Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
Not a member yet
4323 research outputs found
Sort by
The effects of language on person perception: Heritage language and English on Chinese Americans
Full text linkLanguage not only facilitates communication but also constructs social identities through listeners\u27 perceptions and language ideologies. This study examines how listeners perceive second-generation Chinese Americans when they switch between English and Mandarin Chinese. Using a matched-guise perception task, 22 advanced-level English-speaking learners of Mandarin evaluated speakers on attributes of friendliness, confidence, meticulousness, and rationality. Results showed that speakers were rated as significantly more friendly and confident when speaking English than when speaking Mandarin, while no significant differences were observed for meticulousness and rationality. These findings suggest that language choice influences perceived identity traits, with English aligning speakers more closely with dominant American cultural norms, while Mandarin indexes different cultural associations
The Japanese expressive modifier baka ‘stupid’: An evaluation of the individual and the situation
Full text linkThe English noun-modifying expressive modifier damn can express notonly a speaker’s negative attitude toward the target expressed in a noun but also the speaker’s negative attitude toward an entire proposition (=propositional reading)(e.g., Potts 2005; Gutzmann 2019). In this study, I investigate the Japanese noun-modifying expressive modifier baka ‘stupid’, and argue that unlike the English expressive modifier damn, it simultaneously conveys a negative attitude toward an individual expressed in a noun and an entire event within a single reading. This paper shows variations in and proposes a new typology of expressive modifiers
Careful consideration in communicating rejection: Discourse analysis of politeness, empathy, and denial in PhD rejection letters
Full text linkDoctoral degrees are considered daunting, but what about rejection letters? This study examines the bad news genre of rejection using 47 PhD rejection letters through the lens of discourse and genre analysis. Two obligatory rhetorical moves were found in 100% of the letters, a rejection move and a goodwill move. The rejection move includes steps like thanking the applicant and providing reasons. On the other hand, the goodwill move expresses empathy and well wishes. A transitivity analysis also reveals the wordings of the actual rejections employ tactics of indirectness. This project hopes to bring light to the ways that rejection is delivered and how this may impact the receivers of bad news
Extending familiar constructions: How autistic and non-autistic adults fill in the blanks
Full text linkAutistic individuals show group level differences in categorization tasks compared to non-autistic individuals, exhibiting a strength in detecting differences and a reduced tendency to flexibly generalize. The current work indicates that autistic individuals are challenged by a task that require extensions of familiar constructions in relatively novel ways, a challenge previously documented at the level of individual words. Study 1 provides a series of phrases that each contain a single blank slot, and participants are asked to choose which of four words best fits the slot. In key Flexible Extension trials, the target word only infrequently occurs in the phrase in corpus data, but it is more suitable than the other options. Results indicate that AS adults find it more challenging to flexibly extend familiar phrases in new ways than their non-AS peers, when performance is matched on trials that do not require flexible extensions.
A second study tests the extent to which autistic and non-autistic adults converge on the same prototype for familiar multi-word phrases by asking them to generate words to fill open slots. Results suggest that AS participants show less convergence (greater entropy) in the generation of fillers for open slots, when matched with non-autistic participants on education level and verbal fluency. Current results suggest that categorization differences are a subtle yet persistent difference that is relevant for phrasal patterns as well as words
Interpretation of verbal ellipsis in monolinguals and heritage speakers
Full text linkThis study investigates how monolingual English and Turkish speakers, as well as English-dominant Turkish heritage speakers (HSs) interpret strict/sloppy ambiguity in verbal ellipsis structures (e.g., John defended his friend, and Noah did too). Prior work shows that HSs often diverge from monolinguals in interpreting null subjects (Laleko & Polinsky, 2017; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006), yet it is unclear whether this extends to null constructions beyond subject pro-drop. To test this, we examined the interpretations of baseline English and baseline Turkish speakers for ambiguous verbal ellipsis sentences, compared to Turkish HSs, who completed picture choosing tasks in English (Exp. 1) and Turkish (Exp. 2). Baseline English speakers preferred the strict reading, whereas baseline Turkish speakers preferred the sloppy reading in elided sentences. HSs, however, showed a strict reading preference in both English and Turkish, diverging from Turkish monolinguals and aligning more with their dominant language, English. Further analyses revealed individual differences in the interpretation of verbal ellipsis among HSs and Turkish baseline speakers, with HSs showing this variation in both of their languages. These findings offer new evidence of HSs’ divergence from baseline speakers in the domain of interpretation of null elements beyond null subjects and highlight potential role of language experience
Evidence for projection of cleft exhaustivity
Full text linkThis paper argues that negated clefts, as well as other types of embedded clefts, trigger a previously undescribed inference, which I term potential exhaustivity. Although negated clefts do not trigger an actual exhaustivity inference, they imply that the rejected alternative was under consideration as a potential exhaustive answer to the question under discussion addressed by the cleft. Therefore, negated clefts are infelicitous when the common ground already entails that the rejected alternative cannot serve as an exhaustive answer. This finding challenges the prevailing assumption that cleft exhaustivity does not project, thereby providing compelling evidence that exhaustivity is a presupposition. Furthermore, it is proposed that the potential exhaustivity inference should not be seen as a component of the exhaustivity presupposition itself; instead, it emerges due to an independently-motivated constraint on presupposition accommodation
Javanese veridicality mismatches: Q-to-P reduction amid uniformity
Full text linkThis paper examines a surprising counterexample to the Spector & Egré’s (2015) generalization that interrogative and declarative complements of responsive verbs match in veridicality: Javanese predicates ngêrti ‘know’ and kèlingan ‘remember’ are veridical with respect to the interrogative CPs, but not with respect to declaratives. I propose that this pattern is problematic for P-to-Q and Uniformity approaches that bake in the answerhood operator (ANS) into the meaning of the embedding verb, and propose an account that derives the Javanese pattern by maintaining the uniformity of semantic types, yet mimicking the Q-to-P reduction
Comparison of vowel systems in British, American and Irish English: a review
Full text linkThis paper explores the comparative analysis of vowel systems within British, American, and Irish English accents, examining their phonetic characteristics, historical roots, and social implications. English has evolved into numerous varieties worldwide, primarily influenced by regional and social factors. The paper focuses on Received Pronunciation (RP) in British English, General American in American English, and Supraregional Irish English in Irish English, highlighting their distinct phonological features. Rhoticity and lexical sets are examined as key aspects of variation. Differences in the pronunciation of /r/ contribute to unique phonetic landscapes, with British English exhibiting non-rhoticity and American and Irish English maintaining rhoticity. The presence of centering diphthongs in British English and vowel contrasts before /r/ in Irish and American English further distinguishes these accents. Analysis of lexical sets reveals variations in vowel quality and realization, emphasizing the dynamic nature of phonological systems across accents. By examining these differences, the paper underscores the intricate interplay of historical, geographical, and social factors in shaping linguistic diversity. Understanding these nuances is essential for appreciating the complexity of English language variations and their cultural significance
Prosody across sentence types
Full text linkRudin (2018) and Rudin & Rudin (2022) make a typological generalization that languages in which rising declaratives comprise non-canonical yes/no questions (YNQs), like English and Bulgarian, also allow for rising imperatives, used as tentative, but invested requests or disinterested suggestions, but languages in which rising declaratives comprise canonical YNQs, like Macedonian, don\u27t allow for such rising imperatives. I look at another Slavic language, Russian, further expanding and fine-tuning the typology of how different languages realize various meaning components of different types of speech acts. While, like in Macedonian, Russian canonical YNQs are formed via an "intonation-only" strategy, said intonation doesn\u27t involve a rising tune, but a special prosodic peak that I call the Q-Peak. I show that, despite marking canonical YNQs, the Q-Peak can also be used in friendly, but invested requests—but not in disinterested suggestions. I propose that the Q-Peak realizes an operator that asks the addressee to react to the speaker\u27s speech act, which is appropriate in (some) questions and invested requests, but not in disinterested suggestions. The Russian Q-Peak is therefore distinct from the English-style rising tune, which in Rudin (& Rudin\u27s) terms, simply "call[s] off the speaker\u27s commitment to their utterance". The latter can thus have a wider range of meaning effects and brings a different source/flavor of politeness/tentativeness to directives
Anaphoric demonstratives in Mandarin
Full text linkThe goal of this study is to experimentally evaluate contrasting claims in the theoretical literature on the acceptability of Mandarin demonstratives and definite bare nouns in anaphoric contexts. Jenks (2018) argues that Mandarin differentiates between uniqueness-based (weak) and anaphoric (strong) definites through bare nouns and demonstratives, respectively. In contrast, Dayal & Jiang (2022), Bremmers, Liu, van der Klis & Le Bruyn (2022), and Simpson & Wu (2022) claim that both bare nouns and demonstratives can be used in anaphoric contexts in Mandarin, proposing slightly differing explanations with regards to their felicity, tied to factors such as discourse coherence between context and follow-up sentences. Our findings illustrate that Mandarin demonstratives are strongly preferred across the board in anaphoric contexts, patterning with anaphoric definites (rather than demonstratives) in languages such as English, Turkish (Saha, Sa˘g & Davidson 2023), and Bangla (Saha 2023). Additionally, we observe that definite bare nouns are also felicitous in anaphoric contexts, albeit as a less preferred option. We argue that this preference for demonstratives arises because Mandarin bare nouns can have (i) generic interpretations due to the absence of tense and aspectual marking, and (ii) indefinite interpretations in post-verbal positions (Cheng & Sybesma 1999; Simpson & Wu 2022). Demonstratives, by contrast, are unambiguously anaphoric, driving their overall preference