Whamit!

Speaker: Ogloo Jurkhaichin (MIT)
Title: The Nature of ‘Edge’: Evidence from Cross-clausal A-movement in Mongolian
Time: Thursday, November 6th, 5pm - 6pm
Location: 32-D769

Abstract: Syntactic operations are bounded by phases, in which the edge is typically taken to be the highest specifier (Fox & Pesetsky 2005; Rackowski & Richards 2005; Bošković 2016, a.o.). In this talk, I will argue that the edge need not be only the highest specifier; a lower specifier of the clausal periphery may also act as an escape hatch for further syntactic movement. This is evidenced by the novel observation that Mongolian permits cross-clausal A-movement to escape phases in which the highest specifier is an Ā position (contra Gong 2022, 2023). In particular, given the Ban on Improper Movement, I propose to posit a lower A-specifier that facilitates subsequent cross-clausal A-movement.

Speaker: James Morley (MIT)
Title: An “Only-You” restriction in Chamorro and the problems it poses for the theory of hierarchy effects
Time: Tuesday, November 4th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: This talk investigates a person-animacy restriction - henceforth PAR - in Chamorro (Malayo-Polynesian; Austronesian), previously reported in Chung (1998, 2014, 2020) but which has otherwise been subject to little theoretical attention. Chamorro’s PAR prohibits internal arguments from ‘outranking’ external arguments with respect to the hierarchy in (1).

Chamorro-specific person-animacy hierarchy 2nd person > 3rd person animate pronouns > 3rd person animate lexical nouns > Inanimate

Chamorro instantiates what Stegovec (2019, i.a.) calls a *3>2 or “Only-You” person restriction: although 2nd and 3rd person have their distributions constrained by the restriction, 1st person does not. In this talk I make two kinds of argument. First, I argue that this restriction should not be reduced to a language-specific morphological restriction, pace Chung (2014), but should rather be treated as (at least partly) syntactic in nature. The null hypothesis is thus that it should be explained by the same mechanisms postulated elsewhere to capture other syntactic PARs. Second, I argue that this has not been achieved. More specifically, current theories of PARs are either logically incompatible with the Chamorro data, or else incur conceptual or empirical problems when amended to accommodate it. I then sketch some preliminary ideas about how to go about solving this.

Speaker: Thomas Truong (MIT)
Title: Plural superlatives and cumulativity
Time: Wednesday, November 5th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this talk I will present some ongoing work on the interactions between plurals and superlatives.

To do so, I examine a unique reading of sentences containing plurals and superlatives.

(1) Rafa climbed each of the tallest mountains that his students climbed.

Under one reading of (1), the truth conditions require us to look at each of the students, check which mountains each student climbed, and then take the tallest mountain climbed for each of the students.

I will break down this construction. I claim that this reading is generated as a case of cumulative readings, where the superlative operator is in the scope of the cumulativity operator.

I show that if we assume the ** operator (Krifka 1986, Sternefeld 1998, Beck and Sauerland 2000) to derive cumulativity along with an account of superlatives following Heim (1999), covert movement outside of a relative clause seems to be necessary to derive the correct LF for the relevant interpretation of sentence (1).

Speaker: Gasser Elbanna (Harvard)
Title: A model of speech recognition reproduces behavioral signatures of human speech perception and reveals mechanisms
Time: Monday, November 3rd, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Humans dexterously extract meaning from variable acoustic signals and can faithfully repeat back novel utterances—hallmarks of spoken communication. Speech perception is thought to subserve these downstream tasks via transforming sound into robust perceptual representations. Yet progress on the nature of these representations and their mechanisms has been limited by the lack of (i) stimulus-computable models that replicate human behavior and (ii) large-scale behavioral benchmarks for comparing model and human speech perception. In this talk, I will present our work on developing candidate artificial neural network models of human speech perception along with new behavioral experiments to compare phonetic judgments in humans and models. Our models reproduce patterns of human responses and confusions alongside recapitulating key behavioral signatures of human speech perception. I will also show how our models enable us to investigate the role of contextual integration and its directionality in speech perception.

Speaker: Cooper Roberts (MIT)
Title: A rational solution to an agreement-interpretation puzzle
Time: Thursday, November 6 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In some Indo-European languages, a fraction partitive (FP) which embeds a plural DP licenses an optional-agreement phenomenon—-in the appropriate syntactic position, an agreeing predicate can copy the features of either the fraction (1b) or the complement (1a). This is puzzling enough if we assume FPs have a DP-within-DP structure (as do Ionin et al., 2006; Benbaji-Elhadad & Wehbe, 2024; a.o.), which under a Locality-governed model of Agree (Chomsky, 1995) would predict that the fraction is the sole target of Agreement. The plot thickens when we observe that the two agreement possibilities yield different interpretations. (1a) is true in a world where, for example, two out of six walls are covered in mold (I call this the COUNT reading). (1b), on the other hand, is true in a world where, given a plurality of walls which have a cumulative surface area of 12m^2, 4m^2 are covered in mold (a MEASURE reading).

(1) [Italian]
a. un terzo delle pareti sono coperti di muffa
‘A third(m.sg) of the walls(f.pl) are covered(f.pl) by mold’
*MEASURE, COUNT
b. un terzo delle pareti `e coperto di muffa
‘A third(m.sg) of the walls(f.pl) is covered(m.sg) by mold’
MEASURE, *COUNT

The goal of this study is to give a theoretical account of the alternation in Italian-like languages while also explaining why some languages in the family lack the equivalent to (1b) (American English). Following the tenet of One Form/One Meaning, I pursue an analysis where measure and count FPs are structurally-distinct. Specifically, I assume that count FPs are the structurally-simpler of the two, bearing a syntax where the complement is actually the head (see Selkirk 1977) and the semantics are s.t. cardinality functions win over other measurement possibilities (Barner & Snedeker, 2005; Bale & Barner, 2009; Wellwood, 2019; Wagiel 2021). To get the measure FP, I posit a special operator TOTAL which takes the bare FP structure and makes two important contributions. First, TOTAL re-merges the fraction via projecting movement (Bhatt, 2002) to make it the new head of the structure. Second, TOTAL changes the “matrix” parameter of evaluation for measure functions to one where cardinality will lose to other forms of measure. Crucial evidence from this proposal comes from Russian, where FPs which include the part-word chast’ lose the agreement-optionality and necessarily have a measure reading. I interpret this item as a realization of TOTAL and conclude that it can be optionally-overt in some languages.