Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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A counterfactual analysis of adnominal modifiers
Get PDFIn this article, I shall argue for a counterfactual analysis of the semantics of some ad-nominal modifiers. This analysis formalizes the intuition that adnominal modifiers are always restrictive in some sense. Technically, the proposal is formalized with an opera-tor that applies to two intensional entities of type <s,et> and returns as the value the same type of semantic entity (type: <s,et>). In terms of how the rule works, it resem-bles Predicate Modification since it requires a special rule. However, it does not inter-sect the two sets in question. Rather, the rule yields a set of entities that are not neces-sarily a subset of the entities specified by the common noun in the actual world. I call this semantic procedure Restrictive Modification (RM). Essential reasoning is given as follows: the property of being x that has the modifier property and if in all closest worlds w in which x had a crucial property that all CN entities have, then x would have the CN property in w. For example, in the case of stone lion, it denotes the prop-erty of being x made of stone such that if x were to possess a crucial property that a re-al lion has (say, the property of being alive with flesh and blood), then x would be a real lion. This reasoning applies to a variety of adjective types. Some problematic ex-amples such as house key and ice water remain, and they are a reserved for a future study
Chinese complex reflexive ta-ziji as an exempt anaphor
Get PDFThis study examines whether the complex reflexive ta-ziji in Mandarin Chinese can be used as an exempt anaphor. To this end, an offline antecedent choice experiment and an online self-paced reading experiment were conducted to explore whether and how discourse-level factors influence the interpretation of ta-ziji. The offline and online experiments provide converging evidence that the logophoric role (source vs. perceiver) of the non-local subject impacts the interpretation of ta-ziji. Crucially, the online experiment shows that when the non-local subject is an empathized source, non-local binding is preferred; when it is an empathized perceiver, there is no clear binding preference. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to linguistic theories of anaphora and logophoricity
Non-manual Focus Markers in Turkish Sign Language
Get PDFSign languages use syntactic (fronting, doubling, clefting), manual manipulations (variation in size, length, speed, repetition), and nonmanual markers (head and eyebrow movements) to mark focus. Due to their simultaneous nature, they are well-known for using these strategies together. In this study, we examined how the focus is marked in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) in free conversations and elicited data. Both studies’ most observed nonmanual markers are head nod and eyebrow raise. We propose that these nonmanual markers are not pure focus markers since they can cooccur with focus and topic in the structures. Yet, due to information structure, they are the marker of the phonological or intonational phrases. Furthermore, the duration of focal signs could be the marker of focus, which needs further investigation
The Emphatic Marker in Turkish: Two Readings
Get PDFThis paper aims to show that the anaphor kendi in Turkish has two distinct readings depending on when it’s functioning as an emphatic marker, which hasn’t been noted in the previous literature. I propose that it has two distinct readings based on their surface sentential positions and diagnostics from Ahn (2010). Moreover, I show that the event modifying a variety of the emphatic marker in Turkish differs from the same type of emphatic marker in English by showing that (i) it allows theme/patient referents, and the DP modifying variety (ii) may be able to survive without obligatory stress. In addition, I document further observations and nuances regarding the morphological marking of the two varieties of the emphatic marker in Turkish as preliminary discussion points.
Five degrees of (non)sense: Investigating the connection between bullshit receptivity and susceptibility to semantic illusions
Get PDFIndividual differences in people’s tendency to see bullshit statements such as Perceptual reality transcends subtle truth as meaningful and possibly profound have become an active topic of research in judgment and decision making in recent years. However, (psycho)linguistics has so far paid little attention to the topic, despite its obvious appeal for language processing research. I present an experiment that investigated possible shared traits contributing to individual bullshit receptivity and susceptibility to semantic illusions, which occur when compositionally incongruous sentences receive plausible but unlicensed interpretations (e.g., More people have been to Russia than I have). The results show relatively little indication of an individual-level tendency to both fall for bullshit and for linguistic illusions. Implications for future psycholinguistic research into bullshit processing are discussed
Tracking the activation of scalar alternatives with semantic priming
Get PDFFrom an utterance of Mary ate some of the deep dish, hearers frequently infer that Mary didn’t eat all of the deep dish. Similarly, an utterance of The movie is good might lead hearers to conclude that the movie isn’t excellent. These inferences are instances of scalar implicature (SI). The standard assumption is that SI arises via hearers’ reasoning about alternative utterances that the speaker could have said, but did not. In particular, hearers are taken to consider stronger alternatives such as all (or Mary ate all of the deep dish) and excellent (or The movie is excellent) and derive their negation. In this study, we investigate the psycholinguistic reflexes of this inferential process. We use semantic priming with lexical decision to test whether lexical alternatives such as all and excellent are retrieved and activated in the processing of SI-triggering sentences. The results of our experiments indeed suggest that alternatives play a role in the processing of SI, though a number of empirical puzzles remain
You must worry! The interpretation of mustn’t varies with context and verbal complement
Get PDFWe investigate experimentally whether American English adult speakers are influenced in their interpretation of mustn’t by pragmatic context (contexts favoring lack of necessity/necessity not to readings) and/or the semantic properties of the verbal complements of the modal (verbs denoting events in the physical realm vs. verbs expressing undesirable mental activities). In an experiment combining a forced choice task and a gradient acceptability task, participants saw sentences containing mustn’t and physical events/negative mental activities in lack of necessity/necessity not to contexts (e.g., You mustn’t worry. The woman will give you money) They had to choose the most suitable interpretation of mustn’t (\u27it is necessary not to\u27/\u27it is not necessary\u27 interpretations). They then had to rate the acceptability of the sentences containing mustn’t in context on a Likert scale from 1 to 7. We find that participants split into two groups: an Interdiction Group, which always treated mustn’t as expressing interdiction, and a Variation Group, which tended to interpret mustn’t as lack of necessity when the context favored such a reading and when the verbal complement the modal combined with was a negative mental activity. We argue that the lack of necessity reading of mustn’t is obtained via pragmatic weakening from its primary interdiction reading, and that this process is sensitive to context, as well as to the cognitive difficulty of imposing or forbidding mental (but not physical) activities to others
Decomposing \u27As If\u27
No full text‘As if’ constructions have been analyzed as only verbal (Bücking 2017) or idiomatic (Bledin & Srinivas 2019, 2020). We argue that ‘as if’ constructions have the same distribution as any clausal similative (i.e. any ‘as’ construction): they can associate with verbal arguments or propositions. And we argue that ‘as if’ constructions are a common and productive cross-linguistic phenomenon, reliably formed with a relativizer; a question subordinator; and X-marking. We thus present a compositional analysis of the constructions based on extant analyses of as (and its cross-linguistic counterparts) as a relativizer (Rett 2013, among others); if as a question subordinator (Starr 2014b, among others); and X-marking as encoding a similarity relation across possible worlds (Schulz 2014; von Fintel & Iatridou 2020). In addition to being compositional, this approach can better account for the wide distribution of ‘as if’ constructions both within a language and across languages
Mora Insertion in Tetsǫ́t’ıné: apparent cases of under- and overapplication
Get PDFTetsǫ́t’ıné is a dialect of Dëne Sųłıné (ISO: CHP) spoken in Canada’s Northwest Territories. In Tetsǫ́t’ıné, prefix vowel length is subject to a complex set of conditions. The basic generalization is that when a consonant is deleted at the same level that a preceding prefix is added, a short vowel results; whereas when a prefix is added first, and an intervocalic consonant deletes at a later level, a long vowel results (Jaker 2022). This paper addresses two apparent counterexamples to this generalation—that is, cases of exceptional long and short vowels, which may be thought of as overapplication or underapplication of mora insertion. In optative paradigms, the consonant ɣ lenites to w in the singular forms at Level 3. w then deletes at Levels 4 and 5, resulting in a short vowel following Level 4 and 5 prefixes. Conversely, the prefixes θe and ɲe are preceded by a null vowel lexically pre-associated to a High tone. This null vowel acquires a mora at Level 2, thus resulting in an exceptionally long vowel when the initial consonants of θe and ɲe are deleted following a Level 4 prefix
Ablaut and transitive softening in the Russian verb
Get PDFTransitive softening in Russian is a type of consonant mutation resulting from an underlying [CjV] cluster. There exist two closed classes of verbs where it occurs in the present tense in the absence of a clear source for a glide: five verbs with the thematic suffix ‑o‑, which can be illustrated by the verb kolótʲ ‘to stab’, and some 100 verbs with the thematic suffix ‑a‑, which can be illustrated by the verb pisátʲ ‘to write’. To explain how [o] and [a] end up as glides, I propose that the vowels in question change into their front counterparts as a result of the same process as that responsible for the stem ablaut in the verb molótʲ ‘to grind’ (1sg: melʲú). I argue that the hypothesis that ablaut can apply to thematic vowels as well as to stems makes it possible to account for another Russian verb exhibiting an unexpected behavior in the present tense (revétʲ ‘to bellow’). Since the latter part of the argument introduces ablauts involving more than one feature, the remainder of the paper is dedicated to the discussion of how multiple feature changes should be formalized