Whamit!

Speaker: Edith Aldridge (University of Washington)
Date/Time: 7 December, 3:30-5 pm
Location: 32-141
Title: Two Types of Ergativity and Where they Might Come from

Abstract:

Aldridge (2004), Legate (2008), and Coon et al. (2011) have demonstrated for several language families that there are at least two types of ergative language, one in which absolutive case is licensed solely by T and one in which v (also) plays a role. In this presentation, I propose an account of this variation in Austronesian languages as well as suggest a diachronic explanation for this variation. Specifically, I show that most Formosan languages like Seediq are T-type languages, while Philippine languages like Tagalog tend to be v-type. I then show how this distinction can result from two innovations in the reanalysis of a clausal nominalization as a finite root clause. The T-type system results from the first innovation. A reduced clausal nominalization nP is reanalyzed as verbal. Genitive case (which is identical to ergative in the modern languages) is assigned to the external argument in nP. Since n has no structural case feature to license the internal argument, this DP moves to the edge of nP to check case with T. This movement derives the well-known absolutive restriction on A’-extraction, since the object will come to occupy the outer specifier of the nP or vP phase. The ergative system arises when nP is reanalyzed as vP. Philippine languages, which constitute a lower-order subgroup in the Austronesian family, have undergone a second innovation which fully transitivized this vP, resulting in the acquisition of a structural case feature on transitive v.

Date: Monday, Nov. 26

Time: 5pm

Location: 32D-831

Presenter: Suyeon Yun (MIT)

Title: The Role of Acoustic Cues in Consonant Cluster Adaptation

In this talk I will argue that cross-linguistic asymmetries in nonnative cluster repairs - namely vowel epenthesis and consonant deletion - result from perceptual similarity between the clusters and their repaired forms. Expanding my survey in Yun (2012), I suggest some new typological generalizations. First, when the edge consonant is a stop, a vowel is most likely to be epenthesized after the stop. If not, the edge stop deletes, while the non-edge stop does not  (e.g., gdansk (Polish) → [g?dænsk] (English; Yun 2012), ‘compact’ → [kh?mp?kth?] (Korean; Yun 2012), ‘blanket’ → [l?nketti] (Finnish; Karttunen 1977), ‘compact’ → [kompak] (Indonesian; Yun 2012)). Second, when the edge consonant is a sonorant, a vowel is epenthesized before the sonorant. (e.g., lbovskij (Russian) → [ylbovskij] (Kirghiz; Gouskova 2003), rubl’ (Russian) → [rub?l] (Kirghiz; Yun 2012)). While vowel-adjacent sonorants frequently delete, word-edge sonorants do not delete; even in a language where deletion can be a repair strategy, word-edge sonorants undergo epenthesis rather than deletion (e.g., ‘Swaziland’ → [suasilaan] vs. ‘Seattle’ → [siiaatul] (Inuktitut; Pollard 2008)). In addition, I will report several interesting asymmetries concerning positions, source languages, places of articulation, and voicing in stop adaptations, which cannot be explained by standard phonological constraints. Based on the typology, I will argue that acoustic cues, such as stop release bursts and sonorant-internal cues, play a crucial role in consonant cluster adaptation and formulate them as phonetically-based faithfulness constraints. And it will be shown that interactions between  fixed rankings of the phonetically-based constraints (based on the P-map hypothesis (Steriade 2001/2008)) and markedness constraints successfully account for the comprehensive cross-linguistic patterns of the nonnative cluster repairs.

Speaker: Michael (mitcho) Erlewine
Title: Right-location as deletion (Ott & De Vries)
Date/Time: 27 Nov, 1pm
Location: 32-D461

Mitcho will present Dennis Ott & Mark De Vries’ NELS talk, “Right-dislocation as deletion”. The paper is available here.

Uriel Cohen-Priva (Brown U) will be speaking this week at Harvard, in the Language Universals and Linguistic Diversity Colloquium series.

Speaker: Uriel Cohen Priva (Brown University)

Title: Providing universal explanations for language-specific change

Date: Thurs, November 29th 3:30-5pm

Location: Boylston 105

American English often deletes /t/ word-finally, and taps /t/ in intervocalic contexts. Other varieties of English debuccalize and spirantize /t/ in similar contexts. This pattern is not unique to English. Romance languages tend to debuccalize and delete /s/, and varieties of Arabic front, voice and debuccalize /q/. What makes varieties of English repeatedly reduce the articulatory effort of pronouncing /t/ but not /s/? Is there a systematic way to predict which language would prefer to reduce which sound?

I present a new model, MULE, that traces the reasons that lead some languages to preserve sounds that other languages reduce. I show that these phenomena emerge from the balance between two functional forces: information utility and effort avoidance. Information utility is the amount of information that speakers expect a sound would provide — how useful the sound is from an information-theoretic perspective. Therefore, high information utility leads to the preservation of articulatory effort. Effort avoidance is the attempt to reduce articulatory effort, as follows from Zipf’s principle of least effort. In MULE, a sound that provides an insufficient amount of information utility with respect to the articulatory effort it requires is a likely target for an effort-reducing change.

I show theoretically and experimentally how MULE can explain language-specific tendencies to reduce different sounds. Additionally, I demonstrate how the same principles predict language-specific distributional facts, such as a cross-linguistic preference to use highly informative sounds in stressed syllables.

Speaker: Salvador Mascarenhas (NYU)
Title: Reasoning fallacies and treating premises as questions
Date/Time: Friday November 30, 2:10pm-3:20pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract:

The capacity to reason is central to all advanced human endeavors. It is fallible, yet pushed to its limits it makes science and philosophy possible. We propose a theory of human reasoning that provides a novel view of fallacies in na ??ve reasoning as well as our ability to reason competently. Default reasoning treats premises as questions and maximally strong answers to them, even though premises do not superficially look like questions or answers. As reasoners try to understand each new premise as an answer to the question at hand, they overestimate the relevance and appropriateness of these “answers,” producing fallacious conclusions. Yet, systematically asking a certain type of question as we interpret each new premise allows us to reason in a classically valid way, a result we prove formally.

Speaker: Keiichi Tajima (Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Hosei University / Visiting Researcher, Speech Communication Group, Research Laboratories of Electronics, MIT)
Title: Perception of prosody in a non-native language: The case of Japanese
listeners’ perception of English syllable structure.
Date/Time: Monday, Nov 19, 5pm
Location: 32-D831

Learners of a second language (L2) are known to have difficulty in the
production and perception of not just phonetic contrasts that are not
found in their native language (L1), but also prosodic properties that
diverge from their L1, such as syllable structure, rhythm, and
intonation. In the present study, I report results from a series of
studies that investigated the extent to which native Japanese
listeners have difficulty perceiving syllables in spoken English,
given the fact that English generally has more complex syllable
structures than Japanese. Results show that Japanese listeners indeed
have great difficulty accurately counting syllables in spoken English
words. Perceptual identification training, however, significantly
improves their performance. The non-native listeners’ difficulty was
strongly related to phonological factors such as the syllable
complexity of the English words, but it was not related to phonetic
factors such as the speaking rate of the words, nor to lexical factors
such as the presence or absence of loanwords in Japanese that are
etymologically / semantically related to yet phonologically distinct
(with divergent syllable structures) from the source words, e.g.,
English source word “stress” and its corresponding Japanese loanword
“sutoresu”.

Speaker: Theodore Frank Levin
Title: Dependent Case is Licensing
Date/Time: Tuesday, Nov 20, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Baker and Vinokurova (2010) suggest that some languages (including Sakha) may utilize both configurational (i.e. Marantz 1991) and functional-head driven (i.e. Chomsky 2000, 2001) approaches to case-assignment. I have argued elsewhere that Sakha is not such a language (Levin and Preminger 2012). However, I will argue that English is such a language.

Under common assumptions regarding Agree (Chomsky 2000, 2001), a probe must c-command its goal and that probe must have an uninterpretable (and hence unvalued) feature.

(1) AGREE (Chomsky 2000, 2001)
(i) An unvalued feature F (a probe) on a head H scans its c-command domain for
another instance of F (a goal) with which to agree.
(ii) If the goal has a value, its value is assigned as the value of the probe.

Given this assumption, the functional-head driven account of Case assignment is unexpected: A functional head with unvalued ?-features probes its c-command domain for a nominal with valued ?-features and enters an Agree-relationship. As a consequence of this, the c-commanded nominal’s unvalued Case-feature is valued. This valuation is unexpected, as the unvalued Case-feature is not in a position to act as a probe given (1).

A number of proposals have attempted to eliminated instances of “Reverse Agree” (e.g. Boskovic 2007, Zeiljstra 2011). Boskovic (2007) suggests that if (some) probes cannot find a goal in their c-command domains, they will move successive-cyclically until they come to c-command an appropriate, valued feature. An immediate advantage of this account is that it allows us to derive the EPP. In intransitive clauses a DP base-generated in Spec-vP or Compl-V will raise to Spec-TP, because the unvalued Case-feature on the DP triggers movement. Once in Spec-TP, the DP c-commands T0, and is able to value its Case-feature.

However, there is a problem if we assume that both T0 and v0 assign Case in transitive constructions. A subject DP, base-generated in Spec-vP, should be able to value its Case-feature against v0. If this occurs, the object DP should move to Spec-TP to value its Case-feature by Agreeing with T0. Proponents of unvalued-feature driven movement have suggested that accusative case in transitive clauses may be lexically assigned by V0. While only accusative assigned in ECM constructions is assigned by v0.

I will suggest that in a hybrid approach to case-assignment, we can maintain the account of the EPP and treat ECM and transitive accusative uniformly. Specifically, nominative case is assigned under a functional-head driven approach whereby a DP must occupy Spec-TP to be valued nominative. Both ECM and transitive accusative are assigned configurationally. Under this approach accusative case is assigned to an object DP, because it is c-commanded by an as-of-yet caseless nominal. Crucially dependent case must be assigned within the narrow syntax (Baker & Vinokurova 2010; Preminger 2011) contra Marantz (1991) and Bobaljik (2008). Evidence from Case Adjacency effects in English will be utilized to argue for the proposed hybrid theory.

Speaker: Marko Hladnik (Utrecht University)
Title: Resumption in Slavic relative clauses
Date/Time: Tuesday, Nov 13, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Starting with Slovene, we explore the patterns of relative clause (RC) resumption and argue that the common alternative ways of forming a RC we find in Slavic languages share one and the same syntactic derivation, with differences arising at PF due to recoverability considerations. Furthermore, the necessity to differentiate three types of resumption is demonstrated, and we argue that apparent optionality of resumption in Serbo-Croatian and Polish has deeper syntactic causes, and is conditioned by case morphology paradigms.

Speaker: Isa Kerem Bayirli
Title: Impossible Syntactic Representations = Impossible Morphological Expressions?
Date/Time: Thursday, Nov 15, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32D-461

In this talk, I will argue that previous approaches to suffixhood in the inflectional domain, both in their lexicalist (Lieber, 1980 i.a. ) and syntactic (Ouhalla, 1991 i.a.) variants, fail to capture a pattern that emerges upon closer inspection. The pattern in question is this:

V-X Generalization
A morpheme that categorically selects for a verbal item is always a suffix on this verbal item.

An approach that takes suffixhood to be lexically idiosyncratic information treats this as an accident - an unsatisfying conclusion.

My second claim will be that this observation is correlated with a restriction on what kind of behavior verbal items can show:

A Restriction on the Behavior of Verbal Items
Projections headed by verbal items cannot show phrasal behavior (i.e. movement to a spec position and coordination).

The challenge posed by the English language to these claims will be argued to arise from the fact that what has been taken to be bare `VP` in English is actually a projection headed by an infinitival projection, for which independent evidence is presented.

The correlation between the generalization and the restriction given above will be formed as a causal relation, using an non-lexicalist implementation of Brody`s (2003) Mirror Theory.

All in all, we will end up having impossible morphological facts arising from an impossible syntactic representation. This adds a new dimension to debates on the exact relation between syntax and morphology.

Title: A grammatical source of the “Gettier” judgment
Speaker: Wataru Uegaki
Date/Time: Thursday, November 15, 5:30pm
Location: 32-D831

In this talk, I will present the result of my joint experiment with Paul Marty on what kind of grammatical factors affect English native speakers’ truth-value judgment of sentences containing “know”. After Gettier’s (1963) famous examples, it is widely known that a sentence of the form “x knows that p” can be false even when x justifiably believes p and p is true, contra the traditional view that knowledge consists of justified true belief. In our experiment, we tested whether the grammatical form of the complement of “know” affects the truth-value judgment of a knowledge-sentence. According to the result of our experiment, participants judge a knowledge-sentence with a disjunction in the complement significantly less likely as true than a classically equivalent sentence without a disjunction, especially under a Gettier-like scenario. We will discuss theoretical consequences of this result on the semantics of “know” and associated verification strategies. Specifically, I will argue that the result is compatible with the semantics of “know” which is sensitive to the “alternative possibilities” induced by specific grammatical devices such as disjunction and indefinites whereas it calls for further explanation in the analysis where “know” is only sensitive to the classical semantic value of the complement.

Speaker: Maria Giavazzi (CNRS)
Title: A linguistic deficit in Huntington’s disease? Preliminary evidence from a dissociation between production and perception in a morpho-phonological task
Date/Time: Monday, Nov 5, 5pm
Location: 32-D831

There is a lively debate in the recent literature about whether the striatum holds a specific role in linguistic processing, or whether it contributes to linguistic processing indirectly, through its role in executive control, memory and attention (Ulmann 2004; Teichmann et al. 2005, 2008; Chan et al. 2012; Mestres-Missé et al. 2012).

Huntington’s Disease (HD) offers a unique model of primarily atrophy of the striatum with simultaneous decline in various cognitive functions. Although language impairment in this disease has been described in the literature (Teichmann et al., 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, Sambin et al. 2012), evidence is scattered and the specific nature of the deficit has yet to be understood.

In this talk I present data from two experiments conducted with French HD patients. The experiments tested the morphophonological knowledge of the patients, looking specifically at gender alternations within the adjectival paradigm (e.g. [petit] FEM- [peti] MASC ‘small’ ). Although patients had been previously reported to be impaired in a similar task, I show that the deficit is present in a production task, but absent in perception (grammaticality judgment task). I discuss a possible grammatical explanation for this data and try to put it in the wider context of the role of the striatum in language and other linguistic deficits observed in this disease.

Data collection was completed only very recently and its analysis is still in its early stages. I am looking forward to comments and discussion.

Speaker: Hadas Kotek
Title: Wh-coordination in free relatives (Barbara Citko/Martina Gracanin-Yuksek, NELS43)
Date/Time: Tuesday, Nov 6, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Hadas will present Barbara Citko (University of Washington) and Martina Gracanin-Yuksek’s (METU) recent talk at NELS43. The abstract is available here (pdf).

Speaker: Jonathan Barnes (BU)
Title:
Title:
Date/Time: Thursday, Nov 8, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Much of the recent history of research in intonational phonology could fairly be characterized as an ongoing debate between so-called “configuration-based” and “level-based” approaches to the primitive elements that comprise representations of intonation contours. Configuration-based models understand intonation in terms of dynamic elements, such as rises and falls, while level-based models deal instead in static pitch-level targets (primarily Highs and Lows). As phonological opinion has settled in favor of level-based theories, it has been tempting to see a direct instantiation of phonological tone levels in local F0 turning points (e.g., maxima and minima, hereafter TPs). The study of F0 TPs from this point of view has uncovered substantial systematicity both in how tonal movements align with the segmental skeleton of an utterance, and in how they are scaled with respect to each other in the frequency domain. However, serious problems have surfaced as well: TP-locations are often ambiguous, or even unrecoverable, from the F0 record. Worse still, evidence suggests that a host of difficult-to-quantify aspects of global contour shape influence perception of contour identity, potentially overriding TP-based evidence under the right circumstances. Listeners, in other words, attend to precisely those aspects of the signal that standard level-based models predict they should ignore. In this talk, I will present evidence from paired perception and production studies involving intonation patterns in American English, in support of a new approach to the phonetics and phonology of intonation. This model, based on the notion of Tonal Center of Gravity (TCoG), captures key insights from configuration-based approaches, without abandoning the central tenets of a level-based intonational phonology. It also makes a variety of predictions concerning tonal implementation and the structure of tone inventories that are not accessible in traditional level-based terms. One of these I explore further in the context of tonal co-occurrence patterns in Chinese languages.

Mark Baker’s colloquium for Friday has been cancelled due to the effects of Hurricane Sandy. It will be rescheduled for a later date.

Remaining schedule:
Nov 5 - Maria Giavazzi
Nov 12 - holiday
Nov 19 - Keiichi Tajima
Nov 26 - Suyeon Yun
Dec 3 - open
Dec 10 - LSA practice talks

Speaker: Coppe van Urk
Title: Predication, predicate fronting, and what it takes to be a verb (Jessica Coon, NELS43)
Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct 30, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Coppe will present Jessica Coon (McGill)’s recent talk at NELS43. The full abstract is available here (pdf).

Speaker: Ivona Ku?erová (McMaster University)

Title: Spell-out-dependent Case assignment and split ergativity

Date/Time: Thursday, Nov 1, 12:30-1:45p

Location: 32-D461

In my previous work (Ku?erová 2011) I proposed that the presence or absence of what is often analyzed as dependent Case (ACC/ERG) depends
on the size of the syntactic structure which spells out such a “dependent” Case. The actual case assignment reflects which heads are
strong phase heads and as such constitute a Spell-out domain.This talk elaborates on the idea of Spell-out dependency and extends it to the
domain of split ergativity. If we apply this approach to morphologically and syntactically ergative languages (Bittner and Hale
1996), the spell-out-dependent hypothesis predicts that there should be three distinct types of split ergative systems, a prediction which
is confirmed by the descriptive generalization in Coon 2012. A further prediction is that case splits should not be restricted to
ergative systems but should occur in accusative systems as well. As we will see, this prediction is borne out as well.

Title: Scalar implicatures: working memory and a comparison with `Only’.
Speaker: Paul Marty
Date/Time: Thursday, November 1, 5:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract:

A Scalar Implicature (SI) arises when the use of a weaker expression (e.g., some politicians are corrupt) implies the denial of an alternative sentence (e.g., not all politicians are corrupt). The cognitive effort associated with the processing of SIs involves central memory resources (De Neys and Schaeken 2007). The goal of the present investigation is to locate this previous result within the current psycholinguistic debate, and to understand at which level of SI processing these resources are specifically involved. Using a dual-task approach, we show that (i) tapping participant’s memory resources interferes with the derivation of SIs, whereas (ii) it does not affect the interpretation of sentences with only involving similar mechanisms (e.g., only some politicians are corrupt). We explain how these findings suggest that the central memory resources are not involved in (some of) the core sub-process at the source of SIs, and discuss how this new difference between SIs and only bears on recent linguistic debates on the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics.

Speaker: Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware)
Date/Time: 3:30 - 5pm
Venue: 32-D461
Title: Conventionally Implicated Questions

Abstract:

There is a type of adjunct (unselected) embedded question in Korean and Japanese that is unlike any known type of embedded question. The form itself is innocuous; Q, p. Its meaning, however, seems rather complex. (I) The speaker asserts p, and (II) the speaker does not know the answer to Q, but (iii) the speaker speculates that the answer to Q would be a reasonable/likely cause of p. We argue that this type of embedded question is functionally a root questions but belongs to the conventional implicature (CI) tier in the sense of Potts (2005). We therefore claim that the domain of CI be expanded so as to include question meaning as well. It will also be shown that the speaker’s ignorance and the speaker’s speculation on the causal link can be derived pragmatically, making it unnecessary to represent them in the semantic representation.

Speaker: Miwako Hisagi (MIT RLE Speech Communication Group)
Title: Perception of Japanese vowel duration contrasts by L1 and L2 learners of Japanese: An EEG/MEG study.
Date/Time: Monday, Oct 22, 5:00p
Location: 32-D831

(Joint work with Shigeru Miyagawa, Valerie Shafer, Hadas Kotek, Ayaka Sugawara, Dimitrios Pantazis)

One challenge of second language (L2) acquisition research is to evaluate to what extent experience with an L2 leads to changes in automaticity of L2 speech perception. It is important to address whether L2 perception becomes more automatic with increasing experience. The present study investigated the MMN/MMF component. 12 native speakers of Japanese (JP), 12 naïve American English (AE) listeners (i.e., no knowledge of JP) and 12 L2 learners of JP who have acquired some knowledge of JP (i.e., one semester of Japanese) were tested on a vowel duration contrast (tado-taado) to determine whether experience with JP in a classroom leads to sufficiently robust selective perception routines (SPRs) to indicate automatization of speech perception at least for some learners. We used a visual attention task in which attention was directed away from the auditory stimuli. In result, the native JP listeners showed the largest MMN and the naïve AE listeners showed the smallest MMN, with the AE learners of JP showing an intermediate MMN. This study suggests that experience with the L2 (JP) leads to increasing robustness of discrimination of L2 phonemic contrasts, but that these representations (or SPRs) are still less robust than for L1 listeners and that attention modulates these findings.

There is no Syntax Square meeting this week.

There are still open slots for this semester (10/23, 10/30, 11/6, 11/20, 12/3, 12/11). Contact the organizers, TC Chen or Junya Nomura, if you would like to present your work or discuss a paper.

Speaker: Roberta D’Alessandro (Leiden University)
Title: Merging Probes and the locus of syntactic variation. A case study.
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 25, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32D-461

The so-called Borer-Chomsky conjecture as formulated by Mark Baker (2008) states that all parameters of syntacticvariation are attributable to differences in features of particular items (e.g. the functional heads) in the lexicon. In this talk it will be shown that this statement is substantiated in a group of languages that show heavy microvariation: Italian dialects. It is traditionally believed that Northern and Southern dialects belong to different groups, the main differences between them being the presence vs absence of subject clitics, and the presence vs absence of person-driven auxiliary selection. The hypothesis will be explored that subject clitics and person-driven auxiliary selection are instead essentially the same phenomenon: subject doubling. Upper Southern dialects differ from Northern dialects just in the locus of an extra functional head, encoding person features. The almost perfect complementary distribution between dialects with subject clitics and languages with person-driven auxiliary selection is not accidental, but is the logical result the presence of an extra ?-probe doubling the features of the subject in different parts of the syntactic spine. Italian dialects are hence not so different from each other as they might seem.

Furthermore, the macrogroup of Italian dialects also differs minimally from some split-ergative languages because of the valued/unvalued nature of the features found on this extra head. Typological microvariation can be shown to follow from features on functional heads, just as expected.

Speaker: Aron Hirsch
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 25, 5:30-7p
Location: 32-D831

Aron will continue his presentation on topicality in sentence prosody from last week.

Speaker: Sun-Ah Jun (UCLA)
Date/Time: Friday 10/26, 3:30 - 5pm
Location: 32-141
Title: Prosodic Priming in Relative Clause Attachment

Abstract:

In a sentence such as “Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony”, the relative clause (RC) can modify NP1 the servant (i.e., high attachment) or NP2 the actress (low attachment). Although the details of attachment preference are language-specific (Fodor 1998, Fernández 2003) it is known that, cross-linguistically, attachment decisions are sensitive to the length of the RC. This fact has been used to support the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis (IPH; Fodor 1998, 2002), which claims that the implicit prosody associated with a syntactic structure influences attachment. It predicts that speakers and listeners favor low attachment when the RC forms a single prosodic phrase with NP2, but that they favor high attachment when there is a prosodic break before the RC. However, studies testing this prediction based on an out-of-the-blue reading (e.g., Jun 2010) suggest that examining overt prosody may not be a suitable way to evaluate implicit prosody.

In this talk, I will provide new evidence supporting the role of prosody in the resolution of RC attachment by showing that prosodic priming, varied in the location of prosodic boundary and played auditorily, influences attachment decisions in the silent reading of a target sentence. That is, auditory primes with late boundary, (NP1 NP2)//(RC), triggered more high attachment and auditory primes with early boundary triggered more low attachment compared to the those with no boundary (control). However, this pattern was found only for subjects with prominent “autistic”-like traits, in particular, those with poorer communication skills. This result is rather surprising given the prosodic deficits usually associated with autism spectrum conditions (e.g. Diehl & Berkovits 2010). I will explore the hypothesis that this finding is related to individual differences in prosodic strategies for disambiguating the relevant syntactic structures. The results of the study broadly support the IPH, but suggest a more complex picture of the relevant prosodic representations of the target structure and individual differences in interpreting their salience.

Speakers: Michael Erlewine and Hadas Kotek
Title: Diagnosing covert pied-piping
Date/Time: Monday, Oct 15, 3-4p
Location: 32-D831
Note unusual date/time and location

(This is a practice talk for NELS. Full abstract is available here (PDF).)

We argue for the existence of covert pied-piping in English multiple questions. Novel data shows that Focus Intervention Effects occur within a covertly pied-piped constituent containing the in-situ wh-phrase. Focus-sensitive determiners (e.g. no and few) in the covertly pied-piped constituent cause ungrammaticality (1a), while focus-sensitive interveners outside of the region do not (1b), thus acting as a diagnostic for the size of covert pied-piping. We account for these facts through (a) covert pied-piping of in-situ wh-phrases (through Cable’s Q-theory), (b) the interpretation of pied-piped constituents using focus alternative computation (following Horvath, Krifka, Cable), and (c) Beck’s (2006) theory of Focus Intervention.

(1a) Which boy has read ?a/?some/?the/*no/*few book(s) from which library?
(1b)? Which boy hasn’t read a/any/some/the book(s) from which library?

We then extend the domain of inquiry to discuss pied-piping in focus movement, and provide additional support for the theory of covert focus-movement (Krifka 2006, Wagner 2006). While there are several options for size of pied-piping in overt movement, we show that only the largest possible constituent can be moved covertly. We suggest that this shows the preference of LF and core syntax, which is suppressed by the needs of PF in the case of overt movement.

Speakers: Adam Albright and Young Ah Do
Title: Featural overlap facilitates learning of phonological alternations
Date/Time: Monday, Oct 15, 5:00p
Location: 32D-831

Alternations like p~f and t~s provide two kinds of information: certain segments (p~f) and certain features (continuancy) alternate. Grammatical frameworks generally encode alternations using features, predicting that evidence about one alternation may facilitate learning featurally overlapping alternations. We ran an Artificial Grammar experiment, exposing subjects to voicing and continuancy alternations at different frequencies for different segments (3 p~b, 13 t~d; 6 p~f, 3 t~s). In a memory task, subjects preferred frequent segmental alternations (t~d, p~f). However, in a generalization task, subjects systematically preferred voicing alternations, even for infrequent p~b. We model this with feature-based faithfulness constraints in a maxent model.

Speakers: Norvin Richards and Coppe van Urk
Title: On the architecture of long-distance extraction: Evidence from Dinka
Location: 32-D461
Date/Time: Tue, Oct 16, 1-2p

This is a practice talk for NELS.

In this talk, we present novel data from the Nilo-Saharan language Dinka, a language in which the syntax of successive-cyclic movement is remarkably transparent. We show that Dinka provides strong support for the view of long-distance dependencies developed by Chomsky (1986, 2000, 2001, 2008). In particular, Dinka offers clear evidence that long-distance extraction proceeds through the edge of every verb phrase and clause on the path of movement. In addition to this, Dinka offers insight into the limitations of successive-cyclic movement. We show that the profile of extraction in Dinka argue for the idea that extraction is accompanied by successive Agree relations between phase heads on the path of movement, as proposed also in recent work on Tagalog and Hungarian by (Rackowski and Richards 2005) and Den Dikken (2009, 2012a,b). To reconcile these two conclusions, we develop a variant of Rackowski and Richards’ (2005) proposal, in which both intermediate movement to every phase edge and successive Agree relations between phase heads are necessary steps in establishing a long-distance dependency.

Speaker: Anna Maria Di Sciullo
Title: An Evolutionary Developmental Constraint
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 18, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

A striking fact in the development of the nominal extended projection in Indo-European languages is that while pre and post nominal positions for a functional category are possible in earlier stages of the languages, only one position is available in later stages. This phenomenon is neither language specific nor category specific. It can be observed in the development of prepositions in the Indo-European languages, in the emergence of the definite determiner form Old to Modern Romanian, as well as in the development of the possessive adjectives from Ancient to Modern Greek and from Latin to Romance languages. I raise the question of why this is the case. I argue that this phenomenon is the consequence of the Head Initial/Final Constraint, which I take to be an evolutionary developmental universal. The HI/FC is an instance of the Directional Asymmetry hypothesis, according to which language evolution is symmetry breaking. It differs from Greenberg’s universals as they express a characteristic of languages as they evolve and it contributes to reduce derivational complexity.

Speaker: Aron Hirsch
Date/time: Thursday, Oct 18, 5:30pm
Location: 32-D831
Title: Prosodic prominence in intransitive clauses: argument structure or information structure?

Abstract:

Intransitive sentences exhibit variation in English as to whether their subject or predicate receives main prominence under broad focus (‘A VASE broke.’ vs. ‘John RAN.’). I will discuss a recent series of production experiments run jointly with Michael Wagner (McGill University), wherein we attempt to arbitrate between two theoretical accounts for this variation – one based on argument structure (unaccusativity), the other information structure (topicality). We show that the likelihood with which speakers produce prominence on the predicate correlates with the likelihood of the subject being construed as a topic, independent of whether the predicate is unaccusative or unergative (when information structure is controlled for, argument structure has no independent effect). This supports an information structure-based view where subject prominence is the unmarked pattern in intransitive sentences, with predicate prominence signalling topicality of the subject.

Speaker: Ted Levin
Title: Korean Nominative Case-Stacking: A configurational account
Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct 9, 1:00p
Location: 32-D461

This is a practice talk for the 22nd Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference. Full abstract is available here (PDF).

Speakers: Maziar Toosarvandani and Coppe van Urk
Title: On the directionality and nature of nominal concord: Ezafe concord in Zazaki
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 11, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32D-461

This talk investigates a pattern of nominal concord on the Zazaki ezafe marker, a morpheme that accompanies nominal dependents in many Iranian languages. We show that concord on Zazaki ezafe is sensitive both to the properties of the head noun and to those of the dependent. We propose an analysis of this pattern in which the ezafe first enters into a downward Agree relation with its dependent and then agrees upward with the head noun. This derives the pattern of concord and makes sense of the fact that restrictions on nominal concord in Zazaki mirror restrictions on verbal agreement. As a consequence, our analysis offers evidence that nominal concord has a syntactic signature (Mallen 1997; Carstens 2000; Baker 2008), and that the directionality of Agree is more flexible than previously thought (Baker 2008; Bejar and Rezac 2009; Zeijlstra 2012; Preminger 2012).

Speaker: Pranav Anand (UC Santa Cruz)
Title: Assessing the pragmatics of experiments: The case of scalar implicature
Date/Time: Friday, Oct 12, 3:30-5p
Location: 32-141

There is a growing impetus to examine pragmatic phenomena experimentally.
Potentially complicating these investigations is the way in which the
experimental environment itself shapes participants’ models of
extra?linguistic context. A spate of recent results collectively suggest
that the computation of scalar implicature may be sensitive to a host of
factors: task structure, social norms, and type of response elicited.
However, these results provide only a few points in a vast space of
potential task parameters, thereby limiting our ability to systematically
model the interaction between linguistic forms, context and pragmatic
inference. This talk reports ongoing work to systematically investigate the
parametric space of task design. We find that implicature calculation rates
are sensitive to both the structure of the response elicited (e.g., scalar
vs. unordered) as well as the task prompt (whether the participant judges
“accuracy”, “informativity”, or “goodness”), and discuss the methodological
lessons of this kind of work.

Speaker: Michelle Fullwood
Title: Learning nonconcatenative morphological units via Bayesian
inference
Date/Time: Monday, Oct 1, 5-7p
Location: 32-D831

(This is a practice talk for NECPhon.)

I will demonstrate an extension to the Goldwater model of
Bayesian morphological segmentation (Goldwater, Griffiths & Johnson
2009) to handle the unsupervised learning of nonconcatenative
morphologies for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. I will then
discuss a number of linguistic questions that can receive empirical
answers by applying the extended model to actual lexica.

Speaker: Michael Erlewine
Title: Qu in Squliq Atayal
Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct 2, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

In this talk I’ll share some findings from my recent fieldwork on Atayal (Austronesian, Taiwan). Atayal exhibits the familiar “Austronesian voice system,” where verbs are marked for which argument is in a prominent, sentence-final “trigger” position (which is the subject or some topic position, depending on your view). In Atayal, the trigger is marked with ‘qu’. In the variety of Squliq Atayal I looked at this summer, in some circumstances when the trigger is not in sentence-final position (either through cliticization or leftward A’-extraction) another argument of the verb can be marked with ‘qu’. I’ll speculate on what this extra ‘qu’ marking may be, and how it relates to different conceptions of the Austronesian voice system.

Speaker: Angela Friederici (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig)
Date/Time: Tuesday, October 2nd 4pm
Location: Singleton Auditorium, 46?3002
Title: Syntax in the Brain: Evidence for processing networks from imaging

Abstract:

The processing of syntax is an ability specific to humans. The functional and structural neural network underlying this ability will be expounded, both on the basis of data from natural and artificial grammar paradigms in the mature brain. The different brain regions in the temporal, parietal and inferior frontal cortex which are involved in syntax will be described with respect to their specific contributions in the processing of syntactically complex sentences, as will the information flow between them. A model framing these data with respect to bottom-up and potential top-down processes will be presented.

Speaker: Angela Friederici (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig)
Date/Time: Wednesday, Oct 3, 5pm (Refreshments start at 4:30)
Location: 32-D461
Title: Brain maturation and language development: From phonology to syntax

As the brain matures language processing develops. It will be argued that the maturation of certain fiber tracts goes together with the development of particular processing abilities. The talk will focus on two dorsal pathways in particular: one pathway which connects the temporal cortex (TC) to the premotor cortex (PMC) known to support auditory-based phonological processes and another pathway which connects the TC to Broca’s area (BA 44) known to subserve the processing of syntactically complex sentences. Data from newborns, children and adults demonstrate that the TC to PMC pathway is present in the human infant at birth providing the bases for phonologically based learning observable at the age of 4-5 months, whereas the TC to BA 44 pathway only matures much later and appears to be directly linked to the processing of syntactically complex stimuli.

This talk replaces the weekly Experimental Syntax and Semantics Lab meeting.

Speaker: Andreea Nicolae (Harvard)
Date/Time: Thursday October 4, 9:30-11:00am
Location: 32-D831
Title: An alternative account of the distribution of NPIs in interrogatives

Abstract:

Despite much research on the NPI front, their behavior in questions remains puzzling. Many recent theories, building on Ladusaw’s original insight, have developed an alternative–based approach whereby their distribution, a requirement to be in a downward entailing (DE) context, follows from the way their alternatives are “exhaustified,” without having to stipulate a licensing-by-DE condition. In fact, Guerzoni & Sharvit (2007) show that when it comes to the distribution of NPIs in questions, DE-ness cannot be a factor, and claim instead that the crucial factor is strength. While NPIs are always acceptable in direct questions (modulo some intervention facts), matters are more complicated in embedded questions: wonder verbs always allow NPIs, surprise verbs never allow NPIs, and know verbs have an intermediate status.

(1) a. Mary wonders which students brought anything to the party.
     b. %Mary knows which students brought anything to the party.
     c. *It surprised Mary which students brought anything to the party.

Noting that the NPI’s acceptability correlates with whether the embedded question is interpreted as weakly (WE) or strongly (SE) exhaustive — wonder embeds SE questions, surprise embeds only WE questions, while know arguably admits both — G&S draw the generalizations that NPIs are only admissible in embedded questions that receive a SE interpretation. Summing up, the situation is the following. We have a promising theory of NPIs, a good generalization about their distribution in questions, and a theory of WE versus SE questions, but we don’t know how these come together, and in particular how the generalization may follow given what we know about the distribution of NPIs in non–interrogative contexts. In this talk I am going to propose a new way to derive the WE/SE distinction in embedded questions and show how this new approach allows us to tackle the puzzle of NPIs in questions.

The emerging picture is that not only is it the case that DE–ness is not a factor in non–interrogatives and strength not a factor in interrogatives, but that in fact all occurrences of NPIs can be accounted for in an arguably elegant way by simply looking at the interaction between their alternatives and how the grammar uses up these alternatives across different environments. I will also suggest ways to analyze the intervention facts observed with NPIs in questions.

Speaker: Maziar Toosarvandani
Title: Gapping is VP-ellipsis
Date/Time: Thursday, Oct 4, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Johnson (2009) argues that gapping — e.g. “Some had ordered mussels, and others swordfish” — does not arise through VP-ellipsis because gapping has properties that VP-ellipsis does not. He proposes instead that the gap in gapping arises through ‘low coordination’ and across-the-board movement. I first show that Johnson’s across-the-board movement account fails to generate gapping in coordination structures with corrective but (Vicente 2010, Toosarvandani, to appear). Then, I revive a version of the ellipsis account in which VP-ellipsis applies to low-coordination structures. Not only does this correctly generate gapping in corrective but sentences, but once the information-structural effects of low coordination and ellipsis are taken into consideration, it also derives the unique properties of gapping.

Speaker: Alexander Podobryaev
Date/Time: Tuesday, Sept 25, 1-2p
Room: 32-D461

I will discuss “Imposters”, a recent book by Chris Collins and Paul Postal
about expressions referring to the speaker or the hearer that nonetheless
seem to have 3rd person features (“yours truly”, “the present author”,
“your highness” etc.). The presentation will focus on ways in which this
book should or shouldn’t change our general understanding of syntax and
semantics of phi-features.

Speaker: Danny Fox

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 26, 6pm (note unusual date and time!)
Location: 32-D461
Title: TBA

This will replace the regular Thursday meeting of the Experimental Syntax and Semantics Lab.

The talk previously announced for this week will be rescheduled for later in the term. The next scheduled talk is by Michelle Fullwood on Oct 1.

Speaker: Hui-Chi Lee (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan)
Title: Resultative Structures in Hainan Min
Date/Time: Tuesday, Sept 18, 1-2p
Room: 32-D461

The study explores the resultative constructions in Hainan Min, a Chinese language spoken on the Hainan Island. The talk has three goals: to present the syntactic distribution of Hainan Min resultative constructions, to propose a typological analysis and to compare cross-linguistic data. I argue that Hainan Min resultative structure, unlike Mandarin, involves a syntactic mechanism rather than a lexical one. Two related Chinese languages (Southern Min and Cantonese) and Hlai (Tai-Kadai) are also compared.

Speaker: Igor Yanovich
Date/Time: Thursday September 20, 9:30 - 11 am
Location: 32-D831
Title: must: 15 centuries between possibility and necessity

Abstract:

Igor will talk about the semantic changes that must underwent from Old English to Present-Day English, mostly concentrating on what has been traditionally analyzed as a shift from a modal of permission (Old English) to a modal of obligation (Early Modern English).

Ling-Lunch returns this week at its usual time and place with a talk by Masatoshi Koizumi.

Speaker: Masatoshi Koizumi (Tohoku University)
Title: On the Subject-Object Word Order Preference in Sentence Comprehension (and Production)
Date/Time: Thursday, 9/20, 12:30-1:45p
Room: 32-D461

The processing load of sentences with three different word
orders (i.e., VOS, VSO, and SVO) in Kaqchikel Maya was investigated
using a sentence plausibility judgment task. VOS sentences were
processed faster than VSO and SVO sentences. This confirmed the
traditional analysis in Mayan linguistics that the syntactically
determined basic word order is VOS in Kaqchikel, as in many other
Mayan languages. More importantly, the result revealed that the
preference for subject-object word order in sentence comprehension
previously observed in other languages is not universal; rather,
processing load in sentence comprehension is greatly affected by the
syntactic nature of individual languages.

Speaker: Paul Kiparsky (Stanford University)
Date/Time: Friday 9/21 3:30-5 pm
Location: Singleton Auditorium BCS (46-3002) [Note unusual venue]
Title: UG-driven syntactic change: the word-order cycle

It has been claimed that head-final syntax changes to head-initial syntax, but not conversely. Indeed, major families like Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European, and Uralic, all with a significant proportion of SVO languages, are reconstructed on good evidence as proto-SOV. Wherever such changes can be tracked in the historical record, they can be seen to have the characteristic “drift” properties of proceeding in small but discrete steps in a constant direction over long periods of time, which are puzzling in many ways. Why not in shifting directions, or in a single big step? Why do different languages drift in the same direction? And how can the unidirectionality be reconciled with the persistence of typological diversity?

Arguing against accounts based on processing efficiency or representational economy, and against the historical hypothesis of Gell-Mann and Ruhlen 2011, I adopt the view that drift reflects biases in acquisition. I derive the headedness shift from a grounded and empirically improved version of the Final-Over-Final Constraint (Biberauer et al.), crucially in conjunction with the assumption that linearization is done in the syntax, and is sensitive to word structure, in particular to whether functional categories are expressed as syntactic heads or as morphological affixes. (Evidence for this comes from binding theory and from the lexicalist literature.) These principles generate biases which predict exactly the attested diachronic trajectories. I formalize this idea with a language acquisition model where learners favor the most probable language consistent with previously encountered data, definable in OT as the language with the greatest ranking volume (Riggle 2010).

My proposal makes a number of typological predictions, such as that languages with clause-final complementizers, and languages with no syntactically visible functional heads (such as Japanese) are uniformly V-final. A historical prediction of my proposal is that the word-order shift is in fact not unidirectional but cyclic. That is, it should also be the case that OV languages were once VO. For some head-final languages, there are morphological indications that this is correct (Trask 1977).

Date/Time: Monday, September 10, 5 pm
Location: 32-D831

The Phonology Circle will return to its traditional meeting time of 5-7 pm on Mondays this semester in 32-D831.

We will hold a brief organizational meeting next Monday Sept. 10 at 5 to plan the semester’s schedule. If you cannot attend but would like to reserve a date, please email Michael Kenstowicz.

Syntax Square, the informal discussion group for syntax, will be held Tuesdays at 1-2p in 32-D461. The organizers this term are TC Chen and Junya Nomura. Please send them an e-mail if you have ongoing or completed syntactic work that you would like to present or if there is a recent article or book you would like to discuss. Keep in mind that Syntax Square is there for work in various states of disarray. Feel free to use it to present an interesting problem or a theory you are developing.

Date/Time: Thursday September 13, 9.30-11 am
Location: 32-D831

The agenda for this meeting includes catching up regarding what everyone did during the summer, claiming slots for later in the semester, etc. Thursday 9.30-11 am is projected to be the regular LFRG timeslot for the rest of the semester. Please write to Mia Nussbaum or Igor Yanovich if you plan on attending but cannot make the timeslot.

Speaker: Martin Hackl
Date/Time: Thursday 9/13, 5:30pm (Note the new time)
Location: 32-D831

Martin will present some of his work on ACD and “the same.” A relevant paper will be sent out to the lab mailing list in preparation for the meeting. Please contact Hadas Kotek if you would like to be added to the mailing list.

The Experimental Syntax and Semantics Lab will hold an organizational meeting on Thursday 9/6 at 5:15 pm in 32D-831.

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 unless otherwise noted. For further information, please contact the organizers for this year, Iain Giblin and Yusuke Imanishi. This schedule is subject to change, especially for Spring 2013 — please visit the Colloquium webpage for updates.

Fall 2012

September 21: Paul Kiparsky (Stanford)
October 12: Pranav Anand (UCSC)
October 26: Sun-Ah Jun (UCLA)
November 2: Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware)
November 9: Mark Baker (Rutgers)
December 7: Edith Aldridge (University of Washington)

Spring 2013 (confirmed dates only)

March 8: Lisa Matthewson (UBC)
April 5: Sharon Inkelas (UC Berkeley)
April 19: Arsalan Kahnemuyipour (University of Toronto Mississauga)
May 10: Andrew Nevins (UCL)

Speaker: Vera Gribanova, Stanford (joint work with Dasha Popova and Christopher Potts)

Title: “The interaction of syntax and information structure in three kinds of Russian ellipsis”
Date/Time: Thursday June 28, 3pm
Location: Polinsky Lab, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge, 4th floor. Dial “400” at the intercom, and somebody will buzz you up.

This talk compares the syntactic and discourse properties of three types of clause-level Russian ellipses: (a) polarity ellipsis, in which a polarity item is stranded in Pol, the sister of which (TP) is elided (Kazenin, 2006); (b) Aux-stranding VPE, in which an auxiliary appears in T, the sister of which is elided (Kazenin, 2006); and (c) verb-stranding verb phrase ellipsis (VVPE), in which a verb moves out of the ellipsis site (vP) to Asp, thereby being stranded (Gribanova to appear a,b). Taken together, this yields a cascade of ellipsis licensing heads in a structure like (1).

Each type of ellipsis may leave behind a phrasal remnant to the immediate left of the stranded element. The grammatical function of this element, and its possible discourse interpretation(s), vary across the three different types of ellipsis in a surprising way, given (1): polarity (“high”) ellipsis and VVPE (“low” ellipsis) pattern together and are more restrictive, while Aux-stranding VPE is more permissive.

The talk aims to address this puzzle in two ways. First, we provide a way of understanding the discourse status of phrasal remnants in the different types of ellipsis in the framework of Questions Under Discussion (Büring, 2003, inter alia). Second, we explore a syntactic solution to the puzzle that capitalizes on the idea that VVPE moves the verb higher than was originally suggested by Gribanova (to appear a), as high as Pol. Similarities between the two types of ellipsis are therefore the result of identical syntactic positions of the verb in VVPE and polarity markers in polarity ellipsis. Differences between the two types — in particular, the availability of a post-verbal subject in VVPE but a ban on post-polarity subjects in polarity ellipsis — are attributed to the idea that the size of the ellipsis is smaller in VVPE than it is in polarity ellipsis.

Speaker: Christiana Christodoulou (MIT Brain & Cognitive Sciences)
Title: Case in Down syndrome: Morpho-syntactic illusions and the role of interfaces
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 15, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

The speaker writes: “This talk could potentially be of interest to phoneticians/phonologists as well, as a phonetic/phonological analysis, prior to the morpho-syntactic one, sets the foundation of the analysis on Case, and has a major effect on the results.”

Abstract with references available here (pdf).

Down syndrome (henceforth, DS) is a condition that results in severe intellectual impairment. In
this talk we investigate the knowledge of syntactic and morphological Case in individuals
diagnosed with DS.

Previous work on English individuals diagnosed with Down Syndrome (henceforth, Eng DS )
argues for an impaired development of Tense and Subject/Verb agreement (Chapman et al. 1998,
Chapman and Hesketh 2000, Eadie et al. 2002, Laws and Bishop 2003, inter alia). However,
work on the phonetic and phonological system of Eng DS has independently shown a deficit in the
production of inflectionally related sounds like /s/, /t/, /d/, as well as other lingual sounds,
arguing that this is a result of a distinct phonetic and phonological development, due to the
characteristic physiology of the articulation apparatus of DS individuals (e.g. tongue volume)
(Stoel-Gammon 2001).

Through nine experimental tasks, we investigate the linguistic performance of 16 Cypriot
Greek individuals diagnosed with Down Syndrome (henceforth, CG DS ), aged 19;0 to 45;11, and
17 Cypriot Greek Typically Developing Children (hereafter, CG TDC ), aged 7;0 to 8;11. We
examine whether – after setting aside the phonetic and phonological restrictions – we still find
differences in CG DS and CG TDC ’s inflectional systems. If yes, we ask whether those differences
are due to a different realization of the morphological system, or else impairment in the syntactic
assignment of Case.

Results show that Cypriot-Greek DS have (near) full acquisition of both the morphological
and syntactic system of Case. For the small percentage of instances that were not used as
expected, DS exhibit a comprehensive system based on (i) the consistent use of defaults, (ii)
affix drop and (iii) word omission.

Speakers: Sam Al-Khatib and Suyeon Yun
Title: TBA
Date/Time: Wednesday, May 16, 5p
Location: 32-D831

These will be practice presentations for the upcoming Manchester Phonology Meeting.

Speaker: Ayaka Sugawara
Date/Time: Monday, May 7, 5:30p
Location: 32-D461

In this talk, I’d like to discuss an experimental design to investigate children’s knowledge about alternative creation in sentences with a focus-sensitive operator “only.” Previous studies (Crain et al. 1994, Paterson et al. 2006) report that children make considerable mistakes when they interpret sentences with pre-subject only, arguing that children interpret only as if it is attached to the VP (Crain et al.), or children just ignore only (Paterson et al.).

This talk points out that their experiments did not provide sufficient contexts that a sentence with only presupposes (“a sentence with only presupposes that the proposition expressed by the prejacent is ranked low among the alternatives,” see Horn 1969), and argues that the solution that children resort to when they face such a presupposition failure is different from that of adults, which results in the high inaccuracy rate with pre-subject only cases. I also discuss the alternative generation system proposed in Fox & Katir (2010).

Series of experimental design to test this hypothesis are presented. The hypothesis predicts that a difference in manner of introducing characters in a picture ((1) vs. (2) for example) will make a significant difference in accuracy rate.

(1) Look, the goose got a balloon and a flag, the cat got a flag, and the frog got a balloon!
Puppet: Only the cat got a flag.

(2) Look, the goose and the frog got a balloon, the cat and the goose got a flag!
Puppet: Only the cat got a flag.

LFRG will meet twice this week. Please note the unusual time and location of this meeting.

Speaker: Noah Constant (UMass)
Date/Time: 5/8 (Tue) 11 am - 1 pm
Location: 32-144
Title: Witnessable Quantifiers License Type-e Meaning: Evidence from CT, Equatives and Supplements

Abstract (pdf)

There is no Syntax Square talk this week.

Speaker: Gretchen Kern
Date/Time: 5/9 (Wednesday) 5 pm
Location: 32-D831
Title: Perceptual Similarity in Sonority Contours: Evidence from Early Irish
Rhyming Patterns

Abstract:

This is a practice talk for the 7th Celtic Linguistics Conference in
June.

This paper aims to explain the basis of Early Irish rhyme and lend
support to the concept of phonological similarity in sonority contours.
Previous evidence for sonority contour-based similarity has come from
patterns of epenthesis in consonant clusters (Flemming, 2008; Steriade,
2006) arguing that the perceptual distance between C1C2 and C1VC2 is
smaller when there is a steep rise in sonority between C1 and C2 because
that rise is more similar to the one between C1 and an epenthetic vowel.
Adapting this, I argue that in Early (Old & Middle) Irish rhyme, the
relevant dimension of similarity was the sonority profile: the
difference in sonority between the most and least sonorous points. This
can be used to explain some puzzling facts about Early Irish rhyme,
namely the division of rhymeable consonants into classes, the behavior
of consonant clusters, and the behavior of rhymes of two syllables.

Speaker: Yasutada Sudo
Date/Time: 5/10 (Thu) 10-11:30
Location: 32-D831
Title: Gender Presuppositions and Anaphora in Quantified Sentences

Abstract:

Presupposition projection in quantified sentences has been known as a recalcitrant problem for theories of presupposition projection, and many different accounts have been put forward (Karttunen & Peter 1979, Heim 1983, van der Sandt 1992, Krahmer 1998, Beaver 2001, Beaver & Krahmer 1998, Schlenker 2008, 2009, George 2008, Fox 2008, 2010, Chemla 2009, Sudo, Romoli, Hackl & Fox 2012). I will show that the gender presuppositions of bound pronouns pose a serious challenge to the existing theories of presupposition projection, and propose an analysis that solves the problem using the mechanism of cross-sentential anaphora. I will also claim that my analysis accounts for the different projection properties of different quantificational determiners in a uniform way.

There is no Ling-Lunch talk this week.

Speaker: Ayaka Sugawara
Date/Time: Monday, Apr 30, 5:30p
Location: 32-D461

In my LFRG talk I proposed a new experiment on ACD acquisition. In this talk, I would like to discuss pilot results of the experiment. Examples of the target sentences we have are as follows.

(1) Dora wants to be at the same place that Lisa is.
(2) Dora hopes to be on the same mountain that Lisa does.

As opposed to Syrett & Lidz (2011) reporting that 4 year olds can do long distance QR, our results show that children do poorly on long distance QR while they do well on short distance QR.

LFRG will meet twice this week. Please note the unusual date/time and location for this meeting:

Speaker: Anastasia Smirnova (Tufts University)
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 1, 10-11:30 am

Location: 56-180
Title: Evidentiality in Bulgarian: epistemic modality and temporal relations

Bulgarian has a designated morphological paradigm that expresses evidentiality, a linguistic category that encodes the source of information (Aikhenvald 2004). In this talk, I discuss the properties of the Bulgarian evidential system from a cross-linguistic perspective and present a formal semantic analysis of the Bulgarian evidential construction. The analysis is motivated by a number of facts that went unnoticed in the literature on evidentiality in Bulgarian and that cannot be explained by the previous analyses (Izvorski 1997; Sauerland and Schenner 2007; Koev 2011). First, I show that the same evidential construction in Bulgarian can express direct, reportative, and inferential information sources. These data not only challenge the current analysis of the Bulgarian evidential as indirect (Izvorski 1997), but also argue against the assumption that evidential systems cross-linguistically distinguish between direct and indirect information sources (Willett 1988; Aikhenvald 2004). Second, I show that the Bulgarian evidential expresses temporal meaning: it functions as a relative tense. Finally, while I retain the insights of Izvorski’s modal analysis, I substantially change the modal component to account for reports of false information in reportative contexts (I analyze them as reports de dicto). Ultimately, I argue that the evidential construction in Bulgarian has a tripartite meaning: it encodes information source, temporality and epistemic modality. This paper addresses the question about the ontological status of evidentiality in relation to epistemic modality and contributes to the understanding of the semantics of evidentials cross-linguistically (cf. Faller 2002, McCready and Ogata 2007, Matthewson et al. 2007) by showing how the interaction of the modal and the temporal components affects the distribution and meaning of evidentials in discourse.

Speaker: Mitcho Erlewine
Title: Kaqchikel Agent Focus and the syntax of extraction
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 1, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

Agent Focus (AF) in Mayan languages is a morphological change to
transitive verbs which is traditionally described as obligatory
whenever a subject is A’-extracted. In this talk I present evidence
from my ongoing fieldwork on Kaqchikel that AF morphology does not
simply appear when the subject of a transitive verb is A’-extracted.
Rather, AF morphology occurs when the subject of a transitive verb
moves to a particular, immediately preverbal position. This can be
shown by a careful look at sentences involving multiple A’-extractions
to the same verbal periphery. I will discuss what this might tell us
about the nature of AF and argue against recent Case-based approaches
to AF (Coon, Mateo Pedro, Preminger, ms; Assmann et al, 2012) for
Kaqchikel.

The data also features some fun scope judgments… semanticists also welcome!

Speaker: Rory Turnbull (Ohio State University)
Date/Time: Wednesday, May 2, 5p
Location: 32-D831

Title/Abstract TBA

Speakers: Natalia Ivlieva & Sam Alxatib
Date/Time: 5/3 (Thu) 10 am-11:30 am
Location: 32-D831

Abstract:

In this talk, we will discuss several puzzles related to the superlative modifiers ‘at least’ and ‘at most’.

a) Superlative modifiers trigger obligatory ignorance inferences, as shown in (1):

(1) John read at least 5 books. #More precisely, he read 7.

b) Under universal quantifiers these ignorance inferences can disappear, as shown in (2):

(2) To pass the exam, you are required to read at least 5 books.

c) Under existential modals, ‘at most’ and ‘at least’ behave differently - ‘at most’ can lead to the disappearance of ignorance inferences, whereas ‘at least’ cannot:

(3) Your paper is allowed to be at most 15 pages.
(4) *Your paper is allowed to be at least 15 pages.

We will discuss Schwarz’s approach to superlative modifiers based on his handout from the “Indefinites and Beyond” workshop and see how well the approach can handle the puzzles described above.

Speaker: Maziar Toosarvandani (MIT)
Title: Temporal interpretation and discourse structure in Northern Paiute
Date/Time: Thursday, May 3, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

The full abstract is available (pdf).

Speaker: Hagit Borer (Queen Mary University of London and USC)
Date/Time: 5/4 (Friday), 3.30 pm
Location: 32-141
Title: The Domain of Content

Abstract:

An investigation of the properties of derived nominals reveals a number of rather surprising facts. First, derived nominals with non-compositional Content (or Sense) cannot be Argument Structure nominals (Complex Event Nominals in the sense of Grimshaw, 1990), contrasting, as such, with identical morpho-phonological forms which do happen to have compositional Content (e.g. transformation in its technical linguistic sense vs. transformation as transparently composed from transform). Second, Argument Structure nominals, but not necessarily others, must embed a constituent that is otherwise a possible independent verb, thereby making e.g. aviation, fiction andpetulance perfectly licit derived nominals, but not with an embedded event structure.
The contrasts, as it turns out, cannot be accounted for by a lexicalist theory of word formation, nor can they be explained by appealing to any model in which roots are allowed to select arguments. The contrasts, however, can be derived within a wholly syntactic approach to argument structure and to the formation of complex words, in which the domain of non-compositional Content (atomic Content) is defined on the basis of structurally delimited, phonologically realized, syntactic constituents, and is crucially accessible by phase. The argumentation and the conclusions will thus point towards a system of complex word construction which must be syntactic. It will further points towards the need to revise at least some aspects of our understanding concerning the interaction between sound, and specifically phonological realization, and meaning, the latter specifically as in Content.

Speaker: Wataru Uegaki
Date/Time: Monday, Apr 23, 5:30p
Location: 32-D461

In this talk, I will discuss some prospects for a new project investigating the realtime construction of alternatives used in the interpretation of “only”. Using an eye-tracking paradigm, Kim et al. (2008) observe that subjects fixate their eye-movement to a real-world image of the focus-associate of “only” in the auditory stimulus faster when the context mentions the target item than when it mentions a semantically unrelated item. We interprete this result as arising from the varied accessibility of the different strategies to construct alternatives for the interpretation of “only”. More specifically, a structure-based algorithm as proposed by Fox and Katzir (2011) would be more easily accessible than online inference of Question under Discussion. We will present an experimental design to test this hypothesis building on Kim et al’s experiments.

Speakers: Junya Nomura and Daeyoung Sohn
Tile: First conjunct agreement in Kaqchikel
Location: 32-D461
Time: Tuesday, Apr 24, 1-2p

The full abstract is available here (pdf).

Speaker: Uli Sauerland
Date/Time: Tuesday 4/24, 5 pm
Location: 32-D831
Title: Modeling Syncretism Distribution (joint work with Jonathan Bobaljik)

Abstract:

Does the fact that English “you” is both singular and plural, show that there’s an abstract feature “2nd Person”? While many generative analysis accept such an argument, they also need to accept cases of accidental homophony — two morphemes that aren’t related through an abstract feature, but nevertheless sound the same. But, why then not also assume that “you” in the singular and “you” in the plural accidentally sound the same with no need for an abstract feature. The distinction between accidental and systematic (i.e. derived from pieces of generative apparatus) homophony is a conundrum, generative morphologists haven’t overcome. The starting point of our talk is the new hypothesis that accidental homophony should be random — i.e. randomly distributed across languages and across cells of a paradigm. This provides the basis for a statistical approach to paradigm patterns. In the talk, we present two results: 1) The general statistical framework for the analysis of paradigm pattern frequencies. 2) A preliminary application of the framework to Cysouw’s (2003, OUP) data on person marking to argue that a generative analysis accounts for the data rather well.

Speaker: Sameer ud Dowla Khan (Brown University)
Date/Time: 4/25 (Wed), 5 pm
Location: 32-D831
Title: What echo reduplication reveals about correspondence and similarity

Abstract:

Unlike canonical reduplication, echo reduplication involves obligatory differences between the base and reduplicant, either in the form of subtraction or fixed segmentism, e.g. Bengali /goli/ > /oli goli/ ‘alleys, etc.’ and /kashi/ > /kashi tashi/ ‘cough, etc.’, respectively. I show that the unique properties of echo reduplication primarily stem from the multiple competing (anti-)correspondence relations at work, including IO-, BR- and IR-correspondence constraints, an anticorrespondence constraint, and morphemic constraints, all of which can be ranked relative to markedness constraints.Echo reduplication is also investigated as a productive alternation sensitive to phonological similarity. Results of a production experiment on Bengali reveal that BR-homophony avoidance is gradient as opposed to categorical. Bases that begin with consonants more similar to the /t/ are less likely to be echo-reduplicated with the default fixed segment /t/, and more likely to prefer one of the backup labial segments /m, f, p, u/. This homophony avoidance requires a gradient notion of phonological similarity, which can be closely modeled using a probabilistic metric that assigns different weights to different phonological features of the consonants being compared. Possible sources for feature weights are discussed, and will lead to future extensions of the current study.

Speaker: Nadine Bade (Harvard, Tübingen)
Date/Time: 4/26 (Thu) 10-11.30 am
Location: 32-D831
Title: Obligatory Presuppositions and Exhaustive Interpretation

Abstract:

I will provide an analysis for the obligatory occurrence of some presupposition triggers in certain contexts which is based on formal non-Gricean approaches to implicatures (Chierchia (2004), Fox & Hackl (2006), Fox (2007), Chierchia, Fox & Spector (2011)). Presupposition triggers are obligatory in contexts in which it is clear that their presupposition is met. Examples of the phenomenon are given below.

(1) John came to the store.
(a) # Bill came to the store.
(b) Bill came to the store, too.

(2) Yesterday Jenna went ice skating.
(a) #She went ice skating today.
(b) She went ice skating today, again.

(3)
(a) The sun is shining.
(b) # A sun is shining.

(4) It is raining.
(a) #John believes it.
(b) John knows it.

Usually these facts are explained by exploiting a principle “Maximize Presupposition” (Heim (1991), Schlenker (2006), Sauerland (2008b), Percus (2006), Chemla (2008), Singh (2011)). Most of these proposals assume that lexical items or sentences are ordered on a scale with regard to their presuppositional strength. They predict that the sentence or item that is presuppositionally weaker will lead to a specific inference called “antipresupposition” or “implicated presupposition”. I argue that the obligatory insertion of a presupposition trigger follows from the fact that people have to interpret exhaustively in certain contexts. I assume that the trigger is inserted to avoid a contradiction that arises due to the implicature that is the result of this exhaustive interpretation. The present account is hence based on an independently needed mechanism and does not need to assume lexical scales of presuppositional strength or inferences with special status. Moreover, it provides an explanation for the fact that most triggers are not obligatory under negation which “Maximize Presupposition” fails to account for.

Speaker: Kevin Ryan (Harvard)
Title: Statistical onset weight effects in stress and meter
Date/Time: Thursday, Apr 26, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

A traditional observation regarding syllable weight is that it can be determined only by properties of the rime, while onsets are universally ignored. Apparently onset-sensitive weight criteria have received renewed attention in recent years (e.g. Gordon 2005, Topintzi 2010), but such cases remain uncommon. This talk presents a new kind of evidence for onset-sensitivity in syllable weight, arguing that its effects are more pervasive across languages and phenomena than previously acknowledged. In particular, I examine weight-sensitive systems exhibiting gradience/variation. Gradient syllable weight can be found in stress, poetic meter, word order (heavy shift), textsetting, and rhythmic centering or synchronization. In all of these systems, onsets not only matter, but matter in ways that are both highly consistent with each other and with the typology of categorical onset-sensitive criteria.

I focus on stress and meter, the two most discussed weight systems in phonology. First, in complex, less than fully deterministic stress systems such as those of English and Russian, onset size is a significant predictor of stress/accent placement in roots both in the lexicon and in wugs (e.g. a nonword like “brontoon” is more likely to be initially stressed than one like “bontoon”; see also Kelly 2004). I argue that this behavior cannot be attributed to analogy alone, but reflects grammatical generalization. Second, in metrics, syllables with longer onsets are avoided in preferentially light positions and overrepresented in preferentially strong ones, even while controlling for various confounds (rime structure, word shape, etc., as in Ryan 2011). A theory of syllable (or Steriadean interval) weight based on the (stochastic) perceptual downbeat of the syllable rather than the (fixed) onset-rime boundary correctly predicts both the emergence of onset effects in statistical systems as well as its rarity under small n-ary categorization (effectively, the priority of the coda).

Speaker: Uli Sauerland, ZAS (Berlin)
Date/Time: Friday 4/27, 3:30 pm
Location: 32-141
Title: Attitudes and Embedding

Abstract:

The question I investigate is whether sentence embedding is universally used for the linguistic expression of propositional attitudes (cf. Cristofaro 2003, Oxford UP). Recently, it’s been claimed that in some languages (at least Old Babylonian, Teiwa, Pirahã, Matses, Kobon) propositional attitudes are never expressed by embedding but only by other means: quotation, structures akin to coordination or even independent sentences. I present results mostly from fieldwork investigations of three of these languages (Matses, Pirahã, and Teiwa). My results provide evidence for syntactic embedding in all three languages. They also show some novel variation concerning embedding, namely total indexical shift in Matses and clause-like complementizers in Teiwa.

Speaker: Giorgio Magri (Jean Nicod)
Date/Time: 4/18 (Wed) 5 pm
Location: 32D-831
Title: The OT error-driven ranking model of the acquisition of phonotactics: some computational results

Abstract:

Nine-month-old infants already react differently to licit vs illicit sound combinations, thus displaying knowledge of the target adult phonotactics. Children must thus rely on a remarkably efficient phonotactics learning strategy. What could it look like? According to the error-driven learning model, the learner maintains a current hypothesis of the target adult phonotactics and keeps slightly updating its current hypothesis whenever it makes a mistake on the incoming stream of data from the adult language. This learning model has been endorsed by the Optimality Theoretic (OT) acquisition literature because of its cognitive plausibility: it models the observed acquisition gradualness, as it describes a stepwise progression towards the target adult grammar; it relies on surface phonology without requiring any knowledge of morphology, that plausibly develops later than phonotactics; and it does not impose unrealistic memory requirements, as it only looks at a piece of data at the time without keeping track of previously seen data. Bridging cognitive plausibility with computational soundness, my current project defends the hypothesis that OT error-driven learning provides a proper model of the child acquisition of phonotactics. The project is articulated around five core issues. The first issue concerns convergence: does the model eventually stop making mistakes and settle on a final grammar? The second issue concerns correctness: does the final grammar entertained by the model at convergence indeed capture the target phonotactics? The third issue concerns modeling adequacy: do the learning sequences formally predicted by the model match attested child acquisition paths? The fourth issue concerns robustness and variation: how does the model behave in the presence of noise and how can it make sense of the pervasive phenomenon of child variation? The fifth issue concerns framework selection: how can the choice of the OT framework be justified from a learning theoretic perspective? This talk will provide an overview of the project, with a focus on some recent results concerning the first two issues of convergence and correctness.

Speaker: Ben George
Location:32-D831
Date/Time: 4/19 (Thu) 10 am
Title: Question Embedding: Varieties of Reducibility and Non-Reducibility

Abstract:

In this talk is an effort to collect some of my recent concerns about question embedding under predicates, like ‘know’, that have both a propositional (1) and a question-oriented (2) use.

1. Anne knows that Maggie destroyed the records.

2. Anne knows who destroyed the records.

A usual assumption, sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit, is that the truth of sentences like (2) is to be evaluated in terms of the facts reported by sentences like (1). That is, most theories of question embedding employ some version of the reducibility assumption in (3).

3. The truth of a sentence like (2) is determined entirely by which answers to the embedded question (‘who destroyed the records?’) are known by the subject (Anne).

In this talk, I briefly introduce some of the (quasi-)formalizations and weakenings of (3) that I and others have suggested, and then introduce three groups of descriptive claims that challenge some or all formulations of (3), with an emphasis on moving beyond the ‘mention some’ cases that I considered before, and engaging with ‘exhaustive’ examples (4, after an example from Lahiri and an observation of Kratzer) and examples involving ‘agree’ (5, after a claim from Beck and Rullmann).

4. The witnesses know which conspirators were present at the secret meeting.
(Truth depends not only on witnesses’ knowledge, but on whether they have any relevant false beliefs.)

5. Robin and Rupert agree on which of their colleagues are spies.
(Truth depends not only on which answers Robin and Rupert agree to, but on which answers they are opinionated about.)

I do not reach any firm conclusions, but attempt to get a sense of the scope of the problem, and suggest a preliminary taxonomy of problem cases.

Speaker: Leon Bergen (Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MIT)
Title: That’s what she (could have) said: How alternative utterances affect language use
Time: Thursday, Apr 19, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

(Joint work with Noah Goodman and Roger Levy)

We investigate the effects of alternative utterances on pragmatic interpretation of language. We focus on two specific cases: specificity implicatures (less specific utterances imply the negation of more specific utterances) and Horn implicatures (more complex utterances are assigned to less likely meanings). We present models of these phenomena in terms of recursive social reasoning. Our most sophisticated model is not only able to handle specificity implicature but is also the first formal account of Horn implicatures that correctly predicts human behavior in signaling games with no prior conventions, without appeal to specialized equilibrium selection criteria. Two experiments provide evidence that these implicatures are generated in the absence of prior linguistic conventions or language evolution. Taken together, our modeling and experimental results suggest that the pragmatic effects of alternative utterances can be driven by cooperative social reasoning.

Syntax Square will meet on Monday this week due to the meeting with the Visiting Committee. The presenters will be giving WCCFL practice talks.

Date/Time: Monday, Apr 9, 12-1p (Note special date/time)
Location: 32-D461

Speaker: Coppe van Urk
Title: Aspect-based agreement reversal in Neo-Aramaic

In this talk, we discuss an unusual aspect split in dialects of Neo-Aramaic, in which the function of subject and object agreement markers switches completely between aspects. We propose that agreement reversal is driven by the fact that imperfective aspect introduces an additional phi-probe. This account provides support for the hypothesis, developed in recent work on split ergativity (Laka 2006; Coon 2010; Coon & Preminger 2011), that aspect splits arise because nonperfective aspects may be associated with additional prepositional structure (Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2000; Coon 2010), since this hypothesis allows for the apparently disparate patterns of agreement reversal and split ergativity to be given a unified treatment.

Speaker: Hadas Kotek
Title: WH-Fronting in a Two-Probe System

The study of wh-movement has distinguished among several types of wh-fronting languages that permit distinct patterns of overt and covert movement, instantiated for example by the Slavic languages, English and German. This talk extends the cross-linguistic typology of multiple questions by arguing that Hebrew instantiates a new kind of wh-fronting language, unlike any that are presently discussed in the literature. It will show that Hebrew distinguishes between two kinds of interrogative phrases: those that are headed by a wh-word (wh-headed phrases: what, who, [DP which X], where, how …) and those that contain a wh-word but are headed by some other element (wh-containing phrases: [NP N of wh], [PP P wh]). We observe the special status of wh-headed phrases when one occurs structurally lower in a question than a wh-containing phrase. In that case, the wh-headed phrase can be targeted by an Agree/Attract operation that ignores the presence of the c-commanding wh-containing phrase.

The talk develops an account of the sensitivity of interrogative probing operations to the head of the interrogative phrase within Q-particle theory. It proposes that the Hebrew Q has an EPP feature which can trigger head-movement of wh to Q and that a wh-probe exists alongside the more familiar Q-probe, and shows how these two modifications to the theory can account for the intricate data that emerge from the paper. The emerging picture is one in which interrogative probing does not occur wholesale but rather can be sensitive to particular interrogative features on potential goals.

Speakers: Yasutada Sudo and Jeremy Hartman
Title: Principle B and Phonologically Reduced Pronouns in Child English
Date/Time: Monday, Apr 9, 5:30-7p
Location: 32-D461

The full abstract is available (PDF).

Speaker: Suyeon Yun
Date/Time: 11 April (Wed), 5 pm
Location: 32D-831
Title: Epenthesis Positioning in Loan Adaptation: Phonetics, Phonology, Typology

In loan adaptation, vowel epenthesis frequently occurs as a repair, when a cluster of a source
language is phonotactically illegal in the borrowing language. The most notable previous finding
has been that the position of epenthetic vowels differs depending on the type of cluster; sonority-
rising clusters, especially stop-sonorant (TR), are more likely to be split by an epenthetic vowel
than sonority-falling clusters, especially sibilant-stop (ST), e.g., ‘plastic’ > [bilastik] (internal
epenthesis) vs. ‘study’ > [istadi] (external epenthesis) (Egyptian Arabic; Broselow 1992).

This
study investigates epenthesis patterns in all possible types of clusters, both in word-initial and in
word-final positions, from a cross-linguistic survey of loanwords. From the results, I propose
new generalizations about the preferred site of epenthesis: (i) if a cluster contains an obstruent, a
vowel is epenthesized after the obstruent, e.g., ‘camp’ > [k^h?mp^h?] (Korean); (ii) if a cluster
contains a sonorant, a vowel is epenthesized before the sonorant, e.g., rubl (Russian) > [rub?l]
(Kirgiz).

By focusing only on initial clusters (Gouskova 2003, Steriade 2006) or on ST and TR
clusters (Broselow 1992, Fleischhacker 2001, 2005), previous work has failed to identify the
current broad generalizations and cannot uniformly explain the cases where the epenthesis
patterns are different word-initially and word-finally, e.g., mnemonicheskij (Russ.) >
[ymnemonicheskij] ‘mnemonic’ (Kirghiz) with external epenthesis vs. gimn (Russian) > [gimun]
‘hymn’ (Kirghiz) with internal epenthesis. My hypothesis is that the typology results from
perceptual similarity between a consonant and its epenthesized form. Specifically, an obstruent is
perceptually more similar to an obstruent-vowel sequence than to a vowel-obstruent, and a
sonorant is perceptually more similar to a vowel-sonorant sequence than to a sonorant-vowel. I
will show relevant phonetic bases and experimental results supporting this hypothesis. Based on
this, the typology will be analyzed based on the P-map hypothesis (Steriade 2001/2009).

Speaker: Igor Yanovich
Date/Time: Thursday April 12, 10 am
Location: 32-D831
Title: Modal hopes and fears: A diachronic study

Abstract:

In Modern English, may and might are generally modals of epistemic possibility and permission. That, however, cannot explain its uses in sentences like
(1) or (2) (from BNC).

(1) The contrast illustrates that music moves on, the NME moves on, grudges don’t last forever, and I hope this may be so for at least another 40 years.
(2) Omar learnt that he was related to the Sultan, and we hoped that we might persuade him to provide us with a guide to Aussa.

One possible explanation of such facts is to say that may/might in such examples is a mood indicator rather than a full-fledged modal, cf. Portner 1997. But, as Portner notes, the mood-indicating may is not productive in the present-day English. If the mood analysis is correct, then it should be possible to explain the present-day distribution of may in historical terms.

In this talk, I will discuss how may/might first started to appear in the complements of verbs hope and fear, and what consequences that has for our understanding of modal meaning development in general, and of the ‘mood hypothesis’ concerning today’s distribution in particular.

Speaker: Meghan Sumner (Stanford)
Date/Time: Thursday, Apr 12, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

Phonetic variation in speech is often considered a barrier to understanding spoken words. In this talk, I present data that phonetic variation is necessary and beneficial to understanding accented speech. Within the perceptual learning paradigm, listeners are exposed to p- initial words in English produced by a native speaker of French. Critically, listeners are either trained on these words with an invariant VOT based on the speaker’s mean VOT, or with variant VOTs including native English-like to native French-like examples. While a gross boundary shift is made for participants exposed to the variable VOTs, no such shift is observed for the invariant stimuli. These data run counter to models that predict consistent exposure to an invariant stimulus should ultimately result in perceptual learning, and suggest that when adjusting to accented speech, invariance is an obstacle.

Speaker: Meghan Sumner, Stanford University
Date/Time: Friday 4/13, 3:30 PM
Location: 32-141
Title: Effects of indexical variation on the perception and recognition of spoken words within and across accents

Abstract:

As listeners, we face a speech signal that is riddled with variation. We are exposed to words, but a single word is produced differently each time it is uttered. These words stream by listeners at a rate of about 5 – 7 syllables per second, further complicating the listeners’ task. How listeners map a speech signal onto meaning despite massive variation is an issue central to linguistic theory. One problem we currently face is that the vast majority of these different realizations of words are understood equally well by listeners.

While speech is variable, it is also informative. In any window of speech, listeners are presented with cues to sounds, sound patterns, words, speakers and their intentions, emotions, accents and other social characteristics. In this talk, I suggest that in order to understand how listeners take all the individual parts of a word that often vary drastically and understand them as quickly and adeptly as they do, we must understand the influence of these different types of information in speech perception.

In this talk, I begin with an assumption that listeners, by default, use these ever-present cues together. I examine the perception of phonological variants sensitive to typically co-present phonetic and social cues. First, I present data from phoneme categorization tasks designed to examine the effects of different phonological variants across different modes of speech (careful vs. casual). Rather than comparing the responses to words with a frequent phonological variant (e.g., tap) to those with a less frequent member of a variant pair (e.g., [t]) embedded in controlled word-frame, I examine the perception of these variants in phonetic and social contexts in which they are typically heard by listeners. Second, I present data from priming tasks designed to examine the recognition of words with different phonological variants across accents. In this case, I show that an out-of-accent variant results in different behavioral responses dependent on the accent of the speaker. From these data, I argue that many effects attributed to phonological variants are illusory and that the emphasis on the variants hides important patterns linking acoustic variation and social representations.

I suggest that the data from these experiments support a view in which cued social attributes influence perception and recognition at a low-level. This work helps explain effects of phonological variants that are oftentimes conflicting, highlights the effects of social factors independent of the rich lexicon, and has implications for how linguistic units are stored and recalled by listeners.

There will be no Experimental Syntax/Semantics Lab meeting this week.

Speaker: Sverre Stausland

Title: Vowel Weakening in Old West Saxon

Date: April 2 (Monday—note the special date and time!)

Time: 5:30

Location: 32D-831

The predecessor of the Modern English weak verbs with a past tense in
-ed is the Old English second weak conjugation. In West Saxon, the
main dialect of Old English, the past tense forms of these verbs
exhibit both the vowel ‘a’ and ‘o’: ‘andswarade ~ andswarode, wundad ~
wundod’, corresponding to Modern English ‘answered’ and ‘wounded’. The
explanation given in the grammars of Old English is that the ‘o’,
which goes back to an older ‘u’, stems from the verb forms where an
original *u followed in the ending. I raise an alternative hypothesis
by which the ‘o’ (< ‘u’) originated in medial syllables through vowel reduction. A statistical analysis of the verb forms in the largest Old West Saxon manuscript shows that ‘o’ is significantly more common in medial syllables than in final syllables, but that there is no correlation between the distribution of ‘a’ and ‘o’ and where an original *u followed in the ending. The explanation in the grammars is therefore not supported. I suggest that the vowel has been reduced in medial syllables because vowels in medial syllables are shorter than in final syllables.

Remaining Schedule

April

11 Suyeon Yun

18 Giorgio Magri

25 Sameer ud Dowla Khan, Brown U

May

2 Rory Turnbull, Ohio State University

9 Manchester Phonology Meeting Practice Talks

16 Manchester Phonology Meeting Practice Talks

Speakers: Norvin Richards and Coppe van Urk
Title: Dinka Bor and the signature of successive-cyclic movement
Date/Time: Tuesday, Apr 3, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

In this talk, we outline our initial findings with regards to the syntax of extraction in Dinka Bor. In particular, we will focus on a number of ways in which extraction affects Dinka clauses, including (a) certain positions having to be empty, (b) blocking of subject agreement, and (c) the appearance of various forms of special agreement/clitics. We show that these effects differentiate between different types of extraction and discuss the theoretical ramifications of these patterns.

Speaker: Wataru Uegaki
Title: Japanese alternative questions are matrix disjunctions of Q-marked clauses
Date/Time: Thursday April 5, 10 am
Location: 32-D831

Abstract:

Authors in the previous literature disagree on whether ellipsis is
involved in alternative questions and (if it is) how large the elided
material is (e.g., Han & Romero 2004, Beck & Kim 2006, Pruitt &
Roelofsen 2011). In this talk, I present my ongoing analysis of
Japanese alternative questions, and argue that they are best analyzed
as disjunctions of Q-marked clauses with ellipsis in the first
disjunct. The argument is based on the restricted syntactic
distribution of alternative questions in Japanese: DP disjunction
under the Q morpheme “ka” does not induce alternative question reading
(i.e. yes/no-question reading is obligatory) while VP disjunction
under “ka” allows (in fact strongly prefers) alternative question
reading, as exemplified in (i) below.

(i)

a. watashi-wa [Mary-ga [John ka Sue]-o yonda-ka] shitteiru
     1sg-Top Mary-Nom John Disj Sue-Acc called-Q know
     *’I know whether it is John or Sue that Mary called.’ (*alt Q)
     ‘I know whether or not Mary called [John or Sue].’ (Y/N Q)

b. watashi-wa [Mary-ga [John-o yonda ka Sue-o yonda]-ka] shitteiru
     1sg-Top Mary-Nom John-Acc called Disj/Q Sue-Acc called-Q know
     ‘I know whether it is John or Sue that Mary called.’ (alt Q)
     ? ‘I know whether or not Mary called [John or Sue].’ (? Y/N Q)

I show that this fact straightforwardly falls out as a consequence of
a restriction on the deletion operation in the first disjunct, given a
unified semantic analysis of the disjunction marker “ka” and the
Q-particle “ka” as a polyadic operator that creates alternative
possibilities (cf., e.g., Zimmermann 2000, Alonso-Ovalle 2006). If
time allows, I would also like to talk about possible sources of
cross-linguistic variation in the distribution of alternative
questions.

Speaker: Adam Szczegielniak (Harvard)
Title: Relativizing two types of degrees
Date/Time: Thursday, Apr 5, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

This talk will propose an alternative to Carlson (1977) and Grosu and Landman (1998) derivation of (1) and (2) that combines a raising analysis of DegP and a matching analysis of NP. Support for this claim will come from head noun reconstruction facts, as well as scope contrasts between degree relatives and comparatives. DegP will be argued to have its denotation built via subsequent overt raising within CP, where it undergoes Maximization and then moves out of CP to a position modifying the external NP. Differences between (1) and (2) will be attributed to differences in the type of DegP (based on work in Szczegielniak 2012). Following Neelman, Koot & Doetjes (2004), I will argue that there are two DegP’s: one that projects, and the other that merges in Spec-XP.

In what time remains, I will examine the impact of the above analysis for other types of relative clauses, especially restrictive relatives and argue that we should revisit the intuition developed in Quine (1960) that they are clausal adjectives.

(1) It would take us all year to drink the champagne that you spilled at the party
      A. the amount of champagne
      #B. the actual champagne

(2) John took the books that there were on the table

Speaker: Benjamin Spector — Institut Jean Nicod, ENS
Date/Time: 3:30 PM, Friday 04/06
Location: 32-141
Title: Generalized Scope Economy (Joint work with Clemens Mayr, ZAS Berlin)

Abstract:

It is a well-known fact that the relative scopes of several operators
in a sentence do not always correspond to their relative surface
positions. In order to account for such cases, covert scope shifting
operations (CSSOs) such as QR and reconstruction have been assumed to
apply, resulting in hierarchical structures that deliver the correct
interpretation. Such operations, however, are not completely free to
apply. One type of restriction on the application of CSSOs has been
extensively studied, namely, locality constraints that prevent a CSSO
from covertly moving an operator out of a so-called scope-island.
There is, however, a second type of restriction that has not been
studied to the same extent. In many cases, a CSSO seems to be able to
shift the scope of a certain expression x in a sentence S but cannot
affect the scope of some other expression – call it y – in a
structurally parallel sentence where x has been replaced with y.

Consider for instance the following pair:

(1) Every student did not attend the talk
> Inverse-scope possible: Not every student attended the talk
(2) More than two students did not attend the talk
> Inverse-scope marginal: ??? No more than two students attended the talk.

In other words, the possibility of applying a CSSO seems to depend in
part on the nature of the expressions that it targets. As far as we
know, the only attempt to account for these types of restrictions in a
general way is due to Beghelli & Stowell (1997). These authors propose
to account for all the observed restrictions in terms of a
cartographic analysis. They assume that CSSOs such as QR or
reconstruction target different landing sites depending on the surface
position and the nature of the item that undergoes the operation.
Although this proposal has broad empirical coverage, it is not really
explanatory, since it does not provide a principled account of why
the hierarchy of landing sites is the way it is. We develop an
alternative approach whose goal is to account for the observed
restrictions in a unified way. We propose a new licensing
constraint on CSSOs, which is itself a generalization of Fox’s 2000
Scope Economy. In short, we argue that a CSSO can only apply if the
resulting interpretation is not logically stronger than or equivalent
to the surface-scope interpretation. We will show that such a
principle makes correct predictions for a broad range of structures,
discuss how exactly it should be implemented, and address apparent
counterexamples.

Speaker: Adam Albright

Title: Discovering and modeling cumulative markedness interactions with loglinear models

Date/Time: Monday Mar 19, 5:30pm

Location: 32-D461 (Note unusual location)

It is often observed that “phonology can’t count”. This principle rules out, among other things, languages in which a marked structure is tolerated once or twice within a word, but not three or more times. In this talk, I discuss a set of restrictions in Lakhota (Siouan) which are very similar to such a ‘threshold’ effect: roots often contain a single marked structure (fricative, aspirated or ejective stop, consonant cluster), but roots containing multiple marked structures are rarer than one would expect, based on the independent frequencies of those structures. This observation leads two questions: is the degree of underattestation significant, and if so how should it be accommodated in a grammatical model? I show that both questions can be addressed using log-linear (maximum entropy) models of constraint interaction. First, I present results of a series of statistical models of the Lakhota lexicon, attempting to predict the relative type frequency of root shapes based on their phonological properties. The results show that models with interaction terms, in which multiple simultaneous violations may be penalized more than expected based on the individual violations, do significantly better at predicting lexical counts. Furthermore, the effect is strongest for combinations of structures that are independently most strongly penalized. Thus, it appears that cumulative effects are real, and some form of ‘counting’ is indeed warranted. I argue that these statistical models are too powerful, however: they could, in principle, impose strong penalties on combinations that are independently penalized only weakly (or not at all), or they could even reverse the direction of the preference so that languages tolerate a marked structure only in the presence of another marked structure. I argue that we can avoid these predictions with a simpler model, in which markedness constraints interact with MParse (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004). I present the results of a learning simulation, showing that the observed cumulative effects can be predicted using a small set of markedness constraints on simple structures. Finally, I consider some typological predictions of the proposed model.

Speaker: Hadas Kotek
Date/Time: Monday, Mar 19, 5:30p
Location: 32-D124 (Note unusual location)

The full abstract is available (pdf).

I will present pilot results from two sentence processing studies that we ran in the department last month - one concerning multiple questions and the other concerning the quantificational nature of `any’. Both studies yield unexpected results that bear on the theories of questions and of free choice `any’, respectively. In particular, I will argue that covert wh-movement may not target the same position as overt wh-movement but rather a much lower position (if it occurs at all), and that any should be analyzed as an existential quantifier that QRs locally, targeting a lower position than the one targeted by the QR of `every’.

Speaker: Alex Silk (University of Michigan / MIT)
Title: Information-Sensitivity in Deontic ‘Ought’ and ‘Must’
Date/Time: Tuesday Mar 20, 10:00AM-11:30AM
Location: 66-168
(Note unusual time and location)

Abstract:

There is a growing literature on how deontic modals can be interpreted with respect to bodies of information or evidence. However, previous treatments of information-sensitivity in deontic modals focus exclusively on ‘ought’ and ignore important differences between weak necessity modals like ‘ought’ and strong necessity modals like ‘must’. In this paper I attempt to delineate and capture such differences in information-sensitivity between ‘ought’ and ‘must’. Drawing on and revising a suggestion by Aynat Rubinstein, I argue that ‘ought’ and ‘must’ exhibit different conventional signals vis-à-vis common ground assumptions: ‘ought’, unlike ‘must’, conventionally signals that the truth and acceptance of the necessity claim—currently and throughout the evolution of the conversation—relies on certain assumptions not currently established in the global discourse context. This hypothesis helps generate correct predictions concerning the contrasting felicity conditions of ‘ought’- and ‘must’- sentences and meanings of ‘ought’- and ‘must’- conditionals. It also correctly predicts that certain types of modus ponens violations can occur because of the presence of ‘ought’ but not because of the presence of ‘must’.

Speaker: Theresa Biberauer (University of Cambridge)
Title: 231 and the Final-over-Final Constraint
Date/Time: Tuesday, Mar 20, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

In terms of the Final-over-Final Constraint (FOFC), structures in which a head-final phrase dominates a head-initial phrase within the same extended projection should be ruled out (cf. Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts 2007 et seq.). While 2-verb clusters at all stages of Germanic seem to reflect this constraint, the same is apparently not true of 3-verb clusters: as i.a. Wurmbrand (2005), Barbiers (2005), Schmid (2006), Biberauer & Walkden (2010), Biberauer (2010) and Salzmann (2011) observe, a number of West Germanic varieties – notably, West Flemish, certain Swiss German varieties and Afrikaans – feature structures in which 231 orders are either obligatorily or optionally available (3 here refers to the most and 1 to the least deeply embedded verb in the cluster). The purpose of this talk is, firstly, to give an overview of the data, highlighting in particular the extent to which 231 structures are available in Afrikaans, the least well studied of the troublesome Germanic varieties; secondly, to consider the data against the background of existing attempts to account for the FOFC phenomenon (Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts 2011, Sheehan 2011, Cecchetto 2010, Hawkins 2012), all of which will be shown to fall short in different ways; and, finally, to consider the question of what 231 phenomena suggest about the nature of FOFC and, accordingly, what a successful analysis of this phenomenon might look like.

Speaker: Theresa Biberauer (University of Cambridge)
Title: One peculiarity leads to another: insights from Afrikaans analyticity
Date/Time: Thursday, Mar 22, 12:30-1:45p
Location: 32-D461

This talk takes two superficially unconnected phenomena in Afrikaans – negation doubling by clause-final nie2 as in (1) and predicate doubling as in (2) – as its point of departure.

(1)	Ek	is	nie1/nooit	tevrede	nie2
	I	am	not/never	satisfied	POL
	“I am not/never satisfied”

(2)	a.	Sing	SING	daardie	man!
		sing	sing	there.the	man
		“That man really sings with gusto!”

(2)	b.	Gelukkig	is	ek	nou	regtig	GELUKKIG!
		happy	am	I	now	really	happy
		“As for being happy, I’m REALLY happy!”

Based on a combination of diachronic and synchronic considerations, I argue that these phenomena can in fact be connected and that doing so enables us to understand a third, from a Germanic perspective, very surprising fact, namely that Afrikaans readily permits embedded V2 wh-interrogatives, regardless of the nature of the selecting predicate. This latter property is shown in (3):

(3)	a.	Ek	wonder	watter	eksamen	skryf	die	studente	vanaand
		I	wonder	which	exam	write	the	students	tonight
		“I wonder what exam the students are writing tonight”

(3)

b.

Hulle

vind

net

gou

uit

wie

moet

die

kaartjies

gaan

koop

they

find

just

quickly

out

who

must

the

tickets

go

buy

“They’re just quickly finding out who needs to buy the tickets”

From a theoretical perspective, the significance of the data under discussion is argued to be i.a. the insight they deliver into the notion ‘acategorial element’ and the properties elements of this type exhibit in relation to the Final-over-Final Constraint (FOFC; Biberauer, Holmberg & Roberts 2007 et seq.), and also what they suggest about the underdiscussed question of the relationship between Minimalism’s putative phase heads and the more articulated functional domains assumed by cartographers.

Speaker: Mitcho Erlewine
Title: Association with traces and the copy theory of movement (practice talk for GLOW)
Date/Time: Thursday Mar 22, 10:00AM-11:30AM
Location: 32-D831

Abstract:

In this talk I give a principled account for the observation that exclusive only must associate with a focus within its complement (Tancredi’s (1990) Principle of Lexical Association; PLA), utilizing the copy theory of movement and associated work on the interpretation of traces. Previous explanations for this fact come from the idea that traces cannot be F-marked. I argue contra Beaver and Clark (2008) that traces (lower copies of movement chains) can in fact be F-marked and that this is exemplified in F-marking contained in quantifiers which undergo QR. Instead, PLA effects arise through the interpretation of the predicate in both the higher and lower copies of of the moved constituent.

This special session of Syntax Square on Friday will be a practice talk for GLOW.

Speaker: Hadas Kotek
Title: WH-fronting in a two-probe system
Date/Time: Friday, Mar 23, 3:30-4:30p
Location: 32-D831
(Note unusual time and location)

The study of wh-movement has distinguished among several types of wh-fronting languages that permit distinct patterns of overt and covert movement, instantiated for example by the Slavic languages, English and German. This talk extends the cross-linguistic typology of multiple questions by arguing that Hebrew instantiates a new kind of wh-fronting language, unlike any that are presently discussed in the literature. I will show that Hebrew distinguishes between two kinds of interrogative phrases: those that are headed by a wh-word (wh-headed phrases: what, who, [DP which X], where, how …) and those that contain a wh-word but are headed by some other element (wh-containing phrases: [NP N of wh], [PP P wh]). We observe the special status of wh-headed phrases when one occurs structurally lower in a question than a wh-containing phrase. In that case, the wh-headed phrase can be targeted by an Agree/Attract operation that ignores the presence of the c-commanding wh-containing phrase.

I develop an account of the sensitivity of interrogative probing operations to the head of the interrogative phrase within Q-particle theory. I proposes that the Hebrew Q has an EPP feature which can trigger head-movement of wh to Q and that a wh-probe exists alongside the more familiar Q-probe, and shows how these two modifications to the theory can account for the intricate data that will be presented in the talk. The emerging picture is one in which interrogative probing does not occur wholesale but rather can be sensitive to particular interrogative features on potential goals.

Speaker: Hadas Kotek
Title: Second meeting of blocking effects reading group
Date/Time: Monday, Mar 12, 5:30p
Location: 32-D461

In our previous meeting we discussed two approaches to blocking effects: the filter-based approach (Kiparsky 2005) and the derivation-based approach (Embick and Marantz 2008). This week I will survey the predictions that these theories make with regard to brain signals induced by the processing of blocked forms. I’ll present previous ERP studies of blocking effects in irregular verb morphology (Newman 2007, Munte et al. 1999) and recent pilot design/data from an experiment conducted by a group at Tohoku university that is researching blocking effects with -sase forms in Japanese. Finally, I’ll discuss some ideas for a new experiment. No prior knowledge of MEG/EEG will be assumed.

Speaker: Coppe van Urk
Date/Time: Tuesday, Mar 13, 1-2p
Location: 32-D461

This talk discusses work in progress on idiomatic readings of ‘give,’ ‘get,’ and ‘have.’ I show that this data provides evidence that there is a common possessive core to the prepositional dative and double object variant of ‘give,’ (contra Harley 1995 et seq.; Richards 2001). I then try to develop a syntax and semantics for the dative alternation that derives this, the attested classes of idioms of possession, and some other related facts.

Speaker: Sam Steddy
Title: How Palatalisation in Italian Verbs is a Regular Process
Date/Time: Wednesday, Mar 14, 5-7p
Location: 32D-831

Italian has a rule of palatalisation transforming velar stops /k,g/ into affricates [t?,d?] before front vowels /i,e/. At the boundary between verb stem and agreement suffix, though, the rule does not apply consistently - it can be blocked (underapply) or can overapply to forms suffixed by non-triggering vowels. In contrast to Pirelli & Battista (2000), I propose a phonological analysis that explains when each of these three patterns applies, and give a further explanation of a lexical gap in which there are no Italian infinitive forms that underpalatalise. The analysis employs a base-to-derivative relationship in which segments in a derived verb must match for stridency with stressed correspondents in the verb’s infinitive. Infinitives, having no base, palatalise as expected from their conjugation class suffix. Results from a wug-type experiment show the process is productive in the synchronic grammar.