The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics
Speaker: Patrick Jones
Title: Tonal Opacity and Paradigm Structure in Kinande (RUMMIT practice talk)
Time: Monday 11/29, 5pm, 32-D831
Upcoming talks:
Dec 6: Suyeon Yun (MIT)
You can view the current, up-to-date version of the schedule here (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or subscribe via iCal here.
Please join us for Syntax Square this week. Sam Steddy will be discussing joint work with Vieri Samek-Lodovici.
Speaker: Sam Steddy
Title: On the Ungrammaticality of Remnant Movement in the Derivation of
Greenberg’s Universal 20 (with Vieri Samek-Lodovici)
Time: Tuesday, November 30, 1-2PM
Place: 32-D461
We propose an analysis that derives Cinque’s 2005 typology of fourteen linear orders (from a theoretical twenty-four) involving a Demonstrative, Numeral, Adjective, and Noun through four Optimality Theory constraints requiring leftward alignment of these items. We show that remnant movement is ungrammatical whenever it produces universally suboptimal alignments, compared to remnant-movement-free structures. Any movement is permitted, but only the best alignment configurations surface as grammatical. Our analysis need not make similar structural stipulations to Cinque’s, as the different attested structures emerge from exhaustive constraint reranking.
Please note I’ll only present the OT analysis of the typology from our paper, along with a few of its interesting predictions and problems, rather than go into the indepth comparison of our analysis to Cinque’s.
Speakers: Peter Graff, Jeffrey Lim and Sophie Monahan (MIT)
Title: The Determiner Complexity Hierarchy (practice talk for LSA)
Time: December 1, 1:30PM-3:00PM
Location: 32-D831
We present experimental evidence for a hierarchy of complexity for possible denotations of determiners that goes beyond the traditional constraint of conservativity (Keenan and Stavi 1986). Conservative determiners obey the bi-conditional D(A,B) iff D(A, A?B) where A is the restrictor and B is the nuclear scope and thus only predicate over individuals in set A. Results from three online artificial determiner learning studies (N=454) are consistent with a hierarchy of learnability for determiners depending on the set they predicate over where (A?B)>(A-B)>(B-A)>(A?B)c. These results support a learnability-based account of the patterning of determiner typology and exceptions to Conservativity.
Upcoming LFRG meetings:
Dec 8: Luka Crnic, more on “even” and different kinds of intensional verbs
The semi-annual Rutgers-UMass-MIT Phonology Meeting (RUMMIT) will take place at MIT on Saturday 12/4, in 32-D461, from mid-morning until around 6pm. Stay tuned for further details- all are welcome!
Congratulations to Yusuke and Masako Imanishi!
Yuika Sophie Imanishi, born November 14, 2010
In honor of the season, we bring you pictures from Halloween pumpkin carving in the department. Have a great Thanksgiving vacation!
Phonology Circle resumes after the Thanksgiving break, with practice talks for the upcoming RUMMIT (the semesterly Rutgers, UMass, MIT phonology meeting).
Upcoming talks:
Nov 29: RUMMIT Practice talks
Dec 6: Suyeon Yun (MIT)
You can view the current, up-to-date version of the schedule here (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or subscribe via iCal here.
Please join us for Syntax Square this week. Matt Tucker, from UCSC (currently visiting at UPenn), will be leading the discussion.
Speaker: Matthew A. Tucker (UCSC)
Title: Even More on The Anaphor Agreement Affect: When Binding Does Not Agree
Time: Tuesday, November 23, 1-2PM
Place: 32-D461
Many recent proposals have taken Principle A to be reducible to the syntactic relation of AGREE (e.g., Chomsky, 2008), understood to be established between a locally c-commanding functional head and the anaphoric element. In this talk I discuss the so-called Anaphor Agreement Effect (AAE; Rizzi, 1990; Woolford, 1999, et seq.) and show that it is counter-evidence to the claim that binding is mediated by local inflectional heads. I then propose a theory of Principle A effects which meets four theoretical desiderata: (i) anaphoric binding is an instance of AGREE, (ii) the anaphor receives agreement features directly from the antecedent, (iii) AGREE can only operate downward, and (iv) the anaphor does not move to a position c-commanding the antecedent before binding is established. This theory is shown to provide an elegant understanding of AAE effects in subject, object, and possessor positions cross-linguistically. Finally, I explore the implications of this proposal for the typology of reflexives and the contrast between local and long-distance anaphora.
WHO: Luka Crnic
WHAT: On factive NPI licensers
WHEN: November 24, 1:30PM-3:00PM
WHERE: 32-D831
In LFRG this week, we will look at some factive NPI licensers. The recommended reading is Kai von Fintel’s paper on Strawson-entailment, doi:10.1093/jos/16.2.97. The session will facilitate a leisurely transition to Thanksgiving.
Upcoming LFRG meetings:
Dec 1: Peter Graff
Speaker: Michael Kenstowicz
Title: The Origin and Development of Kinande Tonal Classes
Time: Monday 11/15, 5pm, 32-D831
In his analysis of Kinande tone Hyman (1990) proposes a ternary High-Low-Toneless contrast on the final syllable vs. a binary High-Toneless opposition elsewhere. In this paper we trace the historical development of this distinction from its origins in Proto-Bantu to its distribution in the contemporary language.
Upcoming talks:
Nov 29: RUMMIT Practice talks
Dec 6: Suyeon Yun (MIT)
You can view the current, up-to-date version of the schedule here (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or subscribe via iCal here.
Please join us for Syntax Square this week. Isaac Gould will present his work on the Grassfields Bantu language Lamnso’.
Speaker: Isaac Gould
Title: Who Isn’t There? A preliminary description of the absentive in Lamnso’
Time: Tuesday, November 16, 1-2PM
Location: 32-D461
In this descriptive talk, I sketch out some of the basic uses of the absentive morpheme ‘siiy’ in Lamnso’ (Grassfields, Cameroon). Its primary use is to indicate someone’s spatial absence in requests or when reporting information, but it might also have a temporal use as well. I will also give a brief overview of absentive constructions in some other languages. The way that absence is expressed in Lamnso’ appears to be typologically uncommon, but it does seem to have parallels in other languages.
WHO: Guillaume Pierre Yves Thomas
WHAT: Additive “more” and “another”, PART 2
WHEN: November 17, 1:30PM-3:00PM
WHERE: 32-D831
Upcoming LFRG meetings:
Nov 24: Luka Crnic
Dec 1: Peter Graff
Speaker: Tom Roeper (U Mass Amherst)
Title: Vacate Phase: How acquisition data provides subtle support for the Strong Minimalist Thesis
When: Nov 17, 2010, 5pm (pizza provided!)
Where: Polinsky Language Processing Lab Conference Room (4th floor of 2 Arrow St)
Speakers: Peter Graff & Jeremy Hartman (MIT)
Title:Constraints on Predication
Time: Thursday, November 18, 12:30-1:45pm
Location: 32-D461
In this talk we propose a novel semantic universal “Myopia”, which we argue constrains the denotations of lexical predicates in natural language. We generalize that for any lexical predicate P, the only entities relevant to determining the truth of a formula involving P are the entities identified by P’s arguments. Roughly, a predicate P is “myopic” if the truth of a formula involving P in a universe consisting exclusively of the individuals identified by the arguments of P is always identical to its truth value in the full domain of individuals. We show that this constraint not only excludes many denotations of natural language determiners previously excluded by Conservativity (Keenan and Stavi 1986), but also generalizes to predicates of other lexical categories, including nouns, verbs, adpositions and adjectives. We support the psychological reality of our typological observation with evidence from an on-line artificial determiner learning study (N=454), showing that both Conservativity and Myopia are active in determiner learning. Conservative determiners are easier to acquire than non-conservative myopic determiners, which in turn are easier to acquire than non-conservative non-myopic determiners, showing that typological universals may have a more or less profound impact on word learning.
Speaker: Jon Nissenbaum (Syracuse University)
Title: Pseudo Pseudo-Scope
Date: Friday, November 19, 2010
Time: 3:30-5:00PM
Place: 32-155 (PLEASE NOTE ROOM)
The ability of an infinitival clause to contain a gap is often dependent on the syntactic environment. At first glance, infinitival clauses with degree operators (too, enough) seem exceptional, freely alternating between a gapped and gapless version: Bob is too mean [for me to talk to (him)]. But this alternation turns out to be dependent on the syntactic position of the degree phrase at LF, as Bernhard Schwarz and I have argued in recent work. An infinitival degree phrase with a gap must (ordinarily) be interpreted as the sister of a gradable adjective (in situ), while a gapless one must raise at LF. We argued, in other words, that the distribution of gaps in degree phrase infinitives is well-behaved after all, following from semantic compositionality.
However, the picture cannot be so simple. The gapless degree infinitive, in addition to being able to scope past an intensional verb, allows a third reading distinct from either the ordinary wide or narrow scope interpretation. This resembles familiar cases of transparent readings of DPs: interpreted in the scope of an intensional operator without being bound by that operator. But our transparent readings give rise to a conundrum: they are incompatible with gaps—the opposite of what is expected under narrow scope.
The first part of this talk will report continued joint work with Schwarz, rejecting our earlier proposal about these mysterious readings. We argue instead that the third reading is really a species of wide scope LF. I will sketch a proposal about how its peculiar truth conditions are derived. The second part of the talk will attempt to re-situate infinitival degree phrases within a more general theory of gapped and gapless infinitivals.
Speaker: Natalie Boll-Avetisyan (Utrecht/Potsdam)
Title: Does the lexicon bootstrap phonotactics or vice versa?
Time: Monday Nov 8, 5pm, 32-D831
Speech segmentation is a prerequisite to lexical acquisition. The distribution of phonemes in speech provides important cues to word boundaries: Co-occurrence probabilities of phonemes are generally higher within than across words. Infants rely on phonotactic cues in segmentation (e.g. Mattys, Jusczyk, Luce, & Morgan, 1999), but: where does phonotactic knowledge come from?
It has been generally assumed that phonotactics is derived from lexical knowledge (Juszcyk, Luce, & Charles-Luce, 1994). This theory has advantages: Learners would only need to acquire which sound sequences typically occur within words. When listening to continuous speech, infants merely need to attend to cues to which sequences need to be chunked, and the word boundaries would fall out themselves (e.g. Perruchet & Pacton, 2006). From an infant’s perspective, however, a paradox arises: Facilitative cues from phonotactics for segmentation could only be acquired after the onset of lexical acquisition. Avoiding this paradox, phoneme distributions in continuous speech might be proposed as an alternative source of phonotactic knowledge, which has the additional advantage of containing not only chunking information, but also information about low-probable sequences, which should be split (Adriaans & Kager, 2010).
We hypothesize that the prior source of phonotactics is continuous speech, and that infants use knowledge of both over- and underrepresentations of consonant co-occurrences as a cue for speech segmentation. We focus on infants’ knowledge of the probabilities of non-adjacent pairs of phonemes as a cue for speech segmentation. Non-adjacent dependencies are cross-linguistically common (e.g. OCP, McCarthy, 1986) and have been found to influence segmentation in infants (vowel harmony, Van Kampen Parmaksiz, van de Vijver, & Höhle, 2008). Regarding that non-adjacent dependendies are more difficult to acquire than adjacent dependencies, and learning might require additional cues, we used dependencies of identical consonants for our study. In Dutch infant-directed speech (van de Weijer, 1998), some CVC sequences with identical Cs (e.g. /pVp/) are over-represented, and others (e.g. /sVs/) are under-represented. We predict Dutch infants to chunk /pVp/, but split /sVs/ in segmentation.
This was tested in two artificial language (AL) segmentation experiments using the head-turn preference procedure. In Experiment 1, 9 and 15 month-olds were familiarized with an AL that employed 6 syllables, of which four started with /p/ (p1={pe, po}, p2={pa, pe}) and two with /t/ (t={ta, to}), each assigned to a fixed slot and concatenated into a speech stream without pauses (…p1p2tp1p2tp1p2t…). Transitional probabilities between syllables were held constant, rendering three possible segmentations: ptp, ppt, or tpp. If overrepresentation of /pVp/ is used for segmentation, ptp should be dispreferred. Unexpectedly, infants did not exhibit a looking preference for either ptp-words (e.g. /patape/) or ppt-words (e.g. /popata/).
Experiment 2 tested whether 15-month olds use the under-representation of /sVs/ as a segmentation cue in a similar AL, with /p/ replaced by /s/, and /t/ by /x/ (…s1s2xs1s2xs1s2x…). Here, infants had a novelty preference for ssx-words (e.g. /sosaxa/), suggesting that during familiarization, they had split /sVs/ and consequently heard sxs-words (e.g. /saxase/). Furthermore, there was an interaction of the experiments testing /sVs/ and /pVp/. This indicates that that the distribution of specific sequences in the input affects segmentation, rather than some innate bias for either grouping or splitting identical consonants.
The results indicate that during infancy, splitting cues might be more relevant than chunking cues in speech segmentation. This suggests that the source of phonotactic knowledge is continuous speech rather than the lexicon.
References
Adriaans, F. & Kager, R. (2010). Adding generalization to statistical learning: The induction of phonotactics from continuous speech. Journal of Memory and Language, 62, 311-331.
Mattys, S., Jusczyk P., Luce, P., and Morgan, J. (1999). Phonotactic and prosodic effects on word segmentation in Infants. Cognitive Psychology 38, 465-494.
Jusczyk, P.W., Luce, P.A., & Charles-Luce, J. (1994). Infants sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native language. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 630-645.
McCarthy, J. (1986). OCP effects: gemination and antigemination. Linguistic Inquiry, 17, 207-263.
Perruchet, P. & Pacton, S. (2006): Implicit learning and statistical learning: one phenomenon, two approaches. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(5), 233-238.
Van Kampen, A., Parmaksiz, G., van de Vijver, R. & Höhle, B. (2008). Metrical and statistical cues for word segmentation: vowel harmony and word stress as cues to word boundaries by 6- and 9-month old turkish learners. In A. Gavarró & M. J. Freitas (eds.) (2008). Language Acquisition and Development. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 313-324.
Weijer, J. van de (1998). Language-Input for Word Discovery. P.h.D. Thesis. Max-Planck Series in Psycholinguistics 9.
Upcoming talks:
Nov 15: Michael Kenstowicz (MIT)
Nov 29: RUMMIT Practice talks
Dec 6: Suyeon Yun (MIT)
You can view the current, up-to-date version of the schedule here (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or subscribe via iCal here.
Please join us for Syntax Square this week:
Speaker: Erik Schoorlemmer
Title: The indirect licensing of agreement on Germanic attributive adjectives
Time: Tuesday, November 9, 1-2PM
Place: 32-D461
In most Germanic languages, attributive adjectives display an agreement asymmetry. Depending on properties of D (like definiteness or the presence of agreement), these adjectives display either full agreement with the noun or no (or only partial) agreement. The inflection of adjectives displaying full agreement is often referred to as ‘strong inflection’, while its counterpart marking only partial or the absence of agreement is called ‘weak inflection’ (Grimm 1871; Zwicky 1986). In this talk, I propose that agreement on attributive adjectives is always licensed indirectly by a third element that mediates between the adjective and the noun. I then argue that weak adjectival inflection, i.e. no agreement or only partial agreement on the adjective, is licensed in case the mediating element is (partially) blocked as a mediator for independent reasons. Strong adjectival inflection, i.e. full agreement on the adjective, occurs in case the mediating element is not blocked.
WHO: Guillaume Pierre Yves Thomas
WHAT: Additive “more” and “another”
WHEN: November 10, 1:30PM-3:00PM
WHERE: 32-D831
Both “more” and “(an)other” can be used to express additivity in DPs [(1) and (2)] or in adverbial phrases [(3) and (4)]:
- (1) Today in Detroit I witnessed 2 more accidents.
- (2) Today in Detroit I witnessed another 2 accidents.
- (3) You’ve got 2 more hours to enter today’s final drawing for a trip to LA for the Emmys Red Carpet.
- (4) You’ve got another 2 hours to enter today’s final drawing for a trip to LA for the Emmys Red Carpet.
However, the distributions of additive “more” and “(an)other” are different with stative predicates. Whereas additive “more” cannot be used in the degree argument of a gradable stative predicate [c.f. (5) and (6)], “(an)other” is attested in this context [c.f. (7)]:
- (5) *The washi and bamboo kite is six inches in diameter with an extended spar three more inches long.
- (6) The washi and bamboo kite is six inches in diameter with an extended spar another three inches longer. [comparative reading only]
- (7) The washi and bamboo kite is six inches in diameter with an extended spar another three inches long.
In this talk, I will consider possible analyses of additive “more” and “(an)other”. I will use the data in (5)/(7) to argue that additive “more” is a pluractional operator that quantifies over eventualities, while “another” does not relate to eventualities.
Speaker: Caroline Heycock, University of Edinburgh
Title: Riding the tail of the S-shaped curve: detecting the end of a syntactic
change in Faroese.
Date: Friday, November 12, 2010
Time: 3:30-5:00PM
Place: 32-155 (PLEASE NOTE ROOM)
Since the seminal work of Jonas 1996, the Scandinavian language Faroese has been considered to be a crucial test case for claims concerning the relation or lack of it between agreement morphology and verb movement. In this language, syncretism has expanded in the agreement system, and Jonas argued that there are now two dialects, one in which verb movement over negation has been lost entirely, and one in which verb movement is optional, although preferred. In this talk I will present new data from a 3-year project on the status of verb movement in current Faroese. I will argue that there is no evidence for dialectal variation; more surprisingly, there is also no evidence of generational difference. I will claim that it is nevertheless possible to detect in Faroese the prints of a syntactic change that is not yet quite complete: a change at the very tail of the S-shaped curve.
This coming weekend, MIT will be hosting the MIT Workshop on Comparatives which will bring together researchers from the Cambridge area (and beyond!) to discuss the syntax/semantics of comparative (and related) constructions in a variety of languages.
WHAT: MIT Workshop on Comparatives
WHERE: 32-D461
WHEN: Saturday the 13th (10am - 5:45pm), Sunday the 14th (10am - 4pm)
Invited talks:
In case you missed it, the Tech recently featured an article highlighting the linguistics major, including interviews with David Pesetsky and several current majors.
Please join us for Syntax Square this week. Kirill Shklovsky will discuss a part of the Algonquian agreement system and one of the proposed ways of accounting for it within the minimalist framework, namely Bejar and Rezac’s Cyclic Agree.
Speaker: Kirill Shklovsky
Title: Algonquian Direct/Inverse
Time: Tuesday, 11/2, 1-2PM
Place: 32-D461
Speaker: Hal Tily
Title: Linguistic representations are probabilistic: evidence from production
choices, articulation, visual attention and reading times
Time: Tues 11/2, 12pm
Location: 46-3189
Comprehenders are sensitive to the probability of linguistic material: they read more predictable words faster, resolve ambiguities to a more likely outcome, and complete sentences in ways similar to actual speakers’ productions. However, this does not necessarily mean that our knowledge of language includes knowledge about the probability of linguistic material, since we could simply be sensitive to the probability of events in the world (plausibility), which is typically confounded with the probability of the words used to describe them. Luckily, languages sometimes give multiple ways of expressing a single event which may differ in their probability, such as the English ditransitive: “give the princess the necklace” means the same thing as “give the necklace to the princess”. I present work showing that these constructions are indeed used by speakers with different probabilities depending on the linguistic environment. Those probabilities even influence the realization of the utterance in speech: using the more probable construction in a given situation leads to shorter word durations and improved fluency. Using eyetracking, we next show that comprehenders are sensitive to linguistic probabilities and use them to anticipate the order that referents will be mentioned. Finally, in online self paced reading, I show that low probability construction choices lead to difficulty in comprehension. These results suggest that linguistic forms which do not differ in meaning nevertheless have associated probabilistic usage patterns which are fundamental to both production and comprehension.
Speaker: Valentine Hacquard, University of Maryland
Title: Epistemics, mood and attitudes
Date: Friday, November 05, 2010
Time: 3:30-5:00PM
Place: 32-155 (PLEASE NOTE ROOM)
Epistemic modals are notoriously difficult to embed. This talk will focus on epistemic modals in complements of attitudes verbs. I will show that epistemics can appear in the complements of some, but not all attitudes. A rough generalization is that they are prohibited in complements of verbs that select for subjunctive mood in Romance. I will present joint work with Pranav Anand that aims at explaining this generalization: why is the distribution of epistemics restricted, and what role, if any, does mood plays?
Speaker:Sverre Stausland Johnsen (Harvard)
Title: Phonetic naturalness in Norwegian retroflexion
Time: Monday 11/1, 5pm, 32-D831
In some approaches to phonology, phonetically motivated processes are given a special status within the grammar. Under this view, phonetically motivated processes are cross-linguistically common because the synchronic grammar favors it.
In other approaches, these processes are not granted such a status. Under this view, phonetically motivated processes are common because they emerge more easily over time due to errors in perception and articulation. The presence of a certain pattern is therefore caused by its diachronic development.
Since these approaches make the same predictions about phonetically motivated processes (i.e. they should be common), one place to evaluate them against each other is within the domain of phonetically unmotivated processes.
In this talk, I present data from several dialects in Norway in support of the diachronic perspective, since it is able to make correct predictions about how phonological processes behave in these dialects.
I end the talk with a discussion of experimental support, or lack thereof, for positing phonetic naturalness in grammar.
Upcoming talks:
Nov 8: Natalie Boll-Avetisyan (Potsdam)
Nov 15: Michael Kenstowicz (MIT)
Nov 29: RUMMIT Practice talks
Dec 6: Suyeon Yun (MIT)
You can view the current, up-to-date version of the schedule here (click ‘agenda’ to see the schedule as a list), or subscribe via iCal here.
Speaker: Tania Ionin
Title: Long-distance indefinites: an experimental perspective
Time: Thursday, November 4, 12:30-1:45pm
Location: 32-D461
It is well-known that English indefinites are able to escape scope islands such as relative clauses (as in (1)), obtaining widest scope readings (WSR, (2a)), and intermediate scope readings (ISR, (2b)), in addition to narrow-scope readings (NSR, (2c)) (Farkas 1981, Fodor & Sag 1982, and much subsequent literature). Theories of long-distance scope of indefinites include the choice-function approach (Reinhart 1997, Winter 1997, Kratzer 1998, among others), the implicit domain restriction approach (Schwarzschild 2002, among others), and the topicality approach (Endriss 2009, among others).
(1) Every student read every book that a professor assigned.
(2) a. WSR: a professor>every student>every book: There is a specific professor such that every student read every book that this professor assigned.
b. ISR: every student>a professor>every book: For every student, there is a (potentially different) professor such that the student read every book that this professor assigned.
c. NSR: every student>every book>a professor: Every student read every book that was assigned by any professor.While many theoretical points rely on rather subtle judgments, there has been very little experimental investigation into native English speakers judgments’ of indefinite long-distance scope. The present work aims to fill this gap, by experimentally testing the availability of long-distance scope readings, using truth-value judgment tasks with adult, linguistically naive native English speakers. The goals of this research program are (i) to collect empirical data on which factors facilitate long-distance scope readings; and (ii) to test the predictions of specific semantic theories of indefinite scope. This talk will report on four studies testing indefinites in relative clause island configurations such as (1). Study 1 compares the availability of long-distance scope for ‘a’ indefinites vs. ‘a certain’ indefinites. Study 2 examines whether modification inside ‘a’ indefinites facilitates long-distance scope. Study 3 examines the avability of functional vs. non-functional ISRs for both ‘a’ and ‘a certain’ indefinites. Study 4 compares bare and modified numeral indefinites, as well as considering collective and distributive long-distance readings. Taken together, the findings across the four studies pose problems for the choice function approaches while offering tentative support for the topicality approach. More work remains to be done, and planned future studies will be discussed.