Whamit!

Speaker: Dóra Kata Takács (MIT)
Title: Similarity-based syncretism in a Hungarian dialect
Time: Monday, May 17th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: In this talk I take a closer look at the indicative definite and the imperative forms of t-final verbs in Hungarian. In standard Hungarian t-final verbs undergo a special phonological process in the imperative when they are followed by a j-initial suffix (cf. Siptár and Törkenczy 2000). Interestingly, there is a substandard very stigmatized version of Hungarian where this phonological process extends to the entire verbal domain, but crucially not beyond that. I present an analysis for the verb forms in standard Hungarian that not only provides an insight into why t-final verbs are special, but can also successfully capture the changes other verbs undergo. Furthermore, I argue that the dialectal variation is best explained as similarity-based syncretism following Steriade (2016).

Speaker: Shigeru Miyagawa (MIT), Despina Oikonomou (HU-Berlin)
Title: Case and A/A’-movements
Time: Tuesday, May 18th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: We argue for a new way to look at the constellation of data having to do with Condition C reconstruction effects. We propose that Case, which is a key component of Wholesale Late Merger (Takahashi 2006, Takahashi & Hulsey 2009 (TTH)), is an issue not about the head of the chain, as TTH argue, but rather it should be viewed as an issue associated with the lower copy:

Case Interpretation Requirement (CIR)
Case-marked copy of movement must be interpreted in full.

This accounts for the familiar cases of Condition C reconstruction effects reported in the literature. It also accounts for A-movement scrambling that unexpectedly triggers a Condition C reconstruction effect (Hindi, Bhatt and Keine 2019; Japanese, Saito 1992; Mongolian, Gong 2021). Here A-movement behaves like A’-movement because the lower copy is case-marked. Similar facts hold for the CLLD construction in some Romance languages (e.g., Cecchetto 2000).

We also argue that the CIR accounts for a decay in Condition C effect in long-distance wh-movement of DPs (Adger, et al. 2017; Bruening and Al-Khalaf 2017).

(1) ?*[Which criticism of Johni] did hei deny___?
(2) (?)[Which criticism of Johni] does hei think [CP that Mary believes___]?

Some linguists have argued that this decay indicates that there is no Condition C reconstruction effect in wh-DP-movement. We will argue instead that, due to the PIC, the LD-moved wh-phrase only has access to the intermediate copy in the lower Spec,CP (below he in (2)), which is a non-Case position. By the CIR, this intermediate copy need not be (fully) interpreted, thus leading to a decay in Condition C effect. In this way, the intermediate copy of wh-movement behaves similarly to the copy of A-movement. We will demonstrate that in languages in which the intermediate copy is case-marked (e.g., Greek, Japanese), there is no decay in Condition C effect whatsoever regardless of the distance between the LD-moved element and the pronoun.

Speaker: Nina Haslinger (University of Göttingen)
Title: Cumulativity as global non-maximality: A non-lexical underspecification approach
Time: Wednesday, May 19th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: In this talk, I argue that cumulative construals of sentences with multiple plurals (e.g. a construal of (1) that only requires the existence of a plurality of two students such that each of them read books and each book was read by at least one of them) are subject to contextual constraints that parallel those for non-maximal construals of plural definites (e.g. a construal of (2) on which not all of the windows have to be open). In particular, the QUD-dependence observed for non-maximal construals (Malamud 2012, Križ 2015 a.o.) and their sensitivity to contextual alternatives of the predicate (Križ 2015) carry over to cumulativity.

(1) Two of my students have read all the books. (2) The windows are open.

Since cumulativity does not literally reduce to non-maximality, a unified approach to both phenomena is needed. Existing arguments against an ambiguity approach to non-maximality can be extended to argue that (1) should not have separate LFs for the distributive and the cumulative reading (cf. Schwarzschild 1996, Kratzer 2008). In simple cases like (1), the context-dependency behavior of cumulativity can be accounted for by a straightforward extension of the three-valued approach to non-maximality, so that (1) expresses a three-valued proposition that is neither true nor false in a cumulative scenario.

I then show that this approach will not extend to all cases of cumulativity, based on German data involving plurals within an embedded clausal conjunction (cf. Schmitt 2019). The problematic cases are analyzed within a variant of Schmitt’s (2019) system in which any expression containing a plural denotes a predicate of pluralities (possibly of higher type). To account for the context-dependence of cumulative and non-maximal construals, I propose that these predicates of pluralities should be three-valued, with ‘classical’ and ‘tolerant’ extensions that are computed in parallel. Plural sentences end up denoting a three-valued predicate of propositions, which leads to a gap between the truth conditions and the falsity conditions that is resolved in a QUD-dependent manner. I conclude by outlining some potential advantages of this system over the standard ambiguity approach to cumulative and distributive construals.

Speaker: Boer Fu (MIT) and Danfeng Wu (MIT)
Title: Numeral Allomorphy in Mandarin Chinese and A Synthetic Side of the Language
Time: Wednesday, May 19th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: In Mandarin Chinese, the numerals 1 and 2 display interesting allomorphy patterns between two distinct forms. We discuss two puzzles involving single-digit and multi-digit cardinals, their forms when immediately followed by a classifier, as well as their ordinal forms. We argue that we need a morphological rule that refers to both linear order and structural / prosodic relations. Furthermore, the different morphological patterns of numbers below 100 vs. numbers above 100 suggest that Mandarin, despite lacking a synthetic vs. analytic distinction on the surface, in fact makes such a distinction in ways parallel to English. Like English, Mandarin numbers under 100 are synthetic (parallel to English fif+teen and fif+ty), while bases of hundreds and above are analytic (parallel to English five#hundred). We further observe a monotonic trend across languages, where lower number bases tend to be irregular (e.g. suppletive and readjusted), and higher number bases tend to be regular (e.g. analytic). This observation, if real, is interesting because it can be described as *ABA, but cannot be straightforwardly explained by the containment analysis, the traditional analysis of *ABA in the literature.

Speaker: Norvin Richards (MIT)
Title: Finding something to lean on: some extensions of Affix Support
Time: Thursday, May 20th, 12:30pm - 1:50pm

Abstract: I’ll present some ongoing research that attempts to account in a unified way for the FOFC (and some of its exceptions), the Head-final filter, AP-adjacency (Giurgea 2009, Adger 2012, Belk and Neeleman 2014), and some conditions on extraposition in Hebrew discussed by Sichel (2002). The account is based on Contiguity Theory, and will involve some tweaks to the existing idea of Affix Support; the offending configurations will all involve a head in need of Support which fails to find it, once the condition on Affix Support is properly understood.

Speaker: Norvin Richards (MIT)
Title: Anti-Agreement and Restructuring in Passamaquoddy
Time: Tuesday, May 11th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: I’m going to present some preliminary results on the morphological properties of wh-questions in Passamaquoddy. I offered a theory of related facts in Wôpanâak in Richards (2004), and we’ll see that the theory seems to be able to be generalized to cover the Passamaquoddy facts as well. We’ll also see a Passamaquoddy case in which morphology that ordinarily appears on the verb when certain wh-phrases are extracted will show up instead on a verb of a higher clause; I’ll claim that this is a consequence of restructuring.

Speaker: Niels Torben Kuehlert 
Title: The Limits of Root-Controlled Allomorphy: A Reply to Caha et al. 2019
Time: Wednesday, May 12th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: In Nanosyntax, affixal allomorphy is conditioned by the size of a given root structure, predicting that roots may only directly control allomorphs of adjacent affixes. If an affix intervenes between the root and a more peripheral affix, its structure blocks the root from determining which allomorph may be selected. Caha et al. 2019 provide evidence for this claim based on the Czech comparative where the the different allomorphs -ěj-š, -š, -Ø stand in an apparent containment relation, with *-ěj-Ø being unattested due to the inability of the root to condition the presence of the peripheral zero. This paper argues that this generalization is too restrictive and fails to account for cross-linguistic variation. I provide two types of counterexamples based on plural allomorphs in German, Welsh, and Albanian as well as Latin deponent verbs that show a containment relation like the Czech comparative. The first type of counterexample involves a static affix intervening between the root and a peripheral zero morpheme.

1) German Masculine Plurals

a. Mantel-[+front]-Ø -> Mäntel ‘coats’
b. Fuß-[+front]-e -> Füße `feet‘

In the second type, a static affix intervenes between the root and two alternating overt allomorphs, leading to a situation where the root must choose between the two peripheral affixes.

2) German Masculine Plurals

c. Mann-[+front]-er -> Männer ‘men’
d. Fuß-[+front]-e -> Füße `feet‘

Both cases present a situation in which the root must condition an affix that it is not adjacent to, contra the prediction in Caha et al. 2019. This evidence suggests that it is necessary to posit a less restrictive model like Distributed Morphology, in which these types of alternations can be captured via diacritic features.

The 30th meeting of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (FASL) is virtually hosted by our department in the upcoming week (May 13-16)! All the information can be found here: https://fasl30.mit.edu

The 31th Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT31) conference was hosted by Brown University on May 7 – 9, 2021 and held online. Current students and alumni friends at the conference included:

• Frank Staniszewski (5th year): Polarity sensitive weak necessity modals
• Tatiana Bondarenko (4th year): The dual life of embedded CPs: Evidence from Russian čto-clauses
• Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (4th year) and Vincent Rouillard (4th year): Which singular wh-interrogatives admit plural answers in Brazilian Portuguese
• Ido Benbaji (2nd year): A restrictive account of the fourth reading
• Helena Aparicio (MIT Computational Psycholinguistics Lab), Curtis Chen (MIT undergraduate), Roger Levy (MIT BCS) and Elizabeth Coppock: Granularity in the semantics of comparison
• Ömer Demirok (PhD 2019) and Furkan Dikmen: Modifying result states in Turkish
• Paul Marty (PhD 2017), Jacopo Romoli, Yasutada Sudo (PhD 2012), and Richard Breheny: Negative Free Choice
• Despina Oikonomou (PhD 2016): Modally conditioned mood-switch: the case of ADVISE Predicates in Greek
• Seth Cable (PhD 2007) gave an invited talk: Two Paths to Habituality: The Semantics of ‘Habitual Mode’ vs. ‘Imperfective Mode’ in Tlingit 

Speaker: Giovanni Roversi (MIT)
Title: Bárány & Sheehan (2021): Challenges for dependent case
Time: Tuesday, May 4th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: In this paper, Bárány and Sheehan take issue with the idea that Dependent Case can be the only manner of assigning case we need to assume to exist in grammar. To do so, they present two empirical challenges: i) case alternations in clitics in Romance causatives, and ii) global case splits. For the first one, an old insight by Kayne (1975) was that the causee clitic was ACC if the embedded predicate was intransitive, and DAT if it was transitive; this is readily explainable in a dependent case world. However, Bárány and Sheehan show how not only DPs, but also CPs and PPs can work as case competitors, triggering DAT on the causee clitic, which is problematic for a theory that holds that only nominals should be case competitors for other nominals. Then they discuss global case splits, that is, phenomena where the case of an argument is determined not only by properties of that argument, but rather by properties of more than one argument, e.g. both the subject and the object; the empirical basis comes from Kashmiri, Sahaptin and Wampis. They go through two possible Dependent Case approaches, one based on movement and one based on a fine-grained DP-periphery, and argue that both either can’t derive the data or can but at only at a great theoretical/complexity-wise cost. Instead, they propose a Case-by-Cyclic-Agree account for these data, that they claim works better than the Dependent Case ones.

Abstract: Subregular linguistics is a recent research program that draws heavily from formal language theory but enjoys two noteworthy traits:

Speaker: Thomas Graf (Stony Brook University)
Title: Monotonicity as a third factor in syntax and morphology
Time: Friday, May 7th, 3:30pm - 5pm

Abstract: Monotonicity is a staple of semantics, but has occasionally also made an appearance in other domains (cf. Fox & Pesetsky 2005). In this talk, I argue that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that monotonicity plays a central role in morphology and syntax as a third factor that arises from learnability considerations. The approach posits underlying hierarchies, for instance positive < comparative < superlative for adjectival gradation, which are mapped into some other algebra, e.g. surface forms or degrees of acceptability. Requiring these maps to be monotonic rules out a large number of possible configurations.

This provides a unified perspective on a surprising number of phenomena: *ABA effects in morphology, the Person Case Constraint, the Ban Against Improper Movement, the Ban Against Improper Case, the Ban Against Excorporation, the Adjunct Island Constraint and the Coordinate Structure Constraint, their exceptions in the form of parasitic gaps and across-the-board movement, freezing effects, 3/4 splits in typology (e.g. with expletive negation), the absence of anti-omnivorous number, and much more. Crucially, monotonicity does not supplant existing analyses of these phenomena, it supplements them. Monotonicity is the high-level principle that ties the phenomena together, whereas existing analyses hash out how this abstract principle is operationalized in terms of the grammatical machinery.

On April 28, Roger Schwarzschild gave a colloquium talk at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Lomonosov Moscow State University under the title “Noun Meanings in a World of Events and States”.

http://tipl.philol.msu.ru/index.php/science/colloquium/colloquium-2020-2021/April2021-2​

Speaker: Cater Chen (MIT)
Title: Three [anti [long-distance dependency] effects in Mandarin BEI-construction
Time: Tuesday, April 27th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: The Mandarin BEI-construction, where BEI introduces an eventuality that is predicated of the subject of BEI, shows mixed properties in terms of A- vs. A′- movement, similar to the English tough-construction. Compared to other types of A′- dependencies, the BEI-construction is more constrained: long-distance dependencies between the subject of BEI and an object gap cannot be established when the external argument of the eventuality predicate introduced by BEI is existentially closed, or when the subject of BEI and the object gap are separated by a finite clause boundary (Huang 1999; Ting 1998; a.o.).

I propose that the BEI-construction involves composite A/A′-movement followed by A-movement, similar to Longenbaugh’s (2017) analysis of the tough-construction: the mixed A/A′-properties of the BEI-construction are the expected result of composite A/A′-movement; the (derived) subject of BEI A-moves to Spec, IP without violating the Ban on Improper (A′- after A-) Movement.

I also propose to distinguish between compound and simple BEI-construction: In a compound BEI-construction, BEI heads two projections; the inner BEI serves the function of v, while the outer BEI corresponds to passive Voice. In a simple BEI- construction, BEI heads only one projection, and it corresponds to passive Voice.

I will present three arguments for the current proposal: First, when two DPs A′- move from the complement to BEI, only the DP closer to BEI can be the subject of BEI. Secondly, in a simple BEI-construction, the case-less DP must be the subject of BEI. Lastly, only the subject of a finite clause can hyper-raise to be the subject of BEI.

Speaker: Tanya Bondarenko (MIT)
Title: The dual life of embedded CPs: evidence from Russian čto-clauses
Time: Wednesday, April 28th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: With data from Russian, I argue that some embedded CPs are predicates whose meaning depends on the argument that they modify: they specify propositional Content if their argument has it (Kratzer 2006, Moulton 2015, a.o.), but if their argument is a situation without Content, they indicate that this situation exemplifies the embedded proposition (Kratzer 2007). The evidence comes from čto-clauses, which can combine with both content nouns (Cont-DPs) like mysl’ ‘thought’, and with situation nouns (Sit-DPs) like slučaj ‘event’:

(1)
Lene prišla v golovu mysl’ [čto belki sjeli vse orexi]
to.Lena arrived in head thought COMP squirrels ate all nuts
‘Lena had a thought that squirrels ate all the nuts.’

(2)
Na prošloj nedele byl slučaj [čto belki sjeli vse orexi]
on last week was event COMP squirrels ate all nuts
‘Last week there was an event of squirrels eating all the nuts.’

I provide arguments that the CPs are modifiers of the nouns in (1) and (2), but that despite being morphosyntactically identical, they do not receive the same interpretation. One implication of this proposal is that embedded finite CP clauses do not always create intensional contexts.

Speaker: Jeff Heinz (Stony Brook University)
Title: Making copies
Time: Friday, April 23rd, 3:30pm - 5pm

Abstract: In this talk, I explain how making copies is computationally simpler than recognizing copies (Dolatian and Heinz 2020). Computational perspectives on reduplication, and copying more generally, have centered around the complexity of the “copy language”, which is the set of totally reduplicated strings: { ww | w is a string }. It is well known that no context-free grammar can recognize this formal language. This means that the kind of memory required to correctly identify copied strings grows, in the worst case, in a particular way. However, when viewed as a transformation { w —> ww | w is a string } the computational complexity can be shown to belong to the regular class of transformations. This regular class should not be confused with the rational class of transformations, upon which much current computational morpho-phonological analyses are based. Furthermore, I discuss how attested patterns of reduplication can be classified with respect to subregular classes of transformations that are relevant to morphology and phonology, and how various insights from linguistic theories are likewise present within this formal system and can be derived from it. The general message is that far from being fossilized relic of a previous era, mathematical and theoretical computational linguistics continue to contribute much to our understanding of natural languages.

Speaker: Jeff Heinz (Stony Brook University)

Dates: Wednesday, April 21, 12:30pm-2:00pm EDT, and Thursday, April 22, 12:30pm-2:00pm EDT

Title: Learning Constraints over Representations of Your Own Choosing 

Abstract:

In this 2-day workshop, I present a general method for learning constraints of different complexities over different kinds of representations (Chandlee et al. 2019, Lambert et al. in review). The representations can include whatever information you want —- phonological/prosodic/morphological/syntactic features, autosegments, different ordering relations, trees, graphs and so on —- for linguistic objects in any linguistic subfield.  It is shown generally how learning all but the simplest logical kinds of constraints require prohibitively enormous resources. In constrast, for common representations invoked for phonological words, learning the simpler logical kinds of constraints (1) is feasible (2) returns constraints which are the kind found in phonotactic patterns in the world’s languages (3) does not require statistics (contra Wilson and Gallagher 2018), and instead (4) succeeds because of the *structure* provided by the logic and the representational choices. These results surprised even me, and I conclude with a discussion distinguishing between *inductive* and *abductive* inference.

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)

Time: Thursday, April 15th, 12:30pm - 1:50pm

Title: C-selection and the verb phrase

Abstract: In this talk, I want to zoom in on the conditions governing clause construction and discuss how they impact our notion of a “transformation”. Since Chomsky (1995), it has been common to treat Merge as a feature-checking mechanism, a process by which uninterpretable features on a head get “checked” or “deleted” before a structure is sent to the interfaces. In principle, a feature-driven view of Merge makes no distinction between Merge operations induced by “selection” vs. Merge operations characterized by movement (i.e. there is no formal distinction between internal and external Merge). Despite this fact, Merge and Move operations have often been treated as governed by separate feature sets, which exist on separate lexical items, rather than as two logically possible responses to the same feature set. Taking inspiration from Longenbaugh (2019) (who in turn takes inspiration from Müller (2010)), I propose that we not do this. Instead, I propose to treat features that induce Merge as properties of functional categories, which may be satisfied either by internal or external Merge, so long as the result satisfies interface requirements. Thus, two different lexical heads may look featurally identical from the perspective of the syntax, but the syntax is flexible enough to generate structures that can satisfy the different interface requirements of each one. I propose that employing this view of Merge in the domain of verb phrase syntax explains many otherwise elusive properties of verb phrases and their alternations, including 1) the fact that so many languages have some semblance of a dative alternation, 2) the different behaviors of DP and non-DP arguments with respect to passivization and wh-movement.

Speaker: Ido Benbaji (MIT)
Time: Wednesday, April 14th, 1pm - 2pm

Title: Restricting the fourth reading

Abstract: Szabó (2010, 2011) argues that in addition to the three commonly accepted readings of DPs in intensional contexts, there is a fourth, specific opaque reading, in which a DP’s determiner scopes above an intensional operator while its restrictor is nevertheless interpreted opaquely. The existence of this reading poses a potential problem to both the world-pronoun framework (Percus 2000) and the modified scope theory of intensionality (Keshet 2008), as in both wide quantificational scope implies transparent interpretation (though not vice versa). Szabó takes the existence of such readings as evidence that natural language, like logical ones, allows for bare quantification over the entire domain, and posits a mechanism that splits quantifiers from their restrictors at LF. Contra Szabó, I argue that fourth readings do not involve bare quantification, but are syntactically restricted to relativization environments and are generated by invoking independently motivated mechanisms for NP reconstruction into relative clauses (RCs). On this account, the fourth reading is obtained when a DP dominates a raising RC with an intensional operator ([_DP D [[­_NP N]_i [_RC Op t_i]]). The DP’s determiner originates clause externally, and therefore must take wide quantificational scope relative to the intensional operator, while the NP that appears to occupy the DP’s restrictor position originates clause internally and can therefore reconstruct to a position below the operator to receive an opaque interpretation (as proposed by Bassi and Rasin 2018 for data presented in Grosu and Krifka 2007). This analysis predicts the fourth reading to be unavailable when a raising structure for the RC is independently blocked; a prediction that I will show is borne out.

Speaker: Colin Davis (USC)
Title: The immobility of English possessive pronouns: On portmanteau formation and the timing of spell-out
Time: Tuesday, April 6th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: In this research, I use new facts about possessor extraction in colloquial English to analyze the morpho-syntax of English possession, and explore several related consequences about the syntax-morphology relationship. As Davis (2019, a.o.) describes, in colloquial speech about half of native English speakers allow A-bar extraction of a possessor which strands the Saxon genitive morpheme [’s] and the rest of the possessed DP in a lower clause (1):

(1). Who1 do you think [ __1 ‘s cat] is the cutest?

Such extraction is possible in principle for all varieties of WH-movement. Many speakers also can achieve such extraction by topic/focus fronting (2):

(2). I don’t think John’s cat is particularly cute, but MARY1, I’ve always said [ __1 ‘s cat] is really adorable.

Based on data from about a dozen native speakers who independently accept sentences like (1) and (2), I report that similar fronting extraction is unavailable for possessive pronouns (3):

(3). * I don’t think John’s cat is particularly cute, but YOUR1, I’ve always said [ __1 (’s) cat] is really adorable.

The same contrast can be identified using clefting rather than topic/focus fronting. I argue that this restriction emerges from the fact that such possessive pronouns are portmanteau morphemes that correspond to both the possessive D, and the possessor pronoun in its specifier. Under this account, such morphemes do not correspond to a syntactic constituent, and thus are expected to be immobile. Beyond clarifying our understanding of English possessive morpho-syntax, I argue that these results provide new evidence that one morpheme can span across multiple adjacent syntactic nodes, and also deepen our understanding of the timing and nature of phase spell-out.

Speaker: Jad Wehbe (MIT)
Title: An Implicature Account of Actuality Entailments

Time: Wednesday, April 7th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract — An Implicature Account of Actuality Entailments: 

 Actuality Entailments (first discussed by Bhatt, 1999; Hacquard, 2006) arise when the prejacent is present-oriented with respect to the evaluation time of a circumstantial possibility or necessity modal (Matthewson, 2012; Kratzer, 2011). This talk will focus on a puzzle that arises from the interaction of AEs with negation. Namely, negated actualized modals give rise to what Hacquard (2009) calls a non-actuality entailment, an entailment that the event did not occur in the actual world. Taken together, the facts about actualized modals in positive and negative environments require an account of AEs that includes an implicature or presuppositional component. This talk will explore an implicature account of AEs (see Homer, 2019; Alxatib, 2020 for a presuppositional account), proposing that the basic uniform meaning of modal auxiliaries involves existential quantification over a time interval. When the prejacent is present-oriented with respect to the modal perspective, this basic meaning straightforwardly derives non-actuality entailments under negation. In positive sentences, a strengthened meaning is derived by the calculation of an implicature that is modeled after Bar-Lev’s (2020) account of homogeneity with definite plurals. I will show that the proposed implicature account can predict the differences in meaning between actualized possibility modals, actualized necessity modals and their non-modal counterparts, while deriving actuality entailments and non-actuality entailments.​

Speaker: Heejeong Ko (Seoul National University)
Title: Late Adjunction after Spell-out: Evidence from Right-Dislocation
Time: Friday, April 9th, 7pm - 8:30pm

Abstract: In this talk, I closely examine the syntax of postverbal adjuncts (PAs) in Korean – which received relatively little attention, in comparison to postverbal arguments in right dislocation (cf. Ko 2015, Yoon 2016, Park and Kim 2016 for Korean; Abe 2019 for Japanese). In the first part of the talk, I aim to establish empirical evidence against major approaches to right-dislocation which treat PAs as a consequence of rightward movement, PF-ellipsis, or English-type extraposition. Further developing Ko (2015), I propose that PAs in Korean are late-adjoined to the host after Spell-out via concatenation (Hornstein and Nunes 2008, cf. Müller’s (2017) reassociation, Ishii’s (2017) self-pair Merge; cf. Fox and Nissenbaum 1999, Fox 2017, Overfelt 2017 for Late Merge in English extraposition). I show that this proposal not only explains intricate puzzles concerning PAs, but also captures the interesting fact that the syntax of PAs is regulated by a general constraint on sideward movement in inter-arboreal domains. Evidence for my claim is drawn from various tests which involve right root effects, island effects, depth of embedding in LBE, NPI licensing, and scope/binding in postverbal domains in Korean. Theoretically, the current research provides novel support for the existence of non-conventional Merge in natural languages: concatenation (Merge without integration in syntax) and inter-arboreal Merge (Merge across different workspaces). I also suggest that typological differences between Korean PAs and English adjunct extraposition can be attributed to two factors: i) the timing of Late Merge and ii) strict head-finality in syntax & massive agglutination in Korean morphology.

Speaker: Filipe Kobayashi (MIT)
Title: Brazilian Portuguese matrix null subjects as truncation: evidence from negative concord
Time: Tuesday, March 30th, 1pm - 2pm
Note: This week’s Syntax Square session is only open to department members.

Abstract: Despite no longer being a pro-drop language, under certain circumstances Brazilian Portuguese allows for null first person subjects in matrix clauses (Rodrigues 2004). In this presentation, I defend that these are due to a rule of clausal truncation (Rizzi 1993/1994, Pesetsky 2019). Evidence for this analysis will come from the interaction of null subjects and negative concord. Brazilian Portuguese is a non-strict negative concord language, which means that negative concord items like ninguém (’nobody’) in post-verbal position require the presence of clause-mate sentential negation. The crucial datapoint is illustrated in (1) where we see that, if the subject is dropped, the negative concord item can be licensed in the absence of negation. This study is in its very early stages so comments and references are very welcome at this point!

(1) {*Eu, ∅} falei com ninguém.
I spoke with nobody.
“I didn’t speak with anybody.”

Speaker: Anton Kukhto (MIT)
Title: Some thoughts about allomorphy in Russian comparative morphology and Nanosyntax​
Time: Wednesday, March 31st, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: The departing point for this presentation will be a recent paper by Caha et al. (2019; The fine structure of the comparative, Studia Linguistica 73(3): 470–521), which argues for a split structure of the comparative, with two comparative heads instead of one CMPR. The analysis is couched in the framework of Nanosyntax and espouses certain assumptions that are going to be of interest to us, namely that there is no allomorphy beyond the effects of regular morphophonology, no zero exponents, and no lexical class diacritics—all of these arise as a result of non-terminal spell-out, whereby different (classes of) morphemes spell out different amounts of syntactic structure. In this presentation, I’m going to look at the case of comparative forms of adjectives in Russian. First, I’m going to analyse Russian in terms of Caha et al. (2019) to identify the points where this analysis fails, suggesting that the reason for that is the assumption that there is no allomorphy. Second, I’m going to attempt an alternative analysis in Distributed Morphology, which is still very much a work in progress, so thoughts and comments will be much appreciated.

This year’s edition of ECO-5 will take place on Saturday, April 3. ECO-5 is an informal workshop for graduate students of five departments in the East Coast (UMass, Harvard, UConn, UMD, and MIT) to present their syntax research.

Each year, one of the five schools organizes the workshop, but this year’s edition was a joint effort by all departments. It will be held via Zoom. Members of each school will receive the link in an e-mail.

The schedule and other information can be checked here: https://sites.google.com/view/eco-5/home

On Monday, March 22, 2021, Michel DeGraff will participate in the online conference “Justice Now? Tackling legacies of Europe’s colonial past in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter” organized by MIT Anthropology and Avocats Sans Frontières.   Michel will be part of the first panel at 10:30am: “Provocations: What should justice look like?”

More information about the symposium can be found in the link below:
https://justicenowsymposium.wordpress.com/

On Thursday, February 25, 2021, the Black Perspectives Office and the Center for Cognitive Science at Concordia University presented a public lecture by Michel DeGraff:

#BlackLivesMatter​ → #OurLanguagesMatter​
Language rights are HUMAN rights—in Haiti and beyond

The abstract is available here:

https://www.concordia.ca/cuevents/main/2021/02/25/black-lives-matter-our-languages-matter.html

and the video of the lecture is now available here:

https://www.facebook.com/mithaiti/videos/900073544075724

and here:

https://youtu.be/MQZs3fD-Z4E

Speaker: Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (MIT)
Title: Interleaving A- and A’-movement: a Brazilian Portuguese Case study
Time: Tuesday, March 16th, 1pm - 2pm
Location: Zoom
Note: This week’s Syntax Square session is only open to the department and prospective students.

Abstract: In this talk, I argue against the existence of the Ban on Improper Movement, or any other similar constraints on A- and A’-movement interactions. The argument is empirical: configurations found in Brazilian Portuguese, referred to as interleaved movement, are shown to involve A-movement of an A’-moved element. An analysis of these configurations is proposed which highlights that they are exactly what one expects from a grammar without a ban on A-after-A’-chains. The proposal has important consequences for the treatment of phenomena that have been standardly subsumed within the scope of the Ban on Improper Movement. The paper this presentation is based on can be found here: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005609

Speaker: Luke Adamson (Harvard University)
Title: Gender and Inalienable Possession
Time: Wednesday, March 17th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: The present work investigates whether a noun’s gender can be determined (or ‘assigned’) by its possessor, in a way that is expected (in principle) from independent lines of research on gender and possession, each which attribute importance to projections low within the nominal domain (e.g. Kramer 2015 and Myler 2016, respectively). I provide evidence indicating that the gender of a possessee noun can be determined by properties of an inalienable possessor in five unrelated languages: Teop (Austronesian, Oceanic), Jarawara (Arawan), Yanyuwa (Pama-Nyungan), Coastal Marind (Trans-New Guinea, Anim), and Ripano (Romance). I propose that gender features on the nominalizing head n can be conditioned locally, specifically by elements within nP, and not by elements higher in the nominal domain. This proposal predicts an asymmetry between inalienable possessors, which have been argued to have a tight structural relationship with their possessee, and alienable possessors, which have been argued to be introduced by a higher Poss head (Alexiadou 2003, Myler 2016; among others). This prediction is borne out in the five languages examined here, for which only inalienable possessors appear to show influence on the possessee’s gender. If on the right track, this proposal calls into question the viability of analyses that allow gender on n to be valued at a distance via Agree, suggesting the existence of a substantive universal, which restricts gender features on n to entering syntactic derivations valued. The present work thus expands our understanding of what types of elements can be relevant to gender assignment.

Speaker: Adele Mortier (MIT)
Title: Hacquard (2006): Aspects of too and enough constructions
Time: Wednesday, March 17th, 1pm - 2pm

We have just received the exciting news that our distinguished and very recent alum Colin Davis (PhD 2020) has accepted a position as Junior Professor (≅Assistant Professor)  of English Linguistics at the University of Konstanz.  Colin completed his PhD last summer with a dissertation on The Linear Limitations of Syntactic Derivations, and is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar and Teaching Fellow at the University of Southern California.  He will begin his new position in October.  

Congratulations and herzliche Glückwünsche, Colin!!

Speaker: Danfeng Wu (MIT)
Title: Syntax and prosody of either…or… sentences
Time: Thursday, March 4th, 12:30pm - 1:50pm

Abstract: This talk presents an investigation of how the linguistic system maps hierarchical syntactic structure onto linear prosodic structure, with either…or… sentences as a critical case study. To do this, I exploit the fact that either…or… sentences can involve ellipsis, a process that renders some syntactic structure unpronounced. For example, the analysis for (1) involves ellipsis (the struck-through text in (2)). In addition to the syntactic-semantic arguments for ellipsis, I will present evidence from a prosodic experiment, where I found that predictions of this syntactic analysis had measurable prosodic correlates in people’s utterances. I will argue that prosodic structure reflects syntactic structure more closely than some theories previously claimed. These phenomena provide a suitable environment to investigate the syntax-prosody mapping process further: we may ask whether silent material (specifically elided material) is directly represented in prosodic structure. Preliminary results suggest that elided material is represented in prosody, despite having no phonological content. This work has implications for both the syntax-prosody mapping and syntactic theory. First, it supports a derivational view of the syntax-prosody mapping which makes elided material available to prosody. Second, this study is part of a larger program of creating a new domain of argumentation in syntax: I believe that we can draw evidence for syntactic claims not only from traditional sources, but also from prosodic/phonetic experiments. 

(1) Either Pat will eat rice or beans.

(2) Either Pat will eat rice or she will eat beans.

Speaker: Enrico Flor (MIT) and Stan Zompì (MIT)
Title: CSC-Violating Head Movement in English Conditional Inversion
Time: Tuesday, February 23rd, 1pm - 2pm
Location: Zoom
Note: MIT Touchstone authentication will be required to enter this week’s Syntax Square zoom meeting.

Abstract: The ban on asymmetric extraction from coordinate structures, commonly known as Coordinate Structure Constraint, is crosslinguistically very robust and has found very few counterexamples in English (Postal 1998 and references therein). We document a new challenge to the general validity of CSC, represented by sentences like:

(1) Sadie would not have proposed, had Olivia ignored her calls and had forgotten her birthday.

(2) Should we support Carmen and she were to win, she would allow us to drive her Ferrari.

We call the construction exemplified by the antecedents of (1) and (2) Asymmetric Conditional Inversion (ACI). Assuming that Conditional Inversion involves T-to-C Head Movement (Pesetsky 1989, Iatridou & Embick 1994), we use interpretive evidence to argue that the only viable analysis of ACI sentences is one in which the Auxiliary is T-to-C extracted out of the first conjunct in violation of the CSC, as it is normally stated.

Speaker: David Pesetsky (MIT)
Title: Lack of ambition
Time: Thursday, February 25th, 12:30pm - 1:50pm
Location: Zoom
Abstract: In this talk, I suggest a non-standard strategy for explaining the limited range of semantics available to constructions in which certain elements of a normal finite TP are phonologically absent. These include English AUX-drop questions (Fitzpatrick 2006) and infinitival clauses (Wurmbrand 2014), where the proposal suggests an answer to some particularly vexing questions arising from the derivational (“Exfoliation”) theory of infinitivization that I have advanced elsewhere (Pesetsky 2019/2021). The core idea attributes apparent restrictions on the constructions themselves to restrictions on a hearer’s creativity in positing possible identities for material deleted in the speaker’s derivation (“hearer” here understood as an abstract concept, including self-monitoring by the speaker). The key principle is the following:

Principle of Unambitious Reverse Engineering (PURE)
When determining the identity of unpronounced material in the course of “reverse ­engineering” a speaker’s syntactic derivation, the language system of the hearer considers only the minimally semantically contentful possibilities compatible with the morphosyntactic environment.

Fitzpatrick, Justin M. 2006. Deletion through movement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 24:399–431. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-005-3606-3

Pesetsky, David. 2019/2021. Exfoliation: towards a derivational theory of clause size. Unpublished ms., MIT. https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004440

Wurmbrand, Susi. 2014. Tense and aspect in English infinitives. Linguistic Inquiry 45:403–447. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00161

Welcome to the first edition of Whamit! for Spring 2021! After our winter hiatus, Whamit! is back to regular weekly editions during the semester.

Whamit! is the MIT Linguistics newsletter, published every Monday (Tuesday if Monday is a holiday). The editorial staff consists of Adam Albright, Kai von Fintel, David Pesetsky, Cater Fulang Chen, Eunsun Jou, and Margaret Wang.

To submit items for inclusion in Whamit! please send an email to whamit@mit.edu by Sunday 6pm.

Our faculty members and alums taught classes at the Virtual version of the New York Institute (V-NYI), co-sponsored by Stony Brook University (USA) and the Herzen Pedagogical Institute (St. Petersburg, Russia). Below is the list of courses they taught (click on the course titles to access the course introduction).

• David Pesetsky (faculty): Non-finite complementation
• Jay Keyser (faculty): The Mental Life of Modernism
• Jonah Katz (PhD 2010, West Virginia University): The Music-Language Connection: Harmony, tonality, and syntax
• Asia Pietraszko (University of Rochester) & Omer Preminger (PhD 2011, University of Maryland): Words and other things: what do you need to list in your head?
• Andrew Nevins (PhD 2005, University College London) & Naomi Francis (PhD 2019, University of Oslo): Gesture and Human Nature

More information about the V-NYI, including its program, can be found at https://nyi.spb.ru/ .

Miyagawa’s Syntax in the Treetops has been accepted as a Linguistic Inquiry Monograph by MIT Press and is now in press.

Jay Keyser gave a lecture hosted by the MIT Activities Committee on his recent book, The Mental Life of Modernism (2020, MIT Press). A recording of this lecture can be found at this URL: https://youtu.be/bXheskQqr44 

MIT Linguistics was well represented at the 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Many of our current students, faculty, and visitors gave presentations - some as collaboration with alums.

• Danfeng Wu (5^th year): Evasion strategies save apparent island violations in stripping
• Tanya Bondarenko (4^th year), Colin Davis (PhD 2020): What cross-clausal scrambling in Balkar reveals about phase edges
• Daniel Asherov (4^th year), Danny Fox (faculty), Roni Katzir (PhD 2008): On the Irrelevance of contextually given states for the computation of Scalar Implicatures
• Rafael Abramovitz (6^th year): Deconstructing Inverse Case Attraction
• Tanya Bondarenko (4^th year): Inverse in Passamaquoddy as the spell-out of Feature Gluttony
• Neil Banerjee (5^th year): Two ways to form a portmanteau: Evidence from ellipsis
• Daniel Goodhue (University of Maryland), Jad Wehbe (1^st year), Valentine Hacquard (PhD 2006; University of Maryland), Jeffrey Lidz (University of Maryland): That’s a question? Preschoolers’ comprehension illocutionary force, clause type and intonation
• Suzanne Flynn (faculty), Barbara Lust (visiting professor; Cornell University), Janet Sherman (Harvard University), Charles R. Henderson (Cornell University): Binding and Coreference Dissociate in Mild Cognitive Impairment 
• Colin Davis (PhD 2020), Patrick Elliott (postdoctoral associate): Radical successive cyclicity and the freedom of parasitic gaps

Our alums also presented in the conference:

• Colin Davis (PhD 2020; University of Southern California): On parasitic gaps in relative clauses and extraction from NP
• ​Kenyon Branan (PhD 2018; National University of Singapore), Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine (PhD 2014; National University of Singapore): Binding reconstruction and the types of traces
• ​Sam Zukoff (PhD 2017; University of Leipzig): Deriving Arabic Verbal “Templates” without Templates
• ​Joey Lim (National University of Singapore), Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine (PhD 2014; National University of Singapore): Word order and disambiguation in Pangasinan
• ​Elsi Kaiser (University of Southern California), Patrick Georg Grosz (PhD 2011; University of Oslo): Anaphoricity in emoji: An experimental investigation of face and non-face emoji
• ​Jeong Hwa Cho (University of Michigan), Ezra Keshet (PhD 2008; University of Michigan): Actuality and Counterfactual Implicatures in Korean Possibility and Necessity Modals
• ​Tzu-Hsuan Yang (University of Kansas), Yueh-chin Chang (National Tsing Hua University), Feng-fan Hsieh (PhD 2007; National Tsing Hua University): Perceptually inconspicuous yet articulatorily distinct merger: A case study of Taiwanese Mandarin coda nasals
• ​Ken Hiraiwa (PhD 2005; Meiji Gakuin University): Sluicing cannot Apply In-Situ in Japanese
• ​Suyeon Im (Hanyang University), Jennifer Cole (PhD 1987; Northwestern University): Discourse meaning in perception and production of prosodic prominence
• ​​Deepak Alok (Rutgers University), Mark Baker (PhD 1985; Rutgers University): Person and Honorification: Features and Interactions in Magahi (talk presented during the symposium on the features of allocutivity, honorifics and social relation)

Course announcements in this post:

• 24.981: Topics in computational phonology
• 24.964: Topics in Phonology: Generative Phonetics
• 24.956: Topics in syntax and semantics
• 24.960: Syntactic Models

24.981: Topics in computational phonology

• Instructor(s): Adam Albright
• Time: Tuesdays 10-1
• Course site: https://canvas.mit.edu/courses/7288/ 
• Note:

This class does not presuppose any background in modeling or programming, but it does presuppose a basic knowledge of phonological theory (i.e., from 24.961 or 24.901). 

• Description:

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 learning models on realistic training samples, we can test whether a posited analysis can actually be discovered 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. In the most interesting cases, computational modeling uncovers facts about the language that would have been difficult to discover by eye, and forces us to ask which facts are treated as linguistically significant by speakers.

Topics will include: (subject to revision)

• • Statistical “baseline” models (n-gram models, exemplar models)
  • Algorithms for constraint ranking and weighting
  • Algorithms for constraint discovery
  • Integrating learned and innate constraints
  • Learning in the midst of variation and exceptions, and discovery of gradient patterns

• Requirements:

Readings and small regular problem sets, including a small final project+presentation.
*** This class can be used to satisfy the graduate acquisition requirement, with the appropriate choice of readings, exercises, and project. Please let the instructor know if you are planning on doing this.

24.964: Topics in Phonology: Generative Phonetics

• Instructor(s): Edward Flemming
• Time: Mondays 10-1
• Course site: http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/24/sp21/24.964/
• Description:

It is well-established that languages differ systematically in matters of fine phonetic detail such as patterns of coarticulation and contextual variation in the durations of segments, so grammars must regulate these details. However, relatively little is known about the component of grammar responsible for phonetic realization. In this course we will investigate the nature of phonetic grammars, focusing on constraint-based approaches. We will cover both theoretical issues surrounding generative phonetics and the practical skills required to develop constraint-based analyses of phonetic data.

24.956: Topics in syntax and semantics

• Instructor(s): Patrick Elliott, Kai von Fintel, Danny Fox, Sabine Iatridou, David Pesetsky
• Time: Mondays and Thursdays 3-5 pm
• Course site: https://canvas.mit.edu/courses/7282
• Description:

Despite the assumed theoretical primacy of declarative sentences, questions have frequently played a central role in the literature spanning syntax, semantics, and pragmatics - informing issues ranging from structure-building and combinatorics, to speech acts and their effect on the common ground. In this vein, we’ll be asking: what kinds of things are questions, how are they built, and what can they do? Specific topics we’ll cover include: question composition and pied-piping, embedded questions and question-embedding predicates, the dynamic pragmatics of questions qua illocutionary acts, and the external syntax of interrogative clauses.

You can find a preliminary syllabus on the canvas site.

• Course requirements:

Active participation, weekly reading, weekly submission of questions and comments about the reading, final term paper on a relevant topic.

*** Students can receive credit for the advanced seminar requirement in either syntax or semantics, depending on their chosen topic for the final term paper. ***

24.960: Syntactic Models

• Instructor(s): David Pesetsky
• Time: Tuesdays 2-5 pm
• Course site: https://canvas.mit.edu/courses/7283
• Description:

The course has twin goals:

First, it gives a quick introduction to at least two “frameworks” for syntactic research that compete with the Government-Binding/Principles & Parameters/Minimalist tradition in the current syntax world:  HPSG and Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG).  We work speedily through much of the HPSG textbook by Sag, Wasow and Bender, and also look at the LFG textbook by Bresnan, Asudeh, Toivonen and Wechsler.

Next, the class turns historical, tracing the development of generative syntax from Syntactic Structures (1957) up to the early 1980s, when HPSG and LFG first separated themselves off from the research program that became GB/P&P/Minimalism.   An overarching theme of the course is the issue of derivational vs. representational views of syntax — a theme that offers some surprising observations about who said what at various points in the history of the field, but also gives the course a focus relevant to the most current work.  

You can get a good sense of what the class will be like from its old Stellar pages — for example http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/24/sp19/24.960.  I plan to follow essentially the same structure — but perhaps with a twist or two for the Zoom era. 

New for 2021:  We may have a guest lecture or two, and it is possible that one or another might be at a non-canonical time, and possibly might involve one or two commitments on top of the regularly scheduled classes.  Obviously these will optional, if they happen at non-normal times, but recommended — just letting you know in advance.

• Course requirements:

As you may have heard, the sole requirements for the class are:

1. 1. regular attendance and participation;
   2. a few straightforward problem sets (finger exercises) in the first half of the class; and
   3. three class presentations or co-presentations (depending on numbers): of an HPSG paper, an LFG paper, and a paper from the period of generative semantics/interpretive semantics debates.  In some years, the HPSG and LFG presentations have been done together.  That will depend on what the calendar looks like when we get to that point in the semester.

There is no paper required! (A major attraction in the past.)  If you want to write a paper, in order to satisfy a program requirement, you can talk with the instructor to arrange that. Many students have reported finding this class both fun and enlightening (and not just because there is no required paper). Ask some of your predecessors for their reviews.

• Reading material:

The most important book to order right now is the following one:

Sag, Wasow and Bender, Syntactic Theory — second edition (this is crucial).  Here are some links so you can buy it now:

https://amzn.to/2RyMEcJ

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo3633025.html

Please start reading it in advance of the first class.  Get as far as you can in it, so you come to the first class already somewhat prepared. This book is intended as an introduction to syntax for undergraduates, so you will find the early chapters go quickly.  But the syntax it introduces is HPSG, so fairly soon you will be learning new things and tripping over unfamiliar notations.

The books we will be using later in the semester are:

• • Bresnan et al., Lexical-Functional Grammar — please note that this too is a second edition.
  • Chomsky, Syntactic Structures

Other readings (papers and excerpts from books) will be downloadable from Canvas.

A new paper by alum Ezer Rasin (PhD 2018) and faculty colleague Athulya Aravind (also PhD 2018) has just been published in the journal Natural Language Semantics, entitled “The nature of the semantic stimulus: the acquisition of every as a case study”.  (It’s open access, so please click on the link to read!)  Here’s the abstract:

We evaluate the richness of the child’s input in semantics and its relation to the hypothesis space available to the child. Our case study is the acquisition of the universal quantifier every. We report two main findings regarding the acquisition of every on the basis of a corpus study of child-directed and child-ambient speech. Our first finding is that the input in semantics (as opposed to the input in syntax or phonology) is rich enough to systematically eliminate instances of the subset problem of language acquisition: overly general hypotheses about the meaning of every can violate pragmatic constraints, making such hypotheses incompatible with the child’s input. Our second finding is that the semantic input is too poor to eliminate instances of what we refer to as the superset problem, the mirror image of the subset problem. We argue that at least some overly specific hypotheses about the meaning of every are compatible with the child’s input, suggesting either that those hypotheses are not made available by UG or that non-trivial inductive biases are involved in children’s acquisition of every.

In the December 2020  issue of the journal Language of the Linguistics Society of America, Michel DeGraff responds to the target article “Toward racial justice in Linguistics” by Anne Charity Hudley, Christine Mallinson and Mary Bucholtz.  Michel’s article is titled: “Racial justice in Linguistics: The case of Creole studies”:

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/775383 

December 10 is Human Rights Day—to celebrate the day in 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.  On that date, Thursday, December 10 2020,10:30AM EST, Michel DeGraff is offering a workshop online at the University of Sheffield, UK, on “Decolonising the Linguistics Curriculum.” The workshop will start with a talk titled:

“Language as the invisible ‘canary in the mine’ in the minefield of human-rights violations”

Please find the abstract and additional information below.

Abstract:

My case study is my native country, Haiti, where Francophonie and francophilia are linguistic “bluest eyes” (in Toni Morrison’s sense) as they are weaponized for “élite closure” (cf. Carol Myers-Scotton) and for neo-colonial violence against equity and human rights (cf. Yves Dejean). In contradistinction, Haiti’s national language (Kreyòl) is the one language that can serve as the linguistic foundation for the democratization of education and development.  Yet, most state and academic institutions and NGOs in Haiti, including world-famous institutions whose stated mission is to promote human rights, linguistic diversity, etc., routinely devalue Kreyòl in favor of French, and they thus exclude the participation of most Haitians—who are typically fluent in Kreyòl only.  Through such linguistic (mis-)practices, these institutions participate in upholding Haiti’s linguistic apartheid  We find such brutally exclusionary practices even at the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Justice, even in organizations that proudly boast “human rights”, “knowledge”, “liberty” and so on in their titles or mission statements. These organizations will be celebrating “Human Rights Day” on December 10 even as they violate human rights every day of the year. Often times, these organizations are, paradoxically, engaged in producing Kreyòl materials for literacy and human-rights campaigns, for primary education, etc. We’ll look at  UNESCO in Haiti as one spectacular case of such ambivalence vis-à-vis Kreyòl: since the late 1940s, UNESCO has been producing groundbreaking scientific research and educational materials based on the importance of vernacular languages for access to quality education and for human rights and development; yet UNESCO’s leadership in Haiti, more often than not, excludes Kreyòl in its formal proceedings which are typically, with some relatively rare exceptions, conducted and published in French only.  One recent exchange in the “Amis de l’UNESCO” WhatsApp group illustrates the depth of these anti-Kreyòl attitudes: when one inquires about Kreyòl translation—alongside the French, English and Spanish simultaneous interpretation being offered at a forthcoming conference by the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (“AUF”) in the context of Caribbean studies—this inquiry is considered, by UNESCO personnel in Haiti, as “diffamation against AUF.”  Yet there are more Kreyòl speakers in the Caribbean than French speakers; besides, Haiti, where Kreyòl is the single national language, is the 3rd largest Caribbean country. Taken together, linguistic choices, practices and attitudes in most national and international institutions in Haiti have, for the past two centuries, brutally devalued the capital of Kreyòl on Haiti’s linguistic market (in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense), making Kreyòl, in effect, much less attractive than French as a medium and subject matter for teaching and learning.  In a related vein, linguists themselves, from Saint-Quentin in the 19th century to Bickerton and McWhorter in the 21st century, have often mis-represented the history and structures of Creole languages as a class, even mis-classifying them as the world’s “simplest” (read: “most primitive”) languages.  This is what I’ve called “Creole Exceptionalism”.  It is within this complex and ambiguous hegemonic context (social, geopolitical, academic and scientific) that the  MIT-Haiti Initiative engages linguists, educators, policy makers, artists, civil society, etc., near and far  in a historic struggle to open up access to knowledge (and power) for all Haitians through the systematic use of Kreyòl coupled with interactive pedagogy and technology writ large  This Initiative is a model for opening up access to quality education worldwide, especially in the Global South where non-colonial languages are, by and large, still excluded in schools and other formal venues.

More references at:

http://mit.edu/degraff

https://linguistics.mit.edu/linguistics_haiti/

The announcement from the University of Sheffield:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/english/news/online-workshop-decolonising-linguistics-curriculum

Questions: g.t.williams@sheffield.ac.uk

Speaker: Yeong-Joon Kim (MIT)
Title: Cluster simplification and correspondence at acoustic boundaries
Time: Monday, December 7th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: In this talk, I discuss the C2 dominance effect in cluster simplification: in intervocalic C1C2 clusters, C1 is a typical target of deletion but C2 is not. This positional asymmetry has been a problem for parallel versions of Optimality Theory, especially when consonant deletion takes place in clusters derived by syncope (Wilson 2001, Jun 2002, McCarthy 2011). For the formal analysis of the C2 dominance effect in cluster simplification and its interaction with syncope, I propose a new approach, based on correspondence constraints for auditory properties within Flemming’s (2008) Realized Input model. Potential benefits and problems of this new proposal will also be discussed in the talk.

Our department will be hosting the 30th meeting of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (FASL)! You can find the call for papers, including submission details, below.

* * *

The Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is pleased to announce that it will host the 30th annual meeting of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (FASL), which will be held virtually on May 13–16, 2021.

Abstracts are invited for talks on topics in formal Slavic linguistics, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. Both theoretical and experimental studies that have consequences for linguistic theory are welcome. Submissions are limited to one individual and one joint abstract per author (or two joint abstracts per author).

Both talks and posters will be selected. Each talk selected for presentation will be allotted 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes of discussion. Poster presenters will give lightning talks and then present their poster virtually via Zoom.

Abstracts should be submitted in PDF format through EasyChair, with all non-standard fonts embedded. Abstracts should not exceed 2 pages, which includes the data. An additional third page may be used for references. Abstracts must be submitted in letter or A4 format with 1in or 2.5cm margins on all sides, single-spaced, and in a font no smaller than 11pt. Abstracts should be anonymous. Please make sure that PDF files do not have any identifying metadata.

Conference website: https://fasl30.mit.edu/

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fasl30
Submission deadline: January 25, 2021, 23:59, anywhere on Earth (UTC-12)
Notification of acceptance: March 2021

For inquiries, please e-mail us at: fasl30.mit@gmail.com.

Whamit! will be on winter (semi)-hiatus starting next week. While we won’t have weekly postings until the beginning of the spring semester, we will have rolling posts, publishing breaking MIT Linguistics news as it happens. Thanks to all our contributors, editors, and you dear readers. Stay safe and take care!

Speaker: Bruna Karla Pereira (UFVJM)
Title: Silent nouns and gender agreement in Brazilian Portuguese copular sentences
Time: Tuesday, December 1st, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: This work in progress investigates nominal agreement in sentences such as (1), in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), where the subject is feminine whereas the adjective, in the predicate position, is masculine. While current proposals (Rodrigues and Foltran 2013, 2014, and 2015, Conto 2016, Siqueira 2017, and Martin et al. 2020) focus on the “disagreement” between the subject and the adjective, I argue that there is agreement between the adjective and a silent noun, in the internal structure of the post-copula DP. This proposal is coherent with a broader project on constructions with apparent mismatch of agreement in BP (Pereira 2016a, 2016b, 2017, and 2018).

(1) Moto                           é  perigoso.                          (Family conversation, Belo Horizonte, 11/19/2020)
      Motorcycle-FEM.SG is dangerous-MASC.SG
      A motorcycle is dangerous.

Kayne (2005, 2019), Pesetsky (2013), and Höhn (2016) consider the existence of a null category to account for the apparent mismatch of agreement, respectively, in number in Italian and French, in gender in Russian, and in person in Spanish and Greek. Likewise, I assume that a pronominal null category, in the DP predicate, triggers the gender agreement in sentences like (1). Therefore, the predicate of the copular sentence is not simply an adjective, but a DP made up with an indefinite null pronoun (algo ‘something’) plus an adjective, as observed in (2) and (3). This silent (pro)noun bears masculine gender features (and singular number) and triggers agreement in gender with the adjective. In this operation (Pesetsky and Torrego 2007), the adjective (probe), containing uninterpretable gender features, becomes valued [uF val] via agreement with the silent noun algo (goal), containing interpretable and valued gender features [iF val].

(2) Moto                           é  [DP (ALGO)              perigoso                       ].
      Motorcycle-FEM.SG is         (SOMETHING) dangerous-MASC.SG
      A motorcycle is (something) dangerous.

(3) [DP D [AgrP (ALGO_MASC)_i Agr [AP perigoso_MASC A [NP t_i]]]].

In sum, this analysis demonstrates that there is no “disagreement”, in the copular sentences at stake, but agreement between the adjective and a silent noun, in the internal structure of the post-copula DP.

Speaker: Canaan Breiss (UCLA)
Title: Between Grammar and Lexicon: New Experimental Evidence for Lexical Conservatism
Time: Monday, November 30th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: In this talk I will discuss my dissertation research on Lexical Conservatism (Steriade 1997, et seq.), a theory of the relationship between lexicon and grammar which holds that markedness-improving phonological alternations are enabled by the presence of phonologically-optimizing morphologically-related forms in the lexicon. For example, English cómpensate undergoes rightward stress shift when affixed with -able, to yield compénsable, while phonologically-similar ínundate does not (ínundable, *inúndable): Lexical Conservatism holds that this is due to the presence of a phonologically-optimizing morphologically-related form compéns-(atory), while there is no similar form with a stem allomorph inúnd-. Noting this correlation, however, does not provide the detailed information necessary for a fully fleshed-out phonological model, nor a thorough understanding of how the grammar interacts with the lexicon when forming novel words. Drawing on two experiments on English and a third on Spanish, I demonstrate that Lexical Conservatism is robust in the laboratory setting, but holds as a probabilistic tendency rather than as a rule. That is, I find that we observe both the markedness-avoiding behavior pointed out by the original discussion of Lexical Conservatism in Steriade (1997), but that the likelihood of this behavior is responsive to processing factors like the accessibility of the Remote Base, as manipulated by priming. This implies a dynamic trading relationship between the phonological grammar and the lexicon that is not well-captured by extant theories of lexicon-phonology interaction. I discuss which of these findings we might want to incorporate into a phonological theory, and propose a model couched in a Maximum Entropy framework (Goldwater & Johnson 2003) to account for the phonological facts, while allowing principled integration of lexical characteristics that are, I argue, better thought of as non-phonological.

Speaker: Sherry Yong Chen (MIT), Christine Soh (UPenn), Athulya Aravind (MIT)
Title: Intermediate Wh-Copies in a Non-Wh-Copying Language
Time: Friday, December 4th, 2pm - 3:30pm

Abstract: A core issue within current theories of movement is to explain the conditions that drive and constrain the phonological realization of copies left by movement. Although the moved item syntactically and semantically occupies two positions, in languages including English only the highest copy is pronounced, while all lower copies are deleted. At the same time, multiple copy spell-out is attested in many languages, and is also found in the grammars of children acquiring English, a language where we otherwise do not find such phenomena. English-acquiring preschoolers produce long-distance wh-questions with an extra medial wh-word, as in (1) (Thornton 1990, Lutken et al. 2020), a result taken by some to be indicative of the realization of intermediate copies in children’s grammar:

(1) a. Who do you think who is in the box?
b. What do you think what she brought?

In this work-in-progress, we ask whether English-speaking adults respond differently to violations of copy spell out rules from other kinds of ungrammaticality, to see if there is continuity between adult and child grammars in their treatment of intermediate copies. We will present two experiments where we compare adults’ behavioral responses to sentences like (2a) and (2b). Neither is a well-formed sentence of English and both have a corpus frequency of 0. (2a), however, can be construed as a syntactically well-formed structure that violates constraints on copy spell-out, in contrast to (2b) whose infinitival complement does not provide an intermediate landing site for movement.

(2) a. Who did the consultant expect who the new proposal had pleased?
b. Who did the consultant expect who the new proposal to have pleased?

Pilot results are less-than-promising. We’d like to reflect on some of our operationalization assumptions in light of these results, and would welcome comments and suggestions on how to improve our approach.

Speaker: Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla (UBC)
Title: Hawaiian language-based digital realities and futures
Time: Friday, December 4th, 3:30pm - 5pm
Zoom link: (Please email ling-coll-org@mit.edu for more information)

Abstract: This presentation discusses the realities of digital technologies – the “promise”, potential, complexities and hindrances – that Indigenous peoples face when engaging in language reclamation, revitalization, maintenance, and education. For language learners and speakers that choose contemporary pathways, digital technologies provide creative, interactive, and/or immersive opportunities for language learning, teaching, and being. Examples of digital technologies that are adopted and adapted for Indigenous language work will be shared to demonstrate how digital tools are used in the Hawaiian language context to bridge language learners and speakers, facilitate access towards resources, and create and develop relevant materials and content that is centered in community.

Suzana Fong successfully and brilliantly defended her dissertation entitled “The Number Interpretation and Syntactic Distribution of Bare Nominals in Wolof”. The public portion of the defense provoked question after question from the intrigued and enthusiastic listeners (there were so many questions left when we had to move on to the private portion!) — a sure sign that this is work to pay attention to! Congratulations Suzana! 

The 34th Going Romance conference was held virtually by the laboratory “Structures Formelles du Langage” (CNRS/Université Paris 8).

Suzana Fong presented under the title “Distinguishing between explanatory accounts of the A/A’-distinction: the view from Argentinian Spanish Clitic Doubling”.

Some of our alums also gave presentations:

• Benjamin Storme (PhD 2017): Deriving the gradient behavior of French liaison through constraint interaction
• Bridget Copley (PhD 2002), Marta Donazzan, Clémentine Raffy: Characterizing French LAISSER using causal functions and scales
• Beatriz Gómez-Vidal, Miren Arantzeta, Jon Paul Laka, Itziar Laka (PhD 1990): Eye-tracking the Unaccusative Hypothesis in Spanish

Speaker: Cater Chen (MIT)
Title: The tough path to passive
Time: Tuesday, November 17th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: The Mandarin BEI-construction, where BEI introduces an eventuality proposition that the subject of BEI undergoes, is known to show mixed A-/Aʹ-behavior similar to the English tough-construction. An analysis of the BEI-construction that has been widely accepted involves base-generation of the subject of BEI and Aʹ-movement of a null operator to the left periphery of the eventuality complement, akin to Chomsky’s treatment of the tough-construction. In this talk, I argue that a different derivation of the BEI-construction must be possible (and the default), due to its distinct behaviour when interacting with IP-external topicalization (that shows Aʹ-behavior under the standard diagnostics) and IP-internal topicalization and focalization (that shows mixed A-/Aʹ-behavior), which have also been proposed to involve null operator movement. Specifically, I use the subject-oriented long-distance reflexive ziji as a diagnostic for subjecthood to reveal that two moved objects must conform to a nesting path when BEI-construction and IP-external topicalization are involved, but they must conform to a crossing path when BEI-construction and IP-internal topicalization/focalization are involved. By comparison, when two objects undergo IP-external topicalization and/or IP-internal topicalization/focalization, no systematic nesting/crossing asymmetry is found.

Speaker: Frank Staniszewski (MIT)
Title: Polarity sensitive weak necessity modals
Time: Wednesday, November 18th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: I develop a new analysis of ‘weak necessity’ modals ‘should’ and ‘supposed to’ that is motivated by novel observations of weaker than expected meanings in some environments. For example, ’supposed to’ in (1a) gives rise to a meaning that can be paraphrased as the weaker modal statement in (1b).

(1) A: Can you please pick up a book for me at the office?
      B: I don’t know… Are we supposed to be back on campus without a Covid test?
      B′: I don’t know… Are we allowed to be back on campus without a Covid test?

I argue that this and other evidence of weak readings shows that these modal verbs exhibit a type of variable force. They express universal force in positive sentences and existential force under negation. The analysis will build on an analogy with free-choice disjunction that assumes a basic weak meaning that strengthens in upward-entailing environments (Fox 2007; Bassi & Bar-Lev 2016).  I hypothesize that the precise distribution of the strengthened readings is governed by the polarity-sensitive nature of the modals (cf. Iatridou Zeijlstra 2013; Homer 2015).  In particular, I argue that the polarity sensitivity of the modals is the result of the association of their domains with a covert even-like operator (cf. Lahiri 1998; Crnič 2014, 2019  for NPI ‘any’).

This hypothesis makes intricate predictions about the range of readings that should be observed in various logical environments that I show to be borne out. It predicts that the modals should receive strong interpretations in positive sentences, and weak readings in negative sentences. For environments that contain both negative and positive components, such as the question in (1), and in the scope of non-monotonic quantifiers, two possible readings are predicted: one in which the positive component strengthens, and the negative component remains weak, and another in which both components remain weak, and the contribution of the covert ’even’ results in strong constraints on the discourse context. I discuss the logic of these predictions, and also argue that the analysis provides a natural link between polarity sensitivity and ‘weak necessity’ modals.

Speaker: Tamisha Tan (Harvard University)
Title: Two Cases of Doubled Pronouns in Amarasi
Time: Wednesday, November 18th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: This work in progress investigates an apparent case of typologically unusual full pronoun doubling in Amarasi (Austronesian: South-West Timor). Amarasi shows doubling in two contexts: copula constructions (1) and quantified (associative) arguments (2):

1) Au bifee kau.
1SG.NOM woman 1SG.OBL
‘I am a woman.’
2) Hai nua kai mi-mnei.
1PL.EX.NOM two 1PL.EX.OBL 1PL.EX-dream.
‘The two of us dream.’

In each case, a subject pronoun and its oblique counterpart bracket a nominal/adjectival predicate or numeral/quantifier respectively. Despite their surface similarity, I argue that these two constructions involve distinct underlying structures. In particular, I will provide novel evidence that these two surface-similar constructions have distinct derivations, as seen by their differing behaviour under negation, relativisation, and (default) agreement. Copular Pronoun Doubling (CPD) as in (1) will be shown to involve a pronominal copula, instantiating a Pred head which bears full φ-agreement with the subject, while Argument Pronoun Doubling (APD) as in (2) will be argued to involve a predicative (low) pronoun, doubled by a D head.

In all, this paper provides novel evidence for a fully-agreeing non-verbal copula that instantiates Pred (and not T or V) and connects this to other types of predicative agreement cross-linguistically and person splits therein (as with the SCOPA; cf. Baker 2008, Abramovitz 2020.) Furthermore, it explores an unusual type of adnominal pronoun construction in which the predicate is also pronominal (Höhn, 2017). Finally, it presents a potential expansion to the inventory of possible case competitors under Dependent Case Theory (Baker, 2015).

Speaker: Trevor Driscoll (MIT)
Title: Crow Palatal Coarticulation as Gradient Feature Spreading
Time: Monday, November 16th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: The literature on Crow phonology describes two palatalization processes; one changes alveolar obstruents to alveolopalatals before front vowels. The other is progressive where a k following a front vowel or an alveolopalatal is realized with palatal coarticulation. Using acoustic measurements of F2 transitions in VCV sequences, I show that palatal coarticulation interacts with all obstruents and that the place of the constriction determines how F2 transitions from front to back vowels. Further I argue that a GA feature spreading analysis with traditional L/R edges is insufficient to represent the Crow data. I propose adopting gestural landmarks as a domain to assign GA violations; gestural landmarks provide exactly the appropriate number of alignment positions needed to characterize F2’s transition from high to low through an intervening consonant.

Speaker: Naomi Francis (University of Oslo)
Title: Marking objections with gestures
Time: Thursday, November 19th, 12:30pm - 1:50pm

Abstract: This talk explores the role of a gesture, which I call WAYTA (for What Are You Talking About?!), in marking particularly strong objections. I argue that the distribution of this gesture is sensitive to properties of discourse that are also relevant for the distribution of elements of spoken language (e.g., actually, doch), and that this gesture can replace otherwise obligatory linguistic material. I also discuss crosslinguistic variation and the division of labour between gesture, prosody, and the material that they overlay.

This Thursday, November 19, at 4PM (EDT) Michel DeGraff will deliver the keynote at the University of Montreal conference “VocUM 2020 – Language: Norm & Power.”

The title of the talk, which will be delivered in Kreyòl with French subtitles, is:

“Ann Ayiti, frankofoni se zam pou vyolans kolonyal epi se kreyolofoni ki ka sèvi kòm fondasyon pou edikasyon ak liberasyon”

(= In Haiti, Francophonie is a weapon for colonial violence while it’s Kreyòl that can be used as the linguistic foundation for education and liberation.)

https://vocum.ca/presentation/ann-ayiti-frankofoni-se-zam-pou-vyolans-kolonyal-epi-se-kreyolofoni-ki-ka-sevi-kom-fondasyon-pou-edikasyon-ak-liberasyon/

More details about the conference at:

https://vocum.ca/en/vocum-2020/program/

Patrick Elliott gave a talk as an invited speaker at the 17th Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics conference (LENLS 17) under the title “Classical negation in a dynamic alternative semantics”.

Agnes Bi and Patrick Niedzielski taught two Zoom sessions of their class “Make Your Own Language” at MIT Splash 2020, a yearly event in which MIT students hold classes for 9th-12th graders on any topic from “atomic chess to ancient Chinese literature to aerospace.”  In “Make Your Own Language,” students learn about the history of constructed languages, pick up some basic linguistics by making their own constructed language, and then teach fellow students their constructed languages well enough to complete translation challenge sentences. Their course description is below:

Glidis, O studans! When you pick up a fantasy or sci fi novel, do you flip to the back to look at the glossary for that alien language? Do you think the world would be a much better place if there were one, neutral, easy-to-learn language that we all could speak? Maybe you’ve made a code or cypher for you and your friends. Or maybe you think language is too imprecise and really wish there were some unambiguous way of communicating. If any of these statements describe you, congratulations! You might just have what it takes to be a conlanger, someone who makes languages, for fun (and for profit!). In this practicum, we’ll create our own language, for fun (not for profit!), learning some interesting facts about conlangs and linguistics along the way.

Danfeng Wu will be giving an invited talk next Monday, November 23 (10:15 EST) at the Syntax Colloquium at Goethe University Frankfurt on “Syntax and prosody of either…or… sentences”.  Here is her abstract:

Prosodic structure largely reflects syntactic structure, but there are also mismatches. If we follow the intuition that prosodic structure is matched to pronounced material, an obvious place to study the syntax-prosody mismatch is syntactic structure involving non-pronounced material, such as ellipsis. In this talk I will present prosodic evidence of elided material in a phonetic experiment, where I show that the presence or absence of elided structure has an effect on the prosodic realization. Not only does this result provide a new source of evidence for ellipsis, but it also informs the question of what sort of syntactic information is accessible to prosody. 

The construction where I examine the prosodic effects of ellipsis is English either…or… coordination because it provides a suitable environment for the experiment, and allows me to design materials where ellipsis size could be parametrically varied. The prosodic work requires careful syntactic and semantic arguments that there is ellipsis in this coordination in the first place. As background, I will present evidence showing that there is ellipsis in either…or… coordination (following Schwarz 1999), and the size of the elided material is correlated with the position of either (as in 1a-d). These arguments rely on constituency tests, diagnostics involving elided pronouns and referring expressions, antecedent-contained deletion, and verb particle constructions.

(1) a. Lillian will look for either Lauren or Bella.
    b. Lillian will either look for Lauren or look for Bella.
    c. Lillian either will look for Lauren or will look for Bella.
    d. Either Lillian will look for Lauren or she will look for Bella.

After showing evidence for the analysis of ellipsis for (1a-d), I will move on to the prosodic part of the talk. The difference in ellipsis among (1a-d) might lead to a difference in prosody, specifically in phrasing. Consider (1d), which involves coordination of two clauses in syntax. If prosodic structure is built from a structure that contains elided material, and furthermore, if large syntactic constituents correspond to large prosodic constituents, we would have two large prosodic constituents, as can be observed by a large boundary (of intonational phrase, IP) between Lauren and or (2a). On the other hand, if prosody only considers surface structure, it might group Lauren or Bella as a single prosodic constituent even though they are not a constituent underlyingly, creating a small boundary (intermediate phrase, iP) between Lauren and or (2b).

(2) a. Either Lillian will look for Lauren _IP) or she will look for Bella _IP).
    b. Either Lillian will look for Lauren _iP) or Bella _IP).

If prosody is built from a structure containing hidden material, the boundary between Lauren and or would increase as we move from (1a) to (1d), since the amount of elided structure increases. In contrast, if prosody only considers surface structure, that boundary between Lauren and or would be the same for (1a-d). Preliminary results based on transcriptions of tones and breaks in the productions suggest speakers’ strong preference for (2a): the boundary between Lauren and or does increase as the elided material increases, suggesting that prosody tracks syntax closely. These results also bear on the question of timing: the non-pronunciation of material must occur after the creation of prosodic phrasing.

Speaker: Tanya Bondarenko (MIT)
Title: Two paths to explain
Time: Tuesday, November 10th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: In this talk, I show that Russian CPs that combine with the verb objasnit’ ‘explain’ have two interpretations: they can denote what was said as an explanation (explanans) or what has been explained (explanandum):

(1) Lena objasnila [CP čto xleba net.]
Lena explained COMP bread no
Lena explained that there is no bread.’
a. Explanans: Lena said “there is no bread” as an explanation of some other fact (e.g., of the fact that she sent Petya to the grocery store).
b. Explanandum: Lena explained the fact that there’s no bread (e.g., by saying “Katya made sandwiches last night”).

I show that the two readings go hand in hand with a number of differences in argument structure, event structure and extraction, and argue that objasnit’ can either denote a state of something being explained or a process of explaining, and the two denotations correspond to two different mappings to syntax. Explanandum CPs combine as modifiers of internal arguments (Kratzer 2006, Moulton 2015), while explanans CPs combine as event modifiers which specify the Content of the explaining process (Bogal-Allbritten 2016, Elliott 2017). Finally, I show that ‘explain’ is not unique in exhibiting this ambiguity, and verbs like argumentirovat’ ‘argue’, obosnovat’ ‘justify’, predskazat’ ‘predict’, utochnit’ ‘clarify, make specific’ have the same two readings.

Speaker: Daniel Asherov, Danny Fox (MIT), and Roni Katzir (Tel Aviv University)
Title: A problem for iterated rationality approaches to scalar implicatures
Time: Thursday, November 12th, 12:30pm - 2pm

Abstract: This talk focuses on two seemingly equivalent approaches to scalar implicatures, namely the grammatical approach (Fox 2007, Chierchia, Fox, and Spector 2012) and the more recent iterative models of rationality (IRMs; Franke 2009, 2011, Frank and Goodman 2012, Goodman and Stuhlmüller 2013). Recent work has demonstrated the success of IRMs in capturing scalar implicatures derived by listeners in reference games, in which listeners are given a word and a set of objects and are asked to choose which object the word refers to. In many typical cases, the grammatical approach and IRMs make identical predictions. We identify two scenarios where the two approaches make different predictions and report results from an experiment testing these predictions. We conclude that participants’ judgments accord with the predictions of the grammatical approach, but not with those of IRMs.

To help in identifying differing predictions, we will use the simplified IRMs discussed in Fox and Katzir 2020 (https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005519). But we will also explain why the same holds for the actual IRMs discussed in the literature (e.g. Rational Speech Act in Frank and Goodman 2012).

Speaker: Stefan Keine (UCLA)
Title: Crossover asymmetries (joint work w/ Rajesh Bhatt)
Time: Friday, November 13th, 3:30pm - 5pm

Abstract: We investigate and analyze a crossover asymmetry in Hindi scrambling: such scrambling is not subject to (secondary) weak crossover but at the same time shows clear (secondary) strong crossover effects. This asymmetry provides empirical evidence that the two types of crossover should be analytically decoupled from each other, and it sheds light on factors that condition weak and strong crossover. We pursue the view that a movement type’s crossover profile is not arbitrary but instead correlates with independently motivated properties of this movement type. Our investigation finds evidence that weak crossover is conditioned by the landing site of movement, while strong crossover is determined by properties of the launching site. More specifically, we propose that weak crossover follows from a syntactic restriction on the placement of Büring’s 2004 β-operator, which is required for pronominal binding from the landing site. Strong crossover, on the other hand, is determined by the amount of structure present in the launching site, which can itself be derived from Wholesale Late Merger and nominal licensing along the lines suggested by Takahashi & Hulsey 2009. In addition to contributing to our understanding of crossover phenomena, our argument also has implications for the A/A’-nature of scrambling (e.g., Webelhuth 1989, Mahajan 1990) and movement-type asymmetries more generally.

NELS 51 was held virtually at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). The following students, faculty, and staff members presented at the conference.

• Wenkai Tay, Keely New (1st year), Mary Dalrymple and Dag Haug: Reciprocal scope in Mandarin
• Martin Hackl (Faculty), Curtis Chen (Undergraduate Researcher) and Leo Rosenstein (Linguistics Lab Manager): Maximize Presupposition Effects in Haddock-Descriptions
• Fulang Chen (4th year): The role of Strong Strong Start in Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi
• Ido Benbaji (2nd year), Omri Doron (2nd year), Margaret Wang (2nd year): Reduplication in Hebrew as a Diagnostic for Antonym Decomposition
• Rafael Abramovitz (6th year): Deconstructing Inverse Case Attract

Three of our alums also gave presentations:

• Colin Davis (PhD 2020): On parasitic gaps in relative clauses and extraction from NP
• Joana Serwaa Ampofo and Ezer Rasin (PhD 2018): True self-counterfeeding vowel harmony in Akan serial verb constructions
• Richard Stockwell, Aya Meltzer-Asscher and Dominique Sportiche (PhD 1983): There is reconstruction for Condition C in English questions

BUCLD 45 was also held virtually last week at Boston University. Many of our students, faculty, and staff members gave presentations:

• Athulya Aravind (Faculty) and Martin Hackl (Faculty): Maximize Presupposition! in development
• Cindy Torma (Acquisition Lab Manager), Gabor Brody, Athulya Aravind (Faculty): Decomposing both
• Daniel Goodhue, Jad Wehbe (1st year), Valentine Hacquard (PhD 2006), Jeffrey Lidz: Preschoolers’ comprehension of the interaction of intonation and illocutionary force
• Martin Hackl (Faculty), Ella Apostoaie, Leo Rosenstein (Linguistics Lab Manager): Acquisition of numerals, the natural numbers, and amount comparatives
• Fulang Chen (4th year), Leo Rosenstein (Linguistics Lab Manager), Martin Hackl (Faculty): Quantifier-spreading under negation

Our alums also presented:

• Hisao Kurokami, Jeffrey Lidz, Valentine Hacquard (PhD 2006), Daniel Goodhue: Children’s interpretation of additive particles mo ‘also’ and also in Japanese and English
• Valentine Hacquard (PhD 2006), Yu’an Yang, Jeffrey Lidz: Acquisition of belief reports by Mandarin speaking children
• Despina Oikonomou (PhD 2016), Elena Anagnostopoulou; Vina Tsakali: The development of DATIVE arguments: Evidence from Modern Greek clitics

A recent episode of Speaking of Us, a Wikitongues podcast, features a conversation among Michel DeGraff, Kristen Tcherneshoff and Daniel Bögre Udell under the title: “What are Creole languages, anyway?”. More information including the full transcript can be found in the link below:

https://medium.com/wikitongues/what-are-creole-languages-anyway-michel-degraff-feb978b9e

Speaker: Agnes Bi (MIT)
Title: Scalar particles in comparatives (an informal discussion)
Time: Wednesday, November 4th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Scalar particles in comparatives give rise to unexpected evaluative inferences, which vary depending on focus-placement:

1. Alex is even taller than [Blake]_F.    (⇝ Both Alex and Blake are tall)
2. [Alex]_F is even taller than Blake.    (⇝ Both Alex and Blake are short)
3. Alex is even [taller]_F than Blake.    (⇝ Alex exceeds Blake on some other scale as well)

I will argue in favor of hardwiring a positive condition in the semantics of even along the lines of Daniels & Greenberg 2020 and, generally, of Greenberg 2015, 2018. Moreover, I would like to explore similar patterns in Mandarin with the scalar particle hai, which seems to be largely underspecified and to be at play in the full set of readings.

Speaker: Danny Fox (MIT)
Title: Trivalent Strong Exhaustivity –towards a uniform semantics for question embedding
Time: Thursday, November 5th, 12:30pm - 1:50pm

Abstract: In this talk I will go over well-known arguments that there are three different interpretive schemas associated with question embedding (weak-exhaustivity, strong-exhaustivity and intermediate-exhaustivity), where each embedding predicate selects for the appropriate schema. Despite these arguments I will propose a uniform semantics based on the assumption that the answer to a question is a trivalent proposition (the denotation of a cleft). The answer will be “strongly exhaustive” but presuppositional, hence Trivalent Strong Exhaustivity. Different results will follow for the different embedding contexts based on independent differences in presupposition projection.

Based on a recent paper that you can read at
https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jc5NmIxN/Question%20Embedding

How can universities create student experiences that embrace students’ distinct linguistic and cultural inheritances beyond the “You are welcome here” sign? In this important panel session on October 15, 2020, from this month’s J-WEL Connections, MIT faculty, including Michel DeGraff at MIT Linguistics, together with team members of the MIT-Haiti Initiative, discuss how and why universities can strengthen and broaden the impact of their research and enhance teaching and learning by including the rich diversity of faculty and students.

The video of the session is available here:

https://jwel.mit.edu/undervalued-currency-culture-higher-education

Speaker: Cindy Torma (MIT)
Title: Prospective New Experiment
Time: Friday, October 30th, 2pm - 3pm

Abstract: Cindy will be discussing her ideas for a new language acquisition experiment and looking for feedback. Come and give your input on what might become the Language Acquisition Lab’s next new experiment!

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)
Title: Revisiting UTAH: an informal discussion! (Part 2)
Time: Tuesday, October 27th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Put your lexical semantics hats on and come discuss argument structure with me! Some questions I have been pondering include:

• What do “theta positions” mean in the Y-model?
• Do heads “assign” theta roles in the syntax?
• What is the right division of labor between syntax/semantics when it comes to explaining structural generalizations about arguments?

I surely won’t have all the answers, but here are some readings I have found helpful for those who want to do some homework: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (2005), Harley (2011), Marantz (2013), and the recent round table discussion featuring Gillian Ramchand, Heidi Harley, and Artemis Alexiadou (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_bjHrMunWo)!

Speaker: Edward Flemming (MIT)
Title: MaxEnt vs. Noisy Harmonic Grammar
Time: Monday, October 26th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: MaxEnt grammars have become the tool of choice for analyzing phonological phenomena involving variation or gradient acceptability. MaxEnt is a probabilistic form of Harmonic Grammar in which harmony scores (sums of weighted constraint violations) of candidates are mapped onto probabilities (Goldwater & Johnson 2003). However, there is a competing proposal for deriving probabilities from Harmonic Grammars: Noisy Harmonic Grammar (NHG, Boersma & Pater 2016), in which variation is derived by adding random ‘noise’ to constraint weights. NHG has a variant, censored NHG, in which noise is prevented from making constraint weights negative. All of these grammar models can be formulated as making the outputs of a harmonic grammar random by adding random noise to the harmonies of candidates. The models are differentiated by the nature of the distribution of this noise. This formulation provides a common frame for analyzing and comparing their properties. The comparison reveals a basic difference between the models: in MaxEnt, the relative probability of two candidates depends only on the difference in their harmony scores, whereas in NHG it also depends on the number of unshared violations incurred by the two candidates. This difference leads to testable predictions which are evaluated against data on variable realization of schwa in French (Smith & Pater 2020). The evaluation turns out to have interesting complications, but ultimately provides some support for MaxEnt over censored NHG, while both of these models clearly out-perform regular NHG on this data set.

Speaker: Rafael Abramovitz (MIT)
Title: Deconstructing Inverse Case Attraction
Time: Thursday, October 29th, 12:30pm - 13:50pm

Abstract: Inverse case attraction (ICA) in relative clauses (RC) is a phenomenon whereby the head of a seemingly externally-headed RC is marked with the case assigned to the gap inside the RC. This phenomenon has puzzled linguists and grammarians for the better part of the last two millennia, and has given rise to a number of unsatisfactory analyses. Based on data from Koryak, in this talk (practice for NELS) I’ll propose a new analysis of ICA whereby it involves the head of an RC surfacing in a left-peripheral position within the RC. This analysis is supported by data from all languages with ICA for which sufficient data exists in the literature, suggesting that it may provide a unified analysis for all instances of ICA across languages. Further, the type of RC that I posit (ex-situ but internally-headed) has been extensively argued to exist in the Gur languages (most prominently Buli) by Ken Hiraiwa and colleagues. ICA, I argue, therefore arises in languages with both Gur-style RCs and case-marked relative pronouns.

On the Existential Perfect reading of statives

English perfect constructions involving stative predicates such as be in the attic are ambiguous between an (E)xistential-perfect and (U)niversal-perfect reading. The U-perfect reading is the most readily available reading, but the E-perfect reading can be forced with certain modifiers, such as three times.

(1)

1. I have been in the attic since I moved in. (U-perfect, E-perfect)
2. I have (only) been in the attic three times since I moved in. (E-perfect) 

Previous accounts of such sentences (e.g. Mittwoch 1988, Giannakidou 2003) have suggested that E-perfect readings involve coercion of the stative predicate into an eventive predicate.

In this talk, I will argue that these sentences do not involve any eventive structure, and that such readings can straightforwardly be derived using the operation of topological closure, which Giorgi and Pianesi (1997, 2000) argue is integral to deriving the meaning of perfective verb forms.

As additional support for this account, I will provide a compositional semantics of Kannada sentences like (2), which exhibit a peculiar (and as far as I know, unattested) reading which is a combination of the E-perfect and U-perfect readings.

(2) 2001-rinda   ī      kōṇe-yalli   mūru  bari   iddāne.

    2001-ABL     this   room-LOC     three times  be.PRES.1SG

    Lit: “I am in this room three times from 2001.” 

    ≈ “This is the third time I have been in this room since 2001.”   

I will argue that such a reading can be derived through topological closure, but cannot be derived through eventive coercion.

Speaker: Ella Apostoaie (Wellesley College), Curtis Chen (MIT) and Martin Hackl (MIT)
Title: Practice Talks for BUCLD and NELS
Time: Friday, October 23rd, 2pm - 3:30pm

Abstract: Our own undergraduate researchers, Ella Apostoaie (Wellesley College) and Curtis Chen (MIT), along with Martin Hackl (MIT), are presenting talks they will soon be giving at BUCLD and NELS conferences respectively. Please join, see what our Language Acquisition Lab and Experimental Syntax and Semantics Labs have been up to, and give feedback!

Practice talks will be given for the following presentations:

Martin Hackl, Ella Apostoaie and Leo Rosenstein: Acquisition of Numerals, the Natural Numbers,
and Amount Comparatives (Poster)

Martin Hackl, Curtis Chen and Leo Rosenstein: Maximize Presupposition Effects in Haddock Descriptions (Talk)

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)
Title: Revisiting UTAH: an informal discussion!
Time: Tuesday, October 20th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Put your lexical semantics hats on and come discuss argument structure with me! Some questions I have been pondering include:

• What do “theta positions” mean in the Y-model?
• Do heads “assign” theta roles in the syntax?
• What is the right division of labor between syntax/semantics when it comes to explaining structural generalizations about arguments?

I surely won’t have all the answers, but here are some readings I have found helpful for those who want to do some homework: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (2005), Harley (2011), Marantz (2013), and the recent round table discussion featuring Gillian Ramchand, Heidi Harley, and Artemis Alexiadou (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_bjHrMunWo)!

Speaker: Boer Fu (MIT)
Title: The Emergence of Alternation in A Mandarin Language Game
Time: Monday, October 19th, 5pm - 6:30pm

Abstract: The palatal consonants in Mandarin, tɕ, tɕʰ, ɕ, as a group, are in complementary distribution with 3 other groups: the dentals (ts, tsʰ, s), the velars (k, kʰ, x), and the retroflexes (ʈʂ, ʈʂʰ, ʂ, ɻ). The palatals can only precede high front vowels, [i] and [y], or their glide counterparts [j] and [ɥ]. Whereas the other 3 groups cannot. The existence of complementary distribution without any morphophonological alternation has made the phonemic status of Mandarin palatals a puzzle. Some believe they are allophones of either the velars or the dentals (or both), while others argue they are their own independent phonemes. I have designed a language game in which a native speaker is asked to switch around the two onsets of a disyllabic compound, so that some alternation might take place. In particular, I present speakers with marked inputs like *[ky] or *[ɕu], to see whether they preserve the place of articulation of the onset or the backness of the high vowel. Another puzzle investigated in this study is the status of the prenucleus glide. There is an ongoing debate on whether they are structurally closer to the onset or the rhyme. My language game can also shed some light on the matter.

Speaker: Stanislao Zompì (MIT)
Title: Distinctness effects in English nominals
Time: Thursday, October 22nd, 12:30pm - 1:50pm

Abstract: In this paper, I focus on several purported idiosyncrasies of English nominals, such as the contrasts between this tall a person and *a this tall person, between any taller a person and *an any taller person, and between what color car and *a what color car / *what color a car. I argue that all these contrasts follow straightforwardly from Richards’ (2010) Distinctness condition, banning any Spellout domain in which two instances of the same functional category stand in an asymmetric c-command relation. I also suggest that, under slightly less trivial assumptions about the timing of Distinctness repairs, a Distinctness-based account might be extended to the contrasts between how many color cars and *how many colors cars and between a three-year-old kid and *a three years old kid. Along the way, I also use these case studies to shed light back on the underpinnings of Distinctness and the mechanics of its repairs, arguing, in particular, that Distinctness violations must be repaired within the smallest maximal projection in which they occur, and that Distinctness-enforcing movement must, whenever possible, take precedence over Distinctness-enforcing deletion.

Speaker: Ruth Kramer (Georgetown)
Title: A Critical Look at Phonological Gender Assignment: Implications for Linguistic Theory
Time: Friday, October 23rd, 3:30pm - 5pm

Zoom Link: (Please email ling-coll-org@mit.edu for more information)

Abstract: According to classic typological research, grammatical gender can be assigned to nouns in several different ways. Gender can be assigned semantically (depending on social gender identity, animacy, etc.), morphologically (depending on the presence of a specific affix), or phonologically (e.g., depending on the final segment of the noun). In this talk, I take a critical look at the last member of this list: phonological gender assignment. I present three case studies of languages that have been canonically claimed to have phonological gender assignment: Hausa (Chadic), Guébie (Kru) and Afar (Cushitic). For all of these languages, I argue that phonological gender assignment is not necessary to describe the gender system and, more importantly, a phonological gender assignment analysis is less explanatory than alternative approaches (it misses generalizations, makes typologically-unexpected predictions, and/or cannot extend to related phenomena). In Distributed Morphology, phonological gender assignment is predicted to be impossible because gender is assigned during the syntactic derivation and the syntax lacks phonological information. The results from Hausa, Afar and Guébie therefore provide significant support for Distributed Morphology, and do not support theories where gender is assigned in the lexicon with access to phonological information. I close the talk with plans for future work to investigate additional languages with (alleged) phonological gender assignment.

In this talk I’ll take a closer look at the particle combination akár… is in Hungarian. I argue that it has two possible interpretations, one similar to English even, and another one similar to at least. I provide a semantics for the two readings and address the connection between them. I claim that the difference between these two readings is due to the presence of a covert csak (only/just), which together with akár … is gives rise to a minimal sufficiency reading. This is the flip side of Panizza & Sudo’s (2020) proposal which argues for the presence of a covert even for minimal sufficiency readings with exclusives like just. This raises some open questions concerning the role scalarity and exclusivity play in establishing minimal sufficiency readings in general, which will hopefully provide a good base for a fruitful discussion at the end of the talk.

Speaker: Roumyana Pancheva (USC)
Title: Numerals and Number Features
Time: Friday, October 16th, 3:30pm - 5pm

Zoom Link: (Please email ling-coll-org@mit.edu for more information)

Abstract: Nouns combining with numerals show variation in number marking, cross-linguistically and within one and the same language. Existing analyses differ in their answers to the related questions of (i) whether numerals need to combine with predicates of singularities or pluralities, (ii) whether number features on nouns are semantically interpretable or the result of (uninterpretable) agreement; and (iii) whether the number features realized on nouns originate higher or lower than the numeral. In this talk I present evidence from Bulgarian that (i) numerals can combine with semantically singular nouns, (ii) the singular or plural number features on nouns are interpretable, and (iii) the number features on nouns originate lower than the numeral, but are accompanied by a second number feature higher than the numeral. The arguments involve a reanalysis of one type of number inflection for masculine nouns (the ‘count’ form), which has traditionally been considered a form of plural agreement. The analysis of the Bulgarian facts (which are not well known), extends to Russian nouns combining with paucal numerals (a phenomenon that has been studied extensively), refuting the need for positing a paucal number in that language. I end with a suggestion that what underlies variation in number marking across and within languages is that there are two routes to obtaining cardinality measures.

Speaker: Roumyana Pancheva (USC)

Dates: Wednesday, Oct 14, 2-3:30pm EST and Thursday, Oct 15, 12:30-2pm EST

Title: Temporal reference without tense (joint work with Maria Luisa Zubizarreta)

Abstract: Some languages do not have to mark tense overtly: they either do not have tense morphemes or the tense morphemes are optional. The question arises: is tense universal? The answer, within formal semantics, has so far been “yes”. The formally explicit semantic analyses that have been proposed for languages without obligatory overt tense all posit tense in one form or another. The analyses differ along two dimensions: how they accomplish reference to time intervals (e.g., via a syntactically represented covert pronoun or a purely semantic rule), and how they restrict the location of those time intervals (e.g., via covert lexical features or pragmatic constraints). We aim to develop a different type of account altogether that does not rely on tense to derive temporal reference. We propose that evaluation time shift, a mechanism independently attested in the narrative present in languages with tense, can be more widely used for encoding temporal meaning in the absence of tense. We illustrate this account for Paraguayan Guarani, and identify several empirical advantages over accounts that employ tense. The broader consequence of our proposal is an enriched typology of temporal systems: some languages have tense, whether overt or covert, and others do not. And particularly notably, tense is revealed to not be a linguistic universal.

Recommended reading: https://pancheva.github.io/papers/P&Z(2020)NELS.pdf

Speaker: Jad Wehbe (MIT)
Title: Preschoolers’ comprehension of the interaction of intonation and illocutionary force (work with Daniel Goodhue, Valentine Hacquard and Jeffrey Lidz):

Time: Friday, October 9th, 2pm - 3:30pm

Abstract:

This study investigates preschoolers’ ability to infer the force of speakers’ intended speech acts when they don’t match the clause type uttered, by focusing on rising declaratives in English. Prior work shows that infants are sensitive to clause type and intonational distinctions, but doesn’t address speech act interpretation. We show that children deploy a sophisticated understanding of pragmatics and prosody to uncover the intended illocutionary force of speakers’ utterances. This is done via the results of a comprehension task in which children helped a puppet place animals in workplaces throughout a village. In each trial, the puppet either made a statement about where an animal works, in which case the child had to place the animal in the corresponding location, or the puppet forgot and asked a question, in which case the child had to check a book containing information about each animal’s workplace.

Speaker: Elise Newman (MIT)
Title: On wh-movement and transitivity in Mayan
Time: Thursday, October 8th, 12:30pm - 1:50pm

Abstract: It is often claimed that for some languages, A’-extraction of a transitive subject corresponds to a need to intransitivize the clause. While many analyses argue that this represents a ban on subject extraction in these languages, I argue in this talk that the ‘intransitive’ properties of these clauses are only apparent, and are derivable from general conditions on the order of merge operations at Spec vP. Evidence for this view comes from the profile of anti-agreement in Mayan subject extraction. In high absolutive Mayan languages, A’-movement of a transitive subject results in a loss of phi agreement with that argument, and the insertion of a supposedly intransitivizing morpheme, resulting in the so-called `agent focus’ construction. A’-movement of objects, by contrast, shows the same agreement profile as a transitive clause.

I argue that the this effect can be reduced to the fact that Spec vP serves two different functions: 1) to host an argument, and 2) to host an A’-moving constituent. I propose that both of these two functions have the capacity to be satisfied by Merge of any kind, which includes both internal and external merge. This proposal gives rise to the following possibilities: 1) argument is externally merged, A’-phrase is internally merged, or 2) argument is internally merged, A’-phrase is externally merged. The result is that when the A’-phrase is the object, it must internally merge to get to Spec vP. The argument-introducing feature of v is therefore satisfied by external merge of the subject (like a regular transitive clause). By contrast, when the subject is a wh-phrase, it can satisfy the wh-hosting feature of v by external merge, leaving the argument introducing property to be satisfied by the internal argument (i.e. subject wh can cause A-movement of the object). In summary, languages are predicted in which two arguments occupy Spec vP whenever one of them is a wh-phrase.

The order in which internal and external merge apply in each case does not affect whether the result is a transitive clause, but has consequences for the scopal relationship between these two merged phrases, and their accessibility to Agree. I propose that the constituent that satisfies v’s argument introducing feature always ends up c-commanding the wh-phrase in high absolutive Mayan languages, because of economy conditions on how these features are satisfied. In other words, object wh-questions have the order SO_wh at the edge of vP, while subject wh-questions have the order OS_wh. This results in the subject being accessible to a higher phi probe when it is not a wh-phrase, but inaccessible to phi-Agree when it is a wh-phrase, c-commanded by the object. When agreement with the subject is blocked, I propose that an elsewhere morpheme appears, which is what is known as the agent focus morpheme.

Speaker: Tanya Bondarenko
Title: A problem with Content
Time: Wednesday, September 30th, 1pm - 2pm

Abstract: Under Kratzer’s approach to the semantics of clausal embedding (Kratzer 2006; 2016, Moulton 2009; 2015, Bogal-Allbritten 2016;2017, Elliott 2017), embedded clauses denote not propositions (2), but individuals with content (1).

(1) [[that it is raining]] = λxe. Content(x) = λws. it is raining in w (2) [[that it is raining]] = λws. it is raining in w

In this talk I show some evidence that the meaning in (1) is not sufficient to account for the range of what CPs can mean: CPs across different languages are ambiguous between (1) and another meaning, which I illustrate in (3) with an example from Russian. In (3) the CP describes not a contentful individual, but the kind of a situation that took place.

(3) Složilas’ takaja situacija, [čto ja utopil svoj telefon] happened such situation that I sunk self’s phone ‘A situation in which I sunk my phone happened.’

I would like to argue that the meaning of the CP in (3) is not reducible to (1) or (2). I sketch out a more abstract meaning for CPs, which is dependent on whether the argument that CP modifies is a contentful individual or a situation, and show a syntactic diagnostic in Russian that allows to distinguish between the two interpretations.

This work is at the very beginning stage, and I am very much looking forward to your feedback!