A new Brain Research article is in press with co-authors that include visiting scholar Miwako Hisagi, faculty Shigeru Miyagawa, and two alumni, Hadas Kotek and Ayaka Sugawara: “Second-Language Learning Effects on Automaticity of Speech Processing of Japanese Phonetic Contrasts: An MEG study”
Issue of Monday, October 10th, 2016
Ling-Lunch 10/13 - Juliet Stanton (MIT)
Speaker: Juliet Stanton (MIT)
Title: Segmental blocking in dissimilation: an argument for co-occurrence constraints
Date: Thursday, October 13
Time: 12:30pm-1:50pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:
Most contemporary work assumes that dissimilation is motivated by featural co-occurrence (OCP) constraints (e.g. Alderete 1997, Suzuki 1998): a process that maps /X…X/ to [X…Y] (for example) would be explained by positing a ban on co-occurring [X]s.
I first show how this approach can be extended to analyze the typology of segmental blocking effects (name due to Bennett 2015), a term used to describe cases in which a dissimilatory process is blocked by some segments, but not others. For example, dissimilation might apply across some segment Z (/X…Z…X/ > [X…Z…Y]), but not some other segment Y (/X…Y…X/ > [X…Y…X]). This pattern can be explained in the following way (following Kenstowicz 1994, Steriade 1995): if a ban on co-occurring [Y]s (violated in the unattested /X…Y…X/ > *[X…Y…Y]) takes priority over the ban on co-occurring [X]s (violated in the attested /X…Y…X/ > [X…Y…X]), then dissimilation of /X…X/ to [X…Y] will fail if some [Y] is present elsewhere in the word.
I argue that all cases of attested segmental blocking should be analyzed as an interaction between two competing co-occurrence constraints (as above), and provide new evidence from lexical statistics in support of this conclusion. Time permitting, I will introduce an alternative correspondence-based analysis of blocking in dissimilation (Bennett 2015), and show that its predictions are less restrictive than those of the proposed analysis.
Speaker: Juliet Stanton (MIT) Title: Segmental blocking in dissimilation: an argument for co-occurrence constraints Date: Thursday, October 13 Time: 12:30pm-1:50pm Location: 32-D461 Abstract:
Most contemporary work assumes that dissimilation is motivated by featural co-occurrence (OCP) constraints (e.g. Alderete 1997, Suzuki 1998): a process that maps /X…X/ to [X…Y] (for example) would be explained by positing a ban on co-occurring [X]s.
I first show how this approach can be extended to analyze the typology of segmental blocking effects (name due to Bennett 2015), a term used to describe cases in which a dissimilatory process is blocked by some segments, but not others. For example, dissimilation might apply across some segment Z (/X…Z…X/ > [X…Z…Y]), but not some other segment Y (/X…Y…X/ > [X…Y…X]). This pattern can be explained in the following way (following Kenstowicz 1994, Steriade 1995): if a ban on co-occurring [Y]s (violated in the unattested /X…Y…X/ > *[X…Y…Y]) takes priority over the ban on co-occurring [X]s (violated in the attested /X…Y…X/ > [X…Y…X]), then dissimilation of /X…X/ to [X…Y] will fail if some [Y] is present elsewhere in the word.
I argue that all cases of attested segmental blocking should be analyzed as an interaction between two competing co-occurrence constraints (as above), and provide new evidence from lexical statistics in support of this conclusion. Time permitting, I will introduce an alternative correspondence-based analysis of blocking in dissimilation (Bennett 2015), and show that its predictions are less restrictive than those of the proposed analysis.
MIT @ NELS 2016 (UMass Amherst)
The 47th Annual Meeting of North East Linguistic Society (NELS 47) will be hosted at UMass Amherst, from 14–16 October.
Several current graduate students will present posters or give talks:
- Kenyon Branan (4th year graduate student) — Dependent Case as a licenser in Kikuyu [poster]
- Sam Zukoff (5th year graduate student) — Arabic Nonconcatenative Morphology and the Syntax-Phonology Interface [poster]
- Itai Bassi (2nd year graduate student) and Moshe E. Bar-Lev — A unified existential semantics for Bare Conditionals [poster]
- Milena Sisovics (4th year graduate student) — Permission and irony: the case of German “duerfen” [poster]
- Ezer Rasin (4th year graduate student) — Resumptive pronouns across components: evidence from Hebrew [poster]
- Jeremy Zehr, Aron Hirsch (5th year graduate student), Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin and Florian Schwarz — Priming local accommodation of hard triggers in disjunction
- Yihui Quek and Aron Hirsch — Separating focus meanings and focus forms in Standard and Colloquial Singapore English
- Ömer Demirok (3rd year graduate student) — Free Relatives and Correlatives in Wh-in-situ
Several alumni and current visitors will also present their work:
- Ken Hiraiwa (PhD ‘05; current visiting scholar) — Labeling Roots and Pronouns [poster]
- Luka Crnic (PhD ‘11) — More on less
- Isabelle Charnavel and Dominique Sportiche (PhD ‘83) — Icelandic sig: a standard anaphor, after all
- Ivona Kučerová (PhD ‘07) — On labeling of DP coordinations and the lack of phi-feature resolution in syntactic Agree
- David Adger, Alex Drummond, David Hall and Coppe van Urk (PhD ‘15) — Deconstructing Condition C Reconstruction [poster]
- Kazuko Yatsushiro, Uli Sauerland (PhD ‘98) and Artemis Alexiadou — Testing Plural Unmarkedness Across Languages
- Lauren Clemens and Jessica Coon (PhD ‘10) — VOS two ways: A unified account of V1 order in Mayan
- Jessica Coon, Stefan Keine and Michael Wagner (PhD ‘05) — Hierarchy effects in copular constructions: The PCC corner of German [poster]
- Theodore Levin (PhD ‘15) — Distinguishing object agreement and clitic doubling in Noun Incorporation constructions [poster]
- Michela Ippolito (PhD ‘02) — Indefinite Pronouns [poster]
- Shoichi Takahashi (PhD ‘06) and Ohtaka Akane — A Lacuna in Adjunct Extraposition
- Patrick Elliott, Nathan Klinedinst, Yasutada Sudo (PhD ‘12) and Wataru Uegaki (PhD ‘15) — Predicates of relevance and theories of question embedding
- Marie-Christine Meyer (PhD ‘13) and Uli Sauerland — Covert Across-the-Board Movement Revisited
- Hadas Kotek (PhD ‘14) — Movement and alternatives don’t mix: A new look at wh-intervention effects
- Coppe van Urk — Phase impenetrability and resumption in Dinka
- Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley, current visiting scholar) — Covert hyperraising to object
- Andres Salanova (PhD ‘07) and Javier Carol — The mirative evidential is neither surprise nor contradiction, but discovery
- Ora Matushansky (PhD ‘02) and Joost Zwarts — Making space for measures
The 47th Annual Meeting of North East Linguistic Society (NELS 47) will be hosted at UMass Amherst, from 14–16 October.
Several current graduate students will present posters or give talks:
- Kenyon Branan (4th year graduate student) — Dependent Case as a licenser in Kikuyu [poster]
- Sam Zukoff (5th year graduate student) — Arabic Nonconcatenative Morphology and the Syntax-Phonology Interface [poster]
- Itai Bassi (2nd year graduate student) and Moshe E. Bar-Lev — A unified existential semantics for Bare Conditionals [poster]
- Milena Sisovics (4th year graduate student) — Permission and irony: the case of German “duerfen” [poster]
- Ezer Rasin (4th year graduate student) — Resumptive pronouns across components: evidence from Hebrew [poster]
- Jeremy Zehr, Aron Hirsch (5th year graduate student), Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin and Florian Schwarz — Priming local accommodation of hard triggers in disjunction
- Yihui Quek and Aron Hirsch — Separating focus meanings and focus forms in Standard and Colloquial Singapore English
- Ömer Demirok (3rd year graduate student) — Free Relatives and Correlatives in Wh-in-situ
Several alumni and current visitors will also present their work:
- Ken Hiraiwa (PhD ‘05; current visiting scholar) — Labeling Roots and Pronouns [poster]
- Luka Crnic (PhD ‘11) — More on less
- Isabelle Charnavel and Dominique Sportiche (PhD ‘83) — Icelandic sig: a standard anaphor, after all
- Ivona Kučerová (PhD ‘07) — On labeling of DP coordinations and the lack of phi-feature resolution in syntactic Agree
- David Adger, Alex Drummond, David Hall and Coppe van Urk (PhD ‘15) — Deconstructing Condition C Reconstruction [poster]
- Kazuko Yatsushiro, Uli Sauerland (PhD ‘98) and Artemis Alexiadou — Testing Plural Unmarkedness Across Languages
- Lauren Clemens and Jessica Coon (PhD ‘10) — VOS two ways: A unified account of V1 order in Mayan
- Jessica Coon, Stefan Keine and Michael Wagner (PhD ‘05) — Hierarchy effects in copular constructions: The PCC corner of German [poster]
- Theodore Levin (PhD ‘15) — Distinguishing object agreement and clitic doubling in Noun Incorporation constructions [poster]
- Michela Ippolito (PhD ‘02) — Indefinite Pronouns [poster]
- Shoichi Takahashi (PhD ‘06) and Ohtaka Akane — A Lacuna in Adjunct Extraposition
- Patrick Elliott, Nathan Klinedinst, Yasutada Sudo (PhD ‘12) and Wataru Uegaki (PhD ‘15) — Predicates of relevance and theories of question embedding
- Marie-Christine Meyer (PhD ‘13) and Uli Sauerland — Covert Across-the-Board Movement Revisited
- Hadas Kotek (PhD ‘14) — Movement and alternatives don’t mix: A new look at wh-intervention effects
- Coppe van Urk — Phase impenetrability and resumption in Dinka
- Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley, current visiting scholar) — Covert hyperraising to object
- Andres Salanova (PhD ‘07) and Javier Carol — The mirative evidential is neither surprise nor contradiction, but discovery
- Ora Matushansky (PhD ‘02) and Joost Zwarts — Making space for measures
MIT @ Workshop on Shrinking Trees
The Workshop on Shrinking Trees took place on October 10 at the University of Leipzig. The event was organized by Gereon Müller.
David Pesetsky gave the talk Exfoliation: Towards a Derivational Theory of Clause Size.
Howard Lasnik and Susi Wurmbrand also gave talks:
Howard B. Lasnik (UMD, PhD ‘72) — Shrinking Trees: Some Early History
Susi Wurmbrand (UConn, PhD ‘98) — Restructuring as the Regulator of Clause Size
Check the full list of talks here.
The Workshop on Shrinking Trees took place on October 10 at the University of Leipzig. The event was organized by Gereon Müller.
Howard Lasnik and Susi Wurmbrand also gave talks:
Check the full list of talks here.