Whamit!

Heidi Harley (PhD ‘95) and Shigeru Miyagawa (faculty) have just had an article on the Syntax of Ditransitives published by the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. The article is available online at the link. Congratulations Heidi and Shigeru!

Whamit! will be on hiatus during the summer. The editors would like to thank all of you for reading, and all our contributors for sharing their news with us!

Weekly posts will resume September 5th, 2017, but we will certainly update you on an as-it-happens basis with any interesting news that comes our way before then. We hope everyone has an enjoyable summer. See you again in the fall!

The day has come and Prof. Jay Keyser will give a special Ling-Lunch talk today!

Speaker: Jay Keyser
Title: Music, Poetry, Painting and Easter Eggs
Date/Time: Monday, May 22/12:30-1:50pm [notice the exceptional time!]
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

This talk takes the view that modernism in the so-called sister arts of music, poetry and painting resulted from the abandonment of sets of rules that characterized each genre and that were shared by the artist and his/her audience. Rules governing meter and tonal music are reasonably well understood. I propose a way to think about “rules” for the third genre, painting. These rules define a natural aesthetic, ’natural’ in that the rules are shared by the artist and his or her audience in the way that the rules of one’s natural language are shared by speaker and listener.

I suggest that the esoteric direction that the sister arts took in the period cultural historians call “Modernism” is a direct result of abandoning the natural, i.e. shared aesthetic for private formats whose origins can be found in the 14th century.

Finally, I will speculate on the similarity between what happened to the arts at the turn of the 20th century and what happened in science after the publication of Principia Mathematica two centuries earlier.

Speaker: Naomi Francis (MIT)
Title: Turkish ki: A presupposition-challenging particle
Date and time: Wednesday May 24, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

This talk explores the behaviour of the Turkish discourse particle ki. I argue that it serves to challenge presuppositions, just as Iatridou & Tatevosov (2016) propose for a use of even in questions. Pursuing a unified analysis of even and ki motivates modifications of Iatridou & Tatevosov’s (2016) original account, and raises a new puzzle about possible links between even, polarity sensitivity, and presupposition-challenging discourse moves.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign organized the 26th annual meeting of FASL (Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics), which took place this past weekend. MIT was represented by the following talks and posters:

Mitya Privoznov (2nd year grad student): Russian stress in inflectional paradigms[poster]

Masha Esipova (current visitor/NYU): Two types of verb fronting in Russian [poster]

Natalia Ivlieva (PhD ‘13) and Alexander Podobryaev (PhD ‘14): How to negate a disjunction in Russian

Ora Matushansky (PhD ‘02) (UiL OTS/Utrecht University/CNRS/Université Paris-8), Nora Boneh (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Lea Nash (University Paris 8) & Natalia Slioussar (School of Linguistics, Higher School of Economics, Moscow): To PPs in their proper place.

A glimpse of Masha’s poster and of Mitya. Thanks Masha for the picture!

2nd-year grad student Rafael Abramovitz is headed to Manchester for the 25th Manchester Phonology Meeting (25mfm). He will give the talk An Argument against the Richness of the Base from Koryak Labials. Alum Giorgio Magri (PhD ‘09) will present the poster MaxEnt does not help with phonotactic restrictiveness. Adam Albright (faculty) will be one of the discussants

Kenyon Branan (4th-year grad student) is off to the International Christian University in Tokyo (Japan) to present The i-boundedness of A-scrambling at WAFL 13. The 13th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics will take place later this week, on May 25—28. Shigeru Miyagawa (faculty) is among the organizers.

Michel DeGraff (faculty) will be giving two talks at the University of Hong Kong this week.

• Linguistics and Social Justice: De-Colonizing Creole Studies
• The sustainable (re)vitalization of local languages is indispensable for education, development and social justice: The MIT-Haiti Initiative as case study

The first is a special seminar, and the second is part of the Second International Conference on Documentary Linguistics - Asian Perspectives (DLAP-2). Abstracts and the program can be found by following the links.

Ezer Rasin (4th year student) will be giving an invited colloquium talk at the University of Leipzig this Wednesday, entitled “An argument for severing stress from phonology”. For the details, click here.

Speaker: Mitya Privoznov (MIT)
Title: Russian stress in inflectional paradigms
Date/Time: Monday, May 15, 5:00–6:30pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

All analyses of Russian stress agree that it is contrastive. This is easily shown by the existance of minimal pairs, like zámok ‘castle’ vs. zamók ‘padlock’. Hence, at least some information about stress has to come from the lexical entries for individual morphemes. The question is: what kind of information? Most analyses, starting with Jakobson (1963), Zaliznyak (1967) and Halle (1973), assume that there is an underlyingly specified feature [+/-stress], cf. Zaliznyak (1985), Melvold (1990) and Alderete (1999). These theories distinguish between three types of morphemes in Russian: stressed, unstressed and “right-stressed”. The latter type is underlyingly accented, but, in Halle (1973)’s terms, it invokes a specific rule that shifts stress from the morpheme itself to the next syllable to the right (cf. Zaliznyak (1985)’s rightward marking). In this talk I am going to argue that instead of introducing the right-shifting stress rule we could assume that the stress feature, apart from having [+str] and [-str] values, can also be unspecified. This will give us the desired three-way distinction: morphemes can be stressed, unstressed and unspecified for stress. I am going to show that in a combination with StressLeft constraint (cf. Melvold (1990)’s BAP principle) and some independently needed auxiliary assumptions about morpheme dominance, this would derive the desired result.

Speaker: Michelle Yuan (MIT)
Title: Towards a unified analysis of associative plurals and plural pronouns in Inuktitut
Date and time: Tuesday May 16, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

In this talk, I present work in progress on associative plurals and Plural Pronoun Constructions in Inuktitut. I propose that associative plurals and plural pronouns share a common internal syntax; evidence comes from the existence of so-called ‘extended associatives’—associative plurals modified by a comitative phrase, just like PPCs—and the observation that these constructions systematically interact with PPCs. I suggest that the correct analysis for these constructions in Inuktitut seems to roughly correspond to the one proposed by Vassilieva & Larson (2005) for plural pronouns, which are taken to be built from a singular pronoun and an additional unsaturated element (thus, “we” = “I + other(s)”). However, along the way, I’ll also introduce various puzzles for this proposal.

Speaker: Hanzhi Zhu (MIT)
Title: Building expectation into an account of still and already
Date and time: Wednesday May 17, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

In this talk, I’ll explore properties of particles like still, already, and German erst / Mandarin cái ‘only just, only … so far’. In particular, I will argue for the claim that some of these particles give rise to an earlier/later-than-expected inference (discussed in Löbner 1989, van der Auwera 1993, Michaelis 1996, inter alia).

1. Asha is already asleep.
Inference: Asha is asleep earlier than expected.

2. a. Bart qiutian cai lai.
Bart autumn erst come
b. Bart kommt erst im Herbst
Bart come erst in autumn
“Bart will only just come in autumn.”
Inference: Bart’s coming in autumn is later than was expected.

I’ll propose an account which directly builds this inference into their presuppositional content. I’ll then discuss the advantages of such an account over previous proposals (Krifka 2000, Ippolito 2007), as well as the challenges that it faces.

Speaker: Colin Davis (MIT)
Title: Cyclic Linearization and Intermediate Stranding: English Possessor Extraction and Beyond
Date/Time: Thursday, May 18th/12:30-1:50pm
Room: 32-D461
Abstract:

In this work, I argue that the Cyclic Linearization view of phases (CL, Fox & Pesetsky 2005, Ko 2005, 2014) accurately constrains pied-piping/stranding, incorporating unexamined facts from the English possessor extraction (PE) construction, first noted in Gavruseva & Thornton (2001). McCloskey (2000) showed that West Ulster English all can be stranded by wh-movement, not only in the base position, but in an intermediate one also, which he takes as evidence for successive-cyclic movement:

(1). What (all) did he say [CP t (all) that we should buy t (all)]?

Intriguingly in contrast, Postal (1974) noted that English prepositions cannot be stranded in intermediate positions:

(2). (To) who do they believe [CP t (*to) that the students spoke t (to)]?

A Puzzle: West Ulster English all and English prepositions are both strandable elements in principle. Why then is only the first capable of IS? This, as McCloskey noted, is mysterious.

Another IS context is the English PE construction, a colloquial option for many speakers. Long-distance PE out of non-subject DP, such as whose money in (3), requires IS of that DP in the embedded spec-CP. Why does English tolerate IS in PE derivations, but not with prepositions? This fact compounds the puzzle.p>

(3). Who did they say[CP [t ‘s money John stole t]? (PE with object pied-piping)

Solution: Chomsky (2001, inter alia) and CL both offer theories of how phases and their spellout determine the properties of successive-cyclic movement. Whereas Chomsky’s conception of phases does nothing to rule out preposition IS, leaving Postal’s puzzle and related facts mysterious, I argue that CL gets the facts right, predicting (1-3). This solution also predicts a generalization about IS, stated in (4).

(4). Intermediate Stranding Generalization (ISG, Predicted by CL)
IS is possible when what pied-pipes, and then is stranded, was adjoined to the right of the mover.

This generalization fits the fact that IS is possible for the strandable all of West Ulster English and [‘s NP] in possessor-extracting English, as these items follow the moving wh-word. (4) rules out IS of prepositions, which precede a mover they are adjoined to. I argue that (4) is cross-linguistically robust, fitting all cases of IS I’ve so far found.

Over the weekend, Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 27 was held at the University of Maryland. On May 11, there was a workshop on Meaning and Distribution at UMD as well. MIT was represented at both!

Pranav Anand (PhD ‘06) was an invited speaker at SALT, and spoke on Facts, alternatives, and alternative facts, and Beth Levin (PhD ‘83 EECS) was an invited speaker at the workshop, and spoke on The Elasticity of Verb Meaning Revisited. In addition, MIT had several students, alumni, and faculty presenting both talks and posters.

Talks

• Athulya Aravind (5th year) & Martin Hackl (faculty) - Against a unified account of obligatory trigger effects: Evidence from acquisition
• Moshe Bar-Lev & Danny Fox (faculty) - Universal free choice and innocent inclusion
• Matthew Mandelkern (5th year, Philosophy), Jérémy Zehr, Jacopo Romoli & Florian Schwarz - Asymmetry in presupposition projection: The case of conjunction
• Yasutada Sudo (PhD ‘12) & Jacopo Romoli - Lifetime effects as presuppositional scalar strengthening

Posters

• Rachel Dudley, Meredith Rowe, Valentine Hacquard (PhD ‘06) and Jeffrey Lidz - Discovering the factivity of know from its distribution
• Patrick Elliott, Andreea Nicolae and Uli Sauerland (PhD ‘98) - Who and what do who and what range over cross-linguistically?
• Yasutada Sudo (PhD ‘12) - It’s not always redundant to assert what is presupposed
• Lyn Tieu, Robert Pasternak (current visitor), Philippe Schlenker (PhD ‘99) and Emmanuel Chemla - Co-speech gestures: Experimental evidence for projection and local accommodation

Mark you calendar! Jay Keyser will give a special Ling-Lunch talk on Monday, May 22.

Speaker: Jay Keyser
Title: Music, Poetry, Painting and Easter Eggs
Date/Time: Monday, May 22/12:30-1:50pm [notice the exceptional time!]
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

This talk takes the view that modernism in the so-called sister arts of music, poetry and painting resulted from the abandonment of sets of rules that characterized each genre and that were shared by the artist and his/her audience. Rules governing meter and tonal music are reasonably well understood. I propose a way to think about “rules” for the third genre, painting. These rules define a natural aesthetic, ’natural’ in that the rules are shared by the artist and his or her audience in the way that the rules of one’s natural language are shared by speaker and listener.

I suggest that the esoteric direction that the sister arts took in the period cultural historians call “Modernism” is a direct result of abandoning the natural, i.e. shared aesthetic for private formats whose origins can be found in the 14th century.

Finally, I will speculate on the similarity between what happened to the arts at the turn of the 20th century and what happened in science after the publication of Principia Mathematica two centuries earlier.

Speaker: Ting Huang (MIT)
Title: On the Unreleased Stops in Taiwanese Southern Min
Date/Time: Monday, May 8, 5:00–6:30pm
Location: 32-124
Abstract:

Unreleased stops, lacking a burst, have been claimed to have low perceptibility and are more likely to neutralize place contrasts (Stevens 1994; Ohala 2001), which has been supported by examining no-burst VC fragments spliced from released stops. The common consensus is that stop perception relies on two sources of acoustic cues: (i) formant transition and (ii) spectral frequency of burst noise. It is clear that the latter cue is absent in unreleased stops, and therefore the hypothesis is that the cues of formant transition will be enhanced. This study investigates the acoustic correlates of VC (where C=unreleased stops p̚, t̚, k̚) in Taiwanese Southern Min. We argue that the cues of VC are not totally diminished or undistinguishable. Moreover, different morphoprosodic structures (VC-V vs. VC#V vs. VC#C) further complicate the dispersion of stop contrasts in this study, which will also be discussed in this talk. A further comparison of stop cues exhibits that the coronal and dorsal are contrastive in terms of vowel duration and quality. This may be related to the asymmetrical behaviors of consonant-to-consonant assimilation in several languages (e.g. English and Korean) and diachronic changes of stop contrasts in Chinese Phonology.

Speaker: Karin Vivanco (MIT and the University of São Paulo)
Title: Inverse voice in Karitiana
Date and time: Tuesday May 5, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

The goal of this talk is to present a new analysis of the inverse voice morpheme {ti-} in Karitiana, a Tupian language spoken in Brazil. This morpheme arises in three different constructions: object WH- questions, object focus constructions, and object relative clauses (Landin 1984, Landin 1987, Storto 1999, 2005). It also changes the agreement pattern of transitive verbs, that otherwise behave in an ergative-absolutive fashion. For this reason, some {ti-} constructions have been regarded as split-ergativity contexts (Storto 2005).

In the analysis proposed here, objects in {ti-} constructions would be adjuncts located outside of the verbal phrase. Furthermore, {ti-} would be a nominal element generated as the complement of a transitive verb, being later incorporated into it and changing its valency. Specifically, I argue that a verb marked with {ti-} becomes intransitive, a claim that can be supported by diagnoses of (in)transitivity such as the copular and the passive construction (Storto 2008, Rocha 2011, Storto and Rocha 2015). This intransitive status would in turn account for the change of agreement patterns without resorting to split-ergativity.

Finally, I also claim that this proposal can account for the presence of {ti-} in WH- constructions and for a semantic requirement that has not been previously described.

Speaker: Daniel Margulis (MIT)
Title: Quantifier float with overt restriction
Date and time: Wednesday May 10, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

Example (1) demonstrates quantifier float. The quantifier each intuitively quantifies over individual parts of the subject they, but the two are not linearly adjacent. The Hebrew quantifier kol has to be overtly restricted, even when it floats: (2) is ungrammatical without exad ‘one’ or a full NP like student.

1. They have each read a different book.

2. hem kar’u kol *(exad) sefer axer
they read each one book other
“They each read a different book.”

I will discuss several syntactic and semantic puzzles posed by the construction in (2) and their implications for the analysis of quantifier float.

Rajesh Bhatt (UMass Amherst) will be making an extended visit this week. In addition to his colloquium talk on Friday, he’ll be giving a mini course on Thursday on the theory of indefinites in Hindi-Urdu and its implications for polarity and movement cross-linguistically:

Speaker: Rajesh Bhatt (UMass Amherst)
Title: Hindi-Urdu Indefinites, Polarity and Movement
Date/Time: May 11th, 11:30am-2:30pm
Place: 32-D461 (tentative)
Abstract:

[joint work with Vincent Homer, UMass]

Typically, Positive Polarity Items (PPIs), e.g. ‘would rather’, cannot be interpreted in the scope of a clausemate negation (barring rescuing or shielding) (Baker 1970, van der Wouden 1997, Szabolcsi 2004 a.o.):

1a. John would rather leave.
1b. *John wouldn’t rather leave.

The scope of most of them is uniquely determined by their surface position. But PPI indefinites are special: they can surface under negation and yet yield a grammatical sentence under a wide scope interpretation:

2. John didn’t understand something. ok: SOME > NEG;*NEG > SOME

Here we address the question of the mechanism through which a PPI of the `some’ type takes wide scope out of an anti-licensing configuration. One possibility is (covert) movement, another is mechanisms that allow indefinites to take (island-violating) ultra-wide scope such as choice functions (Reinhart 1997). The relevant configurations that have motivated choice functions for other languages can be set up for Hindi-Urdu too.
We can therefore assume that a device that generates wide-scope for indefinites without movement is available in Hindi-Urdu too. We show that in Hindi-Urdu at least, this device is unable to salvage PPIs in the relevant configuration. Only good old fashioned overt movement does the needful. If we think of overt movement in Hindi-Urdu as being the analogue of covert movement elsewhere, then the Hindi-Urdu facts are an argument that it is movement, albeit covert, that salvages PPIs in English too, not alternative scope-shifting devices. We explore whether the conclusion from Hindi-Urdu does in fact extend to English.

Speaker: Rajesh Bhatt (UMass Amherst)
Title: Polar Questions, Selection and Disjunction: clues from Hindi-Urdu ‘kyaa’
Time: Friday, May 12th, 3:30-5:00 pm
Place: 32-155
Abstract:

[joint work with Veneeta Dayal, Rutgers] Hindi-Urdu has an optional marker ‘kyaa’ that appears in polar and alternative questions. We delineate its properties distinguishing from the homophonous thematic ‘kyaa’ (what); in particular we locate it in ForceP. We demonstrate that its distribution in embedded environments is similar to that of embedded inversion in English. Then we use `kyaa’ to argue that projection of alternatives (as in Alternative and Inquisitive Semantics) is constrained by the syntax. In particular, A-bar movements lead to `closure’ of alternatives, making them inaccessible. Consequently we expect a bleeding relationship between such movements and operations that depend upon alternatives such as alternative questions. Finally we also explore interactions between the intonational marking of Y/N questions and syntax.

The 6th Cambridge Comparative Syntax conference (CamCoS 6) took place on 4—6 May. Michelle Yuan (4th year grad student) gave the talk Object agreement and clitic doubling across Inuit: Evidence from Inuktitut ABS objects

This Friday, Michel DeGraff will be presenting his paper, Language, education, human rights, equal opportunity & sustainable development: Haiti as a case study, at the United Nations symposium on Language, the Sustainable Development Goals, and Vulnerable Populations!

Speaker: Rafael Abramovitz (MIT)
Title: A Case for Morpheme Structure Constraints from Koryak Labials
Date/Time: Monday, May 1, 5:00–6:30pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

One of the central departures of Optimality Theory and its descendants from earlier models of generative phonology is the principle of the Richness of the Base (ROTB), which holds that the set of inputs to the grammar lacks language-specific properties (Prince and Smolensky 2004). Since the set of ranked constraints is the only locus of crosslinguistic variation in these models, morpheme structure constraints (MSC) (Stanley 1967, Chomsky and Halle 1968 et. seq.) are inadmissible. In this talk, I present an argument against this view based on the distribution of labials in Koryak (Chukotko-Kamchatkan). In this language, v and w contrast prevocalically (1-2), but are neutralized to w elsewhere (3).

1. wutku ‘here’ vs. vutq-ə-vut ‘darkness’
2. e-wejulʔ-et-ke ‘not scared’ vs. ɣənt-ev-e ‘you ran’
3. waɲav-at-ə-k ‘to speak’, but waɲaw ‘word’, a-waɲaw-ka ‘without words’

For morphemes like the root in (3), we can set up the root-final segment in the UR as v, but morphemes with an underlying final w, giving rise to a putative pattern *waɲaw ~ waɲaw-at-ə-k, do not exist. While these facts are straightforwardly captured by an MSC banning w morpheme-finally, as well as by equivalent machinery like morpheme-level filtering, analyses assuming ROTB without intermediate filtering are unable account for them.

Speaker: Rafael Abramovitz (MIT)
Title: Outward-Sensitive Phonologically Conditioned Allomorphy in Koryak
Date and time: Tuesday May 2, 1—2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

In realizational theories of morphology like Distributed Morphology, syntactic operations are taken to apply to structures that lack phonological information, which then needs to be inserted at some later point in the derivation. A question we can then ask is whether there are any principled restrictions on how this insertion proceeds. One influential answer comes from Bobaljik (2000), who argues that vocabulary insertion is cyclic and phase-based: vocabulary items are inserted bottom-up within phases, and bottom-up from phase to phase. This makes predictions about restrictions on allomorphy determined at vocabulary insertion because it entails that, when a morpheme is undergoing insertion, only phonological information is present about the nodes below it, and only morphosyntactic information is available about those above it. This view predicts, then, that outward-looking allomorphy can be only conditioned by morphosyntactic features, and inward looking allomorphy by only conditioned by phonological/morphological features. In line with this prediction, cases of outward-looking phonologically conditioned allomorphy are very scarce, the only clear example that I know of coming from Deal and Wolf (2014). In this presentation of work in progress, I will provide partial support for cyclic spellout. In particular, I will present 3 cases of allomorphy from the Koryak (Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Kamchatka) verb-word, and will argue that they are outward-looking and phonologically conditioned, contrary to one of the claims of cyclic spellout. Based on this, I will argue that the phase-internal part of cyclic spellout is either false as a universal or unfalsifiable: these patterns of allomorphy pattern cannot be captured by it, but a theory of phonology sufficiently powerful to account for them negates cyclic spellout’s predictive power. However, I will argue that the predictions of phase-by-phase cyclicity are, in fact, borne out: in none of these cases can morphemes trigger allomorphy across a phase boundary, even if they are linearly adjacent to each other.

Speaker: Athulya Aravind (MIT)
Title: Against a unified treatment of obligatory presupposition effects
Date and time: Wednesday May 3, 1-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

Since its original conception, the principle Maximize Presupposition (Heim 1991, Sauerland 2003) has been recruited to explain why the use of certain presupposition triggers is obligatory in contexts that satisfy their presuppositions (1).

1. a. The/#A sun is shining.
b. I washed both/#all of my hands.
c. Does your dog have a bushy tail/#bushy tails?

In this talk, I re-examine one type of “obligatory presupposition” environment, involving additive particles (2), and argue that they do not fall within the purview of Maximize Presupposition (contra e.g. e Amsili and Beyssade, 2006, Chemla 2008, Singh 2008).

2. a. Sue went to the party. John went to the party #(too).
b. Jenn went to the movies yesterday. She went #(again) today.

Building on previous work (Krifka 1999, Saebo 2004, Bade 2016), I will first propose an account for the effects in (2), on which insertion of additives is one strategy (among many) to circumvent inconsistencies arising from uncancellable exhaustivity inferences. I will then present experimental results from both adults and children that offer support for a non-unified treatment of obligatory presupposition effects.

Speaker: Amanda Rysling (UMass Amherst)
Title:  Preferential early attribution in segmental perception
Date/Time: Thursday, May 4th, 12:30-1:50pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract:

Recognizing the speech we hear as the sounds of the languages we speak requires solving a parsing problem: mapping from the acoustic input we receive to the sounds and words we recognize as our language. The way that listeners do this impacts the phonologies of the world’s languages.

Most work on segmental perception has focused on how listeners successfully disentangle the effects of segmental coarticulation. An assumption of this literature is that listeners almost always attribute the acoustic products of articulation to the sounds whose articulation created those products. As a result, listeners usually judge two successive phones to be maximally distinct from each other in clear listening conditions. Few studies (Fujimura, Macchi, & Streeter, 1978; Kingston & Shinya, 2003; Repp, 1983) have examined cases in which listeners seem to systematically “mis-parse” (Ohala, 1981; et seq.), hearing two sounds in a row as similar to each other, and apparently failing to disentangle the blend of their production. I advance the hypothesis that listeners default to attributing incoming acoustic material to the first of two phones in a sequence, even when that material includes the products of the second phone’s articulation. I report studies which show that listeners persist in attributing the acoustic products of a second sound’s articulation to a first sound even when the signal conveys early explicit evidence about the identity of that second sound. Thus, in cases in which listeners could have leveraged articulatory information to begin disentangling the first sound from the second, they did not do so. I argue that this behavior arises from a domain-general perceptual bias to construe temporally distributed input as evidence of one event, rather than two.

These results support a new conceptualization of the segmental parsing problem. Since listeners necessarily perceive events in the world at a delay from when those events occurred, it may be adaptive to attribute the incoming signal to an earlier speech sound when no other determining information is available. There are cases in which listeners do not disentangle the coarticulated acoustics of two sequential sounds, because they are not compelled to do so. Finally, I argue that this has affected the phonologies of the world’s languages, resulting in, for example, predominantly regressive assimilation of major place features.

Speaker: Jon Gajewski (UConn)
Title: It’s not syntax, I don’t think: neg-raising and parentheticals
Time: Friday, May 5th, 3:30-5:00 pm
Place: 32-155
Abstract:

English allows a construction in which a sentence contains a parenthetical with a clausal gap, as in (i). I will refer to phrases such as I think in (i) as clausal parentheticals. Typically, clausal parentheticals cannot be negative, cf. (ii).
(i) There is beer in the fridge, I think.
(ii) *There is beer in the fridge, I don’t think.
It has been noted that when the clausal parenthetical contains a neg-raising predicate, an apparent doubling of a negation in the main clause is allowed, as in (ii).
(ii) There is no beer in the fridge, I (don’t) think.
This doubling has been taken to be an argument in favor of syntactic approaches to neg-raising, as in Ross (1973) and Collins & Postal (2014). I will defend an analysis of the doubling in (ii) that is compatible with a semantic/pragmatic approach to neg-raising, as in Horn 1989, Gajewski 2007, Romoli 2013.

The University of Calgary organized this year’s West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. 1st year grad student Neil Banerjee (Trouble with attitudes and the future) and Heidi Harley (PhD ‘95) were keynote speakers and several current students and alumni presented their work:

Hanzhi Zhu (3rd year grad student): Desonorization in Kyrgyz: Licensing by cue, not syllable contact

Nico Baier (UC Berkeley) & Michelle Yuan (4th year grad student): Deriving anti-agreement with bound variables: feature transmission and impoverishment

Rafael Nonato (PhD ‘14) Skewed AGREE: accounting for a closest-conjunct effect with semantic implications

Ivona Kučerová (PhD ‘07) & Adam Szczegielniak (Rutgers): A dual theory of roots: Evidence from gender-marking languages

Benjamin Bruening (PhD ‘01) & Eman Al Khalaf (U. Jordan): No argument-adjunct distinction in reconstruction for binding Condition

Neil during his keynote [thanks Hanzhi for the picture!]