Whamit!

Speaker: Eduard Artes Cuenca (MIT/Barcelona)
Title: Valencian hypocoristics: when morphology meets phonology
Date/Time: Monday, Oct 28, 5:30pm
Location: 32-D831

This talk aims to present evidence in favor of a grammar governed by strong interactions between morphology and phonology. Valencian hypocorostics demonstrate that the need to conform to certain prosodic patterns forces the insertion of morphologically meaningful vowels (inflectional exponents), i.e., ‘morphological epenthesis’ (Cardinaletti & Repetti 2008). Instead of creating new phonological material, the grammar chooses an exponent already listed in the lexicon, thus resorting to Lexical Conservatism (Steriade 1994).

Speaker: Pauline Jacobson (Brown)
Title: The Myth of Silent Linguistic Material
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 31, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

The literature abounds with arguments for the claim that there is actual silent (or deleted) linguistic material in a variety of “ellipsis” constructions - call this the Silent Linguistic Material (SLM) hypothesis. While obviously not all such arguments can be deconstructed over lunch, this talk aims to show that the reasoning behind many of them is fallacious, and that there is no reason to think there is linguistic material which is silenced or deleted under identity.

First we begin with the broader question at issue. The reason for doubting the SLM hypothesis is not driven by a stubborn allergy to silent material; rather we will put this hypothesis in the context of Direct Compositionality. Direct compositionality (see, e.g., Montague’s English as a Formal Language) maintains that the syntax and semantics work in tandem locally building expressions and assigning them a meaning. While mapping an expression into a silent version of that expression can be done quite locally, what is difficult to reconcile with this architecture is the idea of material being silenced under some sort of identity with something else in the discourse context, as this kind of identity condition is not a local property of an expression. I will briefly mention alternative accounts of both fragment answers and VP Ellipsis that don’t make use of SLM, although time precludes details arguments for the alternatives. Here then I can only level the playing field and show that SLM has no real advantage.

The arguments for SLM to be considered (and deconstructed) here fall into two classes. The first is based on the idea that the “remnant” acts as if it were surrounded by additional material with respect to certain grammatical processes/generalizations. But I will show that this itself relies on non-direct compositional and non-local account of the relevant generalizations, and that for an interesting class of such cases there are indeed alternative accounts “on the market” which undermine the rationale for SLM. Moreover, facts about indexicals known about since at least as early as Hankamer and Sag (1984) make it clear that the requisite “identity” condition cannot be formal. But if that is the case, some of the arguments for SLM also collapse as they crucially assume formal identity. The second type of argument is often implicit but seems to underlie much of the reason that SLM seems at first glance like a commonsense view: this is that the “meaning” of constructions with ellipsis becomes trivial to account for if there is SLM. But we don’t know the actual meaning - only the likely understanding in a discourse context, so this view only makes sense if put in terms of processing. But I will argue that positing SLM makes the job of the processor no easier than not positing SLM. In fact, work on processing often (or at least occasionally) makes the mistake of assuming that there is SLM, that the processor has access to the quiet material, and that processing proceeds from there. In other words, some claims about the processing of ellipsis make sense only if the processor already knows what it meaning it is “trying” to compute. As a case study I will consider an argument from Hackl, Koster-Hale and Varvoutis (2010) concerning the interaction of ACD, processing, QR, and de re vs. de dicto readings. My discussion of this point is based on joint work with Ted Gibson, Ev Fedorenko, Steven Piantadosi and Peter Graff.

Speaker: Wataru Uegaki
Date/Time: Friday 1 November, 1 pm
Location: 32-D831
Title: Exhaustive inferences and intonation-discourse congruence

Abstract:

[This is a revision of the talk I presented last semester at LFRG.]

It has been observed that an exhaustive inference (hereafter ExhInf) of question-answers arises only when the polarity of the answer matches that of the question (Schulz and van Rooij 2006; Spector 2007). E.g., although the answer “I will invite Sue” to the question “Who will you invite?” gives rise to the inference that Sue is the only person that the speaker will invite, the answer “I won’t invite Sue” to the same question does not readily give rise to the inference that Sue is the only person that the speaker will not invite (pace von Stechow and Zimmermann 1984).

Previous approaches to this phenomenon stipulate mechanisms that are specific to polarity (or monotonicity)-mismatching question-answer pairs (Schulz and van Rooij 2006; Spector 2007) and largely ignored the role of intonation. In this presentation, I provide an account of the phenomenon in terms of a general constraint on the alternatives to be used in the derivation of ExhInfs, taking into account the discourse structure modelled as a tree of Question under Discussions (Roberts 1996, Büring 2003). Specifically, the constraint states that the alternatives are restricted to be members of the Hamblin-denotation of the immediate QUD of the utterance (the mother of the utterance in terms of the discourse tree representation).

Taking a closer look at the data, we see that there is a restriction on the felicitous intonations in a polarity-mismatching answer. The only available intonation involves a contrastive topic intonation on the item corresponding to the wh and a focus intonation on the item indicating polarity. I argue that this reflects the general intonation-discourse interface conditions (in particular, Question-answer congruence and CT congruence by Rooth 1992, Büring 2003), and the uniquely available intonation reflects a discourse structure in which the wh-question is divided into multiple polar questions. Given the general constraint on alternatives stated above, such a discourse structure is predicted not to give rise to an exhaustive inference.

Speaker: Eric Reuland (Utrecht)
Date/Time: Friday November 1st, 3:30-5pm
Location: 32-141
Title: Why reflexivity is (not) so special

Abstract:

Cross-linguistically one sees a variety of ways in which languages express reflexivity. Languages use bodypart reflexives, self-anaphors, clitics, special verbal markings, but one also sees simplex anaphors, pronominals, and verb forms that have been characterized as ‘detransitivized’. The vast majority of languages does ‘something special’ to express reflexivity. In my talk I will address two major questions that keep intriguing me:

i. Why would this domain be special? Why would the prima facie simplest way to express reflexivity, namely a structure where the subject just binds an object pronominal (‘brute force’ reflexivization, BFR) be so generally avoided?

ii. Are there nevertheless commonalities underlying the various ways in which reflexivity is expressed, and if so what principles of grammar do they follow from?

For an answer, we need sufficiently detailed analyses of languages that prima facie exhibit non-standard properties. In this talk I will focus on the way reflexivity is expressed in languages of two rather different types, namely Tegi Khanty (an Uralic language), and Bahasa Indonesia (Malay), and related languages. I will show that each in its own way raises intriguing issues, from having locally bound pronominals to having multiple ways of expressing reflexivity.

I will briefly review some current approaches to binding, and show that despite their merits they are unable to capture and explain the patterns of variation we find. I will show how the facts discussed follow from the interplay between the effects of binding per se and independent properties of the grammatical system, along the lines proposed in Reuland (2011). Thus, what appeared to be special turns out to be not so special after all.

Date/Time: Monday, Oct 21, 5:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Anthony Brohan: A case study in assimilation: The view from PBase

This talk will explore the hypothesis that the directionality of assimilation in a given language may be affected by typical stress location in a language. Data from PBase (Mielke 2008) and StressTyp (Goedmans et. al 1996) are used to develop a model of the characteristic behavior of features, which is then used to probe for directionality biases in languages based on stress systems. Second, a case study of lenition is presented, aiming to sharpen the findings of the stress/assimilation interaction. The “lattice” of leniting changes (Hock 1999) is empirically filled in with patterns from PBase and functional pressures of contrast preservation in lenitions (Gurevich 2004) are explored in this lattice.

Ezer Razin: An evaluation metric for Optimality Theory (joint work with Roni Katzir, Tel Aviv University)

Our goal is to develop an evaluation metric for OT, a criterion for comparing grammars given the data. Using this criterion, the child can try to search through the space of possible grammars, eliminating suboptimal grammars as it proceeds. Our empirical focus is the lexicon and the constraints, and our evaluation metric is based on the principle of Minimum Description Length (MDL). We wish to model aspects of knowledge such as the English-speaking child’s knowledge that the first segment in the word ‘cat’ involves aspiration, that [raiDer] is underlyingly /raiter/, and that [rai:Der] is underlyingly /raider/. We take it that any theory of phonology would require this knowledge to be learned rather than innate, making this a convenient place to start. The learner that we present succeeds in obtaining such knowledge, which, to our knowledge, makes it a first. The generality of the MDL-based evaluation metric allows us to learn additional parts of the grammar without changing our learner. We demonstrate this by learning not just the lexicon and the ranking of the constraints but also the content of the constraints (both markedness and faithfulness constraints) from general constraint schemata. The learner that we present succeeds in obtaining this knowledge, making it a first in this domain as well.

Sam Zukoff: On the Origins of Attic Reduplication

In Ancient Greek, the perfect tense is marked by reduplication. The default pattern of reduplication for consonant-initial roots is to have a CV reduplicant, and the default pattern for vowel-initial forms is to show lengthening of the initial vowel. However, for a subset of (synchronically) vowel-initial roots, there exists a different pattern, known as Attic Reduplication. Attic Reduplication forms have a reduplicant of the shape VC with concomitant lengthening of the root-initial vowel. For example, ?ager- ‘gather together’ : perfect ????????? [ag??germai], ?eleuth- ‘go, come’: perfect ???????? [el??loutha], ?ol- ‘destroy’ : perfect ????? [ol??la].

In this talk, I will argue that Attic Reduplication is a well-motivated outcome of the regular phonology of a Pre-Greek system that still contained laryngeals, rather than an analogical development or a stipulated alternative pattern.

The account that will be developed here uses independent evidence from the process of “vowel prothesis” and other alternative reduplication patterns, both in Greek and the other Indo-European daughter languages, to demonstrate that the normal CV reduplication pattern was blocked for laryngeal-initial roots due to markedness considerations. In avoiding these markedness violations, an alternative copying pattern emerges. This new pattern turns out to involve reduplicant-internal epenthesis and copying of both the root-initial laryngeal and the second root-consonant. The ranking which ultimately selects this repair is consistent with, and may even directly follow from, the intersection of the independent rankings necessary to generate vowel prothesis and the default reduplication pattern.

Speaker: Despina Ikonomou
Title: Middle morphology in Modern Greek: Same mechanism in different environments
Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct 22, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Many languages (Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Albanian, Hebrew, Modern Greek, et al.) use the same morphology (usually described as Middle or Non-Active morphology) in a range of argument structure phenomena that usually involve i) anticausatives, ii) verbal reflexives and iii) generic middles (see Kemmer (1993) for a typology). Despite the large amount of work on each of the above phenomena, it has been proven hard to provide a unified account for all of them (cf. Embick 1997, Reinhart 2000, Alexiadou & Doron 2012). In this talk, I focus on Modern Greek and I propose a unified analysis of Middle Voice across the different structures that appears. Namely, I argue that in all cases Middle Voice can be analyzed as a functional head that existentially binds the external argument variable (as it has been proposed for the English Passive by Bach (1980), Roberts (1987), Bruening (2011)). The default structure that arises from this operation is a passive structure. However, each of the structures in (i)-(iii) involves an additional component that differentiates them from passives. More particularly, i) anticausatives involve an additional cause event, ii) verbal reflexives carry a reflexivity feature in their verbal root and iii) generic middles involve a generic operator that universally quantifies over events. If there is no additional component, then a passive structure arises by existential binding over the external argument. If time permits, I will also discuss verbs that appear only in Middle Voice (the so-called deponent verbs) suggesting that most of them fall into the class of either reflexive or anticausative verbs (cf. Zombolou & Alexiadou 2012, Kallulli 2013).

Speaker: Barbara Partee (UMass Amherst)
Date/Time: Friday October 25th, 3:30-5pm
Location: 32-141
Title: The Starring Role of Quantifiers in the History of Formal Semantics

The history of formal semantics is a history of evolving ideas about logical form, linguistic form, and the nature of semantics. This talk emphasizes parts of the history of semantics where quantifiers played a major role, including the “Linguistic Wars” of the late 1960’s and the conflicts in the philosophy of language between the Ordinary Language philosophers and the Formal Language philosophers. Both conflicts resulted in part from the mismatch between first-order logic and natural language syntax. Both were resolved in part once Montague applied his higher-order typed intensional logic to the analysis of natural language, as illustrated most vividly by the treatment of noun phrases as generalized quantifiers. In subsequent developments, generalized quantifier theory led to the first substantive ideas in formal semantics about semantic universals (Barwise and Cooper, Keenan), and the failure of Barwise and Cooper’s universal provoked some of the earliest work in formal semantic typology. Quantifiers have also been central in debates about dynamic approaches to semantics, and about the nature of anaphora.

Reference:
Partee, Barbara H. In Press. The starring role of quantifiers in the history of formal semantics. In The Logica Yearbook 2012, eds. Vit Pun?ochár and Petr Svarny. London: College Publications.

The Northeast Computational Workshop (NECPhon) will be held this Saturday, Oct 26, 2013, at MIT. The program is below. All events will be held in the Stata Center in 32-D461.

11:30 Coffee/lunch

12:00 Ezer Rasin (MIT)
An evaluation metric for Optimality Theory
(joint work with Roni Katzir, Tel Aviv University)

12:30 Joe Pater and Robert Staubs (UMass)
Modeling Learning Trajectories with Batch Gradient Descent

1:00 Tal Linzen and Gillian Gallagher (NYU)
Modeling the timecourse of generalization in phonotactic learning

1:30-1:45 break

1:45 Jane Chandlee (University of Delaware)
Strictly Local Phonological Processes

2:15 Anthony Brohan (MIT)
A case study in assimilation: The view from PBase

2:45-3:00 break

3:00 Naomi Feldman (UMD), Caitlin Richter (UMD), Josh Falk (U Chicago), and Aren Jansen (JHU)
Predicting listeners’ perceptual biases using low-level speech features

3:30 Sean Martin (NYU)
Phonetic category learning with unsupervised cue selection

4:00-4:15 break

4:15 Tamas Biro (Yale)
Title TBA

4:45 Adam Jardine (University of Delaware)
Computationally, tone is different

End: 5:15 pm

Speaker: Jennifer L. Smith (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Time: Friday October 18th, 3:30-5pm
Location: 32-141
Title: Lexical-category effects in phonology: Whence and why?

Please see the full abstract (pdf).

Speakers: Sam Steddy and Coppe van Urk
Title: A Distributed Morphology View of Person-driven Auxiliary Selection
Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct 8, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

We examine the BE vs. HAVE auxiliary splits of Upper-Southern Italian, which differ from familiar Romance languages in being conditioned not by verb type (Burzio 1986), but by person. Building on the work of D’Alessandro (2012 et. prev) and Manzini & Savoia (2005, 2011), we apply the methodology of Arregi & Nevins (2012) to the auxiliaries of Ariellese (Chieti, Abbruzzo) and other languages. Specifically, splits arise because subject clitics and a prepositional head, which turns BE into HAVE (Freeze 1992; Kayne 1993), compete to reach T. This proposal provides support for the idea that HAVE is derived from BE in syntax, and for Arregi & Nevins’ (2012) account of the PCC in Basque.

Speaker: Alexander Podobryaev
Title: Context and assignment in indexical shifting
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 10, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Recently, there has been a lot of work done on “shifting” of indexical pronouns in embedded contexts, in various languages. In this talk I examine some novel data from Mishar Tatar (MT<Turkic). There seems to be two kinds of indexical pronouns in MT: indexicals that are context-dependent (cf. Anand 2006), and those that are are only assignment-dependent (cf. Sudo 2012). It is only the latter that can get “shifted” interpretation in embedded contexts (because the monster operator in MT presumably can only manipulate the assignment function but not the context). Crucially, it is also only the latter that can appear as “fake” (semantically bound) indexicals. What’s more, it also happens that context-dependent pronouns are phonologically overt, while assignment-dependent pronouns are null. Time permitting, I will discuss why this would be the case.

Speaker: Aron Hirsch
Date/Time: Thursday 10 October, 5 pm
Location: 32-D831
Title: Incremental presupposition projection in disjunction

Abstract:

Presupposition projection in conjunction shows left-to-right asymmetries, sensitive to the linear order of the conjuncts. Theories have been proposed linking such asymmetries to general processing considerations, predicting similar asymmetries to be observable across sentential connectives. We address an apparent counter-example – disjunction – which in the classic examples in the literature appears projectively symmetric. We argue that the classic examples are confounded, and show (i) that once the confound is resolved, disjunction is projectively asymmetric, and (ii) that even with the confound in place, there are experimentally observable traces of asymmetry consistent with a processing-based approach.

Speaker: Gaja Jarosz (Yale/MIT)
Title: Inductive Bias in the Acquisition of Syllable Structure in Polish
Date/Time: Monday, Sept 30, 5:30pm
Location: 32-D831

(Joint work with Shira Calamaro and Jason Zentz, Yale University.)

A growing body of recent computational and experimental work investigates the kinds of constraints or inductive biases that are needed to explain adult learning outcomes and artificial language learning results. This paper contributes to this discussion by investigating the extent to which inductive biases are needed to explain phonological development. Our focus is on modeling development of production to probe the learning biases that affect the acquisition process in a naturalistic setting. We use statistical modeling to make and test predictions for learning based on properties of the language input. In particular, on the basis of a longitudinal corpus of spontaneous productions of four Polish-learning children, we present detailed analysis of the acquisition of syllable structure in Polish and the phonological factors underlying the observed development. We subsequently construct a variety of phonotactic probability models estimated from a corpus of spontaneous speech spoken to these children and examine the abilities of these input-based models to explain the observed acquisition effects. Our findings indicate that, while certain phonotactic probabilities are highly predictive of acquisition, none can explain the full range of observed acquisition effects. We show that development of syllable structure is sensitive to phonological factors not recoverable from the phonotactic probabilities, suggesting a crucial role for inductive biases. We also show that access to abstract phonological representations plays a key role in explaining the developmental effects. We discuss implications of these results for theories of phonological learning.

Speaker: Ted Levin
Title: On the structure of Japanese passive constructions
Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct 1, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Please see the full abstract (pdf).

Speaker: Hadas Kotek
Title: What moves where when you process wh-in-situ
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 3, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Recent theories of interrogative syntax/semantics adopt two strategies for the interpretation of in-situ wh-phrases: covert movement (Karttunen 1977, a.o.) and in-situ interpretation (Hamblin 1973, a.o.). The availability of covert movement is traditionally assumed to be all-or-nothing: the in-situ wh covertly moves to C or else stays in its base-generated position and is interpreted without movement at LF. In this talk I argue that this assumption cannot be maintained. I present evidence from real-time sentence processing of English multiple wh-questionswhich shows that wh-phrases require both covert movement and in-situ interpretation for their derivation. I propose a new syntax-semantics for multiple questions that can derive the experimental data.

The Experimental Syntax and Semantics Lab (ESSL) is resuming its regular lab meetings on Thursday evenings at 5 pm in 32-D831. The organizers are currently looking for people to present their research at these meetings (ongoing and finished projects are equally welcome). If you are interested in presenting, please email Erin Olson with a preferred presentation date and a title/short description of what you’d like to present.

The organizers of LFRG would like to arrange a few meetings around the theme of exhaustivity and scalar implicatures this semester. If anyone would like to present so if anyone would like to present a paper or ideas of their own on these topics, please contact Edwin Howard or Chris O’Brien.

Speaker: Chris O’Brien
Date/Time: Friday 10/4, 1-2.30 pm
Location: 32-D831
Topic: Experimental evidence for embedded scalar implicatures (Chemla & Spector 2011)

Chris O’Brien will discuss Chemla & Spector’s 2011 paper “Experimental evidence for embedded scalar implicatures”. Abstract of the paper:

“Scalar implicatures are traditionally viewed as pragmatic inferences which result from a reasoning about speakers’ communicative intentions (Grice 1989). This view has been challenged in recent years by theories which propose that scalar implicatures are a grammatical phenomenon. Such theories claim that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions and enter into the recursive computation of meaning—something that is not expected under the traditional, pragmatic view. Recently, Geurts and Pouscoulous (2009) presented an experimental study in which embedded scalar implicatures were not detected. Using a novel version of the truth value judgment tasks, we provide evidence that subjects sometimes compute embedded scalar implicatures.”

Speaker: Michael Wagner (McGill)
Date/Time: Friday October 4th, 3:30-5pm
Venue: 32-141
Title: Additivity and the Syntax of ‘Even’

Abstract:

Whether ‘even’ carries an additive presupposition remains controversial. While Horn (1969), Karttunen and Peters (1979), Wilkinson (1996) and many others have argued that it does, Stechow (1991), Krifka (1992) and Rullmann (1997) reached the opposite conclusion. This talk identifies a restriction on the focus alternatives that additive operator may range over: They cannot entail or be entailed by what is asserted. Based on tests relying on this restriction and more conventional arguments, the talk then develops a novel syntactic generalization about the circumstances under which even triggers an additive presupposition which reconciles apparently contradictory evidence from the earlier literature. Consequences for our understanding of the syntax of focus operators are explored.

Speaker: Gaja Jarosz (Yale/MIT)
Date/Time: Monday, Sept 23, 5:30p
Location: 32-D831

Gaja Jarosz will lead a discussion of her recent Phonology paper, “Learning with hidden structure in Optimality Theory and Harmonic Grammar: beyond Robust Interpretive Parsing.”

Speaker: Sam Steddy
Title: The syntax of distributive and collective pluralities
Date/Time: Tuesday, Sept 24, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

I argue that distributivity, over collectivity, is a linguistic primitive. DPs which convey some plurality, whether transparently (“the cats”) or obliquely (“the team”), may be ‘distributivised’ by a syntactic head ‘#’, merged at the top layer of their DP, which acts as a plural goal for morphological agreement. I will present a number of ‘agreement mismatches’ that show that # is not solely a semantic operator but has an influence on syntax. The optionality of merging #, combined with LF-raising operations creates nuanced semantic interpretations. Finally, #’s phonology will also be shown to cause the different agreement of British and USA English.

Speaker: Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (University of Arizona/MIT)
Title: Steps to the Physics of Language
Date/Time: Thursday, September 26, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

The study of complex systems seems to affirm the Thompson-Turing claim that “some physical processes are of very general occurrence.” Notably, those involving Fibonacci-based “golden” forms, ubiquitous in nature, and a number of mathematical models standard in modern physics (matrix representation of operators, with associated eigenvalues and eigenvectors expressing directional stability). This lends immediate interest to the observation that the repeated structural motif in the human syntactic system, the X-bar schema, is likewise a “golden” form (Piattelli-Palmarini and Uriagereka 2008, Medeiros 2008, Piattelli-Palmarini and Medeiros in preparation) and leads us to inquire whether whatever is behind the natural ubiquity of such phenomena, in other domains, might possibly be at work in language as well. If so, this peculiar aspect of human phrase structure (the X-bar configuration) would fall under Chomsky’s (2005) “third factor”, a factor about language which is neither encoded in the particulars of our genome, nor learned from the environment, but determined by domain-general principles beyond the organism.”

Date/Time: Thursday, 26 September, 6 pm
Location: 32-G449 (Kiva)
Speaker: Ted Gibson

language@mit, a new group aimed at bringing together researchers investigating various aspects of language across the Institute, will hold its inaugural meeting on 26 September at 6 pm in 32-G449. Ted Gibson will give an overview of his lab’s research, followed by general discussion, including canvassing ideas for future events. All are welcome. Pizza will be served.

LFRG meetings are scheduled for Friday 1 pm in 32-D831 this semester. There are still multiple slots open this semester. Please contact the organizers Edwin Howard and Chris O’Brien if you would like to give a presentation.

Title: Factorial typology and metrical faithfulness (poster rehearsal for m@90)
Speaker: Juliet Stanton
Date/Time: Monday, Sept 16, 5:30-7:30p
Location: 32-D831

In Pintupi, Diyari, Dyirbal, and Walpiri, four Pama-Nyungan (PN) languages, unsuffixed forms are stressed identically but suffixed forms are not. I argue, following Kenstowicz (1998), that these divergences reflect differences in the type and strength of morphological influence on stress in derivatives. This account differs from prior work as it uses directional base-derivative (BD) correspondence constraints to account for all paradigmatic uniformity effects. I assess the predictions of the constraint set via a cyclically evaluated factorial typology. An analysis of PN stress invoking BD correspondence makes tighter typological predictions than competing alternatives (cf. Alderete 2009).

Syntax Square is not meeting this week. There are still multiple slots open, including the next three weeks, so please contact the organizers (Ruth Brillman and Miriam Nussbaum) if you would like to give a presentation.

Speaker: Julia Horvath (Tel Aviv University)
Title: Phrasal Idioms and the Architecture of Grammar
Date/Time: Thursday, Sept 19, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

(Joint work with Tal Siloni, Tel Aviv University.)

The investigation of idioms is important not only per se but also because it has consequences with regard to our choice of theory and for the architecture of grammar. The focus of this talk will be phrasal idioms, as defined by the Type-Sensitive Storage Model (H&S), such as the verb phrase idioms “shoot the breeze,” “spill the beans,” “put (something) on the back burner,” namely idioms headed by a lexical category (not by clausal functional material).

Idioms exhibit an inherent duality. On the one hand, they are complex entities whose internal makeup reflects structural properties of phrasal units. They have syntactic structure similar to phrases built in the syntax. On the other hand, they have conventionalized meanings that cannot be predicted by semantic composition. This means that they must be stored. Since they involve syntactic structure, the question as to how they are stored is especially intriguing and important.

The talk will report three studies (one corpus-based study and two psycholinguistic studies) that help us decide between the various possible hypotheses as to how phrasal idioms are stored in mental representations.

Theoretically, the studies to be discussed provide evidence against theories such as Construction Grammar, as developed by Goldberg 2006 a.o. Such theories advance the claim that our knowledge of language is nothing but a stored set of constructions (their “Construct-i-con”) — a construction being the association of form and semantic-pragmatic function including abstract patterns, idioms, words and morphemes. Constructions on this view are formed on the basis of general cognitive mechanisms, reflect functional needs, and they are all stored. Our study of idioms turns out to offer an elegant argument against such views. Moreover, the findings on phrasal idioms provide evidence with regard to the nature of the lexical component.

There will be an organization meeting of the Phonology Circle on Monday, Sept 9 at 5:30pm in 32-D831. If you would like to reserve a date but cannot attend, please contact Michael Kenstowicz.

Syntax Square will be held on Tuesdays 1-2p this semester. This informal student-run talk series is for all kinds of presentations including works in progress and recaps of articles/conference talks. The organizers for this term are Ruth Brillman and Miriam Nussbaum — contact them if you’re interested in giving a presentation.

Speaker: Ted Levin
Title: Balinese Pseudo-Noun Incorporation: Licensing under Morphological Merger
Date/Time: Tuesday, Sept 10, 1-2p
Room: 32-D461

A full abstract is available (pdf).

Head Movement of a nominal into a verb (Noun Incorporation) has two consequences. The nominal is adjacent to the verb and is (possibly) licensed without Case (Baker 1988). This raises the question of whether Head Movement or the head-head adjacency it creates is responsible for licensing. In this talk, I argue for the latter based on properties of Balinese (Austronesian) Pseudo-Noun Incorporation (PNI). Balinese PNI exhibits properties problematic for previous account of the phenomenon; only Agents including some definite ones (pronouns and Proper Names) undergo PNI. Themes, unexpectedly, never do (contra Farkas & de Swart 2004 inter alia). Furthermore, Balinese PNI is sensitive to nominal-internal word order. As such, it can neither be described as an instance of string-vacuous Head Movement (Baker 2012) or a bare NP (Massam 2001). I posit that Balinese PNI occurs when a caseless nominal head (N or D) happens to be adjacent to V. Head-head adjacency licenses that nominal via Morphological Merger (Marantz 1984).

Ling-Lunch is an informal setting for presenting talks on any linguistic topic, scheduled for Thursdays 12:30-1:45p. If you would like to present, please contact the organizers for this term, Isa Bayirli and Juliet Stanton, at ling-lunch-organizers@mit.edu.

Speaker: Ruth Brillman
Date/Time: Friday, 13 September, 1 pm
Location: 32-D831
Topic: Parasitic Degree Phrases (Nissenbaum & Schwarz 2011)

I’ll discuss Nissenbaum & Schwarz’s (2011) Natural Language Semantics paper “Parasitic Degree Phrases” (available here), which argues that sentences like “John is too rich for the monastery to hire ___,” dubbed gapped degree phrases, contain an instance of null-operator movement identical to the null operators which arguably appear (Chomsky 1986, Nissenbaum 2000) in parasitic gap constructions like “Who did the monastery hire without talking to ___?”). Since gapped degree phrases, unlike their parasitic gap counterparts, don’t appear dependent on a prior instance of A-bar movement, this sort of construction at first appears at odds with a null operator analysis. In fact however, N&S claim that exactly this kind of structure is predicted by Nissenbaum’s (2000) analysis.

Title: Language, reasoning, and commonsense knowledge

Speaker: Noah Goodman (Stanford University)

Date: Tues 9-3-2013

Time: 4:00 PM

Location: Singleton Auditorium, MIT 46-3002

Host: Prof. Joshua B. Tenenbaum; Tim O’Donnell

Human reasoning is a beautiful puzzle: it is productive,
extending to new situations without bound, and it is uncertain,
dealing gracefully with noisy evidence and shades of belief. Reasoning
is also a key window on cognition, providing some of our best evidence
about the structures that underly everyday, commonsense thought. I
will argue that the core representations that support reasoning can be
understood as a ‘probabilistic language of thought’, and that
reasoning is an approximation to probabilistic inference. I will
illustrate this claim with examples of reasoning about games and
property induction. However, I will suggest that the bridge between
the probabilistic language of thought and empirical data is a firm
understanding of natural language. I will sketch a model of natural
language pragmatics and semantics, and describe experimental evidence
from communication games and quantity implicature. I will then
describe how we can extend this framework to encompass vague language,
focussing on scalar adjectives (like “tall”). I will conclude by
coming back to reasoning, explaining two puzzling patterns: the
sorites paradox and the effect of additional premises when reasoning
general-to-specific. Time permitting, I will discuss possible
process-level implementations in a short coda.

The MIT Linguistics Colloquium schedule for this academic year is below. All talks are on Fridays, 3:30-5:00 p.m. in room 32-141. For further information, please contact the organizers for this year, Sam Steddy and Wataru Uegaki. This schedule is subject to change, especially for Spring 2014 — please visit the Colloquium webpage for updates.

Fall 2013:

October 4: Michael Wagner, McGill
October 18: Jennifer Smith, UNC Chapel Hill
October 25: Barbara Partee, UMass Amherst
November 1: Eric Reuland, Utrecht
December 6: Gillian Ramchand, CASTL

Spring 2014:

February 7: Raj Singh, Carleton
February 14: Elena Anagnostopoulou, University of Crete
March 14: Marcel den Dikken, CUNY
April 4: Adamantios Gafos, Yale, Potsdam
April 25: Richard Kayne, NYU
May 2: Matthew Gordon, UCSB
May 9: Julie Legate, UPenn

Speaker: Michelle Fullwood
Title: The perceptual dimensions of sonority-driven epenthesis
Time/Date: Monday, May 20, 2pm (Note special time)
Location: 32-D831

Vowel epenthesis often appears to preferentially target consonant clusters with rising sonority. One explanation for this tendency is perceptual faithfulness (Fleischhacker 2002, Steriade 2006): rising sonority clusters are more susceptible to epenthesis because the perceptual distance between the underlying /C1 C2/ sequence and its correspondent output sequence [C1 V C2] is small, thus incurring a smaller faithfulness cost.

This raises the question of how to compute the perceptual distance between two sonority contours. I propose that the appropriate metric is Sonority Angle, defined to be the angle formed by C1-C2 and C1-V. Given a standard sonority scale mapping classes of consonants to numerical sonority, this metric predicts a certain hierarchy of susceptibility to epenthesis for consonant clusters.

I present two case studies of sonority-driven epenthesis in Chaha (Ethiopia; Southern Semitic) and Irish (Celtic) that demonstrate the correctness of certain rankings of clusters in the hierarchy, in contrast with alternative proposals.

Speaker: Suyeon Yun
Title: Two Types of Right Dislocation in Korean
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 14, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461

This paper proposes that right dislocation of an argument to the post-verbal position in Korean involves two different structures, rightward movement and bi-clausal adjunction following ellipsis, based on prosodic and syntactic evidence. Focusing on Seoul Korean, I also argue that rightward movement is triggered by a focus effect, achieved by the movement of non-focused element bearing old information, and bi-clause adjunction expresses afterthoughts through repetition of a clause.

Speaker: Aniruddh D. Patel (Dept of Psychology, Tufts)
Title: Speech-music rhythmic relations: empirical studies
Date/Time: Thursday, May 16, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Rhythm is widely acknowledged to be an important aspect of speech and music, and theoretical work on rhythm within each domain has long expressed interest in possible connections with the other domain. Yet empirical studies comparing rhythm in speech and music are rare. In this talk I will argue that the paucity of research reflects a fixation on periodic rhythms in human auditory cognition, and that meaningful connections between linguistic and musical rhythm are more likely to be found in the domain of nonperiodic rhythms, i.e., in systematic patterns of timing, accent, and grouping which have nothing to do with periodicity. Two lines of cross-cultural empirical research will be used to support this argument, one concerning differences in how Americans vs. Japanese listeners hear simple nonlinguistic rhythms, and one concerning reflections of speech rhythm in instrumental classical music.

What: Even more Turkshop results
Who: Benjamin Storme
When: Thursday, May 16, 5:30
Where: 32-D831

The final lab meeting of the year will be dedicated to results of projects created by Turkshop participants. We will hear from Benjamin Storme about his project on wh long extraction in French.

The final linguistics colloquium of the semester takes place this Friday.

Speaker: Emmanuel Chemla (LSCP-CNRS Paris)
Date/Time: May 17 (Friday), 3:30-5pm
Venue: 32-141
Title: Polarity items are acceptable in subjectively monotone environments (Based on joint work with Vincent Homer and Daniel Rothschild)

Abstract:

This talk is part of a reflection about the status of linguistic generalizations of the form: “Sentence S is acceptable to the extent that it satisfies property P”, where a linguistic intuition is related with an abstract, objective, mathematical property P. As a case study, we will defend the following version of the good-old generalization about the distribution of NPIs: “NPIs are acceptable *to the extent that* they are in an environment that is recognized as downward entailing”. We will present two sets of results in favor of this subjective version of the generalization. First, we will show that the acceptability of an NPI for a given speaker best correlates with the ability of this particular speaker to recognize that the environment is downward-entailing (Chemla, Homer, Rothschild, 2011). Second, we will show that the presence of a polarity item influences inferences comprehenders are willing to draw. Roughly, they create illusions of monotonicity (contra Szabolcsi, Bott, McElree, 2008). We will show that the shape of these illusions provides further direct evidence in favor of the generalization we defend and against previous approaches (in particular, they go against the idea of local licensing of NPIs under double negations, see Chemla, Homer, Rothschild, in preparation). We will conclude with a discussion about: (a) the position of our generalization with respect to critical configurations discussed in the literature about polarity items (Schwarz/Heim puzzle, non-assertive environments such as questions, etc.), (b) what such results teach us about the linguistic ability and its interface with other abilities.

Speaker: Neil Myler (NYU)
Title: Building and interpreting possession sentences in Cochabamba Quecha
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 7, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461

The full abstract is available here (pdf).

This talk develops an analysis of the syntax and semantics of three different predicative possession constructions in Cochabamba Quechua, a Quechuan language of Bolivia, and draws out the consequences of that analysis for the theory of thematic roles and their place in the grammar.

Speaker: Neil Myler (NYU)
Title: Building and interpreting HAVE sentences in (mostly) English
Date/Time: Thursday, May 9, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

The full abstract is available here (pdf).

The literature on the syntax and semantics of possession sentences is vast. However, much of it can be seen as trying to deal with two major puzzles: what we might call the too many meanings puzzle (why do possession constructions across languages have the ability to convey a myriad of seemingly unrelated meanings, like kinship, body parts, permanent ownership, abstract attributes, etc.?), and the too many (surface) structures puzzle (why do possession constructions vary so much in their surface syntax across languages, from transitive HAVE constructions, to existential BE constructions containing an oblique possessor, to copular BE constructions containing a PP possessee?; Why is the transitive HAVE pattern relatively rare?).

I suggest that a solution to both of these puzzles is forthcoming if we take thematic roles out of the syntax, and instead have them be read off from the output of syntax in the semantic component (a conclusion argued for already on different grounds by Schäfer 2008; Wood 2012; Bruening 2013; Marantz 2009, 2013). The post-syntactic conception of thematic roles has an important consequence: whether a given argument-introducing head takes a complement or specifier is determined in the syntax, but whether it assigns a thematic role or not is determined in the semantics. This means that the notion of “syntactic argument of head X” is potentially independent of the notion of “semantic argument of head X”. I argue that this independence is key to understanding the syntactic structures of possession sentences and how they give rise to the gamut of apparently unrelated “possessive” interpretations. In particular, I argue for the following hypotheses, which rely on this conception:

• HAVE and BE are realizations of the same abstract light verb ‘v’. Semantically, this ‘v’ is a type-neutral identity
  function, which will simply pass the denotation of its complement up the tree (this follows a long tradition of
  proposals that BE and HAVE are meaningless in themselves).

• This ‘v’ is spelled out as HAVE only if it occurs in the environment of Kratzer’s (1996) Voice, and Voice takes a
  specifier. Otherwise, this ‘v’ is spelled out as BE. (i.e., HAVE is simply the transitive form of BE- much in the
  spirit of Hoekstra 1994. The analysis also follows the tradition of Freeze 1992 and Kayne 1993 in taking HAVE
  to be BE+”something else”, but takes the “something else” to be something other than an incorporated
  preposition).

• The thematic roles associated with permanent ownership and the various inalienable possession relations (the
  part-of relation, kinship, etc) are associated with distinct DP-internal argument-introducing heads, but
  languages may vary in whether they first-merge the possessor in a possession sentence into the
  specifier of one of these DP-internal positions, or somewhere higher up in the tree.

• The main source of cross-linguistic variation in the syntax of possession sentences is thus the position in
  which the possessor is introduced into the structure. If the possessor is introduced in spec-VoiceP, we have a
  HAVE construction/language. If the possessor is introduced anywhere lower than spec-VoiceP (e.g. in a spec
  position inside the possessee DP itself, in the spec of a pP which takes the possessee as its complement, in
  the spec of an applicative head, etc.), then we have a BE construction/language.

What: Even more Turkshop results
When: Thursday, May 9, 5:30
Where: 32-D831
Who: Despina Oikonomou, Ruth Brillman, Wataru Uegaki, Paul Marty

This week’s lab meeting will be dedicated to results of projects created by Turkshop participants. We will hear from Despina Oikonomou, Ruth Brillman, Wataru Uegaki and Paul Marty.

Speaker: Andrew Nevins (University College London)
Date/Time: Friday May 10th, 3:30-5pm
Venue: 32-141
Title: Agree-Link, Derivational Sandwiching, and Agree-Copy

Abstract:

Recent work on agreement with coordinated DPs has largely converged on the hypothesis that agreement is established in two steps (a move anticipated in Pesetsky & Torrego 2004). Adopting the terminology in Arregi and Nevins 2012, we can refer to these as Agree-Link, or the syntactic establishment of an Agree relation between Probe and one or more Goals, and Agree-Copy, or the postsyntactic (PF) copying from Agree-Linked Goal(s) onto the Probe. Evidence for this split of Agree into two separate steps comes from the fact that they can be derivationally intercalated by postsyntactic operations such as Linearization in Hindi and Slovenian (Bhatt and Walkow, to appear; Marusic, Nevins and Badecker, to appear) postsyntactic morpheme displacement in Bulgarian (Arregi and Nevins, to appear), and Vocabulary Insertion in West Germanic (van Koppen 2005).

Further evidence for this two-step analysis of agreement comes from a different empirical domain, namely, variation in the interaction of agreement with case syncretisms due to postsyntactic impoverishment in Basque dialects and Indo-Aryan languages. In both cases, variation in the realization of agreement is due to a uniform establishment of syntactic Agree-Link relations, coupled with dialect- or language-particular differences in the application of Agree-Copy and its derivational interaction with postsyntactic impoverishment rules. The variation found is thus largely reduced to familiar feeding and counterfeeding interactions among operations in a derivational theory.

The interaction of agreement and case syncretism in these languages thus converges with crosslinguistic coordination patterns in providing evidence for a strongly derivational theory of Agree in which the latter is established in two steps: hierarchically defined syntactic Agree-Link, followed by postsyntactic Agree-Copy, which can interact in different derivationally defined ways with other postsyntactic operations. As such, it provides converging evidence for the view that minimalist and Distributed Morphology approaches to inflection involve sequenced derivational ordering of specific elementary operations (Müller 2008, Epstein & Seely 2002).

Speaker: Isa Bayirli
Title: On an Impossible Affix
Date/Time: Tuesday, Apr 30, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461

This talk presents a new argument to substantiate the view that the morphological identity of a grammatical object is not lexical idiosyncrasy and that it reflects the syntactic behavior of this object. The empirical claim of this talk will be:

A topic or focus associated morpheme is never an affix.

I will argue that this follows from the syntactic fact that a syntactic head with topic or focus feature cannot trigger head movement. Evidence will be provided from Turkish, Bulgarian, Japanese, Finnish and Pazar Laz. I will show that when we translate these ideas into a non-lexical based implementation of Mirror Theory, we make the prediction that in those languages where there is always a suffix on the verb, this suffix cannot be a topic-focus associated morpheme. I will finally show that the prediction seems to be true.

Who: Matthew Brand, Randal Thurston, Kai von Fintel
What: “The Language of Forms”
Where: Monadnock Room, Broad Institute, 7 Cambridge Center
When: May 1, 6–7pm, Reception to follow

This Wednesday evening, Kai will join two artists in the latest event in a series of events (Catalyst Conversations) bringing together artists and scientists. Learn more at http://www.catalystconversations.net/events/.

NB: Two more linguistics connections: Matt Brand is the husband of Amy Brand (née Pierce), 1989 PhD from MIT BCS (with Ken Wexler as chair) and former linguistics editor at MIT Press. Amy is now Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments and Information at Harvard. Plus, the assistant to the director of the Catalyst Conversations is 2008 MIT Linguistics PhD Sarah Hulsey.

Please don’t be confused: the event series is titled “Catalyst Conversations”, but it takes place at the Broad Institute, not at Catalyst restaurant.

Ling-Lunch will not meet this week. There will be a session next week with a talk by Neil Myler (NYU).

Title: More Turkshop results
Date/Time: Thursday, May 2, 5:30
Location: 32-D831 (Note room!)

This week’s lab meeting will be dedicated to results of projects created by Turkshop participants. Stay tuned for more details.

Speaker: Sam Zukoff
Title: The Phonology of Verbal Reduplication in Ancient Greek
Date/Time: Monday, Apr 22, 5pm
Location: 32-D831

In this talk I put forward an analysis of reduplication in Ancient Greek, focusing on the behavior of consonant-initial roots in perfect-tense reduplication. Particular attention will be paid to two questions. First, how are we to analyze the underlying representation of reduplication in Ancient Greek? I will propose two potential analyses, and consider their theoretical and empirical implications, including asking briefly what is reduplication? Both potential analyses will promote the notion that Ancient Greek reduplication displays morphological fixed segmentism, and that we can explain the reduplicative patterns without referencing reduplicative templates or templatic constraints. Second, how are we to explain the differences in the shape of the reduplicant between roots beginning with different sorts of clusters (namely stop + sonorant versus other clusters)? I will propose a solution based on syllabification. Consideration of certain additional facts about syllable weight will require us to adjust the account slightly by appealing to minor re-ranking within a stratal OT model.

Speaker: Gary Thoms
Title: Remnant movement and discontinuous deletion
Date/Time: Tuesday, Apr 23, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

In this paper I propose that chains are subject to a constraint that bans discontinuous deletion of copies. Initial motivation for this constraint comes from consideration of the properties of regular cyclic movement chains (considering data from Boskovic 2002), but then the rest of the paper is devoted to showing that this constraint is active in constraining remnant movement. Remnant movement is in principle possible, but only if it derives a representation which does not require discontinuous chain reduction. Evidence for this comes from two main sources: (i) a pervasive left-right asymmetry in possible RM derivations; (ii) variation in the availability of “true” VP-fronting. The former is supported by an analysis of the availability of “headless fronting” and extraposition-fed leftward movement, all of which fails to follow from existing theories of RM. The latter is supported by consideration of when fronted VPs behave like moved categories, with novel data showing that the ban on reconstruction into fronted VPs (Barss’ generalization) is lifted when the relevant representation does not fall foul of the discontinuous deletion constraint. I describe a few ways in which languages get around the RM problem presented by VP-fronting (“matching”” analyses, spelling out traces and not leaving traces) and indicate that this may in fact derive us a plausible typology of its language-internal and cross-linguistic distribution. I conclude by considering what kind of theory of movement and deletion this kind of constraint requires.

LFRG will meet twice this week.

Speaker: Ciro Greco (University of Milan-Bicocca)
Date/Time: Wed 24 April, 11:30 am (note special time!)
Location: 32-D831 (note special location!)
Title: “Are subject islands just subject islands? Experimental evidence from Italian”

Abstract TBA

Speaker: Edwin Howard
Date/Time: Fri 26 April, 11:30 am
Location: 32-D461
Title: “Superlative Degree Clauses: evidence from NPI licensing” (Practice talk for SALT 23)

Abstract

Speaker: Ayesha Kidwai (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Title: EX-It: On the syntax of finite clause extraposition and pronominal correlates in Hindi and Bangla
Date/Time: Thursday, Apr 25, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

In this talk, I revisit the familiar question of finite clause extraposition in Hindi and Bangla, and the co-ocurrence of this phenomenon with pronominal correlates in the matrix clause. Examining the facts from rightward scrambling, WH-construal and bound anaphora in the two languages, I will suggest that such a non-canonical rightward positioning of finite complements is effected by a generalised, and revised, version of TH/EX (Chomsky 1999/2001). I propose that while this ‘displacement’ is driven by interface conditions holding both at the PHON and SEM interfaces . Furthermore, I will suggest that that the distribution of correlate/expletive pronominals that may occur in construction with such finite clauses is fundamentally unrelated to the extraposition operation per se, and relates instead to a SEM interface requirement on the merger of complement CPs in the verbal projection.

The Experimental Syntax and Semantics lab will not meet on 4/25.

Speaker: Mark C. Baker (Rutgers)
Date/Time: Friday 26 April, 3:30-5pm
Venue: 32-141
Title: On Dependent Ergative Case (in Shipibo) and Its Derivation by Phase

Abstract:

Focusing on new data from the Shipibo language (Panoan, spoken in Peru), I defend a simple “dependent case” theory of ergative case marking, where ergative case is assigned to the higher of two NPs in a clausal domain. I show how apparent failures of this rule can be explained assuming that VP is a spell out domain distinct from the clause, and this bleeds ergative case assignment for c-command relationships that already exist in VP and are unchanged in CP. This accounts for otherwise anomalous case patterns in ditransitives, reciprocals, and dyadic experiencer verbs. In contrast, applicatives of unaccusative verbs do have ergative subjects, and this is a notable success for the dependent case theory as opposed to popular theories according to which ergative is an inherent case. Finally, I show how case assignment interacts with restructuring to explain constructions in which ergative case appears to be optional. An additional theoretical implication of this work, I claim, is that it shows us more precisely where dependent case marking applies: not in the syntax proper, nor at PF proper, but precisely at Spell-Out, seen as the dynamic interface between syntax and PF.

Speaker: Bronwyn M. Bjorkman (University of Toronto)
Title: Possession and necessity: from individuals to worlds
Date/Time: Thursday, Apr 18, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

(Joint work with Elizabeth Cowper.)

The modal use of possession is well known from the “semi-modal” ‘have (to)’, but is not unique to English: the same broadening from possession to necessity is found in many languages, including Spanish, Catalan, German, and Hindi (Bhatt 1997). We argue that this grammaticalization path is available because possession and necessity are both built on a prepositional relation of containment or inclusion. In possession this relation holds between individuals, in necessity between sets of worlds corresponding to the modal base and the proposition.

Many have proposed that the syntax of possession is prepositional, and that verbal have (and its counterparts in other languages) occurs when the possessive preposition occurs where be would otherwise appear (Freeze 1992, Kayne 1993, a.o.). Levinson (2011) has recently argued that this possessive preposition should be identified as (non-locative) WITH, expressing a relation of inclusion or containment. We argue that this relation of containment or inclusion also appears in the composition of universal modality, but between sets of worlds rather than individuals. A modal operator composes first with a modal base (i.e. a set of epistemically or deontically accessible worlds), and then with a proposition (also modelled as a set of worlds). A universal modal operator requires that a proposition be true in all accessible worlds—-i.e. the set of worlds corresponding to the modal base must be a subset of the set of worlds corresponding to the proposition.

This subset relation mirrors the inclusion/containment relation expressed by possessive WITH. It is this common semantic core, we propose, that is reflected by the grammaticalization of ‘have’ from possession to necessity.

As announced earlier Friday, this colloquium talk will be held Saturday (4/20), 12:00pm, in room 32-D461.

Speaker: Arsalan Kahnemuyipour (University of Toronto Mississauga)
Date/Time: 19 April (Fri), 3:30 - 5pm
Venue: 32-141
Title: Phases as domains of linguistic computation: Second position clisis in Eastern Armenian

Abstract:

This talk explores the relevance of phases as domains of linguistic computation by bringing evidence from the positional distribution of an auxiliary clitic in Eastern Armenian. After a brief discussion of my general framework, I will turn to the distribution of the Eastern Armenian auxiliary in focus-neutral contexts. I will show that the auxiliary can best be analyzed as a second position clitic in the vP phase domain (akin to other second position clitics in the CP domain). I will then look at the distribution of the auxiliary in sentences involving focused constituents, wh-phrases and negation and will provide a syntactic account of these facts based on movement of the auxiliary to the focus head (similar to other cases of verb movement to focus heads in other languages). I will finally argue that in order to unify the distribution of the auxiliary in these two contexts, the notion of phasehood should be extended to include focus heads. I will show how this proposal may pave the way for an analysis of the distribution of the auxiliary in sentences involving multiple foci. This talk draws heavily on the parallelism between CP and vP both in terms of their status as phases, but also their structural make-up. To the extent that it succeeds in accounting for the presented facts, it provides further support for this parallelism.

(The bulk of this talk is based on joint work with Karine Megerdoomian.)

Speaker: Ciro Greco (University of Milan-Bicocca)
Date/Time: Wed 24th April 11:30 (note special time!)
Location: 32-D831 (note special location!)
Title: Are subject islands just subject islands? Experimental evidence from Italian

Speaker: Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (University of Manchester)
Title: Lexical storage and the cyclic reapplication of phonological processes
Date/Time: Monday, Apr 8, 5-6:30p
Location: 32-D831

This talk seeks to describe and explain the peculiar properties of phonological processes applying in cyclic domains smaller than the word, i.e. in sublexical domains. In stratal-cyclic phonological frameworks such as Lexical Phonology and Stratal Optimality Theory, such processes are assigned to the highest stratum in the grammar: the stem level. To characterize the stem-level syndrome, rule-based Lexical Phonology imposed special conditions on rule application at the stem level: stem-level rules were claimed to exhibit stratum-internal cyclic reapplication, to be structure-preserving, and to undergo blocking in nonderived environments. English stress assignment provides a classic example of cyclic reapplication within the same stratum: in a word like [_WL [_SL [_SL imàgin-] átion-] less-ness], foot creation applies twice in the two inner stem-level cycles, and does not apply in the outer word-level domain.

The Lexical Phonology approach to the stem-level syndrome made a number of incorrect predictions. Notably, English has a large set of phonological processes whose domain excludes word-level suffixes, but which nonetheless do not show cyclic reapplication, structure preservation, or blocking in nonderived environments. The GOAT split in the London vernacular is a particularly salient example. In contrast, the stem-level syndrome has altogether dropped off the agenda in current optimality-theoretic frameworks relying on output-output correspondence. Such frameworks do not recognize the notion of cyclic domain, and so cannot sort phonological processes into classes according to domain size. This stance is also unsatisfactory insofar as it fails to account for striking generalizations: in particular, cyclic reapplication within the same stratum is only found at the stem level.

This talk outlines an alternative approach to the stem-level syndrome, where the special properties of stem-level phonological processes emerge from more fundamental grammatical mechanisms. I propose that the distinguishing trait of stem-level linguistic expressions is that they are stored nonanalytically, i.e. as whole output forms generated by the stem-level morphology and phonology. In contrast, word-level and phrase-level constructs are either not stored, or stored analytically (i.e. decomposed as strings of stem-level pieces). Given independently motivated assumptions about morphological blocking, together with the input-output faithfulness technology of Optimality Theory, these postulates about lexical storage make accurate predictions about the behaviour of stem-level phonological processes. Notably, cyclic reapplication turns out to be closely correlated with neutralization (Chung’s Generalization).

Reference:
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2012. The architecture of grammar and the division of labour in exponence. In Jochen Trommer (ed.), The morphology and phonology of exponence, 8-83. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [See pp. 15-40.]

Speaker: Coppe van Urk
Date/Time: Tuesday, Apr 9, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461

This week’s session of Syntax Square will be a discussion of Benjamin Bruening’s manuscript No such thing as defective intervention, which will be led by Coppe.

This week’s Ling-Lunch will feature two shorter talks.

Date/Time: Thursday, Apr 11, 12:30-1:45pm
Location: 32-D461

Speaker: Benjamin Storme
Title: Hittite present tense and its interaction with aspect

In this talk, I will show that Hittite, which has a present tense (PRES) and an asymmetric imperfective morphology (IPFV versus zero), patterns basically as English and Japanese.

When PRES refers to the utterance time, IPFV and zero are in complementary distribution: IPFV associates with eventives, and zero with statives (cf English examples in (1)). IPFV has a wider use than the English progressive, though: it must also be used in generic sentences with an eventive predicate.

(1a) *John builds a house (now).
(1b) John is building a house (now).
(1c) John is in his office (now)
(1d) *John is being in his office (now).

When PRES does not refer to the utterance time but to an interval in the future, the restriction on eventives no longer holds, as in Japanese.

When PRES refers to an interval in the past in its so-called « historical present» use, the situation is more contrasted: in one text, it behaves as PRES referring to the utterance time (eventives have to associate with IPFV) ; in another text, it behaves as PRES referring to an interval in the future or as PAST (eventives don’t need to associate with IPFV, as it is the case for English historical presents).

Speakers: Anthony Brohan and Sudheer Kolachina
Title: Backward Control in Telugu: An illusion?

(Based on squib for 24.951)

The phenomenon of Backward control is evidence of crucial importance when it comes to choosing between the two dominant approaches to control discussed in the literature- Hornstein’s movement theory of control (Hornstein, 1999) and Landau’s empty category-PRO coreferenced with the controller through Agree (Landau, 2001).In recent years, there have been claims about the existence of Backward control in Telugu, a Dravidian language (Haddad, 2007, 2009a,b) and a movement-based analysis has also been proposed to account for these structures. In this squib, we evaluate these claims by taking a closer look at the data on which they are based. The results of our study suggest that what appear to be backward control structures in Telugu are the result of a combination of constraints on the distribution of pro and scrambling effects. We also present an alternate analysis of the structures discussed in previous work which is supported by additional evidence from the language.

References:
Y.A. Haddad. Adjunct control in Telugu and Assamese. PhD thesis, Citeseer, 2007.
Y.A. Haddad. Adjunct control in Telugu: Exceptions as non-exceptions. Journal of South Asian Linguistics, 2:35–51, 2009a.
Y.A. Haddad. Copy Control in Telugu. Journal of linguistics, 45(1):69–109, 2009b.
N. Hornstein. Movement and control. Linguistic inquiry, 30(1):69–96, 1999.
I. Landau. Elements of control: Structure and meaning in infinitival constructions, volume 51. Springer, 2001.

What: Turk workshop, part 4
When: Thursday, April 11, 5:30-7
Where: 32-D461

This week will be the fourth part of the Turkshop. Our goal for this session is to discuss some basics of data visualization and data analysis. For this session, please download and install R 3.0: http://cran.r-project.org/ and R Studio 0.97.x: http://www.rstudio.com/ide/download/desktop. Materials and slides from the Turkshop can be found here: http://web.mit.edu/hackl/www/lab/turkshop/.

Title: Question-answer congruence and (non-)exhaustivity
Speaker: Wataru Uegaki
Date/time: Fri April 12, 11:30am
Location: 32-D461

Abstract:

It has been observed that the exhaustive inference of question-answers arises only when the polarity of the answer matches that of the question (Spector 2005; Schulz and van Rooij 2006). For example, although B’s answer in (i) gives rise to the inference that Sue is the only person that B will invite, B’s answer in (ii) does not readily give rise to the inference that Sue is the only person that B will not invite.

(i) A: Who among Sue, Bill and Mary will you invite?
     B: I will invite Sue. [Exhaustive inference: I will not invite Bill and Mary.]

(ii) A: Who among Sue, Bill and Mary will you invite?
      B: I won’t invite Sue. [No exhaustive inference: I will invite Bill and Mary.]

Previous approaches to this phenomenon stipulate mechanisms that are specific to the polarity-mismatching question-answer pairs (Spector 2005; Schulz and van Rooij 2005). In this talk, I provide an account of the phenomenon in terms of an arguably general constraint on the generation of alternatives to be used in the calculation of exhaustivity. The idea relies on the assumption that an answer can be congruent to a question in different “degrees of strength”, extending the notion of question-answer congruence by Rooth (1992). The constraint requires that an alternative for an utterance given a question be at least as congruent to the question as the original utterance. I will discuss how this mechanism accounts for the basic paradigm while leaving several issues currently unresolved. If time permits, I would also like to compare the proposed constraint on alternatives with Katzir’s (2008) and Fox and Katzir’s (2011) mechanism for the generation of structural alternatives.

Speaker: Ted Levin
Title: Successive-Cyclic Case Assignment: Case Alternation and Stacking in Korean
Date/Time: Tuesday, Apr 2, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

In general, Case theory excludes the option of a DP receiving more than one Case. However,
certain constructions arguably demonstrate that this is possible (e.g. see McCreight 1988,
Bejar & Massam 1999, Richards 2013, and Pesetsky in press). In this talk, I will examine two
separate, but related, phenomena which are problematic for theories which do not permit
multiple case assignment - case alternation and case stacking. Case Alternation occurs when
a DP displays one of two (or more) case markers in the same structural position. Case
Stacking occurs when those two case morphemes are realized simultaneously. Korean
demonstrates both phenomena as seen in (1).

(1a) Cheli-eykey/-ka/-eykey-ka ton-i     iss-ta
     Cheli-DAT/-NOM/DAT-NOM    money-NOM exist-DEC
‘Cheli has money.’

(1b) Swunhi-ka  Yenghi-eykey/-lul/-eyekey-lul chayk-ul cwu-ess-ta
     Swunhi-NOM Yenghi-DAT/ACC/-DAT-ACC       book-ACC give-PST-DEC
‘Swunhi gave Yenghi a book.’

In (1a), the subject Cheli displays dative-nominative alternation and stacking. Similarly, the
indirect object Yenghi in (1b) displays dative-accusative alternation and stacking. I posit that
the examples in (1) and related constructions can be captured if we adopt a cyclic view of case
assignment. In Korean (and maybe in fact all languages) DPs receive case in every case
assignment domain (i.e. phase) they occupy. Case alternation is captured in this system by
restricting the pronunciation of stacked case morphemes via morphological rules.

RUMMIT, the Rutgers-UMass-MIT phonology meeting, will be held at UMass Amherst on Saturday, Apr 6. The program is available here (pdf). This week’s Phonology Circle will feature two practice talks for RUMMIT.

Date/Time: Wednesday, Apr 3, 3-5p (Note special date/time)
Location: 32-D461

Speaker: Aron Hirsch
Title: Weight effects on stress placement: syllables or intervals?

The distribution of stress is sensitive to the weight of rhythmic units such that heavier units more strongly attract stress. In this talk, we address the question as to what is the “unit” of weight. The traditional approach has been to link weight to syllable structure, with the domain over which weight is computed being the syllabic rime (i.e. nucleus + coda). Steriade (2012), however, has recently argued for an alternative non-syllable-based approach under which the domain for weight computation is the total vowel-to-vowel interval, i.e. the distance from the beginning of one vowel to the beginning of the next vowel. This talk reports preliminary results from a nonce word production experiment designed to arbitrate between the two approaches: is the unit of weight the syllable, or is it the interval?

Speaker: Juliet Stanton
Title: Predicting distributional restrictions on prenasalized stops

Previous studies on prenasalized stops have focused mainly on issues of derivation and classification, but little is known about their distributional properties. The current study fills this gap. I present results of a survey documenting positional restrictions on NCs, and show that there are predictable and systematic constraints on their distribution. The major finding is that NCs are optimally licensed in contexts where they are perceptually distinct from plain oral and plain nasal stops. (This is a shorter version of 3/11’s Phonology Circle talk.)

Speaker: Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (University of Manchester)
Title: Lexical storage and cyclic locality in phonologically driven allomorph selection
Date/Time: Thursday, Apr 4, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

If exponence proceeds cyclically, so that cycles define local domains for allomorph selection, then empirical evidence from the size of allomorph selection domains can be used to determine the size of lexically stored exponents. Spanish, for example, exhibits a well-known instance of phonologically driven allomorph selection in which allomorphs containing stressed [jé] and [wé] alternate with allomorphs containing unstressed [e] and [o]: e.g. cué nta ‘count/tell.3 SG’ ~ contámos ‘count/tell.1PL ’. In the deverbal adjective [N [V co ntá ] ble] ‘countable’, the monophthongal allomorph c onta- is chosen during the second cycle of the derivation, when stress moves to the second syllable. This instance of allomorphy must therefore involve competition between stems (i.e. between two exponents of the verb lexeme CONTAR), rather than between roots (i.e. between two exponents of the ?-node ?CONT ). Two lines of evidence support this analysis of the Spanish diphthongal alternation. First, the assumption of stem storage removes the need for declension diacritics in Spanish nominal and adjectival morphology. Secondly, it correctly predicts that, historically, lexemes that share a root but belong to different categories can cease to display the same allomorphic behaviour: e.g. the stem of the verb contár ‘count/tell’ still participates in the diphthongal alternation, whereas the stem of the noun cuénto ‘fable, fibb’ no longer does (cf. cuentéro ‘fabulist, fibber’). These results provide evidence against theories of morphology that restrict lexical storage to roots and to exponents of single functional heads.

Reference
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2013. The Spanish lexicon stores stems with theme vowels, not roots with inflectional class features. Probus 25(1).

Because of the Smolensky talk this Thursday, we will not have a lab meeting this week. Instead, mitcho and Hadas will be in the 8th floor lounge between 4-6pm to help Turkshop participants solve any problems they may have encountered with their experiments (note unusual time/location!). The next Turkshop meeting will take place on 4/11.

Please join us at LFRG this week for a talk by a recent MIT PhD in philosophy:

Title: Exhaustified Counterfactuals
Speaker: Paolo Santorio (University of Leeds)
Date/time: Fri April 5, 11:30am
Location: 32D-461

Standard accounts of counterfactuals make use of a notion of closeness or similarity between worlds, whether in the semantics proper, or in the mechanisms of context change associated to utterances of counterfactuals. I present evidence that this is a mistake. The phenomena that Stalnaker and Lewis took to be hallmarks of closeness—-in essence, apparent failures of monotonocity—-are better explained by systematic exhaustification of scalar items in the antecedents. This suggests that counterfactuals are monotonic in the antecedent position, both on a static and a dynamic understanding of logical consequence. I (somewhat tentatively) explore how a monotonic account of this kind can deal with a number of standard issues in the literature, including reverse Sobel sequences and failures of transitivity in the logic of counterfactuals.

Speaker: Sam Steddy
Title: Palatalisation and the Role of Morphological Bases Across the Italian Lexicon
Date/Time: Monday, Mar 18, 5pm
Location: 32-D831

I propose that a palatalisation rule in Italian misapplies because of base-to-derivative correspondence effects. In previous work I showed that the rule misapplies in verbal morphology because verbs stand in a stress-dependent correspondence relationship with the base from of their paradigm: under- or overpalatalisation result when the stressed syllable of their infinitive contains a [±strident] segment. I now propose a means of unifying this work with Giavazzi’s (2012) account of the rule’s application in nouns and adjectives, wherein post-stress segments avoid neutralisation. Derivational verbs may underpalatalise as their suffixes reassign stress: when stress is reassigned to a syllable containing a relevant stem-final, the segment will not palatalise. The reason that stress does not prevent palatalisation in relevant underived verbs appears to be diachronic, but I will nonetheless suggest that a synchronic constraint targeting forms without a derivational base will shed further light on palatalisation in the contemporary language. In particular, and in line with phonetic theory, it will show that the contemporary neutralisation has become less aggressive, now targeting only the most front vowel /i/. This fact accounts for the as-yet unexplained failure of the fem.pl suffix /-e/ to trigger the rule.

What: ESSL Turkshop project presentations
When: Monday 18 March, 6:00 - 7:00 pm
Where: 32-D831

Please note the special meeting place and date/time!

Aron Hirsch, Lilla Magyar and Mia Nussbaum will present their Turkshop projects.

Speaker: Yusuke Imanishi
Title: When ergative is default: Ergativity in Kaqchikel and Q’anjob’al (and Mayan)
Date/Time: Tuesday, Mar 19, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

In this preliminary talk, I will explore the possibility that ergative is assigned as a default Case only when a nominal lacks a structural Case. I will begin with an investigation of the contrastive alignment between the ergative and grammatical functions in ergative splits of Kaqchikel and Q’anjob’al. I will also show that this analysis has a consequence for syntactic ergativity (e.g. a ban on A-bar extraction of the ergative subject) in the two languages (and possibly other ergative languages both within and outside Mayan). Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that the proposed analysis can capture a novel generalization on the correlation between non-verbal predicates and ergative alignment patterns in some Mayan ergative splits (Imanishi 2012).

Speaker: Noah Constant (UMass Amherst)
Title: “Deriving the Diversity of Contrastive Topic Realizations”
Day/Time: Wednesday, March 20, 3:30-5:00pm
Location: 32-D461

Information structural notions like topic/focus, given/new and contrastive/non-contrastive have a diverse range of effects on sentence structure and pronunciation. In this talk, I look at Contrastive Topic (CT) constructions, and present a novel account of their meaning and structure that can make sense of the range of CT marking strategies attested in the world’s languages. I will cover languages that mark CT prosodically (e.g. English), those that employ a discourse particle (e.g. Mandarin), and those that have a dedicated CT position in the syntax (e.g. Czech).

A typical example of contrastive topic is given in (1). The object is pronounced with falling prosody, marking ‘the beans’ as the answer to the question of what Fred ate. The subject, on the other hand, bears a distinct rising contour, marking ‘Fred’ as a contrastive topic. The effect is to imply additional questions about what other people ate.

(1) (What about FRED? What did HE eat?)
     FRED … ate the BEANS.

I review Büring’s (2003) account of CT and point out several challenges for it—for example, it doesn’t extend to CT questions (attested in Japanese) and it fails to account for effects of CT marking on word order and prosodic phrasing. In its place, I introduce a new model of contrastive topic that posits a Topic Abstraction operator in the left periphery, and defines CT as the focus associate of this operator. In English, the abstraction operator is lexicalized as a tonal clitic to an intonational phrase. The influence of information structure on phrasing is captured via a scope-prosody correspondence constraint requiring the operator and its associate to be realized within a single prosodic domain.

The topic abstraction account is supported by a range of typologically diverse data. For one, it provides a simple way of understanding the possibility of dedicated CT positions in the syntax. Additionally, the account predicts the existence of CT morphemes that occur at a distance from the topic phrase itself, which are attested in Mandarin and Paraguayan Guaraní.

Speaker: Martin Rohrmeier (MIT, Intelligence initiative Fellow)
Title: Introduction to musical syntax
Date/Time: Thursday, Mar 21, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

In recent years, the cognitive link between music and language has been subject to various debates across disciplines ranging from linguistics, music, psychology, computer science, up to evolution and anthropology (e.g. Patel, 2008; Rebuschat, Rohrmeier, Cross & Hawkins, 2011; Katz & Pesetsky, submitted). One particular domain, in which an overlap between music and language has been frequently discussed, is syntax. Lerdahl & Jackendoff (1983) have specified a theory of tonal (Western) music which postulates nested, recursive dependency relationships that are modeled in analogy to linguistic syntax. However, a number of features of generative musical rules is not sufficiently specified in their theory. This point is addressed by a novel approach to describe musical syntax, which specifies an exact, general set of recursive generative rules and casts empirical predictions (Rohrmeier, 2011). In my presentation I will give an introduction into musical syntax and what it means to *hear* musical dependency and tree structures. I will compare these predictions with recent converging experimental evidence from cognitive and computational work.

All relevant musical concepts will be introduced and no particular music theoretical knowledge is required.

Katz, J. & Pesetsky, D. (submitted). The Identity Thesis for Language and Music, lingBuzz/000959 (2009).
Lerdahl, F. & Jackendoff, R. (1983). A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge, MA.
Patel, A.D. (2008). Music, Language, and the Brain. Oxford University Press, New York.
Rebuschat, P., Rohrmeier, M., Cross, I., Hawkins (2011) Eds. Language and Music as Cognitive Systems. Oxford University Press.
Rohrmeier, M. (2011). Towards a generative syntax of tonal harmony. Journal of Mathematics and Music, 5 (1), pp. 35-53.

There will be no LFRG this week or next since people will be out of town for spring break. However, we’d like to draw your attention to our schedule for next month.

April 5: Paolo Santorio (University of Leeds) “Exhaustified Counterfactuals”
April 12: Wataru Uegaki “Question-answer congruence and (non-)exhaustivity”
April 19: TBA
April 26: Edwin Howard “Superlative Degree Clauses: evidence from NPI licensing” Practice talk for SALT 23

As you can see, April 19 is still available, and so is all of May. If you have an idea, a paper or some work you’d like to share with us, please get in touch with Mia or Edwin.

Speaker: Juliet Stanton
Title: Positional restrictions on prenasalized stops: a perceptual account
Date/Time: Monday, Mar 11, 5pm
Location: 32-D831

Previous studies on prenasalized stops have focused mainly on issues of derivation and classification, but little is known about their distributional properties. The current study is an attempt to fill this gap. I present results of two surveys documenting positional restrictions on NCs, and show that there are predictable and systematic constraints on their distribution. The major finding is that NCs are optimally licensed in contexts where they are perceptually distinct from plain oral and plain nasal stops. I propose an analysis referencing auditory factors, and show that a perceptual account explains all attested patterns.

Coppe van Urk will be reporting on a paper from ACAL 44.

Title: On Object Marking in Kikuria
Original Presenters: Rodrigo Ranero, Michael Diercks, and Rebekah Cramerus (Pomona College)
Date/Time: Tuesday, March 12th, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461

The talk presents data regarding object marking in Kikuria and an interesting pattern of interaction between cliticization and clitic-doubling.

Speakers: Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine and Hadas Kotek
Title: Blocking in English causatives
Date/Time: Thursday, Mar 14, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

There is much work on the two causative constructions in Japanese: *lexical* causatives, which are monoclausal constructions with listed, unproductive morphological forms; and *analytic* causatives, which are biclausal and utilize a productive causative suffix -(s)ase. In particular, Japanese causatives exhibit a *blocking effect*, where for verbs which have a listed, lexical causative form, this lexical causative can “block” the use of the more general analytic causative. In this talk we present new data on causatives in English and argue that “make” causatives and lexical causatives in English are the same as (or at least strikingly similar to) the two causatives in Japanese, in terms of syntactic structure, semantics, and also the blocking of “make” causatives by corresponding lexical causatives. However, in English this “blocking” is often not apparent, because the causee can intervene between “make” and the verb. This data provides evidence for certain spellout processes (such as fusion, in DM terms) being sensitive to linear adjacency, and also is an argument for post-syntactic construction of derivational morphology as in DM and contra the Lexicalist Hypothesis.

What: Turk workshop, part 3
When: Thursday, March 14, 5:30-7
Where: 32-D461

This week will be the third part of the Turkshop. Our goal for this session is to cover the technical details of everything you need to know in order to set up your own experiment: creating an items file, randomizing using the Turkolizer, creating an HTML template, approving and rejecting subjects on Turk. Please remember to install Python 2.7.3 on your computer; you can download Python here. Materials and slides from the Turkshop can be found here.

Speaker: Amanda Swenson and Paul Marty
Title: Local Agreement without local binding: What the syntax and prosody of Malayalam taan teach us
Date/Time: Tuesday, March 5, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Jayaseelan (1997) among others has described the Malayalam anti-local form taan ‘self’ as a subject oriented, bound variable that requires a 3rd person antecedent. In this talk, we provide new data from the first systematic exploration of a second reading taan can have, namely an addressee (ADR) reading. We provide a detailed description of the syntactic and prosodic conditions under which 3rd person and ADR readings occur and argue for a unified account of these readings (contra Asher & Kumari 1997). We provide novel data that suggest the so-called Blocking Effects described in the literature are not an intervention phenomenon but rather the result of the morphosyntactic properties of taan. Contra recent radical revisions of Binding Theory (Rooryck & Vanden Wyngaerd 2011, Reuland 2011), we argue that local Agreement (i) always occurs between the nearest subject nominal and taan, but (ii) never results in local binding because of the anti-local nature of taan.

Speaker: Igor Yanovich
Title: Variable-force modality on the British Isles
Date/Time: Thursday, Mar 7, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Recent semantic fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest uncovered modals which may render sometimes English necessity modals, other times English possibility ones without being ambiguous (Rullmann et al. 2008, Peterson 2010, Deal 2011). The analyses for those modals either attribute the peculiar behavior to a radical difference from the “European standard” in the semantics of the modal (Rullmann, Matthewson and Davis), or in the shape of the overall modal system (Deal). In this talk, I add to the typology of variable-force modality the Old English *motan (>modern must), which is analyzed in the earlier literature as a possibility modals with perhaps marginal necessity uses. Only by the end of the 15th century did the modal become a normal necessity modal it is now.

I show that in Old English ‘Alfredian’ prose *motan was an unambiguous modal carrying a presupposition of determined future which explains the peculiarities of the modal’s distribution, and creates a variable-force effect. Then I turn to the semantics of the modal in the AB dialect of Early Middle English (a literary variety written in the West Midlands in the first half of 13th century, remarkably focussed for the period of overall decline in English text production). I show that in Early Middle English, *moten (<*motan) was truly ambiguous between necessity and possibility. We can thus observe in the history of English a change from a true non-ambiguous variable-force modal, into a modal ambiguous between possibility and necessity, into a normal necessity modal.

What: Turk workshop, part 2
When: Thursday, March 7, 5:30-7
Where: 32-D461 (note the unusual location!)

This week will be the second part of the Turkshop. mitcho will teach a tutorial on regular expressions (a useful tool for life!) and then we will discuss individual participants’ ideas and designs for their own experiments. If you are a participant, we remind you that you should come with a question in mind that you would like to explore during the Turkshop and (as much as you can) also with some idea for a design. Materials from the Turkshop can be found here.

Speaker: Lisa Matthewson (University of British Columbia)
Date/Time: Friday 8 March, 3:30 - 5pm
Venue: 32-141
Title: Current relevance meets inchoativity: On what makes a perfect aspect

Abstract:

Here are some big questions: Why do viewpoint aspects (like perfective, imperfective, or
perfect) recur in language after language with similar, but not identical, semantics? What if any
universal properties are shared by the language-specific instantiations of each aspect? How much
variation is permitted, and what do the differences follow from?

In this talk I address a sub-part of the big questions; my goal is to isolate the common properties
shared by present perfects cross-linguistically. I concentrate mainly on Niuean (Polynesian), with
brief looks at Japanese, St’át’imcets, Russian, Blackfoot, Mandarin and Saanich. Pushing
Portner’s (2003) analysis of English to its logical limits, I propose that the present perfect is
purely a pragmatic phenomenon, consisting only of a current relevance presupposition.
Following Portner, I assume that the other salient property of the present perfect – that it places
events within the Perfect Time Span – is derivable from other parts of the grammar.

The claim that perfects contribute only current relevance predicts that current relevance does not
have to be associated solely with viewpoint aspect. I show that this prediction is confirmed by
Niuean. The Niuean perfect displays current relevance effects and places events within the
Perfect Time Span, yet differs from the English perfect in the readings obtained with each
Aktionsart. In Niuean, perfect activities or stage-level states can receive a simple present-tense
interpretation, perfect individual-level states receive an inchoative interpretation, and there are
no universal perfect readings. I argue that all the properties of the Niuean perfect fall out from an
analysis of it as an inchoativizer; it adds an initial change-of-state to any predicate. This shows
that current relevance can be associated with a process operating at the level of event structure.
The analysis of Niuean may also extend to Japanese teiru, as well as several other puzzling
aspects cross-linguistically.

Speaker: Suyeon Yun
Title: To Metathesize or Not to Metathesize: Phonological and Morphological Constraints on Tunisian Arabic Nouns
Date/Time: Monday, Feb 25, 5pm
Location: 32-D831

In Tunisian Arabic spoken in Tunis some monosyllabic nouns with underlying /CVCC/ undergo metathesis of the vowel and the following consonant, e.g., /tamr/ -> [tmar] ‘dates’, while others maintain the underlying order, e.g., /xubz/ -> [xubz] `bread’. In this talk I report distributions of CVCC and CCVC nouns in Tunisian Arabic obtained from my recent fieldwork and investigate the phonological and morphological principles and their interactions that affect the metathesis patterns.

Syntax Square will not meet this week.

The following time slots are still available for the semester: 3/12, 3/19, 4/2, 4/9, 4/30, 5/7, 5/14. Please contact Ruth or T.C. if you’d like to give a talk.

Speaker: Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine
Title: Ergativity without ergative Case
Date/Time: Thursday, Feb 28, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Mayan languages exhibit an ergative-absolutive pattern in their verbal agreement morphology but do not show morphological case alternations on nominals. Furthermore, a subset of Mayan languages show an extraction asymmetry whereby the A-bar extraction of subjects of transitives (aka “ergative arguments”) requires special verbal morphology, known as Agent Focus. Kaqchikel, spoken in Guatemala and recently also in Cambridge, is one such Mayan language with Agent Focus.

In this talk I will argue that Kaqchikel’s morphologically ergative agreement pattern and syntactically ergative extraction asymmetries are both epiphenomenal, and do not reflect an underlying ergative-absolutive system of Case assignment (contra Coon, Mateo Pedro, & Preminger, 2011 ms; Assmann et al, 2012 ms). Agreement in Kaqchikel is the result of a process of phi-agreement which is independent of nominal licensing (abstract Case). The extraction asymmetry is the result of a particular anti-locality constraint which bans movement which is too close. Support for these claims comes from new data on the distribution of Agent Focus in Kaqchikel, as well as from the pattern of agreement in Agent Focus, as discussed in Preminger (2011).

What: Turk workshop, part 1
When: Thursday, Feb 28, 5:30-7
Where: 32-D461 (note the unusual location!)

This week will be the first part of the Turk workshop. We have three goals for this week’s meeting: we will (1) discuss crowd sourcing as an experimental tool in linguistics, (2) introduce basic experimental designs for Turk-based studies, and (3) get familiarized with the Turk interface.

Syntax Square will not meet this week because we are on a Monday schedule on Tuesday.

There are still quite a few slots available for the semester: 2/26, 3/12, 3/19, 4/2, 4/9, 4/30, 5/7, 5/14. Please contact T.C. or Ruth if you have any ongoing/complete syntactic work or interesting articles/books you’d like to present.

Speaker: Abhijit Debnath (Centre for Neural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hyderabad)
Title: Search for a Minimal Agent Predicate Link preference in Recursive Agent Distribution Strategy for Embedded Clauses
Date/Time: Thursday, Feb 21, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

(Joint work with Gautam Sengupta (University of Hyderabad).)

Full abstract is available (pdf).

The current paper reports two reading experiments in Bangla, (also introducing an ongoing ERP experiment) carried out in order to ascertain whether a Minimal Agent Predicate Association could be a the default preference that results in increase of processing complexity when the number of association links between any agent and the predicates of the sentence (which are the verbs either in matrix clause or embedded clause) increases. Bangla provides a more sensitized design for the tests by providing the location of the matrix verb (having control information) at the end of a sentence (like Japanese).

Speaker: David Gow
Date/Time: Thursday, Feb 21, 5:30pm
Location: 32-D831
Title: Imaging interaction: Using Granger causality analysis of MRI-constrained MEG/EEG to understand the dynamic processes that support speech perception and enforce phonotactic constraints

Abstract:

Traditional behavioral techniques and BOLD imaging provide important tools for identifying the components of linguistic and cognitive processes, but are severely limited in their ability to support strong inferences about the dynamic interactions between those components. In this presentation we will present an alternate approach that uses well-established statistical methods rooted in simple intuitions about causality to track the evolving interactions between different brain regions during the perception of spoken language based on high spatiotemporal resolution reconstructions of cortical activity. We will discuss applications of this technique to exploring the role of top-down lexical influences on speech perception and the role they play in producing and enforcing phonotactic regularity.

Speaker: Ayaka Sugawara, presenting work in collaboration with Martin Hackl, Su Lin Blodgett (Wellesley college), and Ken Wexler.
Date/Time: Fri Feb 22, 11:30am
Location: 32-D461
Title: Scalar Presupposition and the Generation of Alternatives in the Acquisition of Only

Abstract:

This talk presents a novel account of a curious and ill understood phenomenon of L1-Acquisition concerning only (Crain et al. 1992, 1994 a.o.). Our account is based on the assumption that only always triggers a scalar presupposition (in addition to presupposing the prejacent) as well as on Fox & Katzir’s (2011) mechanism for generating the set of alternatives relevant for the interpretation of only. In support, we present new data from ongoing experiments indicating that the factors identified by our account modulate children’s success in interpreting sentences with only.

Phonology Circle is scheduled for Mondays 5-7p this semester. There is a brief organizational meeting today at 5pm. If you cannot attend but would like to make a presentation this term, contact Michael Kenstowicz.

Speaker: Junya Nomura
Title: Syntax of Associative Plurals and Licensing of Empty Nouns
Date/time: Tuesday, Feb 12th, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

It’s been claimed by many researchers (Rizzi (1986), Lobeck (1993,1995) among others) that agreements involve licensing of empty elements. Licensing can be done between a verb and a DP or can be DP-internal. In this talk, I would like to propose two claims about associative plurals.

First, following Vassilieva (2005) and Zhang (2008), I will show that associative plurals should be analyzed to contain an empty noun and that what seems to be a head noun is really a modifier. The evidence for this consists of modifier-like morphology of associative plurals and positions of plural marker.

Second, I will provide evidence that the empty noun inside associative plurals must be licensed by agreeing with a plural morphology. In some languages (Japanese, Turkish, Chinese among others), this licensing is done DP-internally, and the claim that the empty noun requires a licensing is difficult to check. However, other languages, for example Kaqchikel and Maltese, adopt licensing by a verb and the claim is falsifiable. I found some evidence in Kaqchikel that the licensing is really necessary. That is, in some constructions, such as First Conjunct Agreement and Agent Focus, a verb cannot agree with an argument in some positions. In these position, associative plurals are not possible, even though ordinary plurals are possible even when there is no plural morphology.

This semester the experimental syntax-semantics lab meetings will take place on Thursdays, 5:30-7pm in 32-D831. An organizational meeting will take place this Thursday, 2/14. A tentative schedule for the rest of the semester is given below. Please email Hadas Kotek if you are interested in presenting at this venue.

Starting on February 28th, we will offer a 5-week workshop on the use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (dates below). The workshop is designed for people with little or no experience doing experimental work, and will provide tools and technical assistance to allow participants to develop, run and analyze their own (simple) experiment. We plan to cover general topics such as the use of experimental methods in linguistics and experimental design and also much more technical issues like creating input files and html templates for Turk and using R to analyze the results. The workshop is planned to be hands-on, as we think people will benefit from it the most this way, but observers are also welcome. We will provide more details about the workshop in the lab meeting next week, but feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Important: As part of the workshop we hope that each participant will develop and run their own small experiment. We are now in the process of trying to get the department to fund these experiments and therefore need to have a participant head count. If you think you may want to participate, please let Hadas know. If you later decide you can’t make it that’s ok, but if you only decide later that you want to participate we may not be able to fund you.

Schedule for this semester:
Feb 14: Organizational meeting
Feb 21: David Gow
Feb 28: Turk workshop I
March 7: Turk workshop II
March 14: Turk workshop III
March 21: OPEN
March 28: No meeting, spring break
April 4: Turk workshop IV
April 11: Turk workshop V
April 18: OPEN
April 25: OPEN
May 2: OPEN
May 9: OPEN
May 16: OPEN

There will be a special meeting of the Phonology Circle on 2/4, featuring a WCCFL practice talk by Suyeon Yun. (Please note the time!)

Title: The Role of Acoustic Cues in Nonnative Consonant Cluster Repairs

Speaker: Suyeon Yun

Date/time: Mon Feb 4, 10:30am

Location: 32D-461

This paper describes a comprehensive typology of consonant cluster repairs in loan adaptation, namely vowel epenthesis and consonant deletion, and crosslinguistic asymmetries concerning sites of epenthetic vowels and deleting consonants. I argue that presence or absence of certain acoustic cues play a crucial role in determining the site of epenthesis or deletion to achieve perceptual similarity between the source language input and the borrowing language output, and provide a P-map (Steriade 2008) analysis of the typology.

Syntax Square is scheduled for Tuesdays at 1-2pm this semester. The organizers are Ruth Brillman and Tingchun Chen — please contact them for scheduling issues, if you have ongoing or completed syntactic work you’d like to share, or if there’s an interesting article/book you’d like to discuss.

This week, there are two sessions of Syntax Square for WCCFL practice talks.

Speaker: Ted Levin
Title: Untangling the Balinese bind: Binding and voice in Austronesian
Date/Time: Monday, Feb 4, 1:30-2:30p
Location: 32-D461

Full abstract is available. (pdf)

Voice alternations in Balinese interact with binding phenomena in a way that appears problematic for
standard views of the A/A-bar distinction. In simple sentences, movement to Spec-TP does not create
new antecedents for binding, suggesting that Spec-TP is an A-bar position. In raising constructions,
however, movement to the higher Spec-TP does create new antecedents for binding, behavior expected of
an A-position. This paradox is dubbed the Balinese Bind by Wechsler (1998), who uses the phenomenon
to demonstrate the superiority of HPSG approaches. In this paper, I argue that the paradox is illusory, and
that Balinese Spec-TP is an unambiguous A-position, if we adopt a new account of the Balinese voice
system and the Agree-based theory of Binding advanced by Rooryck and Vanden Wyngaerd (2011).

Speaker: Hrayr Khanjian
Title: Complementizer concord in Western Armenian
Date/Time: Tuesday, Feb 5, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Full abstract is available. (pdf)

This paper accounts for the typologically unique double headed CP structure found in
Western Armenian (WA), as an instance of concord. Certain CPs in WA can have two
heads, where one is head-initial and the other is head-final. For these phrases, it is possible
to omit one of the heads, and end up with either a head-initial or head-final phrase. These
double headed CPs present two major challenges which I present solutions for. First, how
to account for the phonological and syntactic differences between the head-initial and the
head-final CPs. Second, how to compositionally derive the desired semantics of the doubly
headed CPs.

The first LFRG meeting is a practice talk for WCCFL by Mitcho and Isaac this Wednesday.

Future meetings are tentatively planned for Fridays at 11:30. Please contact this semester’s organizers, Edwin Howard and Miriam Nussbaum, if there is a scheduling conflict or if you would like to present something.

Speaker: Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine and Isaac Gould
Title: Domain Readings of Japanese Head Internal Relative Clauses
Date/Time: Wednesday, Feb 6, 11:30a
Location: 32-D831

The structure and interpretation of Head-Internal Relative Clauses (HIRC) differ from head-external variants, and these differences are not yet well understood. We present a study of the interpretation of Japanese HIRC with quantificational heads, and show novel evidence that the HIRC corresponds to the domain of the quantifier, rather than its witness set. We propose that HIRC denote the maximally informative set which can be the domain of the HIRC’s head quantifier. Sources of inter-speaker variation will also be discussed.

Ling-Lunch will keep its usual schedule of Thursdays 12:30-1:45p in 32-D461. Please contact the term’s organizers, Isa Kerem Bayirli and Despina Oikonomou, if you would like to present a talk.

There will be no meeting of the Experimental Syntax and Semantics Lab this week; the first meeting will be next week, day and time TBA.

If you are interested in participating in the lab meetings or in attending the Turk workshop that will take place during 3 or 4 lab meeting time slots throughout the semester, please indicate your availability in this Doodle poll. The Turk workshop will meet for the first time on the last week of February and then every 2-3 weeks after that, depending on participants’ schedules. Please contact Hadas if you have any questions; we will announce the lab meeting time and more details about the Turk workshop later this week.

Speaker: Suyeon Yun
Title: Optionality and Gradience in Compensatory Lengthening: Case Studies and Theoretical Implications
Date/Time: Monday, Dec 10, 5pm
Location: 32-D831

This study investigates the scalar nature of compensatory lengthening, which has traditionally been treated as a categorical phenomenon (Hayes 1989, Kavitskaya 2002, Yun 2010, among others). Based on case studies from Farsi and Turkish, I show that compensatory lengthening can take place in a systematically gradient fashion, and argue that this gradient occurrence of compensatory lengthening serves as evidence that speakers’ knowledge of duration preservation is active in synchronic grammar (cf. Hayes and Steriade 2004), not originating from “innocent misapprehension” (Ohala 1981, Blevins 2004). The gradient compensatory lengthening will be formulated within a weighted-constraint model (Flemming 2001). Also, I seek to account for the categorical and obligatory occurrence of compensatory lengthening as well as gradient and optional ones in a unified way based on phonetic characteristics of the consonants involved.

Speaker: Ermenegildo Bidese (MIT)
Title: CP-Erosion in semi-speakers’ Cimbrian: A tentative study about syntax contraction
Date/Time: Tuesday, Dec. 11, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

‘Semi-speakerness’ is a phenomenon quite wide-spread in language islands, especially when (i) in small communities a stronger standard comes to exert a huge pressure on the minority language (ML), and (ii) the process of language death takes place very slowly (Dorian 1981). It manifests itself through a partly (or even severely) eroded competence in the production of the ML displaying deviant morphological forms (deficient paradigms and the tendency to eliminate irregularities and marked forms by the process of analogical leveling) and a skewed syntax. In my talk I will present data from semi-speakers’ Cimbrian that seem to support the idea that intheir language competence some subparts of the CP layer are ‘inactivated’ or inaccessible (focalization and d-linking or familiarity topics) whereas other parts of the CP layer (wh-movement) show a higher capacity to survive. An analogy would be to an urban landscape after an earthquake, where some infrastructures are put down, whereas others remain intact. The challenge will be to find out whether we can predict which structures are more likely to ‘break down’.

Speaker: Ermenegildo Bidese
Title: A binary system of complementizers in Cimbrian relative clauses
Date/Time: Tuesday, Dec 4, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

The system of Cimbrian relative clauses manifests itself in a complex scenario: two different complementizers occur in this context: i) the ‘autochthonous’ (Germanic) bo, cognate of Southern German wo, and ii) the ‘allochthonous’ ke, borrowed from Italian (che), which is gradually spreading. In my talk I provide empirical evidence for a crucial specialization of both complementizers: the former shows up only in restrictive relative clauses, the latter in both restrictive and non-restrictive relatives, giving rise to a binary system. In my analysis I aim to explain the binary system of Cimbrian relative complementizers directly addressing the general discussion about relative clauses, showing once more the relevance of both linguistic contact and microvariation for the theory of grammar.

Speaker: Yusuke Imanishi (MIT)
Date/Time: December 6 (Thu), 12:30-1:45p
Place: 32-D461
Title: Parameterizing (non-)split ergativity in Mayan

Abstract:

Recent studies (Coon 2010, Mateo Pedro 2009, 2011) have shown that a split ergative pattern in Mayan languages such as Chol and Q’anjob’al is bi-clausal by taking the form of nominalization.
Under these analyses the split ergativity in these languages derives from a particular agreement paradigm in Mayan: genitive = ergative.

These studies leave open an interesting question why other Mayan languages like Kaqchikel do not exhibit split ergativity the way that Chol and Q’anjob’al do (Mateo Pedro and Imanishi 2012).

In this preliminary talk, I address this question and attempt to propose a parametric analysis of the variation in Mayan regarding (non-)split ergativity.
The languages I look at include Kaqchikel/Tzutujil/Q’eqchi’ (non-split ergative languages) and Chol/Q’anjob’al (split-ergative languages).

I focus on the independent property of a non-verbal predicate (NVP) in the languages hinted at by Coon et al. (2011): whether an NVP in a given language has the ability to raise the subject.
I then argue for the generalization
(i) If an NVP in a given language does not raise the subject, the language displays (Chol/Q’anjob’al-type) split ergativity.
(ii) If an NVP in a given language raises the subject, the language does not display (Chok/Q’anjob’al-type) split ergativity.

I further address some exceptions to the generalization.

The Experimental Syntax and Semantics Lab will hold its end-of-semester lab meeting, led by Martin Hackl, on Thursday 12/6 at 5:30 pm in 32-D831.