that languages that are morphologically uniformly complex (e.g., Romance) or uniformly simple (Chinese) allow pro-drop, calling it “Morphological Uniformity” (MU). In this talk, I will flush out some of the empirical issues associated with pro-drop to try to understand what is behind MU. An important observation made in the 1990s is that not all instances of pro-drop are associated with a pronominal element (Huang 1991, Otani and Whitman 1991). Oku (1998) shows that in some cases the empty element is the site of noun-phrase ellipsis (NPE). His work shows that the distribution of pro and NPE can be predicted by and large from the presence or absence of agreement: only pro is allowed in the presence of agreement; NPE is only allowed in the absence of agreement (see also Saito 2007). Based on recent studies by Miyagawa (2010), ?ener and Takahashi (to appear), and Takahashi (2008, 2010), I will show that when there is no morphological indication of agreement whatsoever at finite T, the default is to interpret person agreement at T, leading to the possibility of pro but not NPE. This is the morphologically uniformly simple phenomenon in MU and it characterizes Chinese, which shows person agreement at T without any morphology. Data from Basque and Japanese provide further evidence for this new version of MU.
WHAT: Work in progress
WHO: DaeYoung Sohn and Yasutada Sudo
TITLE: Scale Dependency in Comparatives and Other Degree Constructions in Korean
WHEN: April 12th, Monday, 11.30AM - 1PM
WHERE: 32-D831
This week’s Phonology Circle presentation is by Haruka Fukazawa, of Keio University.
Speaker: Haruka Fukazawa
Title: How to restrict the architecture and sub-components of the grammar
Time: Monday 4/12, 5pm
Location: 32-D831
Along with its development, the simple architecture of classic OT has shown its limitation: there are many difficult or unexplained cases. Several sub-components have been introduced to compensate for this limitation. In this talk, I am going to discuss how the architecture and sub-components of the grammar can be integrated or restricted within OT focusing particularly on Local Conjunction, Relativized Faithfulness, and OT-CC.
Upcoming talks:
Access real-time updates, on-line via the web (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or through iCal
Please join us for Syntax Square this week. Alya Asarina and Jeremy Hartman will discuss “Subject case and verbal morphology in Uyghur embedded clauses.”
Time: Tuesday, 4/13, 1-2PM
Place: 32D-461
The GSAS Workshop in Language Universals and Linguistic Fieldwork presents:
Speaker: DANIEL KAUFMAN (UNFR and CUNY Graduate Center)
Title: ‘Greenberg’s 16th slayed in the Bronx? Language universals and
fieldwork in New York City’
Time: Tuesday, April 13th, 5:30-7pm
Location: Boylston Hall 104
Upcoming Universals Talks
Hazel Pearson (Harvard University)
April 20, 5:30-7pm; Boylston 104
Title: “Towards a crosslinguistic typology for comparatives: Evidence
from Fijian and Japanese”
Michael Diercks (Georgetown University)
April 27, 5:30-7pm; location TBA
Title: “Complementizer Agreement in Lubukusu”
Speaker: Aniko Csirmaz (University of Utah)
Title: Degree achievements - achieving specific aspectual properties
Time: Thurs 4/1, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Degree achievements verbs (DAs, Dowty 1979), which include ‘dry’, ‘darken’, ‘cool’ and ‘narrow’, can appear in different types of event descriptions.
For some DAs, the telicity of the event description can vary: ‘the soup cooled’ can be telic or atelic, and accordingly permit modification by
‘in an hour’ and ‘for an hour’, respectively. Intuitively, ‘the soup cooled in an hour’ describes an event where at the conclusion of the event,
the soup attained a specific temperature — a temperature suitable for eating, for instance. The atelic ‘the soup cooled for an hour’ describes
an event where the temperature of the soup decreased somewhat, but it does not need to have reached a specific temperature.
This characterization suggests that telic interpretation requires the availability of a specific adjectival value; a maximal or contextually
determined endpoint of the adjectival scale. For the atelic interpretation, any change along the scale is sufficient. It is predicted that for
DAs where the adjectival scale lacks an endpoint (eg. ‘widen’), only an atelic interpretation is available. Accordingly, in absence
of a salient contextually defined endpoint, ‘the road widened’ can only be atelic (cf. discussions in Kennedy and Levin 2008, Kearns 2007, a.o.).
In contrast with the these observations about the correlation between telicity and the nature of adjectival scales, I argue that the scale does not
necessarily determine whether a telic interpretation is available. I show that Hungarian event descriptions unambiguously determine telicity,
irrespective of the closed or open nature of the adjectival scale. For a closed scale DA, some event descriptions permit only an atelic interpretation,
and for open scale DAs, some event descriptions can only be telic. I propose a treatment of telicity where the endpoint of the adjectival scale and
the endpoint of an event (which yields telicity) are kept distinct, and telicity amounts to lack of continuation for an event.
I also show that Hungarian event descriptions with DAs can differ in another respect: in the argument that is homomorphic to the event. The event
can be homomorphic either to the adjectival scale or to the affected argument; a given event description is also unambiguous
in this respect.
Finally, I address verb particles in some detail; in Hungarian, it is these particles which yield event descriptions that are unambiguous with respect to
telicity and the homomorphic argument.
Speaker: Ash Asudeh (Carleton University)
Time: Friday, April 16, 2010, 3:30pm-5pm
Location: 32-141 (Stata Center)
Title: Evidence for Parallel Composition from Resumptive Pronouns
An important tenet of linguistic semantics is the principle of compositionality, which states that the meaning of a linguistic expression is determined by the
meanings of its parts and their arrangement. Two approaches have arisen in compositional semantics. The rule-by-rule or categorial approach holds that syntax
and semantics are constructed in parallel. The interpretive approach holds that semantics interprets the output of syntax. These traditions are often viewed as
fundamentally equivalent, since the main interest in formal semantics is typically in the models. Sometimes theoretical distinctions are highlighted, as in the
direct compositionality and variable-free programs. However, rarely is there an empirical issue that seems to favour one approach over the other. I will
present such an empirical challenge based on resumptive pronoun data from Irish, Swedish, and Vata. The facts seem to favour the parallel approach to syntax
and semantics over the interpretive approach.
WHAT: Practice talks for CLS
WHEN: April 5th, Monday, 11.30AM - 1PM
WHERE: 32-D831
Talk 1: Gregory Scontras (Harvard University), Peter Graff (MIT), and Noah Goodman (MIT)
Title: Comparing Pluralities
Talk 2: Luka Crnic
Title: Imperatives in Unconditionals
Speakers have reliable truth-judgments when comparing pluralities. The semantics of these constructions, however, cannot straightforwardly follow from the
semantics generally assumed for comparatives (e.g., von Stechow 1984, Heim 1985, Kennedy 1997) or plurals (e.g., Link 1983, Landman 1989, Schwarzschild 1996).
Past work on plural comparison (Matushanksy and Ruys, 2006) attempts to capture speakers intuitions in a semantics that reduces plural comparison to a
multitude of comparisons between the individual members of compared pluralities. We present experimental evidence that plural comparison does not reduce to the
comparison of degrees true of individual members, but rather to the comparison of collective degrees inferred from the pluralities involved.Our results support the hypothesis that a plurality can have a single degree associated with it that differs from the maximal degrees true of each of its parts,
and that this degree is calculated by averaging the maximal degrees of the individuals belonging to the plurality. Thus, collective properties of pluralities
are compared. Plural comparison then proceeds just as singular comparison, where the property relevant for comparison is inferred by averaging the degrees
associated with the individual members of each plurality. Translating differences between pluralities into a probabilistic truth value significantly improves
the models fit to human data. Ongoing work investigates how the gradience in human judgments arises.
This week’s Phonology Circle presentation is by Mafuyu Kitahara of Waseda University.
Speaker: Mafuyu Kitahara
Title: The lexical distinctiveness of tones and segments in Japanese
Time: Monday 4/5, 5pm
Location: 32-D831
Phonological events are not equally utilized. Some events (particular segments, features, or tones) are highly useful and crucial for phonological distinctions while others are not. Such distinctive properties can be estimated from the distribution of lexical items in the lexicon.
Upcoming talks:
Access real-time updates, on-line via the web (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or through iCal
The Harvard Department of Linguistics presents the Fifth Annual Joshua and Verona Whatmough Lecture, featuring a talk by Sandra Chung (UCSC).
Speaker: Sandra Chung (UCSC)
Title: Parts of Speech and the Limits of Exoticism
Time: Monday 4/5, 4pm
Location: Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall
On Tuesday, Geert Booij will give a talk as part of the GSAS Workshop in Language Universals and Linguistic Fieldwork:
Speaker: Geert Booij (Visiting Erasmus lecturer from Universiteit Leiden)
Title: ‘Noun incorporation and particle verbs in Dutch: a challenge for linguistic models’
Time: Tuesday, April 6th, 5:30-7pm
Location: Boylston Hall 104
Verbs with noun incorporation such as adem-halen to breathe and
particle verbs such as aan-vallen to attack look like complex verbs,
and they do behave as lexical units in a number of ways. They often
have idiosyncratic meanings, and feed word formation. Dutch
orthography requires them to be written as one word. Yet, the two
parts are separable in root clauses, as in:
- Jan haalt zwaar adem John breathes heavily
- De tijger viel ons aan The tigre attacked us
Such separable complex verbs are therefore phrasal in nature, but
they have a number of properties that distinguish them partially from
what the regular syntax of Dutch predicts. Hence, they have to be
analysed as cases of optional syntactic compounding.Their phrasal structure corresponds with specific meanings. Noun
incorporation evokes the meaning of conventional action. The word door
through used as a particle expresses continuative aspect, as in
door-gaan lit. through-go, to continue.The existence of these separable complex verbs therefore implies a
lexicon with a set of phrasal constructional idioms, phrasal
constructions of the type [X V],with the X position lexically
specified. Hence, there is no sharp boundary between lexicon and
syntax, unlike what many models of grammar assume.
Jim McCloskey (UC Santa Cruz) will give two talks at BU this week.
Details can be found in the PDF poster announcement.
Speaker: Elliott Moreton (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Time: Friday, April 9, 2010, 3:30pm-5pm
Location: 32-141
Title: Connecting paradigmatic and syntagmatic simplicity bias in phonotactic learning
Phonotactic patterns are easier to learn in the lab when they are simple and systematic
in terms of phonetic features (e.g., LaRiviere et al. 1974, Saffran & Thiessen 2003, Kuo
2009, Wilson 2003, Moreton 2008). This is true in two ways: A category contrast is
easier if it is defined by possession of a specific feature (paradigmatic simplicity,
e.g. [p t k]/[b d g] rather than [p d k]/[b t g]), and also if it is characterized by
within-stimulus dependencies between instances of the same feature rather than of
different features (syntagmatic simplicity, e.g., height harmony rather than height-voice
correlation). Both biases are important to linguists because of their possible impact on
natural-language typology. This talk presents evidence for syntagmatic simplicity bias,
and discusses the relationship between paradigmatic and syntagmatic simplicity bias, in
connection with theories of general human and non-human category learning, and of
phonotactic pattern learning.Although paradigmatic simplicity bias is consistent with what is known about human
category learning in other domains (Shepard et al. 1961, Nosofsky et al. 1994),
syntagmatic simplicity bias has not been addressed. Paradigmatic simplicity bias in
non-linguistic domains can be accounted for by error-driven learning in which constraints
compete for influence on the basis of how well they explain unexpected data (the “delta
rule”, Gluck & Bower 1988). The same learning rule is used in Maximum Entropy (Jaeger
2004), Harmonic Grammar (Boersma and Pater 2008), and Stochastic OT (Boersma 1997,
Boersma & Hayes 2001), resulting in the same bias (Pater et al. 2008).These results can be extended to account for syntagmatic simplicity bias, *if* there is a
guarantee that the constraint set provides more-general constraints only for
featurally-simpler within-stimulus dependencies. But evidence from both the lab and
natural language suggests that constraints can also be induced from phonological data
(Hayes et al. 2009). This talk will present a model of supervised phonotactic learning
in which constraint induction is restricted by Feature-Geometric constraint schemas which
support general constraints only for featurally-simple between- and within-stimulus
dependencies, while still allowing great flexibility in the formulation of constraints.
The model implements the delta rule in Harmonic Grammar as an evolutionary competition
among constraints which reproduce with variation and selection, so that constraint
induction and ranking (weighting) happen simultaneously. The model correctly predicts
superior acquisition of syntagmatically- and paradigmatically-simple patterns.
Discussion will focus on alternative models of category learning and phonotactic learning.
Due to a cancellation, the ling-lunch slot on April 29th is now available. Please email Bronwyn and Alya if you are interested in giving a ling-lunch talk on that date.
Please join us for this week’s ling-lunch:
Speaker: Daniel Jaspers (CRISSP/HUBrussel)
Time: Thurs 4/8, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Logic of Colours
Starting from the Aristotelian oppositions as represented in the logical square on the one hand and Höflers (1897) colour octahedron on the other, it will be shown algebraically how definitions for the relations of opposition in predicate logic entailment, contradiction, contrariety and subcontrariety carry over to the realm of colours and describe very precisely the relations of opposition obtaining between primary and secondary colours.
This result has the potential to provide a better characterization of a lot of diffuse everyday knowledge people generally have about colours. Moreover, there are interesting consequences from a linguistic perspective too, relating to the fact that certain colour terms (such as red, green, etc.) are ordinary natural language words whereas other terms such as magenta and cyan are not.
The observed isomorphism between colour perception and logical reasoning also raises interesting philosophical questions: are the logical oppositions as deeply embedded in the physiological structure of human cognition as the colour opposition system?
Phonology Circle this week features a CLS practice talk by Youngah Do
Speaker: Youngah Do
Title: Why do Korean children learn some alternations before others?
Time: Monday 3/29, 5pm
Location: 32-D831
Korean verbs show numerous alternations. Children acquiring Korean are reported to go through a stage in which they produce some alternations but not others (Do, to appear). The current simulation uses the MaxEnt Grammar Tool (Hayes, 2006) to explore why some alternations are acquired late. It shows that the frequency of different alternations in Korean can give rise to the attested intermediate stage, without assuming intrinsic bias.
The learner is assumed to have a set of constraints, and weights them according to the frequency of violations in the data. Following Hayes (2004), learning is simulated in two stages; phonotactic and morphological learning. The phonotactic learning stage models the fact that even prior to learning morphology, learners master phonotactic distributions. Once morphological relations are discovered, learners may wish to avoid alternations. I model this with output-output faithfulness constraints (OO-F), demanding faithful to a base form.
After two-stage learning, the learner was able to demote all OO-F to master all alternations. The interest of the current study, though, is to simulate a stage in which learning is incomplete. I simulated this by controlling how freely the model can change the weights of OO-F. By decreasing sigma, the learner is biased to leave the weights closer to their high initial weights.
The grammar trained purely by the frequency of different alternations perfectly predicts the child forms. Therefore, this study demonstrates that even without intrinsic bias, the statistics of Korean gives rise to the attested intermediate learning stage.
Upcoming talks:
Access real-time updates, on-line:
via the web (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or through iCal
Please join us for our post-spring break Syntax Square meeting. David Pesetsky will lead the discussion.
TIME: Tuesday, 3/30, 1-2PM
PLACE: 32-D461
For the rest of the semester, the LFRG meeting time will alternate between the old slot on Monday, 11:30am, and the _new slot_ on Wednesday at 4pm. So please double-check if a particular meeting you want to attend in on Monday or on Wednesday. The next week the meeting is on WEDNESDAY.
WHAT: Talk
WHO: Patrick Grosz
TITLE: German ‘doch’: An Element that Triggers a Contrast Presupposition
WHEN: March 31, Wednesday, 4PM - 5:30PM
WHERE: 32-D831
WHAT EXACTLY (abstract):
This talk investigates the German particle “doch”, contrasting it with
the particle “ja” (Weydt 1969). I propose that in declaratives, “ja” and “doch”
are weak and strong counterparts of each other, in the following sense. They
share a core meaning component (uncontroversiality/familiarity, cf. Kratzer
1999), but “doch” has an additional meaning component (contrast/correction, cf.
Thurmair 1991). It follows that “ja” and “doch” on their own are in competition.
The particle “ja” is used when the presuppositions for “doch” are not met; in
contrast, “doch” is used when its presuppositions are met, due to Maximize
Presupposition (Heim 1991).
In my analysis of “doch”, I argue that the correction component operates on
propositional alternatives (“doch” reinforces the modified proposition p in
contrast to a contextually salient alternative q that contradicts p) and is
presuppositional in nature. I argue that “doch” makes use of an alternative
semantics, associating with focus. This predicts correctly that “doch” triggers
intervention effects (Beck 2006): It cannot associate with the same focus as
another focus-sensitive element, such as “nur” (‘only’). My analysis accounts
for ordering restrictions, which permit “ja doch”, but rule out “doch ja”.
Kratzer (1999) argues that “ja” operates on complete propositions and cannot
occur between a quantifier and a variable that it binds. I show that “ja” also
cannot intervene between a focus-sensitive particle, like “nur” (‘only’) and
the focus. Given that “doch” is focus-sensitive, we correctly rule out “doch
ja”, but not “ja doch”.
FUTURE LFRG MEETINGS:
Please join us for this week’s Ling-Lunch:
Speaker: Pritty Patel
Time: Thurs 4/1, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: First Conjunct Agreement under Agreement Displacement
This paper focuses on the object-verb agreement pattern present in the perfective aspect in
Kutchi Gujarati (Indo-Aryan). The language has a 3rd person object reflexive NP, whose
presence triggers agreement mismatch: The verb appears to reflect the features of the subject
instead of the object. Such agreement displacement also occurs in clauses where the subject
consists of two conjoined DPs and a plural reflexive object, pot-pothane. Canonically, in clauses
with conjuncts in argument positions, the verb typically shows plural agreement. However the
presence of this 3rd person reflexive results in 1st conjunct agreement (Benmamoun 1992).
I propose reflexives cannot trigger verbal agreement (an anaphor agreement effect, Rizzi
1990), causing agreement displacement: The verb actually agrees with the subject rather than the
reflexive object. I argue plural agreement is established via Agree under c-command (Chomsky
2001), a relationship between a probe and a goal, established when an agreeing head is merged.
Contrastively, I argue that first conjunct agreement is a second cycle effect (Bejar and Rezac
2009), where a probe on v can search as high as its specifier if it does not find a suitable goal in
its c-command domain. I argue subject &Ps are phases, and spell out at the next phase level; the
difference between plural agreement and first conjunct agreement is whether the &P has spelled
out (which results in first conjunct) or not (which results in plural agreement). It follows that
agreement displacement happens late in the derivation, explaining 1st conjunct agreement.
This week’s scheduled colloquium talk by Hubert Truckenbrodt has had to be postponed until next semester, so there will be no colloquium this Friday, April 2nd.
The next colloquia are on April 9th, by Elliot Morreton (UNC Chapel Hill), and on April 16th, by Ash Asudeh (Carleton).
Phonology Circle will not meet next week, due to spring break.
It will resume on 3/29 with a talk by Youngah Do; the schedule for the rest of the semester is below.
Upcoming talks:
Access real-time updates, on-line:
via the web (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or through iCal
WHAT: Work in progress
WHO: Igor Yanovich
TITLE: A non-standard theory of vagueness
WHEN: March 15, 11.30AM - 1PM
WHERE: 32-D831
I will present a “solution” of the sorites paradox (aka the heap paradox, the bald man paradox, etc.) which I believe is new and distinct from earlier
solutions.
The main idea is that vague predicates come with meaning postulates which are true in a certain kind of infinite models, and are useful for some kinds of
practical reasoning, but which lead to dire consequences when used as axioms for reasoning about finite models such as the ones of the sorites paradox
situations.
FUTURE MEETINGS:
Speaker: Adam Albright
Title: Cumulative complexity effects and phonotactic acceptability
Time: Monday, 3/15, 5pm
Location: 32-D831
A design feature of both ruled-based and constraint-based models of phonology is that processes apply independently of one another: for example, final consonant clusters with disagreeing voicing are always banned in English, causing voicing alternations regardless of whether the word has a simple or complex onset (`caps’ /kæp+z/, `claps’ /klæp+z/ ? [kæps], [klæps]), a round vowel (`copes’ /ko?p+z/ ? [ko?ps]), or any other marked structure. By forcing rules or constraints to apply independently, we exclude the possibility of `superadditive’ effects in which the well-formedness of a structure depends on the presence of another structure. In this talk, I argue that when we move beyond alternations and turn to static phonotactics, superadditive effects do seem to occur. For example, English allows words beginning with /bl-/ and /gl-/ clusters, as well as words ending in /-sp/ and /-sk/ clusters, but there are no words with both together (*blesk, *glisp). As it turns out, the rarity or lack of such combinations cannot be predicted from the independent frequencies of /bl-/, /-sp/, etc. I discuss several sources of evidence for superadditive effects, including lexical underattestation in Lakhota and English, and acceptability ratings for English nonce words. In all three cases, it appears that marginal structures become worse in the presence of other marginal structures. Crucially, however, not all combinations are penalized in this way. Relatively common combinations, such as /kr-/ and /-st/ co-occur about as often as expected (crust, crest, etc.), and do not show superadditive effects. Furthermore, although frequency is often a factor in predicting superadditive effects, in many cases, phonetic biases appear to play an even more important role in determining the marginality of a structure. I propose a model in which acceptability judgments arise through a combination of two levels of evaluation: (1) a non-grammatical evaluation of phonotactic probability, which assesses the joint probability of the substrings in a word, and (2) evaluation by a grammar of weighted constraints, further penalizing sequences that violate highly weighted constraints.
Upcoming talks:
Access real-time updates, on-line:
via the web (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or through iCal
This week in Syntax Square:
Kirill and Yasu will lead a discussion of their work on Uyghur Case.
Time: Tuesday 3/16, 1-2PM
Place: 32-D461
Please join us for this week’s ling-lunch:
Speaker: Simon Charlow (NYU)
Time: Thurs 3/18, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: TBA
WHAT: Talk
WHO: Hadas Kotek
TITLE: An indefinite amount relative: evidence from Romanian
WHEN: March 8, 11.30AM - 1PM
WHERE: 32-D831
WHAT EXACTLY:
> I will present some data and ideas about so-called definite and indefinite
amount relatives in Romanian. I identify two main differences between these
two constructions - to do with the kinds of information that they
presuppose, and the kinds of readings that they allow. I suggest an analysis
that deals with (at least some of) these facts, and then open the discussion
to talk about some residual issues, most importantly regarding so-called
“substance readings” of amount relatives, and to similar phenomena in your
favorite language.
Speaker: Michael Kenstowicz, MIT
Title: Vocale Incerta, Vocale Aperta
Time: 5pm, 32-D831
It is well known that Standard Italian distinguishes between open and closed mid vowels in stressed syllables and that this contrast is neutralized in unstressed syllables. Less well known is a process which realizes mid vowels as open when stress shifts from an unstressed to a stressed syllable of the base, as in numero but nume?ric. This process can be detected in certain isolated corners of the derivational morphology and more systematically in loanword adaptation. In the first part of this presentation we document the process and in the second we explore two alternative phonetic motivations: sonority enhancement under stress and dispersion in F1-F2 vowel space.
This week in Syntax Square:
Omer will present (and maybe even discuss) some nifty data from a talk he heard at the LSA in January, by Johanna Nichols and David A. Peterson, with the dramatic title “Contact-induced spread of the rare Type 5 cIitic,” concerning data from 6 different languages in the Nakh-Dagestanian family (eastern Caucasus, Russia/Georgia/Azerbaijan).
Time: Tuesday 3/9, 1-2PM
Place: 32-D461
Please join us for this week’s ling-lunch:
Speaker: Peter Jenks (Harvard)
Time: Thurs 3/11, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Quantifier float, adverbs, and scope in Thai
Novel data in Thai suggest that quantifier float, properly
analyzed, lends further merit to the idea that quantifiers and
argument NPs do not always join the clause as a single DP. More
specifically, Thai data suggest that quantifier float occurs when an
adverb is base generated in its scope position, triggering covert
movement of an argument NP. Thai has SVOAdv word order, with floated
quantifiers appearing in adverbial positions. I present arguments
against a “pure” stranding analysis, where the NP is always generated
Q-internally and then moved, as well as arguments against Q-float as
extraposition. However, island sensitivity and the interpretation of
these quantifiers suggest that they are directly associated with
argument NPs by movement. In order to resolve this conflict, I rely on
three notions: a) base generation of FQs in their scope positions b)
QR via movement or reconstruction to somewhere in the Thai middlefield
by an NP and c) generalized VP-raising. I will also try to show that
that this analysis can account for the typology of quantifier float in
classifier languages, which is limited to languages which allow the
DP-internal order N-Q-Cl.
Speaker: Paul Portner (Georgetown University)
Time: Friday, March 12, 2010, 3:30pm-5pm
Location: 32-141
Title: Imperatives and the Analysis of Permission and Choice
Despite the fact that they are sometimes seen as being canonically
associated with the function of imposing a requirement (e.g., ordering),
imperatives can easily be used to give permission, including free-choice
permission:
- Take an apple!
- Take an apple or a pear!
- Take any piece of fruit you like!
Because they are inherently directive, imperatives are likely to prove
revealing as we seek to understand the phenomena of permission and choice. It
is well known that imperatives can instantiate a wide range of pragmatic
“readings”, including orders, suggestions, and requests, often without any
special marking. This fact suggests that the various subtypes of imperatives
differ from one another primarily in their interaction with context.
Permission imperatives and imperatives in free choice sentences are like other
imperatives in this regard.I will present a dynamic analysis of imperatives which are used to give
permission, including free choice permission with disjunction, which draws
crucially on two theories: a treatment of imperatives which says that they
help to impose an order on the worlds compatible with the common ground
(Portner 2004, 2007), and a semantics for disjunction based on alternatives
(e.g., Alonso-Ovalle 2006). I will also discuss the relevance of this
analysis to our understanding of free choice with modal sentences, though my
main point here will be that different types of modals need to be
distinguished and studied more carefully than they have been in the past.
WHAT: Tutorial
TITLE: “Some things you want to know about modal logic, but don’t know you do”, by Igor Yanovich
WHEN: 11.30AM - 1PM
WHERE: 32-D831
WHAT EXACTLY:
The idea is to review, in an informal manner (read: without doing much technical stuff), several simple results from the modern period of modal logic
development. Instead of focusing on different systems like K etc. and completeness, the tutorial will take the so-called semantic perspective and discuss modal
logic as a tool for talking about relational structures in a certain way. Topics which are likely to emerge: the standard translation from modal logic into a
fragment of first-order logic; bisimulations and bisimulation-equivalence; limits of the expressive power of the standard modal logic, and some ways to enrich
it, etc.
Plus, if you want to learn something in particular - drop an email to Igor with your question. No guarantees, but he’ll try to answer it on Monday.
If you want to read, or at least browse, something before going to the meeting (or instead of going), read this:
It is a wonderful introductory chapter from the “Handbook of modal logic”, written by Johan van Benthem and Patrick Blackburn - two really important guys in
current modal logic, who also happen to write very readable texts accessible even for beginners.
Speaker: Marina Bedny (PhD, Postdoctoral Associate, Saxe Lab)
Title: Language in the visual cortices of congenitally blind adults
Time: Tues 3/2, Noon, 46-3310
This week in Syntax Square:
Hrayr Khanjian will lead a discussion on modals and negative concord in Western Armenian.
Location: 32-D461
Time: Tuesday, March 2, 1-2pm
Please join us for this week’s ling-lunch:
Speaker: Jessica Coon
Time: Thurs 3/4, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Transitivity and Split Ergativity in Chol
In this talk I discuss two types of split ergativity and their interaction in Chol: aspect-based split ergativity (perfective vs. non-perfective), and a “split-S” system (unergative and unaccusative subjects pattern differently). I begin by showing that Chol makes an important distinction between those stems which subcategorize for internal arguments (transitives, unaccusatives, and passives) and those that do not (unergatives and antipassives). Specifically, all and only those stems which subcategorize for internal DP arguments are verbs. If a theta-role assigning stem combines with an internal argument DP, it is a verb; if not, it must be realized as a noun. I’ll argue that despite the appearance of aspect-based split ergativity, agreement marking in Chol follows a very simple rule: all internal arguments are marked absolutive and all external arguments are marked ergative. That is, Chol is robustly split-S. This is obscured, I show, by the fact that the non-perfective aspect markers are themselves verbs which embed nominalized clauses.
Though I focus on data from Chol, I discuss two points at which this analysis has broader implications. First, I discuss implications of the proposal that all and only verbs combine with DP complements. While this does not obviously appear to hold in other languages, we see hints of it elsewhere, for instance in the proposal that unergatives are always light verb constructions (Hale & Keyser 1993). Second, I show that in aspect-based splits in languages around the world we find evidence for a biclausal analysis of aspect-based split ergativity (see Laka 2006). Under the analysis proposed here, there is no split in agreement or case assignment; rather the difference between ergative-patterning and nominative-patterning clauses is reduced to the difference between simple versus complex clauses.
Speaker: Alec Marantz (NYU)
Time: Friday, March 5, 2010, 3:30pm-5pm
Location: 32-141 (Stata Center)
Title: Locality Domains for Contextual Allosemy
At least since work within Lexical Morphology and Phonology, the issue of the connection
between word structure and allomorphy has been heavily investigated by
morphophonologists. Recent advances within Distributed Morphology (see in particular
Embick 2010) have shown that the general cyclic architecture of a phase-based Minimalist
Program syntax provides the proper locality domains for the interaction of information
determining contextual allomorphy, although phonology- specific notions like adjacency
also play a role, restricting possible interactions even more than what might be allowed
within a cyclic domain. Less well understood are the parallel issues at the syntax/
semantics interface, namely the computation of possible meanings of morphemes in
context. Against some recent work disputing claims in Marantz (1997, 2000) linking the
domain of special meanings to phases and against recent proposals that the locality
domains for phonology and semantics might differ, this paper clarifies the issues in
contextual meaning determination and supports the idea that the locality domains for
contextual allosemy are just those for contextual allomorphy. As a specific notion of
phonological adjacency further constrains allomorphic interactions, so too does a
semantic specific notion of adjacency constrain allosemic interactions and may
restrict possible interactions among morphemes even more strongly than the general
cyclic architecture of phases.
Phonology Circle will resume next week, with a presentation by Michael Kenstowicz. There are still open slots (see below); please let Adam know if you would like to present.
Access real-time updates on the web (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or through iCal
LF Reading group will have its first meeting of the semester today. Please join us!
WHAT: Brainstorming/Open discussion
TITLE: “How to put things right - a brainstorming session on corrective discourse particles,” led by Patrick Grosz
WHEN: 11.30AM - 1PM
WHERE: 32-D831
Patrick will introduce some data and ideas about the distribution of German particles
‘ja’ and ‘doch’, and then there will be an open discussion of those two
and similar particles in your favorite language.
Speaker: Nadya Modyanova, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Wexler Lab
Title: From Semantics to Genetics: a Biolinguistic Investigation of Reference in Autism Spectrum Disorders and Williams Syndrome
Time: Tues, 2/23, Noon
Location: 46-3310
Please join us on Tuesday for the second meeting of syntax square:
Discussion leader: Patrick Grosz
Title: Everybody likes and nobody hates right-node
raising and multidominance respectively: Some thoughts on the syntax of
constructions with ‘respectively’
Location: 32-D461
Time: Tuesday, February 23, 1-2PM
This time will be our regular meeting time this semester. If you have questions or would like to volunteer to lead a discussion, please email Claire Halpert (halpert@mit.edu).
Please join us for ling-lunch this week:
Speaker: Hiroshi Hasegawa (Senshu University/Harvard University)
Time: Thurs 2/25, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Swiping - preposition stranding + remnant PP extraposition analysis
Swiping is a form of ellipsis (sluicing) where a preposition appears after the remaining wh-element (John was talking, but I dont know who to). According to Merchant (2002), Swiping is derived from application of wh-movement pied-piping the preposition, followed by sluicing (PF IP ellipsis) and PF head movement of the wh to the front of the preposition. I propose an alternative account, where Swiping is a result of wh-movement stranding a preposition, followed by remnant PP extraposition and IP ellipsis (Sluicing). I will discuss various advantages of our analysis over Merchants analysis, and argue that this interestingly complex phenomenon results from interactions not only of syntactic principles, but also of various others factors, namely, certain factors related to PF/phonology/prosody (e.g. PF island repair effects and Obligatory Contour Principle), to parsing/processing (e.g. crossing constraint), and to focus/information structure. I will give some cross-linguistic considerations, taking up relevant examples drawn from English, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and German data.
Please join us for the first Ling-lunch of the semester:
Speaker: Rafael Nonato
Time: Thurs 2/18, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: 6 weeks among the K?sêdjê: images, sounds and data
Phonology Circle resumes next Monday, with a brief organizational meeting followed by a talk by Patrick Jones. If you would like to present this semester, please come prepared to claim a date, or contact Adam ahead of time.
Speaker: Patrick Jones
When: Monday 2/8, 5pm
Where: 32-D831
Within Distributed Morphology, syncretisms (i.e. cases in which a morpheme appears in more than one cell of a morphological paradigm) are typically analyzed as resulting either from featural underspecification of Vocabulary Items or from feature-deleting Impoverishments of terminal nodes; apparent cases of syncretism that cannot be so explained are generally treated as accidental syncretisms in which two morphemes simply happen to have the same phonological shape. In this talk, however, I discuss a case of syncretism in Kinande (Bantu, D42) which, while it cannot be satisfactorily analyzed in terms of underspecification or impoverishment, cannot be analyzed as an instance of accidental homophony either. The syncretism involves the inflectional suffix */ire/*, which occurs both in forms expressing Perfect Aspect and in (a subset of) forms expressing Recent Past Tense. I show that the heterogeneous range of contexts in which */ire/*/ /appears precludes an Impoverishment-based or Underspecification-based account of its distribution. However, I also present evidence from phonological and morphosyntactic processes showing that it is a single */ire/*/ /morpheme - and not a number of homophononous */ire/*/ /morphemes - that appears in all of these contexts. I conclude with a discussion of possible mechanisms whereby the single Vocabulary Item */ire/*/ /is made to occur in the range of contexts in which it does.
Speaker: Victor Kuperman, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
Title: Probabilistic processing of morphosyntax
Time: Thurs 2/11, 12pm
Location: 46-3189
Speaker: Daniel C. Hyde (Harvard)
Time: Friday, February 5, noon
Location: 46-3189
Speaker: Alan Prince (Rutgers)
Time: Friday, February 5, 2010, 4:00pm
Location: Harvard, Boylston 103
Title: OT without Ranking
There will be no ling-lunch this Thursday (Feb 4). If anyone would still like to schedule a talk for this semester, the following dates are still available:
To reserve a date, just email the ling-lunch organizers — Bronwyn Bjorkman and Alya Asarina — and ask to be added to the schedule.
The final syntax-semantics reading group meeting of the semester is on Monday at 11:30am in room 32-D461. Kathryn Davidson will give a talk titled “Question-Answer Clauses in American Sign Language” (joint work with Ivano Caponigro).
Abstract: In American Sign Language (ASL), a common rhetorical strategy is to pose a question and answer it, seemingly as one prosodic unit. We show that in fact these questions and their answers form a single syntactic and semantic unit that can even be embedded within larger clauses. Futhermore, these clauses clearly consist of a full question and its answer, not a relative clause structure. Issues arise concerning how the question and answer combine syntactically and semantically, and I will outline our proposal, inspired by previous analyses of pseudoclefts in languages like English. Ultimately, we disagree that the Question-Answer Clause is a pseudocleft, suggesting that this analysis works much better for the clauses in ASL than for typical pseudoclefts. I’ll end by discussing the issue of exhaustive and non-exhaustive answers, and how to account for their distribution in Question-Answer Clauses in ASL.
Time: Monday 12/7, 5pm, 32-D461
Speaker: Maria Giavazzi
Title: Perceptual effects of stress on consonantal contrasts: Preliminary results
I am going to present results from an acoustic study investigating the effects of primary stress on the acoustic realization of stop bursts in Italian.
I will then show preliminary (partial) results from a perceptual experiment suggesting that stressed-conditioned differences on stop bursts affect the confusability between stop and affricates before front vowels. I use these experimental results to provide a Dispersion Theoretic analysis (Flemming 1995, 2001) of Italian palatalization as a case of neutralization of the velar-affricate contrast in non-stress adjacent positions. Finally, I will propose that similar effects of stress on the realization of adjacent consonants could have been the trigger of a further prosodically conditioned consonantal process namely assibilation /t-i/ sequences in Finnish.
Stay up to date! Check out the online schedule, or subscribe via iCal
Join us for the last ling-lunch of the semester:
Speaker: Alya Asarina
Time: Thurs 12/10, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Modal Adjectives in Uyghur
There is a syntax-semantics reading group meeting on Monday at 11:30am
in room 32-D461. Floris Roelofsen will talk about inquisitive
semantics. The relevant background readings can be found on the group’s website. Everyone is welcome!
TIME: 11.30AM-1PM
PLACE: 32-D461
Time: Monday 11/30, 5pm, 32-D461
Speaker: Sverre Johnsen (Harvard)
Title: Contrast maintenance effects in Norwegian retroflexion
Norwegian contrasts morpheme initial /s/ and /ʂ/ before a vowel (/sV-/
- /ʂV/), but not before a consonant (/sC-/ - */ʂC-/). Initial /s/
undergoes retroflexion to /ʂ/ when preceded by a morpheme ending in
/-r/. Before a vowel, the contrast between /s/ and /ʂ/ is then lost
(/sV-/, /ʂV-/ > /ʂV-/), but no contrast is lost before a consonant
(/sC-/ > /ʂC-/). I present data from two experiments showing that
Norwegian speakers apply this retroflexion significantly more often
before a consonant than before a vowel. The effect is that a contrast
is better maintained. Retroflexed /ʂV/-tokens have, however, more
lexical neighbors and a higher phonotactic probability than
retroflexed /ʂC/-tokens. Experiments in lexical access have shown that
items with a high lexical neighborhood and phonotactic probability are
more prone to be misidentified. I show that under an exemplar model of
speech perception/production, the asymmetry in retroflexion between
/sV-/ and /sC-/ is a direct consequence of such misidentifications.
Upcoming schedule:
| Dec 4 | Michael Tanenhaus (1:30-2:30pm, location TBA) |
| Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
Stay up to date! Check out the online schedule, or subscribe via iCal
This week, Mamoru Saito will give a double-header guest lecture in the East Asian Linguistics seminar.
Speaker: Mamoru Saito
Tuesday, December 1, 10-1, 66-156
Talk 1: “A Comparative Syntax of Ellipsis in Japanese and Korean”
Talk 2: “Clause Types and the Japanese Right Periphery”
Please join us for Ling-lunch this week:
Speaker: Coppe van Urk
Time: Thurs 12/3, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Movement and Antecedency in Obligatory Control
The two most prominent contemporary theories of control echo early theories in transformational grammar, Equi-NP Deletion (Rosenbaum 1967) and Postals (1970) null pronoun Doom. Hornstein (1999) suggests that control is derived through movement. Landau (2000 et seq.), on the other hand, argues for a PRO analysis. Regardless of what conceptual problems are associated with each analysis, there are significant empirical arguments for both approaches. In this talk, I go over some of these and conclude that both strategies are necessary. The empirical observation behind this is that some control complements behave like raising: the thematic positions have to be non-distinct, can share a single Case and the lower copy can be spelled out. Others behave more like non-obligatory control: they allow partial control and the lower position needs to have independent Case. These properties correlate across languages. I show that this account greatly simplifies the theory of control. Many of the special mechanisms that are necessary in Hornsteins and Landaus account can be dispensed with. In addition, the empirical coverage derived in this way is superior to that of other theories.
Michael Tanenhaus, visiting MIT to give a colloquium talk, will talk about speech at a special meeting of the Phonology Circle December 4th, 1:30pm-2:30pm. Please stay tuned for an announcement about the exact location.
Speaker: Michael Tanenhaus (University of Rochester)
Title: Fine-grained phonetic detail in spoken word recognition
Time: Friday 12/4, 1:30-2:30 pm
Location: TBA
Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, it is widely assumed
that some classes of
speech sounds are perceived categorically in a way that exemplars from
other types of
non-speech categories are not. Yet, the articulation of many sounds, including
consonants, varies systematically with position in a prosodic domain.
A system that
discarded sub-phonetic detail would thus be ignoring potentially useful
information. I’ll
review recent data from eye-tracking studies demonstrating that spoken
word recognition
does, in fact, exploit fine-grained sub-phonetic detail to make
probabilistic hypothesis
about lexical candidates, including within-category variation for stop
consonants—the
poster child for categorical perception.
MIT Linguistics Colloquium 12/04: Michael Tanenhaus (University of Rochester)
Speaker: Michael Tanenhaus (University of Rochester)
Title: Common ground and perspective-taking in language processing
Time: Friday, December 04, 2009, 3:30pm
Place: 32-141
Successful communication would seem to require that speakers and
listeners distinguish
between their own knowledge, commitments and intentions, and those of their
interlocutors. A particularly important distinction is between shared
knowledge (common
ground) and private knowledge (privileged ground). Keeping track of
what is shared and
what is privileged would seem, however, to be too computationally
expensive and too
memory intensive to inform real-time language processing—a position
supported by
striking experimental evidence that speakers and listeners act
egocentrically, showing
strong and seemingly inappropriate intrusions from their own privileged
ground. I’ll
review recent results from my laboratory demonstrating that (a)
speaker’s utterances
provide evidence about whether they believe information is shared or
privileged and (b)
listeners are extremely sensitive to this evidence. I’ll suggest an
integrative framework
that explains discrepancies in the literature.
Phonology circle will return next week, after the Thanksgiving holiday break.
Upcoming schedule:
| Nov 30 | Sverre Johnsen |
| Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
Stay up to date! Check out the online schedule, or subscribe via iCal
The syntax-semantics reading group is meeting on Monday at 11:30am in room 32-D461. Micha Breakstone will talk about Measure Phrase licensing and Evaluativity using Vector Space Semantics.
Nobuko Hasegawa of Kanda U of Int’l Studies will guest lecture in the East Asian Linguistics Seminar this week:
Tuesday, November 24, @ Harvard, Boylston 303, 11AM (not 10AM) - 1PM. (Note also that Mamoru Saito will guest lecture Tuesday, December 1, @MIT, 66-156, 10 AM (not 11AM) - 1PM.
“Person Agreement and Subject Ellipsis at the CP Level”
Nobuko Hasegawa (Kanda University of International Studies)
Japanese has been considered as a non-agreement language unlike English and other European languages (cf. Kuroda 1988, Fukui 1986). It is in fact not easy to convincingly argue that Japanese exhibits agreement between the subject and the predicate at the IP level (or in embedded sentences). In this presentation, however, I will show that Japanese does exhibit rather extensive agreement processes between the subject and the predicate, once matrix phenomena are taken into consideration, such as Imperatives and Volitionals. I will resort to Rizzis (1997) CP system to account for these phenomena. That is, the sentential Force (Clause Type) marked at the CP projection, such as Imp(erative), Vol(itional), requires a particular predicate form, which in turn requires (or agree with) a particular type of a subject, [+Addressee], [+Speaker], respectively. With such agreement, the subject can be null.
I will then extend this analysis to other null subject cases, which I will argue result from agreement at CP level. One is the 1st person deletion phenomenon, which is allowed only at the matrix subject. The other case is PRO in infinitives, whose interpretation is also tied with the structure of CP, as pointed out in Borer (1989) (cf. (5)). Our analysis of PRO provides an account for an interesting (and novel) fact of matrix arbitrary PRO in Japanese. Based on these cases, I claim that a null subject is allowed only when Force of the CP requires a particular predicate form that agrees with a particular person of subject.
If the analysis proposed is on the right track, we seem to come up with a picture quite different from what has been assumed in the GB framework with respect to null subject phenomena in general. Null subject phenomena are relevant to what a head of the CP level specifies and even pro of null subject languages (NSLs) may be analyzed in a similar way, if the predicate (or Infl) is supposed to communicate with CP, as often has been assumed. Then, a null subject is not special to NSLs but is to be observed in more prevalent environments where the function of a CP is more apparent, namely, at the matrix level.
References:
* Hasegawa, Nobuko. 2009. Agreement at the CP Level: Clause Types and the Person Restriction on the Subject. The proceedings of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics 5: 131-152. MITWPL, MIT.
* Portner, Paul. 2004. The Semantics of Imperatives within a Theory of Clause Types. ms. Georgetown University.
* Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. In L. Haegeman (ed.) Elements of Grammar: Handbook of Generative Syntax. 281-331. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
* Ueda, Yukiko. 2009. Person Restriction on C in Japanese , The proceedings of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics 5, MITWPL, MIT.
Readings: Hasegawa 2009, Portner 2004
Phonology circle is on hiatus this week, recuperating from a highly successful weekend of NELS talks. There is also a slot available next week (11/23)—please contact Adam if you would like to sign up for it.
Upcoming schedule:
| Nov 23 | OPEN |
| Nov 30 | Sverre Johnsen |
| Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
Stay up to date! Check out the online schedule, or subscribe via iCal
Please join us for Ling-lunch this week:
Speaker: Omer Preminger
Time: Thurs 11/19, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: On the nature of ergativity: New and old evidence from Basque
Basque unergatives have long been held as evidence that
unergatives have an implicit object (Hale & Keyser 1993). Recently, I
have argued that the presence of absolutive agreement-morphology in
Basque is by no means an indication of an agreement relation being
successfully established with a nominal target (Preminger 2009, LI).
Building on this, I present two new arguments (and one old one) that
Basque unergatives systematically lack an implicit object.
Since the single argument of these predicates is nonetheless
marked with ergative Case, these facts furnish an argument against
ergative in Basque adhering to a Case-competition logic (i.e., against
ergative in Basque being “dependent Case”; Marantz 1991). At first
glance, this seems to favor an account of ergative as inherent Case
(Woolford 1997, Legate 2008, among others). However, there is evidence
internal to Basque which casts doubt on such an account: (i)
raising-to-ergative constructions (Artiagoitia 2001), and (ii) the
existence of ergative Theme arguments (Etxepare 2003, Holguín 2007,
among others).
In response to these facts, I propose a slight variation on the
inherent Case theory of ergativity: ergative Case is still assigned in
[Spec,vP], but [Spec,vP] is not unambiguously a base-generation site;
it can be the target of movement, as well. If a DP is base-generated
in [Spec,vP], it will receive not only ergative Case, but also an
Agent theta-role; but if a DP moves into [Spec,vP], it will get
ergative Case but retain whatever theta-role it already had.
Speaker: Jonathan David Bobaljik (University of Connecticut)
Title: Idiosyncratic syncretic patterns: Some Chukotko-Kamchatkan evidence
Time: Friday, November 20, 2009, 3:30pm
Place: 32-141
Syncretism (homophony within paradigms) has played a significant (if somewhat controversial) role in morphological theory. There is relatively broad agreement that there are no limits on the patterns of surface homophony that may be attested. In addition to stipulated accidental homophony, many current theories have powerful mechanisms (feature-manipulating rules, for example) that ultimately allow for essentially any pattern to be described. In this talk, I aim to support the rather conservative notion that there is nevertheless a line to be drawn between natural syncretic patterns on the one hand, and idiosyncratic patterns on the other. The natural patterns are those that can be represented as underspecification of vocabulary items (exponents), while the idiosyncratic patterns require the invocation of special rules, the residue of contingent factors such as historical changes.
I start with a brief discussion of a feature inventory motivated by categorical universals in the area of person marking, which are independent of the issue of syncretism. I show that this feature inventory defines a division between natural and idiosyncratic patterns that is robustly supported by the distribution of language types in large scale surveys (thus converging with Pertsova 2007 over a different sample). I then turn to an in-depth investigation of one set of extremely idiosyncratic patterns in a single language family, looking at the reflexes of Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan agreement prefix *næ-. Comrie (1980) has famously discussed this prefix as providing evidence for a functional inverse alignment in these paradigms, leading to a complicated form:function mismatch, and requiring a theory in which rules of vocabulary insertion are governed by constraints on the overall shape of the paradigm. Continuing a line of work arguing against appeals to such paradigm-level constraints (e.g., Bobaljik 2002, 2008), I argue that the proper description of the quirky Chukotko-Kamchatkan facts is best stated in terms of deletion (impoverishment) rules (ranging over specific features, or in some cases entire terminal nodes, cf. Arregi & Nevins 2007, Calabrese 2008), but that the explanation of these rules is entirely diachronic. An appeal to paradigmatic constraints is neither sufficient, nor necessary to explain the observed idiosyncratic syncretic patterns.
In this week’s installment of Phonology Circle, Jen Michaels will give a practice talk for NELS:
Time: Monday 11/9, 5pm, 32-D461
Speaker: Jennifer Michaels (MIT)
Title: To alternate or not to alternate: What is the boundary?
Abstract: http://web.mit.edu/nels40/program/abstracts/NELS40Michaels.pdf
Upcoming schedule: (contact Adam for open slots)
| Nov 16 | Igor Yanovich |
| Nov 23 | OPEN |
| Nov 30 | Sverre Johnsen |
| Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
Stay up to date! Check out the online schedule, or subscribe via iCal
Syntax-Semantics Reading Group: NELS practice talk on Uyghur indexicals
Time: Monday at 11.30AM in room 32-D461
Speakers: Kirill Shklovsky and Yasutada Sudo
Title: Shifted indexicals in Uyghur (NELS practice talk)
Abstract: here
We hope to see you there!
Please join us for Ling-lunch this week:
Speakers: Jonah Katz and David Pesetsky
Time: Thurs 11/12, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: The Identity Thesis for Language and Music
This paper argues for the following proposal:
Identity Thesis for Language and Music:
All formal differences between language and music are a consequence of differences in their fundamental building blocks (arbitrary pairings of sound and meaning in the case of language; pitch-classes and pitch-class combinations in the case of music). In all other respects, language and music are identical.In particular, we argue, developing but also extending earlier proposals by Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983), that music, like language, contains a syntactic component in which headed structures are built by iterated, recursive, binary Merge. This is the component that Lerdahl and Jackendoff called Prolongational Reduction, which represents hierarchical patterns of tension and relaxation in tonal harmony. We further argue that the distinct component that Lerdahl and Jackendoff called Time Span Reduction is a musical prosodic component (a point anticipated by Lerdahl and Jackendoff themselves) — whose interface with the syntactic component is strikingly similar to the comparable interface between syntactic and prosodic structure in language.
Though our discussion takes Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s work as a starting point and touchstone throughout, our proposals also constitute a significant realignment of their model — necessary in order to reveal similarities between musical and linguistic structure that were not evident in their presentation. This realignment also reflects a distinction in goals between our proposal and theirs. Their work took as its starting point the question “Given a piece of music in a particular musical idiom I, what laws govern the class of analyses that a listener assigns to it in I?” Our proposals arise from a related but distinct question, more typical of generative linguistic work: “What general laws define the class of possible pieces in I?” That is, what is the grammar of I?
Our realignment of Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s proposals in light of the Identity Thesis allows us to ask questions not taken up in their work. For example, does Internal Merge (i.e. syntactic movement) apply in the construction of musical syntactic structure, in addition to External Merge? We argue that the phenomenon of cadence is an instance of exactly this: head-movement from the penultimate constituent of a musical passage (the dominant) to the final tonic chord.
Finally, we will suggest (but probably not have time to argue) that the output of musical syntax feeds a Tonal-Harmonic Component whose formal relation to the music syntax strongly resembles the relation between linguistic syntax and the semantic system that interacts with it — and is subject to a Principle of Full Interpretation with respect to that component.
(A draft of a paper related to this talk is available on LingBuzz.)
This week, we will have two talks in preparation for the upcoming NELS meeting:
Time: Monday 11/2, 5pm, 32-D461
Upcoming schedule: (contact Adam for open slots)
| Nov 2 | NELS Practice talks, first installment (Gallagher, Johnsen) |
| Nov 9 | NELS practice talks, second installment (Michaels) |
| Nov 16 | Igor Yanovich |
| Nov 23 | OPEN |
| Nov 30 | Sverre Johnsen |
| Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
Please join us for Ling-lunch this week:
Speaker: Artemis Alexiadou
Time: Thurs 11/5, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: TBA
In Monday’s Syntax-Semantics Reading Group, Igor Yanovich will talk about the nature and formal analysis of indexical presuppositions (this is a practice talk for LENLS 6).
TIME: Monday 11.30AM - 1PM
PLACE: 32-D461
For further information, please visit:
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/groups/synsem/
This week’s Phonology Circle features a double-header of two talks, in preparation for UMMM at UMass this weekend
Time: Monday 10/26, 5pm, 32-D461
Speaker: Claire Halpert (MIT)
Title: Place assimilation changes its triggers
Speaker: Peter Graff (MIT) and Gregory Scontras (Harvard)
Title: Metathesis as Asymmetric Perceptual Realignment
We investigate the perceptual salience of consonant order in intervocalic stopfricative (ST/TS) and stop- nasal clusters (NT/TN) and present evidence that speakers of English (N=24) more readily perceive these clusters with the stop in prevocalic position, regardless of their native lexical statistics or whether the fricatives or nasals are native sounds. This bias is amplified when the stop-burst is removed, indicating that perceptual repairs increase as a function of the availability of phonetic cues. Our findings support the proposal that CC-metathesis is driven by optimization of auditory cues in consonant clusters (Hume 2001; Steriade 2001) rather than symmetric confusability.
Upcoming schedule: (contact Adam for open slots)
| Nov 2 | NELS Practice talks, first installment (Gallagher, Johnsen) |
| Nov 9 | NELS practice talks, second installment (Michaels) |
| Nov 16 | Igor Yanovich |
| Nov 23 | OPEN |
| Nov 30 | OPEN |
| Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
Speaker: Evelina Fedorenko, Ph.D. (Post-doctoral Fellow, Kanwisher Lab)
Title: Functional localization in the domain of language: A new take on the questions of functional specificity
Time: Tues 10/27, 12:00 to 1:00
Location: 46-3310
Join us for this week’s Ling-lunch talk:
Speaker: Ted Gibson
Time: Thurs 10/29, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Quantitative investigations of syntactic representations and processing
Joint work with Denise Ichinco, Ev Fedorenko, Steve Piantadosi, Nat Twarog, and Melissa Troyer.
We present a new method to quantitatively evaluate similarity and differences in language representations and processes: Inter-Subject Analysis of Covariation (ISAC). The method is a quantitative version of an approach that has been traditionally used in the syntactic literature. In this method, participants rate materials for their acceptability. It is assumed that judgments will correlate more across individuals on materials with overlapping structures or similar processing demands. In order to evaluate this novel method, we demonstrate that relative clauses and wh-questions are rated very similarly to each other across different kinds of transformations, much more so than several control structures. This method holds a lot of promise for addressing questions concerning the nature of linguistic representations and processes.
Speaker: Maria Gouskova (NYU)
Title: Exceptionality as a Property of Morphemes: the Case of Yers
Time: Friday, October 30, 2009, 3:30pm
Place: 32-141
Most languages have some phonological rules that apply only to a
subset of eligible morphemes (for example, in English, regressive
voicing assimilation, “thie[f]”/”thie[vz]” vs. the default progressive
assimilation, “chie[f]”/”chie[fs]”). The question examined in this
talk is whether there are rules that apply only to a subset of
eligible segments. I will explore the hypothesis that exceptionality
is a property of whole morphemes. This theory of exceptionality has
many incarnations (Chomsky and Halle 1968 et seq.), but my version is
formalized as Lexically Indexed Constraints in Optimality Theory
(Prince and Smolensky 1993): in any given language, a universal
constraint can be indexed to individual morphemes in the lexicon and
ranked in two different positions in the language’s hierarchy (Pater
2000, 2006).I test this theory on a famous purported case of segment-by-segment
exceptions: Slavic yers, vowels that idiosyncratically alternate with
zero (e.g., [mox] vs. [mx-a] `moss (nom/gen sg)’ alongside [mex] vs.
[mex-a] `fur (nom/gen sg)’). The dominant analysis of these “ghost
vowels” is that they must be underlyingly marked as exceptional on a
segment-by-segment basis. Yers are also usually underlyingly marked as
representationally defective—either nonmoraic or lacking features
(Kenstowicz and Rubach 1987, Melvold 1990, Yearley 1995, inter alia).
In this talk, I revisit yers from a different perspective. Instead of
treating the individual vowels as special, I argue that entire
morphemes are indexed to special phonologies. I show that there are
generalizations as to the quality and the position of alternating
vowels in Russian. These generalizations are phonologically sensible,
but they are lost in accounts where vowels are labeled as deletable on
a segment-by-segment basis. Finally, I survey yers in other Slavic
languages and test the OT hypothesis that a phonological rule can only
be exceptional in one language if it is general in another.
Suggested readings:
In this week’s installment of the Phonology Circle, Youngah Do will present on the acquisition of Korean morphophonology.
Time: Monday 10/19, 5pm, 32-D461
Speaker: Youngah Do
Title: Child Preference of Base Correspondence: the Asymmetry of the Inflection of Regular and Irregular Verbs in Korean
In this talk, I examine the distinctive ways in which children inflect Korean verbs with respect to the (ir)regularity of the verbal stem. An experiment of picture description asks children to inflect two verb forms in a coordinated sentence. The result shows that the inflectional structure of the two coordinated verbs are always identical. Interestingly, an asymmetry of the inflection is found according to the order of the appearance of regular and irregular verbs in a sentence. When the first verbal position is occupied by regular verb and irregular verb follows, children inflect both verbs in a simple way(C category stem+C category suffix), not using any extra morpheme. On the contrary, when the inflection of irregular verb is required first and regular one is following, they inflect the verbs in a complex way by using an extra morpheme (A category stem+A category suffix+ Extra morpheme +C category suffix).Adopting the hypothesis that that the A category is the base in the Korean verbal inflectional paradigm (Albright and Kang 2009), I argue that this asymmetry is due to children’s tendency for respecting base correspondence in the process of verbal inflection.
Upcoming schedule:
| Oct 26 | UMMM practice talks (Graff, Halpert) |
| Nov 2 | NELS Practice talks, first installment (Gallagher, Johnsen) |
| Nov 9 | NELS practice talks, second installment (Michaels) |
| Nov 16 | Igor Yanovich |
| Nov 23 | Hyesun Cho |
| Nov 30 | OPEN |
| Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
Join us for this week’s Ling-lunch talk:
Speaker: Andrew Nevins
Time: Thurs 10/18, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: TBA
Shigeru Miyagawa is giving a Richauer Institute talk at Harvard, Friday, October 23, 4-5:30
“Murasaki Shikibu Meets Generative Grammar: What Can the Old Japanese Particle ‘wo’ Tell Us About Human Language?”
1730 Cambridge St, Room S250
Please note the special day (Tuesday) for this week’s Phonology Circle- normal place and time!
Speaker: Michael Kenstowicz
Title: Laryngeal (Mis)alignments: the Adaptation of Mandarin Loanwords into Yanbian Korean
Coordinates: *TUESDAY* (10/13) 5pm, 32-D461
This presentation (based on Ito & Kenstowicz 2008 and 2009) examines the ways in which two laryngeal categories of Mandarin Chinese are adapted into the Yanbian dialect of Korean in a corpus of c. 250 contemporary loanwords. The first concerns the mapping of the Mandarin binary aspirated-unaspirated distinction with respect to the Yanbian ternary tense-lax-aspirated contrast and the second the correspondences between the Mandarin four-way tonal contrast with respect to the Yanbian high-low pitch opposition. In both cases the phonetic correlates of the phonological categories play a crucial role in understanding the correspondences.
Join us for this week’s Ling-lunch talk:
Speaker: Asya Arylova
Time: Thurs 10/15, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
The talk will focus on the Russian predicative possession BE-construction.
Speaker: Nadya Modyanova, PhD, Simons Postdoctoral Fellow, BCS
Date: Tuesday, Oct 13, 12pm, 46-3015 (Note special location!)
Title: Semantic and Pragmatic Language Development in Typical Acquisition, Autism Spectrum Disorders and Williams Syndrome
This talk focuses on understanding the reasons for children’s overuse of definite article ‘the’, to refer to one of several objects in a context set, as opposed to the unique established referent. Competing theories argue the deficit is either in children’s semantic computational knowledge (of uniqueness/maximality), or in their pragmatic/social awareness/theory-of-mind development. Experiments in this dissertation focused on children’s comprehension and interpretation of the indefinite and definite determiners, as well as ‘that’, anaphors ‘another’ and ‘same’, and free relative clauses.The results suggest that in typically developing (TD) children the late acquisition of determiner ‘the’ is due to the late maturation of the semantic principle of maximality. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and with Williams syndrome (WS) either manifested an adult-like competence, an absence of manifestation of knowledge, or a pattern found in TD younger children (where ‘that’ is understood better than ‘the’ as referring to the salient unique referent) - indicating delay of development of the language faculty, but no deviance. This suggests that the observed deficits in ASD and WS pattern with those in TD, and hence are also semantic in nature.
Beyond posing an explanatory challenge to linguistic theories, the research comparing typical and atypical development sheds light on the mechanisms of language development and impairment, and provides endophenotypic descriptions of ASD and WS, which are crucial for elucidating not only genetics of neurodevelopmental disorders, but also the genetic basis of the human language faculty.
This week, Peter Graff will present the background/design of an experiment that he is proposing to run (abstract below).
The format is intended to be like a lab meeting for discussing experimental work in progress, and is the kick-off of what we hope will be more regular meetings of this sort. Since we already have a full docket of regular talks throughout the semester, we will discuss on Monday the scheduling of future lab meeting sessions.
Speaker: Peter Graff
Title: Evolutionary vs. Phonetically Driven Phonology: An Iterative Learning Experiment
Time: 10/5 5pm, 32-D461
In this talk, I will propose an iterative learning experiment trying to test the predictions of Evolutionary Phonology (Blevins, 2006) and Phonetically Driven Phonology (Hayes and Steriade, 2004). Both hypotheses about phonological learnability and knowledge predict phonological systems to be optimized for transmission. The crucial difference is that Phonetically Driven Phonology hypothesizes phonetic optimization of phonology to be speaker driven, while Evolutionary Phonology attributes phonetic optimality to unbiased or “innocent” misperception and production independent of the grammar of the speaker. I will suggest simulating diachronic transmission in iterative learning and propose ways in which to manipulate speaker driven optimization to see whether such manipulation affects the course of simulated linguistic history as might be predicted by certain conceptions of Phonetically Driven Phonology.
Join us for this week’s Ling-lunch talk:
Speaker: Norvin Richards
Time: Thurs 10/8, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: TBA
Speaker: Jim McCloskey (UC Santa Cruz)
Title: Further Reflections on Movement and Resumption
Time: Friday, October 9, 2009, 3:30pm
Place: 32-141
The syntax of apparently unbounded dependencies in Irish has for
long been viewed as providing evidence for the (successive) cyclic
view of long WH-movement, and also as making available a rich set of
puzzles by which the nature of such movement operations could be
probed. In Irish, this set of puzzles is further enriched by the
relatively free availability of resumption as an additional option
for forming A-bar binding relations. This paper (a progress report
in a long-running struggle) is concerned with a couple of
inter-related questions in this area: (i) how we should understand
the choice between resumption and movement and what the availability
of that choice implies (ii) how the choice, once made, is reflected
in the morphosyntax of the language. At stake ultimately is the
fundamental question of how we should understand locality requirements
in syntax.
Join us on Monday for Phonology Circle! Please note the new location: 32-D461.
Speaker: Andrew Nevins
Date: Monday, Sept 28
Location: 32-D461
Title: Encoding and decoding in the whistled phonology of Antia, Greece
This is intended to be a discussion about the phonetics and phonology of whistled languages,
and participants are invited to read the attached paper by Annie Rialland on the topic as a
starting point. I will also present some production data from words and non-words collected in Antia, the results of perception tasks with both whistlers and non-whistling Greek speakers, and offer some ideas about the encoding mechanism used in this surrogate speech system.
Recommended reading: Rialland (2005) Phonological and phonetic aspects of whistled languages
Join us for this week’s Ling-lunch talk:
Speaker: Ivy Sichel
Time: Thurs 10/1, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Title: Economy and the Interpretation of Pronominals
Natural languages use pronominal material for a variety of purposes which extend beyond the ordinary use of pronouns to denote independent theta-roles. In some of these other uses, pronominal material appears to double another DP, including, for example, resumptive pronouns and agreement. The talk addresses how these forms are interpreted, and in particular whether the pronominal form allows reconstruction of its associated DP. The central claim is that form alone does not determine interpretation, and that the existence of alternatives does to a significant extent. The first part of the talk demonstrates this for resumptive pronouns and focuses on a correlation between interpretation and extraction. In non-island contexts, Hebrew has optional and obligatory resumptive pronouns. Optional resumptives block reconstruction of the RC head and also block extraction from the RC; obligatory resumptives allow reconstruction and also allow extraction, exactly like traces. I argue that (1) The possibility for reconstruction depends on the structure of the RC, and in particular the division into Matching and Raising RCs (Bhatt 2002; Sauerland 2004; Hulsey & Sauerland 2006), and (2) that the structure associated with reconstruction is best realized with a trace and is realized with a pronoun only if no trace alternative is available. The second part of the talk extends the alternatives-based analysis to agreement in Palestinian Arabic (PA). PA exhibits an alternation between full-Agr and no-Agr, and clauses with full-Agr lack inverse scope readings, analyzed as absence of reconstruction. This is related to the availability of an alternative structure in which agreement is absent, the surface position of the subject is low and its scope is fixed at that position.
The Syntax-Semantics Reading Group is meeting for two special sessions on
Monday, September 21, to hear practice talks for Sinn und Bedeutung:
Who: Jacopo Romoli
When: 11:30AM
Where: 32-D461
Title: Towards a Structural Account of Conservativity
Abstract can be found on the Sinn und Bedeutung webpage.
Who: Patrick Grosz & Pritty Patel-Grosz
When: 3:30PM
Where: 56-191
Title: The Typology of Pronouns: Two Types of Anaphora Resolution
Abstract can be found on the Sinn und Bedeutung webpage.
If you are
interested in presenting your work or someone else’s work in the Syntax-Semantics Reading Group, there are
still some slots available for this semester - please check the group’s
webpage.
Join us for this week’s Ling-Lunch talk:
Speaker: Kirill Shklovsky
Title: Person-Case Effects in Tseltal
Time: Thurs 9/24, 12:30-1:45
Place: 32-D461
Person-Case Constraint (PCC) is a restriction on the nature of the direct object argument in the presence of an indirect object: in many languages, the the direct object in a ditransitive construction can only be third person (Bonet, 1991). Tseltal, a Mayan language of southern Mexico, exhibits PCC restrictions not only in with ditransitive verbs but also in a construction involving non-finite complement embedded under an intransitive verb. Curiously, the restriction is not in effect when the same non-finite complement is embedded under a transitive verb. In this talk I will show that the phenomenon can be accounted for using theories of PCC in Béjar and Rezac (2003) and Anagnostopoulou (2003) in combination with inherent case theory of ergative case (Woolford (1997), Legate (2008)). This should provide support for the idea that ergative is inherent case in Tseltal. The rest of this talk will deal with case-assignment and agreement in non-finite complement clauses.
Please join us for a special session of the syntax-semantics reading group on Friday, 9/25.
Who: Chris Collins (NYU)
When: 1:00-2:30PM
Where: 32-144
Title: A formalization of Minimalist Syntax
The goal of this formalization is to give a precise, formal account of
certain fundamental notions in minimalist syntax, leading up to the
definition of a convergent derivation. We would like this
formalization to be useful to minimalist syntacticians in evaluating
their own proposals (both conceptually and empirically), and comparing
their proposals to others.
The talk is joint work with Ed Stabler.
Speaker: Martina Wiltschko (University of British Columbia)
Title: The composition of INFL: An exploration of tense, tenseless languages and tenseless constructions.
Time: Friday, September 25, 2009, 3:30pm
Place: 32-141
In this paper we argue that the functional category TENSE, sometimes viewed as the head of the clause can be decomposed. It consists of the universal functional category INFL and language specific features of temporal content: [past] and [present]. Thus, the functional category TENSE is not a primitive category of UG, but INFL is. Specifically, we argue that INFL has a universal function, namely anchoring, but that the substantive content associated with it is language specific or can be lacking alltogether.
We present three arguments for this view:
i) Arguments from language variation. We show that in some languages INFL exists without features of temporal content. Instead, in Halkomelem INFL is associated with substantive features of spatial content. In Blackfoot, INFL is associated with substantive features relating the participants of the event to those of the utterance (Ritter & Wiltschko, in press). This much establishes that the category INFL exists independent of its substantive content, at least at the initial state.
ii) Arguments from tenseless constructions. The independence of INFL from its substantive content is further supported by the existence of constructions where INFL appears without temporal content even in a language which otherwise appears to be a tensed language: Infinitives and imperatives. This much establishes that INFL exists without substantive content even within a given language. The proposal correctly predicts that in contexts where INFL is used without substantive content the difference between English, Halkomelem and Blackfoot vanishes.
iii) Arguments from nominal licensing. Finally, we show that the licensing of nominal arguments varies with the substantive content associated with INFL. In languages with temporal features, nominal arguments are licensed via dependent marking (structural case), while in languages with spatial or participant features, nominal arguments are licensed via head-marking. This indirectly supports Pesetsky & Torregos 2001 idea according to which structural case reduces to tense features on D. However, since tense is not a primitive category in our analysis, we argue that case reduces instead to the substantive features that make up tense: [present = NOMINATIVE] and [past = ACCUSATIVE].
We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our proposal for our understanding of functional categories.
Phonology Circle will not meet this week, but will meet every Monday for the remainder of the semester. Here is the tentative schedule of presentations:
| Mon Sep 28 | Peter Graff |
| Mon Oct 5 | Andrew Nevins |
| Tue Oct 13 | Michael Kenstowicz |
| Mon Oct 19 | Youngah Do |
| Mon Oct 26 | UMMM practice talks |
| Mon Nov 2 | Igor Yanovich |
| Mon Nov 9 | NELS practice talks |
| Mon Nov 16 | Sverre Johnsen |
| Mon Nov 23 | Hyesun Cho |
| Mon Nov 30 | Gillian Gallagher |
| Mon Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
Phonology Circle resumes its weekly meetings on Monday with an organizational meeting, and a brief presentation by Peter Graff on what he has learned about a local MIT resource, the Behavioral Research Lab.
Time: Mon 9/14, 5pm
Location: 32-D831
If you cannot make it to the meeting, but wish to present some time this semester, please contact Adam to request a slot.
Patrick Grosz and Pritty Patel-Grosz are going to present their work on
pronominal anaphora next week, which they will also present at Sinn und
Bedeutung 14. For the title and abstract of their presentation see below. Note
that this is not a 30-minute practice talk, but intended to be a longer, more
interactive presentation where comments, discussion and feedback are encouraged
throughout.
DATE: Monday, September 21, 2009
TIME: 3:30-5PM
ROOM: to be announced
TITLE: The Typology of Pronouns: Two Types of Anaphora Resolution
ABSTRACT: can be found on the Sinn und Bedeutung webpage
This will be a special session of the LF Reading Group (Syntax-Semantics Reading
Group).
Speaker: Keith R. Kluender, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Title: Speech perception as efficient coding
Time: Friday, 18 September, 4pm
Place: Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
Fundamental principles that govern all perception, from transduction to cortex,
are shaping our understanding of perception of speech and other familiar
sounds. Here, ecological and sensorineural considerations are proposed in
support of an information-theoretical approach to speech perception.
Optimization of information transmission and efficient coding are emphasized in
explanations of classic characteristics of speech perception, including:
perceptual resilience to signal degradation; variability across changes in
listening environment, rate, and talker; categorical perception; and, word
segmentation. Experimental findings will be used to illustrate how a series of like
processes operate upon the acoustic signal with increasing levels of
sophistication on the way from waveforms to words. Common to these
processes are ways that perceptual systems absorb predictable characteristics
of the soundscape, from temporally local (adaptation) to extended periods
(learning), and sensitivity to new information is enhanced. [Supported by NIDCD]
For more info: http://mit.edu/bcs/newsevents/colloquia.shtml
The Syntax-Semantics Reading Group, also known as the LF Reading
Group, is still looking for presenters. If you would like to discuss
your research or present stimulating work done by others, please let
Tue or Luka know. The group’s first meeting is scheduled for:
Monday, Sept 21, 11.30AM
Location: 32-D461
For more information, please visit the group’s website.
With the beginning of the new semester, the Syntax-Semantics Reading Group gears up again.
If there are papers that you would like to see discussed, please let us know. Also contact Tue and Luka if you have any other suggestions for the group or, naturally, if you want to give a practice talk.
See you soon!
Your LFRG organizers
Phonology Circle will resume its fall schedule next Monday, 9/14, at 5pm in 32-831. If you cannot make this meeting, but would like to reserve a slot for the fall semester, please contact Adam.
See you there!
Please join us this FRIDAY at 3:00 for our last LF Reading Group of the semester. Friederike Moltmann will give a talk titled “Reifying Terms”. Abstract below. Note the special day, room and time.
SPEAKER: Friederike Moltmann
TITLE: Reifying Terms
TIME: Mon. 5/18, 10:30am
ROOM: 32-D831
In this talk I will discuss the syntax and semantics of NPs of the following sort:
- a. the person John
b. the name John
c. the fictional character Hamlet
d. the number ten
e. the numeral ten
f. the color greenI argue that the semantics of such NPs uniformly consists in introducing an object on the basis of a non-referential occurrence of an expression, hence they are ‘reifying terms’. I argue that numerals, color words, and simple quotations in fact generally are not referential terms and that only with the help of the construction (1) reference to expressions, colors, and numbers as objects is possible.
Time: Monday 5/11, 5pm
Location: 32-D831
Speaker: Jelena Krivokapi? (Yale University)
Title: The production and perception of prosodic structure
Prosodic structure refers to the level of linguistic structure above the segmental level, namely phrasal organization and prominence. This talk examines the temporal and structural properties of phrasal organization as reflected in production and perception. Previous research has shown that prosodic phrase boundaries introduce systematic phonetic variation in the temporal properties of segments. Acoustic studies have found that at boundaries segments increase in duration. Articulatory studies have shown that gestures become longer in the vicinity of boundaries and that this articulatory lengthening increases with boundary strength. I will present a series of experimental studies examining a) the effect of prosodic structure on pause duration in utterances, b) the extent of boundary effects as shown in the articulation of gestures near phrase junctures, c) the categoricity and gradiency in the perception of prosodic boundaries, and d) recursion in prosodic structure. The results inform our understanding of the linguistic representation of prosodic structure and its relation to processes involved in producing spoken language. A model incorporating the results of these studies is proposed.
Speaker: Carlo Semenza (Department of Neuroscience, University of Padova)
Title: Neuropsychology of nominal classes
Time: Thursday, May 14, 2009, 11:00 AM
Location: 46-3189