Whamit!

Speaker: Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley)
Title: Pseudo-de re, generalized
Time: Thursday, March 6th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Let’s call an element of an attitude report “exportable” if it can be replaced with a co-extensional element salva veritate. In linguistic semantics, the long-standing analysis of exportable terms in attitude reports runs on acquaintance: the attitude holder is acquainted with the referent of the exportable term (under a guise/description). Serious problems for the acquaintance requirement have been known about since the 1970s. Some recent attempts to grapple with them have called for a wholesale replacement of the acquaintance-based semantics; others have called for an acquaintance-based semantics for some cases but not others. I present an argument for a theory of the second type, wherein there is indeed a non-acquaintance-based semantics available for exportable terms (“pseudo-de re”), which is indeed highly generalized, but which can in certain linguistic phenomena be productively contrasted with true acquaintance-based semantics.

Speaker: Ben Flickstein and Ezer Rasin (Tel Aviv)
Title: Towards a phonological feature system for birdsong
Time: Monday, February 10th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: A foundational assumption in theoretical phonology is that phonological representations are built from distinctive features, typically stated in articulatory terms. Those features define natural classes that phonological processes typically apply to or are conditioned by. Even though birdsong shares important properties with human phonology, the dominant approach in birdsong research has not yet explored the possibility that the sound patterns of birdsong could be tied to cognitive, articulatory-oriented features. This presentation of an ongoing research project reports on a preliminary attempt to create such a feature system for the song of canaries.

Course announcements in this post:

• More Advanced Syntax (24.955)
• Topics in Syntax (24.956)
• Topics in Semantics (MIT 24.979/Harvard LING 207R)
• Topics in Computational Phonology (24.981)

24.955: More Advanced Syntax

• Instructor: Elise Newman & Sabine Iatridou
• Wednesdays, 10am-1pm
• Room: 32-D461

This class is a requirement for the syntax specialization and strongly recommended for those interested in the syntax-semantics interface.

It explores many topics, all of which have the property that they have not been taught in the 24.951/24.952 classes of the previous two years. Each topic will be covered in at most two class sessions. Registered students will be required to write three snippets. The first snippet has to be on a topic taught in the first 4 weeks, the second on a topic of the second 4 weeks, and the third on a topic taught in the last 4 weeks.

The topics we plan to cover include (subject to change):

• The Plural Pronoun Construction
• Polydefiniteness
• Allocutive agreement
• Asymmetric coordination
• Puzzles about the perfect
• Temporal adverbials
• Syntax of comparatives
• Expletives
• Ergativity
• V-initial languages
• Ne-que construction
• Imperatives
• Selection/subcategorization
• NP ellipsis and ne-cliticization
• Long distance agreement

This class is offered biannually, so if you are considering taking it, please note that the next time it will be offered will be in the ’26-’27 academic year.

24.956: Topics in Syntax

• Instructors: Peter Grishin & David Pesetsky
• Mondays, 2-5pm
• Room: 32-D461

MIT 24.979/Harvard LING 207R: Topics in Semantics 

• Instructors: Athulya Aravind & Kathryn Davidson
• Thursdays 9:45-11:45AM
• Room: Harvard Boylston 303; MIT 32D-461

Experimental methodologies have increasingly been employed within the field of linguistics to collect data in service of theory building, especially understanding points of variation across languages, understanding the process of language acquisition, and understanding how linguistic representations interact with other aspects of cognition. In this course we’ll survey the field of experimental semantics and its interfaces with syntax and with pragmatics with an eye toward giving students coming in with foundational graduate-level background in theoretical linguistics a framework for reading current experimental literature in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and for developing their own experimental designs. We plan to explore experimental and developmental case studies from well-established areas of formal semantics, including presupposition and anaphora, connectives, quantification and modality, with the possibility of incorporating additional topics based on student interests.

24.981: Topics in Computational Linguistics

• Instructor: Adam Albright
• Tuesdays, 2-5pm
• Room: 32-D461

Computational modeling can usefully inform many aspects of phonological theory. Implementing a theory provides a more rigorous test of its applicability to different data sets, and requires a greater degree of formal precision than is found in purely expository presentations. By training models on realistic training samples, we can test whether a posited analysis can actually be learned from representative data, and we can observe what proportion of the data is actually accounted for by that analysis. Modeling also provides a direct means of testing whether a proposed formal device facilitates the discovery of generalizations, or whether it hampers learning by greatly increasing the size of the search space. Finally, modeling has played an increasingly important role in modeling gradient experimental data, since it provides a way of comparing human behavior with statistical properties of linguistic input, filtered through a possibly non-trivial learning procedure.

This class is intended to provide an introduction to the theory and practice of computational models of phonology.  We will discuss recent theoretical work informed by computational implementations, and tools for modeling phonological knowledge of various kinds.  Special attention will be paid to the relation between formal learning models and empirical data concerning early phonological acquisition.

January at MIT is a quiet month, without regular classes and regularly scheduled events — so you might not hear from us again until the new semester begins in February 2025.  Of course, we will report any interesting events as they happen, even before the start of the new semester.  Meanwhile, we wish you a Happy New Year, and hope to welcome you back to Whamit next semester.

Speaker: Stanislao Zompì (Universität Potsdam) and Zhouyi Sun (MIT)
Title: Augmenting Vocabulary Insertion: From Monotonic to Output-driven
Time: Thursday, December 5, 5-6pm
Location: 32-D769

Abstract: It has been argued that *ABA in root suppletion patterns can be reduced to the principle of monotonicity: given a partial order among feature bundles, if two feature bundles x and z are mapped to the same value, then any y between x and z in terms of the given order must also be mapped to the same value (Graf 2019; Moradi 2021). We show that Underspecification/Overspecification combined with Pāṇinian ordering as rules for Vocabulary Insertion are both inherently monotonic. In other words, previous works deriving *ABA using these approaches all implicitly share the monotonicity thesis.

However, given the independently motivated featural successive containment relations in the domains of Case (Nom ⊂ Acc ⊂ Dat) and Gender (Neu ⊂ Msc ⊂ Fem) in Germanic languages, we find monotonicity falls short in capturing attested paradigms, and therefore both Underspecification and Overspecification undergenerate. Monotonicity in the form as explicitly posited by Graf (2019) or implicitly assumed by many others may thus not be a desirable property for language. Our survey further suggests that the empirical picture instead aligns with an concept that’s properly weaker that monotonicity—Output-driven (Tesar 2014; Magri 2018a,b), which requires monotonicity not between any two feature bundles with the same output, but only between any feature bundle and the output it maps to.

We propose an optimization-based approach to Vocabulary Insertion which allows for and penalizes feature addition and deletion, with penalties tied to specific features. Realization of a feature bundle is determined by minimizing the penalty incurred to reach a feature bundle associated with a dedicated Vocabulary Item. We argue it generates—and only generates—output-driven mappings, fitting the empirical picture.

Speaker: Oddur Snorrason (QMUL)
Title: Pseudo-ABA patterns in pronominal morphology (Middleton 2021)
Time: Thursday, November 21, 5pm - 6pm
Location: 32-D769

Abstract: I‘ll be presenting Middleton‘s (2021) paper on the pseudo-ABA patterns of morphology found in pronominal forms. Apparent ABA patterns in languages like Babanki, Malayalam, Yoruba and Tok Pisin challenge proposed containment relationships for prominal morphology (see Harbour 2016, Middleton 2020). In this paper, Middleton shows how the problematic data can be dealt with in an analysis which adopts spanned exponents (Svenonius 2012), while null allomorphy and impoverishment analyses overgenerate.

Dear friends of MIT Linguistics,

Sadly, we have been on hiatus for some weeks.  We are excited to share the news that will now be publishing a number of backdated issues to catch up with all we’ve been doing at MIT Linguistics in the meantime — and that we are now back! That said, January is always a quiet month at MIT (no regular classes, reading groups, or talks), so you might not hear from us for a while once again.  But once the new semester starts in February 2025, you will be hearing from us regularly, as before.

-the Editors

Speaker: Christopher Legerme (MIT)
Title: Sulemana (2024) on Passives without Morphology
Time: Thursday, October 10th, 5pm - 6pm
Location: 32-D769

Abstract: For this week’s Morphun, I’m looking forward to presenting a cool recent paper by an alum of our department, Dr. Abdul-Razak Sulemana, who investigated passive constructions without morphology in Buli (Gur, Ghana).  Despite lacking passive morphology, Sulemana argues that Buli exhibits true passive constructions with implicit arguments. We will explore the key evidence used in support of this analysis, including:

1. Semantic interpretation of implicit agents
2. A-movement of internal arguments
3. Compatibility with by-phrases

Speaker: Chelsea Tang (MIT)
Title: Overapplication in Reduplication in Gikuyu: Evidence for Back-Copying?
Time: Monday, October 7th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Back-copying is an overapplication phenomenon where the reduplicant creates an environment for a phonological process to apply, after which the base “back-copies” from the reduplicant. Many scholars (McCarthy, Kimper, and Mullin 2012; Kiparsky 2010; Inkelas and Zoll 2005, among others) have argued that this phenomenon does not exist, thus presenting an overgeneration problem for Parallel Optimality Theory (OT) as proposed by McCarthy and Prince (1995). This presentation offers evidence from Gĩkũyũ that back-copying (possibly) exists. If confirmed by native speakers, this data will pose a serious challenge to both serialist and cyclic theories of reduplication. The attested back-copying patterns will also provide strong empirical support for Parallel OT.

Speaker: Alma Frischoff and Ezer Rasin (MIT and Tel Aviv University)
Title: On the absence of crucially-simultaneous phonological interactions in natural language
Time: Thursday, October 10th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Theories of phonology should be able to generate attested types of interactions between phonological processes – including opaque interactions – and at the same time explain why certain conceivable types of interactions are unattested. We draw attention to three universals regarding unattested opaque interactions, which have been identified and defended in previous literature. These universals are expected in a rule-based theory of phonology where rules must apply serially and can never apply simultaneously. We propose to unify the three universals under a general universal called No Simultaneity, which states that there are no crucially-simultaneous phonological interactions in natural language. We then argue that this universal has important implications for theories of phonology, by showing that certain phonological theories that aim to generate opaque interactions in parallel are too permissive and over-generate unattested interactions, contrary to recent proposals that opacity is not as tied to serialism as previously thought.

The Understanding Obviation workshop was held at McGill University from October 4-6 (co-organized by MIT alum Jessica Coon - PhD ‘10). MIT Linguistics was well represented in the workshop with the following talks:

• Peter Grishin (PhD ‘23 and current post-doc) and Elise Newman (faculty) presented a talk based on joint work with Giovanni Roversi (current graduate student) entitled: Obviation in Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey: Dependent case?
• Jessica Coon (PhD ‘10) - with Stefan Keine, and Juan Vázquez Álvarez presented a talk entitled: Animacy and obviation in Ch’ol

The workshop was a great success and was full of interesting crosslinguistic questions and parallels (and perhaps not-so-parallels). Congratulations to all presenters for their work!

MIT Linguistics was well represented at the 29th iteration of the Sinn und Bedeutung conference, held between 17-19 September in Noto, Italy. Current students, faculty, and alumni presented talks and posters (posters mentioned for current students only, more at conference website):

• Danfeng Wu (PhD ‘22): Why “not numeral NP” requires “but” but not “not many NP”
• Sam Alxatib (PhD ‘13) - with Andreea Nicolae: FC with discourse referents: the curious case of ‘any’
• Jad Wehbe, Omri Doron (current graduate students): Diagnosing the presuppositional properties of global and embedded implicatures
• Jad Wehbe (current graduate student): On the scope of together
• Despina Oikonomou (PhD ‘16) - with Vina Tsakali, Alexandra Samarentsi, Benedict Vassileiou: Temporal interpretation in Directive Speech Acts: A competition between imperative and 2nd-person subjunctive in Greek
• Wataru Uegaki (PhD ‘15) - with Anne Mucha, Mary Amaechi, Tim Jantarungsee: Disjunction with additives
• Omri Doron (current graduate student) - with Omri Amiraz: Definite plurals in comparatives
• Patrick G. Grosz (PhD ‘11) - with Mailin Antomo, Lea Fricke, Tatjana Scheffler: Lying and commitment with (not-)at-issue emojis
• Orin Percus (PhD ‘97) - with Mora Maldonado: Another look at contrafactive predicates: The case of Spanish ‘creerse’
• Keny Chatain (PhD ‘21) - with Benjamin Spector: Readings of pronouns across connectives are sensitive to monotony
• Paul Marty (PhD ‘17) - with Omri Amiraz, Patrick Elliott, Guillermo Del Pinal, Jacopo Romoli: Homogeneity in non-monotonic contexts
• Adèle Hénot-Mortier (current graduate student): Redundancy under Discussion (Poster)
• Johanna Alstott (current graduate student): On “very”-intensified superlatives (Poster)
• Haoming Li (current graduate student): The case for the strong and conditional analysis of permission (Poster)
• Anastasia Tsilia (current graduate student): (In)direct evidential futures in Colloquial Jakartan Indonesian (Poster)
• Adèle Hénot-Mortier (current graduate student): Unifying the French evidential construction on di(rai)t que (Poster)

The following department members also presented talks in post-event workshops:

In the workshop: Does semantics have a too many tools problem?

• Ido Benbaji-Elhadad (current graduate student): Worlds, times and the fate of ontological symmetry
• Amir Anvari (faculty): Indefinites as Indexed Definites 
• Adèle Hénot-Mortier (current graduate student): “One tool to rule them all”? An integrated model of the QuD for Hurford sentences

In the workshop: Evidentials in non-canonical speech acts

• Michela Ippolito (PhD ‘02) - with Crystal Chen: `Gosh, how X is that?!’ The case of Exclamative-Interrogatives
• Danfeng Wu (PhD ‘22): Corrective markers ‘bing’ and ‘you’ in Mandarin Chinese

Congratulations to all presenters for their work!

In the series organized by Michel DeGraff entitled Language & Linguistics in Decolonization and Liberation Struggles in Haiti, Palestine, and Israel, earlier announced here:

Speaker: Camelia Suleiman (Michigan State University)
Title: Palestinian Women in Higher Education in Jerusalem: Between Nationalism and Neoliberalism
Time: October 9, noon-2pm
Location: Room E51-095

How do Palestinian women students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem resolve the tension between Jewish nationalism and neoliberalism? Based on ongoing ethnographic sociolinguistic research in the daily lives of Palestinian women, I find that students manage these tensions through the performative aspects of language. My analysis demonstrates critical consciousness of their collective identity.

Prof. Suleiman’s visit is co-sponsored by MIT’s MindHandHeart and by MIT Women’s and Gender Studies.

For suggested readings in preparation of Prof. Suleiman’s visit and for additional information about the seminar, please click here for the full description.

Speaker: Giovanni Roversi (MIT)
Title: Pronouns, DPs, and Omnivorous A-movement
Time: Tuesday, October 1st, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Some of us hope that one day we can reduce all instances of Movement to Agree. About Agree, we know that “omnivorous” patterns exist, where a probe will skip a more local goal to target one further away, if the less local goal has some special feature that the probe is interested in. If Movement is Agree, we should therefore expect “omnivorous” movement patterns, where out of two goals, a more featurally special one is favored for movement over a closer one. This is pretty much exactly what goes on in typical Ā-context: in object questions, C move the wh-object and skips the closer (non-wh) subject. And indeed, we’re used to thinking that Ā-movement can be non-local, but A-movement is strictly local. Given enough featural distinctions, however, there’s no principled reason why we shouldn’t expect omnivorous movement patterns to hold in the realm of pure A-movement as well (not even a little bit mixed A/Ā). I argue that a particular corner of Äiwoo grammar works exactly like this. Movement to spec,TP in this language favors pronouns over lexical DPs: T will skip a closer lexical DP goal to rather move an object pronoun. This also teaches us something about why and how syntax treats pronouns and full DPs differently, and I suggest that at least in this language, any explanations based on “greed” (“this pronoun needs to move because it’s deficient”) or any kind of “licensing” don’t work.

Speaker: Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (Paris Lodron Universität Salzburg)
Title: Structuring Concealed Questions
Time: Wednesday, October 2nd, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Concealed Questions (CQs) are DPs that can be naturally paraphrased as embedded questions, e.g., “I know [Ann’s birthday]” <=> “I know [what Ann’s birthday is]”. This talk, like most of the literature on CQs, is focused on two puzzles identified by Heim (1979): (i) the ambiguity of quantified CQs, and (ii) the ambiguity of nested CQs. I build on Romero (2005) and Frana (2017) to advance a novel account of these ambiguities that synthesizes these works’ main insights into a general theory of quantification over individual concepts. A key feature of my proposal is that the ambiguities identified by Heim are due to the internal structure of the NPs within CQs.

Speaker: Eyal Marco (Tel-Aviv University)
Title: Optimal Paradigms: A challenge from Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic
Time: Monday, September 30th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: In this talk we will reevaluate Optimal Paradigms (OP), an extension to Optimality Theory proposed by McCarthy (2005). In OP, candidates are full inflectional paradigms and faithfulness constraints can require uniformity between all members within a candidate. According to OP, prosodic templates are not grammatical entities, and morphosyntactic categories like noun and verb are not available to the phonology. Instead, systematic phonological differences between categories are derived by special constraints that require uniformity between all members of an inflectional paradigm. One of the original cases McCarthy used to showcase OP with, comes from Moroccan Arabic. McCarthy proposed that a noun-verb asymmetry in the distribution of schwa in Moroccan Arabic can be predicted by OP using the different paradigm structures of nouns and verbs in the language. We will reevaluate this proposal using new fieldwork data from Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic, an endangered variety of Arabic that is closely related to Moroccan. We will see that if adjectives are added to the picture, OP can no longer predict the distribution of schwa in the different categories. The conclusion is that OP does not eliminate the necessity of templates or category reference in phonology, disputing the main original motivation for the theory.

Speaker: Andre Batchelder-Schwab (Boston University)
Title: Undocumented Whistled Languages in Africa
Time: Thursday, October 3rd, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Although a few dozen whistled languages are attested across the world, it seems that sub-Saharan Africa could easily double that number, including Akan-Twi, Kinande, isiXhosa, TshiVenda, and many more. While many of these systems conform to expected typologies, some could contribute evidence towards theories about speaker/hearer syntactic heads, sonority scales, and intelligibility. The presentation will end with a discussion on current directions in research on whistled language, and possible uses in orthography and tone acquisition.

Speaker: Irene Heim (MIT)
Title: A better dissertation
Time: Wednesday, September 25th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: I will revisit the transition from the second chapter to the third chapter of my 1982 dissertation “The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases”. My purpose is to isolate and throw light on some of the individual ideas in the dynamic package deal. I will not address (let alone remedy) any empirical problems (such as bathroom sentence, weak readings, proportion problem).

Prerequisites: Familiarity with the technical core and conclusion of chapter II of Heim 1982 (i.e., sections II.2, II.3, and II.8). Familiarity with how trivalent truth functions account for presupposition projection. The handout will be technically self-contained but not an introduction to this background material.

Speaker: Edward Flemming
Title: Generating and parsing f0 contours using a model of f0 production
Time: Monday, September 23rd, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: I will present ongoing work aimed at developing a framework for formulating phonetic grammars of tone realization that can derive complete fundamental frequency (f0) trajectories from phonological specifications.

The proposed framework consists of two main components: A model of f0 production that maps time-aligned tone targets to f0 trajectories, and a set of weighted constraints that select the optimal targets for a given phonological representation. The constraints can evaluate properties of both the underlying targets and the resulting f0 trajectory.

In addition to generating f0 contours, the model of f0 production can also be fitted to observed f0 contours to infer the underlying f0 targets, effectively parsing the f0 contour. This proves particularly valuable when analyzing tones with targets that are difficult to locate because they correspond to a turning point in the f0 contour that is not a local maximum or minimum (often referred to as ‘elbow’ targets).

This analytical approach will be illustrated through a study of variation in the realization of the Mandarin rising tone as a function of speech rate.

Speaker: Peter Grishin, Cora Lesure, Elise Newman, Norvin Richards, J. Cooper Roberts (MIT)
Title: What’s new with the Passamaquoddy Working Group?
Time: Thursday, September 26th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Passamaquoddy is an endangered Algonquian language spoken in parts of Maine, USA and New Brunswick, Canada (the dialect spoken in Canada is called Wolastoqey). In this Ling-Lunch, members of the Department’s Passamaquoddy Working Group—a coalition of faculty members, postdocs, and students interested in investigating the language and improving its vitality through pedagogy—will present some preliminary results of a recent fieldwork trip. Group members will discuss a variety of topics, including the syntax of the inverse and how it relates to control, different kinds of movement and its triggering of certain verb types, the syntax-semantics of container constructions, and more. Their findings not only improve our understanding of Passamaquoddy, but also inform linguistic theory in general. And hopefully some of you will be enticed to join us and explore some of these (or other) topics!

Speaker: Hedde Zeijlstra (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
Title: Pro drop and the morphological structure of inflection
Time: Tuesday, September 17th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: A central problem for pro drop theory is how to account for the distribution of argumental null subjects. A paradigmatic approach, in which the whole paradigm determines whether a language can have null subjects or not, undergenerates in that it does not predict the existence of partial pro drop languages. An approach in which the licensing of null subjects is determined per context overgenerates in that it is not obvious why e.g. English does not have null subjects in at least the 3rd person singular. This talk aims at repairing the overgeneration problem for contextual approaches. By contrasting the Romance pro drop languages with the Germanic languages and Standard French, we argue that only the latter express tense and agreement with the same underlying morpheme, which therefore contains features (tense) that are incompatible with the subject it would have to license: it is featurally overspecified. The question is then what determines the choice between a bi- or monomorphemic expression of tense and agreement, and we will argue that reasonable assumptions about the acquisition of morphological systems makes the right cut.

Speaker: Wenkai Tay (UCL)
Title: Compound vs phrasal resultatives: the view from Mandarin Chinese
Time: Wednesday, September 18th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this talk, I will argue against a uniform syntactic analysis of V-V compound resultatives and V-de phrasal resultatives in Mandarin Chinese. I propose instead that V-V resultatives are built in morphology while V-deresultatives are built in syntax. My proposal predicts that V-V and V-de resultatives will exhibit distinct behaviour with respect to a number of processes. (i) V-de resultatives are accessible to syntactic operations while V-V resultatives are not. (ii) Since obligatory arguments must be projected in a syntactic structure, V1 must project its arguments in V-de resultatives but not in V-V resultatives. Furthermore, it seems that these differences in argument structure between compound and phrasal resultatives are observed in languages other than Mandarin. These differences cannot be captured within a theoretical framework that makes no reference to the notion of a “word”. Therefore, to the extent that it is on the right track, my proposal provides evidence for an architecture of the grammar in which morphology and syntax are distinct subsystems.

Speaker: Runqi Tan (MIT)
Title: Direction of Coarticulation in Retroflex Fricative – a case study from Mandarin
Time: Monday, September 16th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Abstract: In many Australian and Dravidian languages, retroflex and apical alveolar stops only contrast after vowels (e.g. Steriade 1995, 2001). This is because the primary cues to the contrast between retroflex and apical alveolar stops are located in the VC transitions (Anderson 1997), thus this contrast preferentially appears after a vowel, where the sounds are more perceptually distinguishable (Steriade 1995, 2001). The fact that the primary cues are realized on the preceding vowel follows from the fact that the retroflex stop has a stronger coarticulatory effect on the preceding vowel than the following vowel (Steriade 1995, 2001, Hamann 2003, Tabain et al. 2020). However, it is the following high front vowel that assimilates to retroflex sounds in Mandarin, a language with retroflex fricatives and affricates (Li & Zhang 2017), suggesting a stronger coarticulatory effect on the following vowel than the preceding vowel. In articulation, the characteristic flapping-out movement of retroflex stops does not happen to retroflex fricatives (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996), which makes it possible for retroflex fricatives to have coarticulation on the following vowel. These observations lead to the hypothesis that the direction of coarticulation in retroflex fricatives differs from retroflex stops. This study conducted a phonetic experiment to test this hypothesis. The experiment explored F3 transitions in a pair of Mandarin fricative /s/ and /ʂ/. The lowering effect of F3 by /ʂ/ is the primary cue to the contrast between retroflex and alveolar sounds (Hamann 2003). Ten native Mandarin speakers (age from 20 to 30, 5 male speakers and 5 female speakers) were asked to read 15 VCV minimal pairs in a carrier sentence “wo du __ gei ni tiŋ” (I read __ for you to hear), where the C was /s/ or /ʂ/, and the two vowels in VCV were identical. Due to Mandarin CV syllable structure, in VCV structures, VC is necessarily between syllables and CV is within syllables. The stop study also allows C to be onset, which means that VCV also comes from two syllables, which is comparable to fricative study. F3 was measured in four positions in each VCV stimuli: midpoint of the first vowel (V1F3), endpoint of the first vowel (C1F3), beginning of the second vowel (C2F3) and midpoint of the second vowel (V2F3). The effect of place of articulation on F3 on left and right side of the consonant was calculated and compared by fitting a linear mixed effect model with consonant F3 as dependent variable, vowel F3 as independent variable, C as a fixed effect, and a random slope for sibilant place. The lowering effect of F3 is found on both sides of the retroflex fricative and does not differ significantly between the left and right side. This result confirms that the direction of coarticulation in Mandarin retroflex fricative /ʂ/ differs from that in retroflex stops. This difference leads to the prediction that retroflexion contrast in fricatives should not follow the same typology as retroflexion contrast in stops, as a result, different rankings of the markedness constraints and faithfulness constraints are expected for the two types of retroflex consonants. Keywords: retroflex fricative, coarticulation, phonetic cue.

Speaker: David Beaver (University of Texas at Austin)
Title: Presupposing practice
Time: Thursday, September 19th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: I will discuss reformulations of the notions of presupposition and accommodation, themselves based on a non-standard model of meaning, as developed in The Politics of Language (Beaver & Stanley, Princeton University Press, 2023). The goal is to develop a general model of transmission and change of ideology, including language practices, a model that can help explain how terrifying or divisive practices can be innocuously normalized, reinforced, and spread.

Building on work of Lynne Tirrell and others, the background to the theoretical developments includes cases of people, or entire peoples, referred to as if they were monsters, snakes, cockroaches, lice, parasites, or even, in the case of a concentration camp warden Victor Klemperer reported on, industrial raw materials. Standard tools of semantic theory were not designed with such issues in mind. I argue that a generalization of the notions of presupposition and accommodation can carry some of the weight.

The reformulation of presupposition hinges on three definitions:

1. Associative resonance: p(feature| instantiation of practice) − p(feature)
2. Effect probability: The probability that a certain feature of the context is an effect of an action instantiating a practice, p(instantiation of practice caused feature).
3. Presuppositional resonance: Associative resonance − Effect probability

The main goal of the LingLunch talk will be to discuss these definitions, their relationship to prior work on presupposition (and formal semantic theory more generally), and their application to difficult issues like presuppositions of divisive practices.

A secondary goal of the talk is to discuss an extension of accommodation that complements the changes in the notion of presupposition. Hearers accommodate not merely propositions, but practices, developing an increased tendency to behave in line with the practice. For example, if politicians and bureaucrats discussing a public health problem focus on the costs of alternative technologies that would potentially remediate the problem, their marginalization of human suffering carries a presupposition that it is reasonable to frame the issue in purely technocratic terms. What is accommodated is a tendency to treat a human life as a commodity. In response to sexist jokes, one may accommodate tendencies to discriminate based on gender.

In standard accounts of accommodation, the driving force is a driving desire to create common ground in the face of ignorance of a speaker’s assumptions. In the model I will discuss, however, accommodation is driven by a desire to avoid cognitive dissonance and find harmony, and these are in turn largely driven by a need to fit in with in-groups, and to mark oneself as distinct from out-groups.

MIT Linguistics research affiliate and alumn Hadas Kotek (PhD ‘14) is organizing a careers workshop series for linguists. The careers workshop will meet every other Tuesday at 5pm in room 32-D831, starting this Tuesday. All are welcome. Currently planned topics are below; Spring topics will include: resumes, networking, applying and interviewing, immigration considerations. Additional topics may be added based on audience request.

MIT alumn Pritty Patel-Grosz’s (PhD ‘12) work on dance in Gibbons has been accepted for publishing in the biology journal Primates. Pritty’s co-authored work offers a linguistically informed view of Gibbons’ dance behavior, showing it forms groupings based on isochronous rhythm.

The pre-print version can be found here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.29.610299v1.full

The New York Times also offered a piece based on the work, found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/science/gibbons-dancing-apes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Kk4.dsYX.XXFLiwNd-UiD&smid=url-share

Congratulations to Pritty and her collaborators!

In the series organized by Michel DeGraff entitled Language & Linguistics in Decolonization and Liberation Struggles in Haiti, Palestine, and Israel, earlier announced here:

Speaker: David Beaver (University of Texas at Austin)
Title: “Neutrality helps the oppressor”: how accommodation can become complicity with a radical agenda
Time: September 18, noon-2pm
Location: Room E51-095

Abstract:

In this election season, amid bloody global conflicts and the existential threat of climate change, we are all called upon to take sides. Let us say that public discourse is polarized if large subsets of society are unable to recognize the legitimacy of the perspectives embodied by other people’s speech. Then today we find ourselves in an extreme situation. We are witness both to polarization, in which groups diverge from each other, and to asymmetric polarization, in which one group (say a group centered on conspiracy theories) diverges rapidly from prior norms. And despite that chaos, we find some who claim, self-righteously, not to have taken sides, to be, in some sense, above the fray. I think here not only of Fox News’ preposterous claim to be “fair and balanced”, but also of the NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger’s recent assertion that he, and hence his newspaper, has “no interest in wading into politics.”

Elie Wiesel began his Nobel prize address, from which my title quotation is drawn, imagining a conversation with the child he had been, a child sucked into the bewildering terror of the holocaust. Here is a little more of the famous quote:

And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Wiesel can be read as suggesting that neutrality is not merely ill-advised, but impossible: everything we say reflects affinities and disaffinities with the groups who surround us, and even the silent implicitly take sides. Building on my recent book “The Politics of Language”, with Jason Stanley, I will explore the idea that there can be no true neutrality. The thought here is that language, far from being neutral, inevitably reflects social affinities and associated ideologies. On this view, supposing one’s speech to be neutral is not evidence of objectivity, but of failure to recognize the legitimacy of other perspectives. The archetype here is not national media, for which few people take the claim of neutrality seriously, but bureaucratic language, supposedly neutral speech which can be the ultimate tool of an autocratic oppressor, or of any large organization that has no direct interest in the well-being of those it interacts with. I will consider the processes that lead to extremes of speech and ideology, whether extremes to the left, extremes to the right, or, incongruously oxymoronic though the phrase may seem, extremes of neutrality.

Speaker: Johanna Alstott (MIT)
Title: On “very”-intensified superlatives
Time: Wednesday, September 11th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Existing literature treats “very” as a prototypical modifier of gradable adjectives (Wheeler 1972; Klein 1980; von Stechow 1984; Kennedy & McNally 2005, a.o.). Focusing on cases like “Sarah is very tall,” these accounts propose that “very” is a standard-booster: while “Al is tall” is true iff Al’s height meets the contextual standard, “Al is very tall” is true iff he meets a higher standard. This talk concerns a previously unanalyzed use of “very”: namely, the productive occurrence of “very” with superlatives (“the very best applicant,” “the very most important day of my life”). On the basis of data with plural superlatives, I propose that “very” in superlative DPs is the same as the “very” we see with positive forms. After arguing for this unified analysis, I show that past theories of “very” and “-est” cannot generate “very X-est.” To fix things, I give a new theory of “very” built on (a) a new theory of comparison classes; (b) Fitzgibbons et al.’s (2008) claim that “-est,” like the positive morpheme “pos,” invokes a standard-degree. The upshot is that “pos” and “-est” not only similarly invoke a standard but have a modifier in common.

Speaker: Adam Przepiorkowski (University of Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences, MIT)
Title: Towards a Minimalist Theory of Coordination
Time: Thursday, September 12th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: To say that linguists do not agree on the syntactic structure of coordination is to say very little. Are phrases such as Lisa and Bart endocentric or exocentric? If they are endocentric, are they headed by one of the conjuncts (e.g., Lisa), or by the conjunction (e.g., and)? If they are headed by the conjunction (Conj), is their category ConjP? Or is it perhaps the case that the conjunction takes over some of the features of – “agrees with” – one of the conjuncts, so that Lisa and Bart is effectively an NP rather than a ConjP? Each of these options is implemented in a number of linguistic analyses.

Existing accounts often ignore – or try to explain away – coordination of unlikes: unlike categories (e.g., Bart is a rascal and proud of it), unlike cases (in languages such as Polish), and unlike grammatical functions (e.g., What and when to eat to stay healthy?). In this talk, I’ll argue that direct coordination of unlikes is real and that it provides arguments for the essentially exocentric nature of coordination. I’ll also recall arguments for the flat structure of n-ary coordinations, such as Lisa, Bart, and Maggie. Taken together, these aspects of coordination provide evidence for the existence of a general – not just binary – SetMerge operation in language. I’ll offer some initial thoughts on the nature of this operation, to be more fully developed during my stay at MIT in the coming months.

Speaker: Christopher Legerme (MIT)
Title: Complementizers and Verb Fronting with Doubling in Haitian Creole
Time: Tuesday, September 10th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: For this Syntax Square, we will investigate the syntax of Haitian Creole and the interaction of the ki/ke complementizer alternation (1) with Verb Fronting with Doubling constructions (VFD, Glaude and Zribi-Hertz, 2012) (2). HC shows the following subject-object asymmetry where the form of the complementizer varies according to whether the subject or object undergoes wh-movement (Koopman, 1982; Law, 1995).

As we ease into the new academic year, here’s what some of us got up to this summer:

• May 21: Asherov, Fox and Katzir in Linguistics and Philosophy
  Alumnus and current postdoctoral associate Daniel Asherov (PhD ‘23) as well as current linguistics section head Danny Fox and Roni Katzir (PhD ‘08) have a new paper published in the journal Linguistics and Philosophy. The paper’s title is “Strengthening, exhaustification, and rational inference” and is available on open access here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10988-023-09406-0. Congratulations to the authors!
• May 28-30: Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 34) was hosted by the Linguistics department at the University of Rochester. MIT Linguistics was well-represented by current students and recent alums:
  • Ruoan Wang: Tiered honorification in Eastern Indo-Aryan: [HON]-less, and also presuppositionless
  • Yurika Aonuki: Comparatives and differential measure phrases without -er in Gitksan
  • Enrico Flor: Coarse modality with Italian magari 
  • Tamari Berulava (incoming PhD student) and Clemens Mayr: Bare plurals in articleless languages as weak definites
  • Vincent Rouillard (PhD, 2023; MIT post-doc 2023/24): A note on any and simplification
  • Tatiana Bondarenko (PhD, 2022): Javanese veridicality mismatches: Q-to-P reduction amid uniformity
  • Itai Bassi (PhD, 2021): Pathological questions, focus, and unacceptable ellipsis
  • Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (PhD, 2023), Enrico Flor (dissertating student): Quantification Uncovered
  • Andreea Nicolae, Aron Hirsch (PhD, 2017), Anamaria Falaus: Exceptives under negation: Strengthening the case for p-Exh
    
• May 28 & 29: David Pesetsky @ the Romanian Academy of Sciences
  At the beginning of the summer, David Pesetsky gave two talks at the Romanian Academy of Sciences.  On May 28, he gave a talk on the topic “Is there an LLM challenge for Linguistics?” to the Academy itself, and the next day he participated in a celebratory conference honoring the 75th anniversary of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy, with a talk on “Dissimilation: Shrinker of Clauses”.
• May 31: A number of recent PhDs received their diplomas and ceremonial hoods at MIT’s graduate commencement ceremony in May. Renewed congratulations to Christopher Yang, Daniel Asherov, Fulang Chen, Boer Fu, Vincent Rouillard, Cora Lesure, Peter Grishin, and Filipe de Salles Kobayashi! 
• June 4—6: The 27th International Symposium on Malay and Indonesian Linguistics (ISMIL 27) was organised by the National University of Singapore. Current students Omri Doron, Keely New, and Ruoan Wang gave presentations on their recent and ongoing field work on Jakarta Indonesian. The conference was co-organised by alum Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine (PhD, 2014). Almost as important as the conference was the delightful local cuisine, as pictured.
• 
• June 27 & 28: Workshop on Speech Act Related Operators at ZAS, Berlin
  This workshop, organized by Clemens Mayr and Tue Trinh (PhD ‘11), featured contributions by Kai von Fintel, Sabine Iatridou, Danny Fox, Shigeru Miyagawa, Omri Doron, Jad Wehbe, Keny Chatain (PhD ‘21), Uli Sauerland (PhD ‘98), Marie-Christine Meyer (PhD ‘13), Roni Katzir (‘08), and Luka Crnič (PhD ‘11).
• July 4: Fox & Katzir in Theoretical Linguistics
  A new paper on LLMs and linguistic cognition was published by our colleague Danny Fox and alum Roni Katzir (PhD ‘08) in the journal Theoretical Linguistics. The paper is entitled “Large Language Models and theoretical linguistics” and discusses the validity of LLMs as theories of human linguistic cognition. You can access the paper here: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/tl-2024-2005/html. Congratulations to Danny and Roni!
• July 13-26: CreteLing
  The 6th Crete Summer School of Linguistics took place in Rethymnon at the University of Crete campus. MIT’s Sabine Iatridou was a co-director and an organizing committee member. Sabine also co-taught a class on Polydefiniteness during Week 1 of the school. MIT Linguistics was also well-represented by a number of faculty and alumni who (co-)taught courses as well as graduate students who TAed for classes.
  - Adam Albright taught a course entitled Exceptions
  - Athulya Aravind co-taught a course entitled Language Acquisition: Developmental Issues in Semantics
  - Ora Matushansky (PhD’02) co-taught a course entitled Realizational Morphology and Pieces of Inflection
  - Kai von Fintel co-taught a course entitled Enough! The Linguistics of Sufficiency
  - Paul Kiparsky (PhD ‘65) co-taught a class entitled Language Change
  - David Pesetsky co-taught a class on Ellipsis with Kyle Johnson (PhD ‘86)
  - Shigeru Miyagawa co-taught a class on The Morpho-Syntax and Semantics of the Altaic Languages
  - Ezer Rasin (PhD ‘18 and current visiting professor) & Donca Steriade taught a class on Phonological Opacity and Grammar Architecture
  - Six current MIT Linguistics graduate students were TAs for classes during the school: Adéle Mortier, Bergül Soykan, Johanna Alstott, Bingzi Yu, James Cooper Roberts, and Hani Na’eem
• 
• August 10—19: Passamaquoddy field trip
  The MIT Passamaquoddy group went on a field trip to Maine from August 10-19. They worked with native speaker informants in Sipayik, Motahkomikuk, and Indian Township. Among said informants was MITILI alumnus Roger Paul. Below are some pictures.
  
• Michel DeGraff reports steady progress this summer on the English version of a book manuscript for MIT Press, now under review, with the working title: “Our Own Language: Linguistics and Education for Decolonization, Liberation and Nation-building in Haiti and Beyond”. Work on the Kreyòl version will start in the fall once the reviews are in. Michel also forwarded links to various articles and presentations of his, including a talk at the Collège de France (6/7/2024) and an Inside Higher Ed piece (6/13/2024).

Maša Močnik defended her dissertation (“Strange attitudes on top”) on August 5. Her committee was Kai von Fintel (chair), Amir Anvari, and Danny Fox. About her dissertation, Kai writes:  ”In her extraordinarily rich investigation, Maša analyzes the interaction of several kinds of attitude predicates with embedded modal operators (epistemic, bouletic). In the first chapter, she studies the Slovenian doxastic possibility attitude ‘dopuščati’ (which lexicalizes the meaning of “consider it possible”) and the distribution of epistemic modals in its complement. In the second chapter, she explores the distribution of expressions of epistemic modality in the complement of desire predicates. In the third chapter, she extends and deepens earlier joint work with Rafael Abramovitz on the Koryak attitude verb ‘ivək’ and how its variable force/variable flavor arises, sometimes in interaction with modal meanings in its complement. In all three chapters, she deploys a brilliant combination of insights from modal logic and its application to natural language, recent philosophical work on (local) information-sensitive modality, and detailed empirical investigations of multiple, unrelated languages.”

Congratulations Maša!!

On August 19th, Yeong-Joon Kim brilliantly and successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Phonetic faithfulness in phonological opacity”! Congratulations, Yeong-Joon!!

Here’s the abstract:

This dissertation presents a novel approach to phonological opacity, which is grounded in new findings regarding substantive restrictions on the patterns of opaque interactions. The central thesis posits that phonological opacity functions to preserve the phonetic properties specified in the input of a phonological operation. Specifically, it argues that inputs are enriched with phonetic auditory features, and surface opacity emerges as a result of processing these enriched inputs. This proposal can be detailed as follows. First, processes that become opaque are initially biased by certain phonetic markedness conditions. Second, these phonetic biases, encoded in the phonetically enriched inputs, are mapped onto the nearest phonologically contrastive sounds to satisfy the requirement of phonetic faithfulness, resulting in surface phonological opacity.
This hypothesis yields a testable prediction: only phonetically natural processes, which possess an appropriate phonetic markedness condition, can become opaque. The results of typological surveys of 87 counterfeeding and 65 counterbleeding interactions across languages support this prediction, revealing that opacified processes are subject to a narrow range of markedness conditions, such as coarticulatory assimilation (e.g., palatalization) and durational adjustments (e.g., segmental weakening). Other types of phonological processes, particularly non-natural ones, which are unlikely to have appropriate phonetic markedness conditions, are rarely, if ever, opacified. This asymmetry in the patterns of phonological opacity underscores that opaque interactions are not independent of phonetic substance.

In addition to this main finding, it is also shown that the current proposal offers additional advantages in explaining phonological opacity. First, it successfully accounts for various non-typical opaque interactions, such as feeding opacity and stress misapplications, alongside counterfeeding and counterbleeding interactions. The proposal also integrates various phonological phenomena, such as compensatory lengthening, coalescence, and incomplete neutralization, within the framework. Second, the proposed model suggests that learners can successfully acquire and reproduce opaque patterns. Learning simulations using a weighted constraint version of the proposed model demonstrate that intermediate hidden structures, such as phonetically enriched inputs, can be learned based solely on surface patterns when the mappings between abstract inputs and surface representations are known. This challenges the conventional notion that opaque patterns are more difficult to learn than transparent phonology.

Speaker: Marta Massaia (Utrecht University)
Title: Mapping the Left Periphery of Similarity construction in Germanic: Dutch dialects as case study
Time: Tuesday, May 14th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Similarity constructions in Germanic can be introduced by different elements that can be subsumed under four main types: like-, as-, so-, and how-elements. Especially in non-standard varieties, these elements can co-occur in what seems to be a strict order that holds cross-Germanically. I argue that this order can be explained if we take similative clauses to be prepositional relative clauses and these elements to be part of the head complex raising to the edge of the similative (in line with a raising analysis à la Kayne 1994). To support this idea, I will first provide data from a micro-comparative perspective (Dutch dialects), and then provide the meso-comparative perspective (English, Dutch, German, Swedish and Norwegian).

Speaker: Juan Cancel (MIT)
Title: A Lenition Approach to Consonant Gradation in Nganasan
Time: Monday, May 13th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Nganasan (Szeverényi, Várnai, and B. B. Wagner-Nagy 2002; Endrédy et al. 2010; B. Wagner-Nagy 2018) is a Samoyedic language which exhibits a set of alternations commonly described as “Consonant Gradation”. What distinguishes these alternations from alternations seen in other languages is the environments which control them: whether the consonant in question is the onset of an open or closed syllable, or whether the consonant in question is in foot-initial position or not. In this presentation, I will argue that by using an effort-based lenition approach (Kirchner 1998) and by taking into account some diachronic changes (Castrén 1855; Mikola and B. Wagner-Nagy 2004), we can 1) analyze the alternations as a case of lenition similar to similar cases seen in other languages, and 2) provide principled reasons as to why the alternations are the ones that we see. In the end, what really distinguishes Nganasan from other languages which exhibit lenition is the blocking of lenition in one particular environment.

Speaker: Ruoan Wang (MIT)
Title: Tiered honorification in Eastern Indo-Aryan
Time: Thursday, May 16th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Longstanding tradition in the literature uses [HON] to analyze tiered honorification systems of Indo-Aryan. This work explores an analysis outside that tradition, using Wang’s (2023) presuppositional account which does not make use of [HON]. I make a crucial modification to Wang (2023) and show how it can explain the diachronic and synchronic patterns of Indo-Aryan honorification.

This weekend, visiting Professor Jon Rawski gave invited talks at the CUNY Computational Linguistics Lecture Series, and the Workshop on Theoretical Phonology (WTPh) in Montreal.

Speaker: Charlie Yan (QMUL)
Title: On the locality profile of verb doubling in Mandarin Chinese
Time: Tuesday, May 7th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Within Mandarin Chinese root clauses, verb doubling effects are attested in either a clause-medial or clause-initial position (Cheng 2007; Meadows and Yan 2023; a.o.). I treat this contrast as VP-fronting to a lower or higher position in the clausal spine. Crucially, I show in this talk that cross-clausal VP-fronting to the lower, clause-medial position is only possible out of a limited class of complement clauses, unlike VP-fronting to the clausal periphery. I offer an approach to such movement restrictions based on the Williams Cycle (Williams 2003, 2013; Poole 2022), and predictions about VP-fronting across multiple levels of embedding.

Speaker: Xinyue Zhong (MIT)
Title: Tone sandhi in Mandarin-English bilingual speech
Time: Monday, May 6th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: When bilingual speakers mix languages in their speech, two phonologies come into contact in real time, which raises the question of how potential incompatibilities between the two phonologies are resolved. This study investigates one such potential incompatibility concerning how Mandarin-English bilinguals handle Mandarin tone sandhi when the trigger is a word in English. Existing research (Cheng 1968, Gao and Wu 2022) suggests that tone sandhi can be triggered by English words based on pitch similarity. Nevertheless, my previous experiment (2021) additionally showed that English consonant clusters can block tone sandhi in places where sandhi is expected to apply based on pitch similarity.

Two hypotheses were proposed to explain this blocking effect: 1) an “illusory” vowel or low tone is associated with consonant clusters (cf. Dupoux et al. 1999), which interferes with the expected pitch patterns, or 2) the fact that consonant clusters are banned in Mandarin phonotactics prevents English syllables with clusters from participating in Mandarin phonological processes. A new production experiment was conducted this semester where two Mandarin tone sandhis, the Tone 3 sandhi and the bu sandhi, are tested with select English words embedded in otherwise Mandarin sentences. The results showed that neither of the hypotheses is fully consistent with the patterns in speakers’ sandhi production under the assumption that English syllables receive Mandarin tones in the tested sentences. The findings so far suggest that closer inspection of the phonetic properties of the English syllable triggers is needed, and that we might need to adjust our assumptions about what conditions tone sandhi in Mandarin.

Speaker: Viola Schmitt (MIT/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Title: Possible worlds and ontological symmetry
Time: Thursday, May 9th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: The main point of this talk is a negative claim: I will argue that possible worlds differ from other objects via which construct meanings in terms (i) reference and (ii) plurality formation (i.e.., contra ontological symmetry, Schlenker 2006). Based on this claim, I will outline a puzzle, namely, why worlds should be constrained in this way and why — in the modal part of the language — quantification is seemingly dissociated from reference and plurality formation.

Speaker: Yosef Grodzinsky (The Hebrew University)
Title: High behavioral and neural selectivity in the processing of downward entailingness, and its theoretical implications
Time: Friday, May 10th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-141

Abstract: (with I-An Tan)

A 50-year-old discovery, that Downward Entailing (DE) operators incur greater processing costs than their Upward Entailing (UE) counterparts (Just & Carpenter, 1971; henceforth the Monotonicity Effect) led to a series of psycho- and neuro-linguistic studies. These explored the manner by which DE operators license Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). We took several steps: first, we conducted behavioral studies that showed that the Monotonicity Effect is highly robust and replicable, demonstrably independent from generic psychological factors such as word frequency, length, on-the-fly learning, delayed verification, and more (Deschamps et al., 2015; Agmon et al., 2023, passim). Second, an fMRI study localized the Monotonicity Effect anatomically in a small and neuroanatomically coherent region that is adjacent to, but excluding, the left hemispheric Brodmann Areas 44,45 (famously known as Broca’s region, Grodzinsky et al., 2020).

These studies served as backdrop against which we conducted our next investigation: Once the Monotonicity Effect was indexed behaviorally and anatomically, we could use these indices to determine the role of DE-operators as NPI licensors. NPI licensing conditions have long been debated, with syntactic and pragmatic factors weighing in. We conducted a series of behavioral studies with English and Hebrew speakers, hoping to obtain evidence for a precise characterization of these licensing conditions. We tested sentences with 2 DE operators, hosted in Homer’s (2020) flip-flop environments, and in a series of controls. To enable a coherent interpretation of our results, we defined a direct mapping from DE-domains to processing costs. We found that (i) the Monotonicity Effect is determined not by the number of DE operators, but rather, by the monotonicity of the minimal constituent in which they reside; and (ii) that DE-ness is not a property of operators, but of environments (Gajewsky, 2005; Tan et al., 2024).

Finally, we tested the same materials in fMRI (Tan et al., in prep.). Despite difficulties, we not only replicated previous results, but also, provided a new perspective on the neural bases of DE-ness. We show how our results bear directly on the current debate about the nature of monotonicity, and conclude with some speculations about the cognitive functions of the new brain area our studies uncovered.

Speaker: James Cooper Roberts (MIT)
Title: A Kalinian perspective on internal reduplication and its consequences
Time: Thursday, May 2nd, 5pm - 6pm
Location: 32-D769

Abstract: The true identity of infixes was a topic of much speculation in some corners of morphology. However, it was not until Kalin (2022) that we saw any hard evidence to inform an analysis. Considering cross-linguistic evidence from allomorphy, Kalin concludes that infixes are indeed (underlyingly) prefixes or suffixes. That is, infixes begin their lives at the edge of the root and are pushed to their pivot inside of the root. In her eyes, infixation is a finely timed process where exponent choice must precede infixation, which in turn must precede prosodification.

Kalin’s proposal is an exciting one, but there is one noteworthy gap in her proposal. In a Distributed Morphology framework, reduplication is accomplished by a special morpheme often glossed as RED. This morpheme is phonemically underspecified, instead consisting of a set of copying instructions which duplicate segments from a root. If we assume that internal reduplication is likewise a case of infixation, and RED enters the morphosyntax the same way any other morpheme does, when does this copying occur? Furthermore, is this order universal, or is there variation cross-linguistically? In a survey of genetically-diverse languages, Roberts (2023) finds that there is in fact cross-linguistic variation on when reduplication occurs relative to infixation. From this perspective, local internal reduplication can be thought of as a case where copying happens after infixation, and non-local internal reduplication is a case where copying happens before infixation.

However, proponents of Optimality Theory and related phonological frameworks may take issue with the assumptions of Roberts (2023) and Kalin (2022). For one, there is good reason to conclude that infixation is at least sometimes the result of phonological optimization rather than an arbitrary morphological process (e.g., McCarthy (2003)). Furthermore, reduplication can be thought of simply in terms of a correspondence between an output and itself. In a constraint-based framework, the facts of internal reduplication as they currently stand can be analyzed with independently-motivated constraints. Ergo, critics may rightfully wonder whether the theoretical machinery employed in Roberts (2023) (time of reduplication, “direction” of copying, etc.) is really necessary to account for the data.

In this presentation, I discuss these competing analyses in detail. I begin with an overview of Kalin (2022) and a detailed summary of Roberts (2023). I then discuss the analytical cost of such an approach to internal reduplication, and what we gain from it. This is followed by a summary of OT approaches to infixation and reduplication as both separate and combined phenomena, and I conclude with a discussion on the predictions of the two theories and how future work could inform the debate.

Speaker: Gianluca Porta (Ulster University)
Title: Causing extraction
Time: Tuesday, April 30th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: A well-known distinction between arguments and adjuncts is that only the former allow extraction. A number of reasons for the island status of adjuncts have been proposed (e.g. Haung’s (1982) CED). Recent experimental studies challenged the categorical island status of adjuncts. In this talk I will present data that suggest that there can be extraction from them, and I will propose a theory to account for the data. I will show that an adjunct becomes transparent when there is a relationship of causation between the adjunct (the causing event) and the matrix clause (the caused event). I will apply this theory to two types of adjuncts: English temporal clauses and purpose clauses. While these clauses differ in a number of ways, they offer similar insights w.r.t. to what makes an adjunct transparent.

Speaker: Jon Rawski (MIT) and Zhouyi Sun (MIT)
Title: Tensor Product Representations of Phonological Constraints and Transformations
Time: Monday, April 29th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: A crowning achievement of connectionist modeling in phonology embedded symbolic structures using tensors as an intermediary to neural computation, and used optimization over such structures to compute well-formedness (a la OT, HG, etc). However, there has been considerable difficulty restricting these models to match the upper computational bounds of phonology (regular languages and functions) since almost every constraint-interaction formalism computes supra-regular patterns with ease, and many are either Turing complete or uncomputable. We will discuss our recent attempt to circumvent this gap, by directly embedding both (sub)regular constraints and transformations into the tensor calculus used by constraint-interaction models. We will use finite model theory to characterize objects like strings, trees, graphs, and even input-output pairs as relational structures. Logical statements meeting certain criteria over these models define various classes of constraints and transformations. The semantics of such statements can be compiled into tensors, using multilinear maps as function application for evaluation. We show how this works for varieties of First-order and Monadic Second-Order definable constraints and transformations, and compare to previous work on correspondence constraints using model theory.

Speaker: Tanya Bondarenko (Harvard)
Title: TBA
Time: Thursday, May 2nd, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: TBA

This past weekend, April 26-28, the 27th Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas (WSCLA 27) was hosted at the University of Toronto. Several current and former MIT linguists presented at the conference:

• Peter Grishin (Postdoc, PhD 2023): The Syntax and Semantics of Passamaquoddy-Wolastoqey modals
• Line Mikkelsen, Emily Clem, Michelle Yuan (PhD 2018), and Ellen Thrane (unaffiliated): Apparent Cross-Clausal Agreement with Obliques in Kalaallisut is Prolepsis
• James Crippen (McGill) and Jessica Coon (PhD 2010): Linguistics for Indigenous Language Study: A Course in Development
  Marta Donazzan, Hamida Demirdache (PhD 1991), Ana Lucia Müller, and Hongyuan Sun: On the Interpretation and Analysis of Covert Tense: Evidence from Karitiana

Speaker: Isabella Senturia (Yale)
Title: On the Spectra of Syntactic Structures
Time: Tuesday, April 23rd, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: This talk explores the application of spectral graph theory to the problem of characterizing linguistically significant classes of tree structures. As a case study, we focus on three classes of trees, binary, X-bar, and asymmetric c-command extensional, as well as different types of syntactic movement, and show that the spectral properties of different matrix representations of these classes of trees provide insight into the properties that characterize these classes. More generally, our goal is to provide another route to understanding the structure of natural language, one that does not come from extensive definitions and rules taken by extrapolating from the syntactic structure, but instead is extracted directly from computation on the syntactically-defined graphical structures. We also discuss implications of this work for generative capacity and for the Minimalist program.

Speaker: Logan Swanson (Stony Brook)
Title: Phonotactic Learning with Abductive Principles
Time: Monday, April 22nd, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: A foundational learning problem in phonology is phonotactics: discovering the constraints which govern what configurations of sounds are licit in a particular language. These constraints are generally formulated over some kind of substructure, which could be segmental, feature-based, or autosegmental. These substructures form a partial order, with simpler structures contained within more complex ones.

In this talk I will present the Bottom-Up Factor Inference Algorithm (BUFIA), an algorithm which leverages this underlying structure to learn surface-true phonotactic constraints from positive data (Chandlee et al., 2019). In this sense, BUFIA offers a general form for phonotactic learning, since it can operate over any choice of representation and use any abductive principle to decide when to add constraints. While Rawski (2021) examined several possible constraint selection principles, my work has shown additional kinds of abductive pressures that can guide the search, including execution of the search path itself in addition to other constraint selection criteria.

I will discuss how the BUFIA framework provides insight into the impact of these factors on learning, and give a demo of the software implementation.

Speaker: Yiyang Guo (University of Cambridge/Harvard University)
Title: Event counting, eventuality, and aspect
Time: Thursday, April 25th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Counting in the domain of events can exhibit a two-level nesting structure, i.e., the event level and the occasion level (Cusic 1981), as illustrated by the use of stacked time-adverbials in English (Andrews 1983; Ernst 1994; Cinque 1999) and two types of verbal classifiers in Mandarin Chinese (Deng 2013; Donazzan 2013; Zhang 2017). In Mandarin Chinese, event counting interacts with eventuality types and aspect. In this talk, I will provide two main observations:

(i) Countability of events hinges on eventuality types. Specifically, statives cannot be counted, activities allow counting at both the occasion level and the event level, while achievements and accomplishments can only be counted at the occasion level.

(ii) Counting expressions display difference in their compatibility with aspect. They are incompatible with the progressive marker -zhe, compatible with the perfective marker -le, but non-uniformly compatible with the experiential perfect marker -guo.

To account for the distribution of counting expressions, I will propose an atom-based analysis of event-counting (cf. Bach 1986; Krifka 1989; Landman 2006) under the framework of neo-Davidsonian event semantics (Parsons 1990; Carlson 1984; a.o.).

Speaker: Juan Cancel (MIT)
Title: Unexpected Syncretisms: A Look at the Nganasan Case and Subjective Agreement Paradigms
Time: Thursday, April 18th, 5pm - 6pm
Location: 32-D769

Abstract: Nganasan (Szeverényi, Várnai, and B. B. Wagner-Nagy 2002, B. Wagner-Nagy 2018) seems to have a near-exact, cross-paradigmatic syncretism between the NOM exponents of the Case Paradigm and 3rd Person exponents of the Subjective Agreement (The relevant syncretic exponents are highlighted):

Nganasan (Reduced) Case Paradigm
(B. Wagner-Nagy 2018, pg.191-193)

Nganasan Subjective Agreement Paradigm:
(B. Wagner-Nagy 2018, pg.229)

*In the grammar, ACC.DU and GEN.DU have a “ghost” consonant at the end.

I will argue for the following three things:

1) NOM.DU /-Kəj/ and 3rd.DU /-gəj/ are in fact the same exponent, meaning that we can argue that NUM is the morphosyntactic feature behind the syncretism and that there is no contextual allomorphy (Bonet & Harbour 2012) between nominal and verbal stems in the CONTEXT of NOM and 3SG.

2) The apparent syncretism between NOM.SG, ACC.SG and GEN.SG /-∅/ is superficial in nature since phonological phenomena such as Syllabic Gradation and Epenthesis clearly distinguish word-paradigms involving NOM.SG /-∅/ from word-paradigms involving ACC.SG and GEN.SG /-∅/.

3) The apparent syncretism between NOM.PL and GEN.PL /-ʔ/ is also superficial for similar reasons, but in light of the typology of epenthesis and vowel harmony (Finley 2008), GEN.PL /-ʔ/ is better understood as being /-Vʔ/, where V is a vowel that participates in vowel harmony.

Finally, one can see similar syncretisms in the Case and Subjective Agreement Paradigms of Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014, pg. 57, 59, 61, 78) and Forest Enets (Siegl 2013, pg. 121-124), suggesting that this cross-paradigmatic syncretism is more widespread in the Samoyedic language family.

Speaker: Janayna Carvalho (UFMG)
Title: Generic null impersonals in Brazilian Portuguese and structure removal
Time: Tuesday, April 16th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this presentation, I explore some sentential properties of generic null impersonals in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In particular, I look for an explanation for two of their properties: a) their restricted modal readings; b) their apparent ban on sequence of tense readings. I argue that these two disparate properties are due to the removal of part of the functional sequence of these clauses, due to a conflict between two probes – C and T – that could potentially value the external argument in these sentences.

Speaker: Sarah Payne (Stony Brook University)
Title: Marginal Sequences as a Window into Phonotactic Acquisition
Time: Thursday, April 18th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Most current theories of phonotactic learning (e.g., Hayes & Wilson 2008, Chandlee et al. 2019) assume a close relationship between attestation and licitness. Under such accounts, a sequence is licit only if its subcomponents (e.g., sequences of phones or feature bundles) are all attested in the input; illicit sequences are thus those that contain some unattested subcomponent. Under such theories, however, what is the status of marginal sequences (e.g., English ?[#sf])? Constraint-based views posit that marginal sequences are illicit but attested, making them an exceptional subclass of illicit sequences. However, marginal sequences pattern much more closely with licit sequences than illicit ones in terms of repairs in borrowings and in terms of production and perception errors, suggesting that they may instead be an exceptional subclass of licit forms. I argue for a theory of the phonotactic grammar in which attested sequences are divided into productive/licit ones and unproductive/marginal ones. I present a syllable-based computational learning model that learns a binary classification of attested forms into marginal or licit. When evaluated on English complex onsets, I show that this model matches well with human judgments, outperforming the model of Hayes & Wilson (2008) while accounting for the unique behavior of marginal sound sequences.

Speaker: Shrayana Haldar (MIT)
Title:Fixing Engdahl’s Type-Shifter and Heim’s Unary Which
Time: Wednesday, April 10th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Engdahl’s (1986) account of functional readings of sentences like (1) involved having the pronoun herself bound upstairs by a covert binder E, given in (2), while having a totally impoverished trace (i.e., just “t”, without any restrictor) with a complex index; that is, “tf(x) “. The E operator also does the job of shifting the restrictor to type ⟨ee, t⟩, without which the functional reading wouldn’t be possible. Heim (2019) pointed out that having the pronoun bound upstairs like this cannot derive ϕ-feature agreement between the pronoun and the antecedent quantifier, in this case, no girl, and binding theoretic effects like *Which picture of herself1 did no girl’s1 father submit?. Motivated by this reason, she proposed to have an LF like the one in (3), where which is unary (because it attaches directly and only to the question skeleton) and polymorphic (because it needs to be able to quantify over ⟨e, e⟩-type functions). Moreover, she proposed to have the whole restrictor picture of herself is in situ, getting syntactically bound by no girl, thereby avoiding the ϕ-featural and Binding Theoretic issues.

Speaker: Dóra Takács (MIT)
Title: Vowel-zero alternations in Hungarian
Time: Monday, April 8th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: There are a closed class of about 500 stems in Hungarian that are subject to vowel-zero alternations if they are followed by a potentially vowel-initial suffix (Siptár & Törkenczy 2000). Early proposals (Vago 1980, Törkenczy 1992, Siptár & Törkenczy 2000, Abrusan 2005) mostly focused on whether this process is a result of epenthesis, metathesis or syncope . Some patterns among the consonants in these exceptional stems have been previously noted in the literature, but these observations were not integrated in the previous analyses. In this talk I show how stem-internal vowel-zero alternation in Hungarian interacts with voicing assimilation, affrication and gemination and use these interactions to support the claim that this process is in fact a result of syncope.

On Friday, 22 March 2024, James Cooper Roberts (first year student) presented his work on a computational investigation of the productivity of medials in Passamaquoddy at the Seventh Workshop on Computational Methods for Endangered Languages (ComputEL-7). This workshop was colocated with 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2024) in St. Julian’s, Malta.

Speaker: Stanislao Zompì (Universität Potsdam) and Zhouyi Sun (MIT)
Title: *ABA in Multidimensional Paradigms: A Harmonic Grammar-based account
Time: Monday, April 1st, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In piece-based and realizational models of morphology, a fundamental question concerns the assignment and conditioning of phonological content to morphemes represented as feature bundles. This talk shows the limitations of Underspecification (Halle 1997; Bobaljik 2012) and Overspecification (Caha 2009; Starke 2009) approaches (henceforth US and OS) in deriving ABA patterns of contextual allomorphy in multidimensional paradigms (Christopoulos & Zompì 2022; Caha 2023). Our proposal essentially combines US and OS (cf. Ackema & Neeleman 2005; Wolf 2008; Müller 2020) and equates exponent choice to finding the ‘shortest path’ for each feature bundle to a legitimate exponent under a Harmonic Grammar framework. We further discuss the typology of ABA patterns of root suppletion and show that the proposed model makes appropriate restrictions on accidental homophony and derives the correct typology. Lastly, we suggest that our proposal yields output-driven maps in the sense of Tesar (2014), which boosts the learning of morphological paradigms.

Speaker: Fangning Ren (University of Cambridge)
Title: Approaching Mandarin wh-topicalization/focalization: D-linking effect
Time: Tuesday, April 2nd, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: This talk mainly provides two findings and the proposed analyses: (i) To form a content question, Mandarin ex-situ wh-nominals are invariably D-linked (Pesetsky 1987), whereas all wh-nominals can stay in situ regardless of their D-linking status; (ii) Mandarin wh-ex-situ creates both gapped dependencies and resumptive dependencies, with the former showing A’ diagnostics not the latter. Comparing three types of Mandarin wh-nominals: which-complexes, what-complexes and the what-simplex, I propose their varying degrees of D-linkability (in a morphosyntactic sense) are determined by their ability to realize the higher D head in a split-DP structure, which maps to the discourse (Roberts 2001, Guardiano 2012; Roberts 2017). In terms of the syntactic nature of the two dependencies created by Mandarin wh-nominal reordering, I argue that the resumptive one involves a base-generated wh-hanging-topic that introduces a null copular construction containing a reduced co-varying restrictive-relative head (Safir 1986, Kallulli 2012), whereas the gapped one involves wh-focus-movement. This is corroborated by the asymmetry they show in terms of parasitic-gap licensing, CNPC sensitivity, and the WCO effect.

Speaker: Yurika Aonuki (MIT)
Title: Minimum-standard predicates as resultatives and measure phrase interpretations
Time: Wednesday, April 3rd, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this practice talk for WCCFL, I will propose a compositional analysis of verbal predicates in Japanese that have been treated as minimum-standard gradable adjectives (GAs) (e.g., Kubota 2011; Sawada and Grano 2011). I demonstrate that the verbs in these predicates are inchoative-state verbs (Kiyota 2008) and argue that their GA-like behaviours provide novel empirical support for a state-based analysis of GAs (Wellwood 2015).

What have been treated as minimum-standard GAs, e.g., katamui-tei- ‘tilted’, allow absolute MPs (1). This property, in contrast with the lack of absolute MP readings with relative GAs (2), has played a major role in Japanese degree semantics.

(1) Poster-ga 5mm katamui-tei-ru poster-nom 5mm tilt-tei-npst ‘The poster is 5mm tilted.’ (2) Kono ki-wa 8m taka-i this tree-top 8m tall-npst ‘This tree is 8m taller.’ *‘..8m tall.’

However, these minimum GA-like predicates are morphologically Verb + aspectual marker -tei- (Oda 2008). I present the first compositional analysis of (1) in which the MP measures a result state.

Speaker: Heidi Duressi (MIT)
Title:An analysis of the Albanian verbal paradigm with with multiple exponence and paradigm contrast
Time: Monday, April 1st, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: Albanian verbs are typically analyzed to be broadly split into 2 categories: those with roots ending in vowels (Class 1) and those with roots ending in consonants (Class 2) (Newmark, Hubbard, & Prifti 1982; Camaj, 1984). There are certain segments (alternating between j and n) that are present in the indicative present forms of some verbs in Class 1, but not those of Class 2. There have been attempts at further characterizing these alternations (Trommer 2013) but there is no complete explanation of why they surface in the person/number combinations that they do. The goal of this talk is: 1) to present an analysis of this phenomenon, which combines ideas of multiple exponence, as suggested and used by (Matthews, 1974; Müller, 2006; Müller & Trommer, 2007), with paradigm contrast (Rebrus & Törkenczy, 2005; Hall, 2007) and 2) to explore the implications of this analysis for the general Albanian verbal paradigm.

Speaker: Noa Bassel (UMass)
Title: Complex anaphors
Time: Thursday, April 4th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Anaphors with a complex morphological structure are attested across many different languages and show recurring traits in meaning and distribution. Despite extensive research into these phenomena, there is no broadly-accepted definition of the primary grammatical function(s) of complex anaphors. This talk will evaluate various definitions from previous literature, with the goal of defining complex anaphors in a way that would explain their cross-linguistic properties: morphological complexity, binding effects, and homophony with focus-intensifiers (e.g., The queen HERSELF came to our party).

Speaker: Amanda Rysling (UC Santa Cruz)
Title: What it takes to comprehend (a) focus
Time: Friday, April 5th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-141

Abstract: Over the past half-century, psycholinguistic studies of linguistic focus have found that comprehenders preferentially attend to focused material and process it more “deeply” or “effortfully” than non-focused material. But psycholinguists have investigated only a limited subset of focus constructions, and we have not come to an understanding of how costly focus is to process, what factors govern that cost, or why the language comprehension system behaves in the way that it does, and not others. In this talk, I discuss the problem for language comprehenders presented by the category of focus, and present evidence that focus processing is generally costly, but this cost can be attenuated by the presence of contrastive alternatives to a focus in the context before that upcoming focus. Evidence from the processing of second-occurrence foci demonstrates that comprehenders seem to work harder than our general models of sentence processing would posit that they should in comprehending given focused material. These findings add to our understanding of what it means to be good enough or efficient in language processing, delineating conditions under which comprehenders do (not) find apparently important material to be worth processing deeply or effortfully.

Speaker: Keely New (MIT)
Title: There’s no deletion in meN-deletion
Time: Tuesday, March 19th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In Indonesian/Malay, there is an optional verbal prefix meN- which is widely taken to be the subject voice marker since it correlates with subject voice SVO word order, and when it is present, only the subject may be A’-extracted. In object voice OSV word order, meN- is obligatorily absent, and only the object may be A’-extracted. The well-known “meN-deletion” generalisation is, therefore, that movement of the object over the verb in Indonesian/Malay results in deletion of meN (Saddy 1991, Fortin 2006, Aldridge 2008, Cole et al. 2008, Sato 2012, Georgi 2014 among others). Under such a perspective, the optional absence of meN- in subject voice is derived from a separate process from the obligatory absence of meN in object voice. Most analyses remain silent on the optionality of meN in subject voice. In this talk, I argue against a view where “meN-deletion” is triggered by movement of a DP across the verb. Drawing from data in Jakartan Indonesian, I propose that the choice between flavours of functional Voice/v head is one-to-one with the overt presence/absence of meN- prefix on the verb. In doing so, I argue that word order in Indonesian/Malay is but an epiphenomenal correlate of voice in the language.

Speaker: Lorenzo Pinton (MIT)
Title: Exclusive disjunction in bilateral logic: Hurford Disjunctions as evidence for split connectives in natural language
Time: Wednesday, March 20th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: “Disjoint Hurford Disjunctions” (DHD; Amir Anvari, p.c.) are a novel class of examples of deviant disjunctions that resemble Standard Hurford Disjunctions (SHD; Hurford, 1974), but don’t present any classical entailment (or overlap) relation between the two disjuncts:

(1) SHD: # John lives in Paris, or he lives in France.

(after Hurford, 1974)

(2) DHD: # John lives in Paris and he’s married, or he lives in France and he’s single.

(Amir Anvari, p.c.))

In order to unify (1) and (2) under the ‘Hurford disjunction’ label, we have to make certain assumptions about how conjunction and disjunction work, and examples like (2) might therefore be particularly revealing of what type of logic is at play in language and reasoning. In this talk I will extend Bilateral State-based Modal Logic (BSML) from Aloni (2022) with an exclusive disjunction (ED). ED will be “classically” defined as supporting the disjunction of its disjuncts and rejecting their conjunction. Crucially, in BSML, supported disjuncts and rejected conjuncts are defined in a split way, and have therefore an ‘independent life’ from one another (for instance, to reject (A ⋀ B) you need to be able to reject A and B independently). I will claim that ED - implemented in a system that rules out zero models by default (i.e. BSML* from Aloni, 2022) - is a better predictor of assertability conditions of disjunction in natural language compared to both the classical logic and the standard BSML definitions of disjunction. First, equipping BSML* with ED provides a unified and direct semantic explanation to both standard Hurford Disjunctions and “Disjoint Hurford Disjunctions”. Second, ED yields the correct ‘uniqueness’ interpretation for sentences with multiple disjuncts, which has been a major challenge for past proposals of natural language disjunction as inherently exclusive. I will conclude the talk with possible challenges to the present system by showing that (i) conjunctions are not always split and we need a device to capture these cases (possibly along the lines of subject matter, from Truthmaker semantics (Fine, 2017)) and that (ii) assuming ED as the standard meaning for disjunction actually clashes with some results in Aloni (2022) (wide scope free choice) and Degano et al. (2023) (absence of exclusivity in production tasks). Time permitting, I will briefly sketch in-progress solutions to solve the conflicts.

Speaker: Yeong-Joon Kim (MIT)
Title: Overapplication opacity as a consequence of phonetic faithfulness
Time: Monday, March 18th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: This study contributes to the understanding of opacity by identifying substantive restrictions on counterbleeding interactions and proposing a novel analysis tied to these typological generalizations. A typological survey of counterbleeding-on-environment instances reveals an asymmetry in the types of opaque processes involved, with assimilation and consonant-induced vowel processes being the most common. A novel account of phonological opacity is suggested to deal with this asymmetrical distribution of the opacified processes. The basic idea for explaining this observed asymmetry is that most opaque interactions have a functional rationale, that of preserving phonetic properties of lexical entries (e.g., Flemming 2008). The approach can also account for overapplication opacity in feeding interactions, such as self-destructive feeding in Japanese, which is problematic for classical Optimality Theory.

Speaker: Ksenia Ershova (MIT) and Nikita Bezrukov (UPenn)
Title: Moving away from antilocality: A defense of very local movement
Time: Thursday, March 21st, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Most syntactic research assumes that syntactic dependencies are subject to locality constraints: agreement and movement cannot cross certain elements (bounding nodes, phase boundaries, elements which bear the same features, etc.). A growing body of work also argues that there are antilocality constraints which impose a lower bound on syntactic dependencies – movement, and perhaps Agree, must cross a certain type of boundary. Focusing primarily on Spec-to-Spec Antilocality (Erlewine 2016 et seq.), which states that movement from Spec,XP “must cross a maximal projection other than XP”, we argue that such constraints are unlikely to be part of Universal Grammar. The argument is three-fold. First, we briefly discuss the trajectory of antilocality theories and argue that they were originally proposed as responses to theoretical idiosyncrasies which don’t extend beyond the frameworks that they are couched in. Second, we focus on one of the most discussed empirical motivations for antilocality theories – constraints on subject extraction – and suggest that this data can be analyzed in other ways, while antilocality approaches fall short in explaining the patterns. And finally, we present a case study of possessor relativization in West Circassian which demonstrates that Spec-to-Spec Antilocality makes the wrong empirical prediction: very local movement exists.

Speaker: Shota Momma (UMass Amherst)
Title: A theory of structure building in speaking
Time: Tuesday, March 12th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Partly due to our free will, our ability to produce sentences is notoriously hard to study. Existing theories of sentence production are not very good at capturing how speakers assemble structurally complex sentences that involve syntactically interesting phenomena. In this talk, I attempt to fill this gap by developing a theory of sentence production that integrates well with theories of syntax. This model aims to capture the production of sentences involving various syntactic phenomena, including raising, control, and wh-movement dependencies, and suggests a close parallelism between locality domain for syntactic computations and planning units in sentence production. The proposed theory makes counter-intuitive predictions about the time-course of sentence formulation as well as one of the most well-studied phenomena in sentence production: structural priming. I present experimental evidence confirming those predictions.

Speaker: Caroline Heycock (University of Edinburgh) & Elise Newman (MIT)
Title: When to revisit? investigating (un)ambiguity in temporal clauses
Time: Wednesday, March 13th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Ever since the seminal work of Geis in the 1970s, it has been known that temporal adverbial clauses in English (and a number of other languages) show the same kind of ambiguities as also observed in wh-questions and (even more relevantly) relative clauses, so that a sentence like “She arrived just when I predicted she would arrive” can mean either that her arrival coincided with my act of predicting, or with the time given in the prediction. This follows fairly directly from an analysis of such temporal adverbial clauses as a type of free relative clause denoting a definite description of a time, which can be formed syntactically by A’-movement of a temporal operator, or whatever analysis is given to such long-distance dependencies. Here we’d like to report on joint work in progress (Caroline Heycock, Elise Newman, Rob Truswell) where we investigating cases of temporal clauses where long-distance movement seems to be either excluded or at the least heavily disfavoured, and exploring the possibility that the data motivate a distinction between temporal clauses that are descriptions of time intervals and those that are descriptions of events.

Speaker: Levi Driscoll
Title: Ludika: Playing with Feet
Time: Monday, March 11th, 5pm - 6:30pm
Location: 32-D831

Abstract: We present a description and formal analysis of a novel English-based ludling called Ludika. Starting from clear cases with direct cues to foot structure, we argue that meaningless bits are affixed to the right edge of surface English feet in Ludika. We then use Ludika as a diagnostic of foot structure in more ambiguous contexts such as initial stressless light syllables (po‘tato). Evidence from Ludika aligns with Kiparsky’s (1979) characterization of these initial stressless syllables as unstressed degenerate feet, rather than syllables adjoined to feet in a recursive structure (Jensen 2000, Davis & Cho 2003, Kager 2012) or stray syllables (Ito & Mester 2009). We also leverage phrasal data to illustrate that function words in phrases behave just like feet elsewhere in Ludika, suggesting that they are neither stray syllables in phonological phrases (Selkirk 1996) nor syllables adjoined to content words as part of a recursive prosodic word structure.

Speaker: Rajesh Bhatt (UMass Amherst)
Title: A blocking effect in Hindi-Urdu
Time: Friday, March 15th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-141

Abstract: In this talk, I will present a blocking effect in Hindi-Urdu that could be characterized as Poser blocking, namely a word winning over a phrase. This blocking arises in the context of deverbal adjectives and its analysis has implications for the representation of adjectives as a syntactic category and the structure of verbal derivations in Hindi-Urdu.

Many languages have specialized morphology that can verbalize adjectives. In English, for example, -en can combine with a number of adjectives (e.g. flatten, redden). Hindi-Urdu lacks verbalizing morphology of this sort but it has another device that allows for productive verbalization of adjectives. This very productive device involves the light verbs ho ‘be’ and kar ‘do’. There is, however, a restriction on the application of this very productive device: the class of deverbal adjectives cannot be verbalized via the light verb strategy. I propose that we can see verbalization as being blocked by the existence of equivalent lexical verbs; hence the characterization in terms of Poser blocking.

However I do not derive this effect by appealing to the notion of Poser blocking as a primitive. Instead I explore a derivational system where the `blocked’ cases are simply not derived; instead the derivational process delivers the corresponding lexical verbs. The derivational system I set up has a surprising feature: a semantically contentless categorizing head needs to be treated as a last resort element that is inserted countercyclically.

Phonology Circle will meet on March 4, 5-6.30pm, in the 8th floor conference room for a logistical meeting. Be there or be square!

On February 22, 2024, our fifth-year grad student Ido Benbaji-Elhadad gave an invited talk at the interdisciplinary colloquia series organized by the Linguistics Department at Tel Aviv University. 

Title: Specific-opaque readings and the temporal interpretation of noun phrases

Abstract: Szabó (2010,2011) argues that in addition to their de dicto, de re and third readings, DPs in intensional contexts can have a fourth, specific-opaque reading in which their determiner scopes above an intensional operator while their restrictor is nevertheless interpreted opaquely, in the intensional environment created by the operator. Szabó provides examples of specific-opaque readings relative to the three main intensional operators, namely, attitudes, modals and tense, as evidence that natural language makes available a general, unrestricted mechanism to derive such “split” readings for DPs in intensional environments. We focus on specific-opaque readings relative to modals and tense and show that neither supports that conclusion; i.e., that both are restricted in meaningful ways and should be derived without a general mechanism. The discussion serves to highlight the ways in which modal and temporal operators differ with respect to the availability of the specific-opaque reading for DPs in the intensional environments that they create, providing new evidence that worlds and times differ in the kind of mechanisms that introduce them to the semantic composition.

Speaker: Heidi Harley (University of Arizona)
Title: Object drop, intention, and event individuation (joint work with Raffaella Folli)
Time: Friday, March 8th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-141

Abstract: We introduce a pattern of interaction between object drop and the animacy of the external argument in English, particularly with verbs of contact. Object drop produces an agentivity/animacy constraint on the newly intransitive verb, which doesn’t exist in the transitive equivalent. Compare John pushed the car to the curb and The glacier pushed the boulder to the sea. The former, but not the latter, allows for object drop: At the signal, John pushed! vs #In winter, the glacier pushed.

Our analysis follows Martí 2015, according to which object drop instantiates noun incorporation of a null indefinite N. As with all noun incorporation, this tends to yield a ‘conventionalized’ denotation for the VP—compare Michael lifted the glass with Michael lifted.

In both object drop and (overt) noun incorporation contexts, the denotation of the object nominal is nonreferential—no object participant in the verbal event is introduced. Instead, the object nominal is integrated into the predicate denotation via some flavor of predicate restriction or predicate modification (Chung & Ladusaw 2004, e.g.) We contend that the absence of an event participant creates a challenge for the application of the predicate by the speaker. A predicate which has been subject to object drop or noun incorporation, then, lacking an event participant, does not pick out the same class of events that the transitive verbal predicate does. Instead, we contend, intentionality is recruited to derive the sortal content of the verbal predicate. Martin 2015 showed that an agent’s intention by itself can constitute aa so-called “indicative property”, providing enough individuating properties to license the application of a change-of-state predicate in nonculminating contexts even when the change of state encoded by the verb has not yet begun to occur. Without an intentional agent, she shows, such ‘Zero-CoS’ readings of telic predicates are unavailable, since no indicative properties which can identify the ongoing event as an instance of the predicate exist until the CoS actually begins to occur. Intentions, then, can identify events even when ‘normal’ event identification criteria, such as the configuration of participants or the existence of a CoS, do not apply. This, we propose, is why the subjects of such predicates have to be (intentional) Agents—it’s because without intention, the indicative properties necessary for application of the predicate cannot be identified. This also lets us understand why object drop contexts so often produce such specialized ‘conventionalized community activity’ readings—it’s a subcase of the wider case where simply intending to execute an action of a particular type yields enough indicative properties to license predication. We term this effect the ‘Goal Oriented Condition’ on object drop. This condition on event individuation in turn constrains the types of subject argument that are compatible with object drop contexts, since external arguments must be ‘teleologically capable’ of executing the event type denoted by the predicate. In the case of intentionally individuated event types, the only kind of external argument that has the relevant teleological properties are animate Agents.

Over the weekend, the linguistics department at UMass Amherst hosted the annual ECO-5 workshop. ECO-5 is a workshop for graduate students of five departments on the East Coast (UMass, Harvard, UConn, UMD, MIT) to present work in progress to each other. This year, MIT was represented by two second-year graduate students, Zachary Feldcamp and Bergül Soykan:

• Zachary Feldcamp: Evidence for low base-generation of PP in locative inversion
• Bergül Soykan: Plural Marked Interrogatives in Turkish

Our MITILI student Rani Ukhengching Marma was recently featured on 7000.org for International Mother Language Day. The feature highlights the important work that Ukheng is doing to preserve and protect her native language Marma. Some of this work is ongoing right now as part of her MA thesis work, but Ukheng also shares about her commitment to language and cultural preservation beyond the dissertation. Read more here: https://www.7000.org/post/our-global-community

Speaker: Christopher Legerme (MIT)
Title: Movement Dependencies and Existential HAVE constructions in Haitian Creole
Time: Tuesday, February 27th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: For this upcoming Syntax Square, I will be presenting content from two papers which are relevant for an unresolved puzzle of Haitian Creole syntax: 1. Takahashi and Gracanin-Yuksek’s (2008) Morphosyntax of Movement Dependencies in Haitian Creole and 2. Myler’s (2018) Complex copula systems as suppletive allomorphy. Here’s the puzzle. The Haitian Creole (HC) sentence kimoun ki te genyen is ambiguous.

1. (a) Ki moun *(ki) te genyen?
      WH person COMP PST win.
“Who won?” (lit. Which person that won?)

(b) Ki moun *(ki) te genyen?
WH person COMP PST have
“Who was there?” (lit. Which person that had?)

The surfacing of the complementizer ki after a wh-moved phrase is claimed to be symptomatic of subject extraction (Koopman 1982, DeGraff 2001, Takahashi and Gracanin-Yuksek 2008). Therefore, it’s puzzling that ki obligatorily surfaces in (1b) given how the suppletive allomorphy approach (Myler 2018) deals with the syntax of existential “copula” constructions like the following:

2. (a) Te genyen yon moun
      PST have a person
        “There was a person.” (lit. had a person)

(b) Yon moun *(ki) sanble (ki/∅/*ke) te genyen
INDF person COMP seem COMP PST have
“There seemed to be a person.” (lit. A person that seems that had)

Note that in (2b), the second ki is optional. To my knowledge, these facts of HC are unexplained in the literature. Related facts are the obligatory presence of ki with moved thematic arguments of certain (transitive?) verbs like jwe “play” or anbrase “hug”.

   3. (a) (Se) gita ki t ap jwe nan pak la
it.is guitar COMP PST PROG play in park the
“GUITAR was playing in the park.” (lit. (It is) GUITAR that was play in the park)

(b) (Se) ti moun yo ki t ap anbrase
It.is small person PL COMP PST PROG hug “THE KIDS were hugging” (lit. (It is) THE KIDS that was hug)

HC apparently doesn’t show subject inversion (DeGraff 1992: 48) nor English-style passive morphology (Deprez 1992: 208). Still some verbs inflect depending on whether its external argument is agentive or thematic, that is, there are verbs in HC that alternate between a transitive and intransitive form (DeGraff 2001: 75).

4. (a) Mwen fè/*fèt kabann lan rapid-rapid maten an
1SG make bed the fast-fast morning the “I made the bed very quickly this morning.” (DeGraff 2001: 75)

5. (b) Kabann lan *fè/fèt rapid-rapid maten an
bed the made fast-fast morning the
“The bed was made very quickly this morning.” (DeGraff 2001: 75)

I do not have a solution to these puzzles, but I will present the analyses of complementizer ki and existential HAVE sentences of Takahashi and Gracanin-Yuksek (2008) and Myler (2018), respectively, to show how exactly a sentence such as (1b) is puzzling given the theories advanced in those papers, and I will speculate that the correct solution could come from how one might handle the null expletive there and complementizer agreement in the language.

Speaker: Omri Doron (MIT)
Title: Disjunctive inferences and presupposition projection
Time: Wednesday, February 28th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Multiplicity and Homogeneity (demonstrated in 1 and 2 below) are cases of a truth value gap: the negated sentences in (1b) and (2b) are stronger than what we would get by applying logical negation to the sentences in (1a) and (2a). Evidence gathered in recent years indicates that these truth value gaps are the result of disjunctive presuppositions triggered by the (in)definite plural NPs. Both sentences in (1) presuppose that either Jack saw more than one horse or no horse, and both sentences in (2) presuppose that either Mary read all of the books or none of them. However, it is still unclear how these presuppositions come about. In this talk, I propose that they are the result of presuppositional exhaustification applied at the NP level, and show that their disjunctive nature can be cashed out as a consequence of the properties of presupposition projection from the environments in which they are generated.

(1) a. Jack saw horses.
Inference: Jack saw more than one horse.
b. Jack didn’t see horses.
Inference: Jack saw no horses.

(2) a. Mary read the book.
Inference: Mary read all of the books.
b. Mary didn’t read the books.
Inference: Mary read none of the books.

Speaker: Christopher Legerme (MIT)
Title: Verbal (Non-)Apocope in Haitian Creole
Time: Thursday, February 22nd, 5pm - 6pm
Location: 32-D769

Abstract: Verbal apocope is widely attested across French-lexified creole (FLC) languages and it involves the alternation between a short and long form of the verb in certain syntactic contexts (Seuren 1990, Henri and Abeillé 2008).

(1)  Mo fin mâze (*mâz)
      1.SG finish eat
       “I have eaten.”

(2) Mo fin mâz diri la (*mâze)
      1.SG finish eat rice DET
     “I have eaten the rice.” (Mauritian Creole, Seuren 1990)

(3) Konbyen dan Tonton Bouki genyen (*gen)
      how-many tooth Uncle Bouki has
      “How many teeth does Uncle Bouki have?”

(4) Tonton Bouki gen 32 dan l (*genyen)
       Uncle Bouki has 32 tooth 3.SG
      “Uncle Bouki has (all of) his 32 teeth.” (Haitian Creole, DeGraff 2001)

In (1) and (3), the long form of the verb is obligatory, and in (2) and (4) the short form is obligatory. The morphosyntactic or morphophonological conditions influencing verb shortening (or lengthening) are still a mystery and vary across FLCs, with linguists citing factors such as the (non-)presence of a VP complement or semantic agent, as well as other syntactic, prosodic, or semantic considerations depending on the language. Haitian Creole (HC) stands out as the most systematic in the realization of its verbs and most verbal roots of HC in fact must surface with the verbalizing affix -e, such as in manje “to eat” (√Manj-+-e) and genyen “to win” (√Gen+-e, with added phonological processes deriving from gen /gɛ̃/ the final surface form genyen /gɛ̃jɛ̃/). This verbalizing affix may also be -i for a certain class of roots, for example, fini “to finish” (√Fin+-i) or mouri “to die” (√Mour+-i). HC is also the least constrained in the domain of verbal apocope because, aside from (4) (which I will account for), there isn’t much evidence that HC short forms are ever obligatory to the exclusion of the long form, unlike in the apocope patterns of other FLCs where both the exclusively short and the exclusively long contexts are widespread. However, HC verbs that permit apocope (e.g., gad(e) “look”, gen(yen) “have”, fin(i) “finish”, vin(i) “come”) do show evidence that the long form is required in some contexts. For example, one generalization (attested in other FLCs, too) is that the short form cannot occur when the complement of the verb is absent. For this talk, I will demonstrate that the pattern of HC short/long alternation is actually that of a verbal non-apocope, where the shortening of the verb by deletion of the verbal suffix -e is barred by PF constraints rather than there being a licensing of the short form by a combination of various semantic or syntactic considerations. Crucially, this phenomenon of verbal non-apocope in HC is related to stress assignment at the interface of syntax and phonology and a constraint against apocope when the verbalizing affix -e has primary stress. Finally, I will extend my analysis to a famous puzzle of HC linguistics concerning the pattern of the ∅/ye “be” copula alternation. 

Speaker: Yurika Aonuki (MIT)
Title: Degree constructions in Gitksan
Time: Wednesday, February 21st, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: I will present my ongoing work on degree constructions in Gitksan (Ts’imshianic; see Rigsby 1986 and Bicevskis et al. 2017 for previous documentation). Based on the availability of comparative and superlative interpretations of positive forms as well as the obligatory differential readings of co-occurring measure phrases in positive constructions, I argue that gradable adjectives take a differential degree as an argument (1), which builds on Oda’s (2008) analysis of Japanese (see also Beck et al. 2004).

(1) [[‘tall’]] = λd. λx. λd. Height(x) ≥ d + d

An alternative account assuming a covert comparative or superlative opera- tor is ruled out by additional data showing that the comparative and superlative readings of positive constructions are unavailable with minimum-standard predicates. In addition, what appears to be a standard phrase in comparatives only indirectly determines the standard degree (see Hohaus 2015). Finally, as my analysis predicts, constructions with relative adjectives always involve comparison; those that do not involve such comparison, such as degree questions and absolute measurements, require a nominalizer, which I analyze as saturating the standard degree argument of a gradable adjective with a zero degree.

Speaker: Giovanni Roversi (MIT)
Title: Workshopping φ-marking in Äiwoo
Time: Tuesday, February 13th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Äiwoo verbs usually carry markers indexing the φ-features of the subject (agreement? Clitics/reduced pronouns? We’ll talk about it). Beyond this one basic fact, not much is neat or clear. These markers show different patterns in different voices, in terms of the morphological exponents, their position (prefixes vs suffixes), their ability to simultaneously co-occur with an overt subject DP, and more. Moreover, there are also cases where these markers index the object’s φ-features instead of the subject’s. And of course, a theory that correctly derives the behavior of the φ-markers is only a good one inasmuch as it can fit well into a general theory of Äiwoo syntax (word order facts, the morphosyntax of voice, patterns of Ā-extraction, etc.). I have the data, now please help me out!

Speaker: Amir Anvari (MIT)
Title: Revisiting E-Type Theory
Time: Thursday, February 15th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: A implementation of E-Type Theory faces two serious problems, the problem of uniqueness and the problem of formal link. In this talk, I will discuss a simple implementation of E-Type Theory that addresses the problem of uniqueness with minimal auxiliary assumptions. The predictions of the resulting theory for a number of cases, including anaphora to wh-indefinites, will be examined in detail. To address the problem of formal link, I will flesh out a rule that I will refer to as Antecedent Conversion based on the proposals in Parsons 1978 and Heim 1990. AC prevents the theory from over-generation. It also makes a prediction regarding the underlying form of pronouns that are anaphoric to nested indefinites which in turn leads to interesting predictions involving crossover phenomena and i-within-i effects which I will discuss as well.

Welcome back everybody from winter break, whether it was restful or productive! Here is a round-up of what people have been up to: 

• The 100th LSA meeting was held in NYC January 4-7! 
  • Anton Kukhto, along with Alexander Piperski (Stockholm University, Sweden), gave a talk Stress clash avoidance in Russian comparatives: A corpus study. 
  • Megan Gotowski and Forrest Davis gave a talk titled What Language Models Can Tell Us About Learning Adjectives.
  • Keely New gave a talk titled Voice and the variable position of auxiliaries in colloquial Jakartan Indonesian.
  • Agnes Bi gave a talk titled Tonal identification in whispered speech. 
  • Omri Doron and Jad Wedbe gave a poster titled Scalar implicatures are sensitive to constraints on presupposition accommodation. 
  • Dora Takacs was a panelist at the panel Securing an internship, contract work and part-time jobs during your degree program: A practical guide for linguistics students & faculty advisors. The panel was organized by the LSA Linguistics Beyond Academia Special Interest Group.
  • Maya Honda was a speaker at the Session Collaborative Efforts in Linguistics: Partnerships Between and Among Secondary and Higher Education Institutions.
  • Johanna Alstott gave a talk titled A first semantics for at first and at last. 
  • Chelsea Tang, along with Sansan C Hien (University of California, Berkeley), gave a poster titled STAMP morphs in Lobi: Morphological and Typological Implications. 
  • Katie Martin gave a poster titled A stereotype-based semantics for slurs.
  • Suzanne Flynn, along with Chie Nakamura (Waseda University) and Katsuo Tamaoka (Nagoya University), gave a poster titled L1 vs. L2: Persistence of processing cost due to differences in relative clause configuration.
  • Christopher Legerme gave a poster titled Why Haitian Creole ye-tracing is non-verbal predicate resumption. 
  • Lorenzo Pinton and Janek Guerrini gave a poster titled Numerous-like predicates in bare plural generics. 
  • Jon Rawski organized a Special Session with Scott Nelson and Jeff Heinz (Stony Brook), titled Formal Language Theory in Morphology and Phonology.
    
    
• Jon Rawski gave two invited colloquium talks in Paris! They were: Learning (Sub)Regular Transformations at the Automata Seminar, Institut de Recherche en Informatique Fondamentale (IRIF), and Abductive Inference of Phonotactic Constraints at the Ateliers de Phonologie, CNRS.
  
  
• Jon Rawski and co-authors had their article The Problem-Ladenness of Theory accepted in the journal Computational Brain and Behavior! Congratulations. 
  
  
• Eunsun Jou had her article Honorification as Agree in Korean and beyond published in Glossa! Congratulations! 
  
  
• Hadas Kotek begins a 3-year term as LSA Executive Committee member-at-large.
  
  
• NELS54 was a great success, held January 26-27 at Stata. Many thanks to the organizers (Keely, Agnes, Giovanni, Zhouyi, Stan, Athulya, David), student helpers, and especially the staff, who made all of it possible! Pictures below. Discerning readers will also see that we had David Pesetsky’s birthday. Presentations were given by: 
  
  
  • Jad Wedbe, Covert reciprocals (talk)
  • Johanna Alstott, Before and after decomposing first and last (talk)
  • Yeong-Joon Kim, Phonetic faithfulness in counterfeeding opacity (talk)
  • Peter Grishin & Anton Kukhto, Infixing Outward (poster)
  • Adèle Hénot-Mortier , The French demonstrative paradigm: structurally transparent but semantically intricate (poster)
  • Haoming Li, Dou and plural universal quantification in Mandarin Chinese (poster)
    
    
• Norvin Richards, Peter Grishin, Elise Newman, Cora Leasure, and Cooper Roberts embarked on a Passamaquoddy trip to Maine! Pictures below. 

Speaker: Nicholas Rolle
Title: “Phonological locality and constraints on exponent shape”
Time: Friday, Feb 9th, 3:30pm - 5:00pm
Location: 32-141

Abstract:
The focus of this talk is exponence – the mapping of syntactic representation (e.g. features, nodes, small trees) to phonological representation (e.g. segments, tones, etc.) via stored X↔Y pairings. What are the restrictions on the contents of Y (the exponent) in such pairings? While Optimality Theory established principles curtailing restrictions on underlying forms (e.g. “Richness of the Base”), approaching this issue from the syntax-phonology mapping reveals one robust constraint: all components of an exponent must be local, either in a contiguous string on a single phonological tier, or connected via an association line across tiers. To support this thesis, we examine two types of ‘bipartite morphemes’: circumfixes of the German ge-…-t type, and grammatical tone involving distinct segmental and tonal components. While bipartite morphemes superficially contradict our constraint, based on their morphological patterning we show that the multiple components always constitute separate exponents.

We are pleased to announce a series of five lectures by Prof. Matilde Marcolli. The lectures will be based on three recent papers by Matilde co-authored with Bob Berwick and Noam Chomsky. The talks will be hybrid. Contact Amir Anvari for any questions. 

Title: Mathematical Structure of Syntactic Merge: An Algebraic Model for Generative Linguistics 

Abstract: This series of lectures is based on work in collaboration with Noam Chomsky and Robert Berwick. The main goal is to present a mathematical formulation of Chomsky’s theory of Merge and the Strong Minimalist Thesis, and show how various aspects of the theory fall naturally into place in terms of the algebraic structure. We will discuss how one can think, in this light, about Externalization, about the difference between older forms of Minimalism and the new SMT, and about the interface between syntax and semantics.

Papers: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.06189], [https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.10270], [https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.18278]

Times and Locations:

• Monday 11^th of December: Room 32-D461, Time 12-1:30pm 
• Tuesday 12^th of December: Room 32-D831, Time 1-2:30pm
• Wednesday 13^th of December: Room 32-D461, Time 10-11:30am
• Thursday 14^th of December: Room 32-D461, Time 1-2:30pm
• Friday 15^th of December: Room 32-D461, Time 1-2:30pm

Please note the differences, both in time and location, of the lectures on different days.

Speaker: Johanna Alstott (MIT)
Title: Trying and failing to count in dense intervals
Time: Wednesday, December 13th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: In this LSA practice talk, I offer a semantic analysis of a puzzling restriction on the distribution of ordinal numbers in English: while the temporal adverbials “at first” and “at last” are felicitous, putting any other ordinal in this environment is degraded (#at second, #at sixth). I know of no previous literature that discusses “at first”/”at last” or the unacceptability of #at second, #at third, etc. My analysis of “at first” and “at last” builds on the notion that assertions are relativized to a salient time interval, known in the literature as topic time (Klein 1994). On my semantics, “at first” and “at last” further relativize an assertion to a salient subinterval of the topic time that shares an infimum (first point) or supremum (last point) with it. On the assumption that time-intervals are dense, the infelicity of #at second, #at third, etc. follows from this semantics. Since “at first” and “at last” invoke the infimum and supremum of a time-interval (respectively) on my semantics, #at second will attempt to invoke the second (i.e. second earliest) point of a time-interval. Invoking the infimum or supremum of a (closed) dense interval is coherent, but invoking the second earliest point (the point closer to the infimum than any other) is not. My analysis makes interesting predictions about the interaction of “at first”/”at last” with present tense and with frame adverbials, and it paves the way for an account of why ordinals are forbidden in related “at”-modifiers with superlatives (e.g. at most vs. #at second most).

Speaker: Ksenia Ershova (MIT)
Title: What’s in a (polysynthetic) phase: Dynamic domains, spellout and locality
Time: Thursday, December 7th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: INTRODUCTION This talk demonstrates how languages with complex morphology (=polysynthetic languages) can help tease apart rules which apply purely in the syntax from interface conditions which determine how linguistic structure is pronounced. The two types of rules nontrivially interact with each other, making it difficult to determine the division of labor in languages like English, which don’t make use of complex morphology. The results of the study highlight the importance of understudied, typologically diverse languages for our understanding of human linguistic competence.

ABSTRACT Since Chomsky (2000), constraints on locality have been defined in terms of phasehood. One explanation for the opaqueness of phases for syntactic operations has been to treat them as potential goals and, correspondingly, interveners for Agree with elements inside the phase (Rackowski and Richards 2005, etc.). On the other side, a broad consensus has been to connect phasehood to the timing of spell-out: syntactic structure is sent to PF cyclically, and a constituent which has been spelled out is no longer visible for higher syntactic derivations (Uriagereka 1999, Chomsky 2001, 2008, etc.). Building on this intuition, a number of approaches have identified phases as salient domains for defining prosodic rules (e.g. Newell 2008, Dobashi 2013).

Based on data from West Circassian, I argue for an integrated theory of phasehood which combines both approaches. West Circassian provides evidence for the existence of two partially overlapping, but independent notions of syntactic domain: (i) spellout domains which are relevant for defining rules of syntax-to-prosody mapping, and (ii) locality domains, which serve as interveners for Agree. The two types of domains display different properties: prosodic domains are spelled out wholesale, together with the head and the edge of the constituent, while locality domains are equidistant to higher probes with their edge, allowing for successive-cyclic movement out of them. Both types of domains are dynamic (cf. den Dikken 2007; Gallego 2010; Bošković 2014), but in different ways and under distinct conditions. Prosodic domains are defined by the boundaries of the extended projection: for example, an NP behaves as a prosodic constituent even in the absence of D. The opaqueness of locality domains, on the other hand, is relativized to a given probe – if the probe has independently agreed with the head of a locality domain, the corresponding domain no longer displays phasehood properties in relation to that probe.

As a polysynthetic language, West Circassian provides a unique window into the dichotomy between the two types of syntactic domains due to the parameters which derive its complex morphology. In the domain of syntax-to-prosody mapping, polysynthetic languages allow for systematic mismatches between syntactic and prosodic phrasing (e.g. Compton and Pittman 2010; Barrie and Mathieu 2016) – certain phrases correspond to phonological words and are thus identifiable as prosodic domains. The sensitivity of locality domains to Agree is observable due to obligatory agreement between heads of the same extended projection, which, among other things, drives concatenation of verbal heads to form complex wordforms – in certain well-defined configurations, this agreement renders locality domains transparent for probing, thus confirming Agree-based approaches to phasehood.

References Barrie, M. & E. Mathieu. 2016. Noun incorporation and phrasal movement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34: 1–51. Bošković, Željko. 2014. Now I’m a phase, now I’m not a phase: On the variability of phases with extraction and ellipsis. Linguistic Inquiry 45.1.27–89. Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In R. Martin, D. Michaels & J. Uriagereka (eds.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, 89–156. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In M. Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2008. On phases. In Foundational issues in linguistic theory, eds. R. Freidin, C. P. Otero & M. L. Zubizarreta, 133–166. MIT Press. Compton, R. & C. Pittman. 2010. Word-formation by phase in inuit. Lingua 120: 2167–2192. den Dikken, Marcel. 2007. Phase extension: Contours of a theory of the role of head movement in phrasal extraction. Theoretical Linguistics 33.1–41. Dobashi, Yoshihito. 2013. Autonomy of prosody and prosodic domain formation: A derivational approach. Linguistic Analysis 38. 331–355. Gallego, Ángel J. 2010. Phase theory. John Benjamins. Newell, Heather. 2008. Aspects of the morphology and phonology of phases. Doctoral dissertation, McGill University. Rackowski, A. & N. Richards. 2005. Phase edge and extraction: A Tagalog case study. Linguistic Inquiry 36 (4): 565–599. Uriagereka, Juan. 1999. Multiple spell-out. In S. D. Epstein & N. Hornstein (eds.), Working minimalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Speaker: Benjamin Spector (Institut Jean Nicod (CNRS-ENS-EHESS))
Title: Reasoning with Quantifiers, Lewisian Imaging and the Confirmation Paradox
Time: Friday, December 8th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Location: 32-141

Abstract: From a normative point of view, the conclusions we can draw from a sentence of the form No A is B are the same as the ones we can draw from No B is A, because No is a symmetric determiner, and therefore these two sentence types are logically equivalent. I will present experimental evidence (based on joint work with Vincent Mouly) showing that people do not in fact reason in the same way with No A is B and with No B is A. In particular, people’s estimate of the number of As after processing No A is B is higher than after processing No B is A (and vice-versa for B). I will argue that this instantiates a more general property of restrictors: we tend not to revise our beliefs about the size of the restrictor set even when receiving information that would in fact warrant such a revision. I will argue that this effect can be explained if we make the following hypotheses:

- Belief update does not (always) correspond to probabilistic conditionalization, but can also proceed by Imaging, as defined by David Lewis (1976). In a nutshell, when revising our beliefs with a proposition S, our posterior degree of confidence in a certain proposition T corresponds to our prior degree of confidence in the conditional ‘If S, T’ (using Stalnaker’s semantics for conditionals), rather than to the conditional probability P(T|S).
- Restrictors tend to serve as anchors when we engage in conditional reasoning: when considering the different ways in which a quantified sentence could be true, we mentally keep constant the restrictor set. I will relate this both to the possibility of de re readings for restrictors and to recent experimental results about verification strategies for quantified statements (Knowlton, Pietroski, Williams et al. 2023).

I will show that how these findings and the proposed theory can shed light on the confirmation paradox (see also Rinard 2014): given a statement S of the form ‘All As are Bs’, people are more prone to think that an observation of an object that has both properties A and B ‘confirms’ S than they are to think that observing an object that is both not-B and not-A confirms S, and I will discuss, time permitting, further experimental results (based on joint work with Nicolas Poisson) pertaining to the confirmation paradox.

Selected References:

- Knowlton, T., Pietroski, P, Williams, A., Halberda, J & Lidz, J. (2023), Psycholinguistic evidence for restricted quantification. Nat Lang Semantics 31, 219–251. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-023-09209-w
- Lewis, D., (1976), Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities, Philosophical Review, 85(3): 297–315. doi:10.2307/2184045
- Rinard, S. (2014), A New Bayesian Solution to the Paradox of the Ravens, Philosophy of Science 81 (1):81-100 (2014)

Speaker: Sigrid Beck (University of Tübingen)
Title: The emergence of a Generalized Quantifier: English ‘every’
Time: Friday, Dec 1, 3:30pm – 5pm
Location: 32-141

Abstract: The talk investigates the diachronic development of universal quantifiers in English. The etymological source of Present Day English ‘every’, Old English ‘aelc’ is analysed as an indeterminate pronoun. It participates in an alternative semantic system of quantification. I show how during Middle English, this system was reduced and finally lost. A reanalysis as a Generalized Quantifier becomes possible towards the end of the Middle English period. The compositional semantic change is analysed. I argue that interpretive stability at a propositional level is a crucial condition on such semantic change.

Speaker: Noa Bassel (UMass Amherst)
Title: No choice: Anaphoric dependencies in the prepositional domain
Time: Tuesday, November 28th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Pronominal elements have long been understood as cues for the length of linguistic dependencies. This is based on a regular morphology that targets pronouns in local dependencies and leaves long-distance pronouns unmarked, leading to the well-known complementarity between complex anaphors and simple pronouns.

The category of prepositions creates a gap in this respect, as it introduces positions in which the division of labor between anaphors and pronouns is inconsistent. In these environments, pronouns and anaphors may have the same reference (e.g., Max rolled the carpet over him/himself).

This has motivated claims that that PPs enable free choice between the anaphor and the pronoun, which speakers employ to convey nuanced semantic details and attitudes. Accordingly, P anaphors have so far seemed as an unreliable syntactic diagnostics and were largely ignored by theories of P syntax.

I will argue that P anaphors are restricted to local dependencies as in any other environment, and that the apparent freedom in pronoun choice follows from a robust structural ambiguity in the domain of prepositions.

Speaker: Magdalena Lohninger (MIT)
Title: Cross-clausal A-dependencies: A composite probe approach
Time: Thursday, November 30th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Hyperraising, i.e. A-movement out of a CP complement clause, posits a puzzle for generally assumed constraints like the Ban on Improper Movement or the Phase Impenetrability Condition and has been discussed widely in the recent years. In this talk I present a typological examination of Hyperraising as well as Hyper-ECM across unrelated languages, covering them under the umbrella term cross-clausal A-dependencies (CCA). I start by investigating empirical properties of CCA such as that i) the A-dependency stems from the matrix predicate, ii) the DP undergoing CCA is base-generated in the embedded clause and moves through the embedded left edge (SpecCP) and iii) the embedded CP often resembles a regular phase. In the course of this typological investigation of CCA, I conclude that the ability to hyperraise is not a parametric option but rather, that CCA falls into five structurally different configurations across languages (including Prolepsis). These five resemble each other on the surface but underlyingly differ in four relevant properties: i) selectional properties of the matrix predicate, ii) movement or high base-generation of the DP undergoing CCA, iii) A-Minimality differences and iv) interpretational restrictions (s.a. topic requirements). Based on these four parameters, I present a methodological tool to disentangle CCA constructions across different languages as well as within single ones. Further, I suggest a composite A’/A probe analysis for a subclass of CCA constructions, namely such involving movement out of the embeddded clause. The analysis is couched in ongoing research on the probing mechanism of A’/A probes and I discuss different implementational options such as Feature Gluttony (Coon & Keine 2021, Coon, Baier & Levin 2021), Interaction and Satisfaction (Deal 2015, 2022) and Contingent Probes (Branan & Erlewine 2020, Branan 2021). Last, I delve into (last resort) independent probing options for composite A’/A probes and what they might tell us about CCA co-occuring with regular long-distance A’-movement.

Christopher Legerme, Cora Lesure, and Lorenzo Pinton represented MIT Linguistics at Fall Splash on November 18-19. Splash is an MIT student-run educational enrichment program for 9th-12th graders that draws a thousand students to MIT each November for a weekend of classes on all sorts of topics. Christopher and Lorenzo designed and taught “The Mathematical Foundations of Language” and Cora designed and taught two sections of “What’s in a word? An Introduction to Morphology”. Maya Honda observed their classes and attests that all three did a fantastic job of sharing their knowledge and their passion for linguistics with 60 students. Many students stayed after class to ask questions and seek advice about studying linguistics. Kudos to Chris, Cora, and Lorenzo!