Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Musical genres exhibit distinct sociophonetic targets: An analysis of Quebec French
Get PDFGenres such as indie (Beal 2009) and hip-hop (Eberhardt & Freeman 2015) feature dialectal traits in English, but whether genres form targets distinct from speech remains unclear. We examine genre effects on phonetic variation in Quebec French music by probing the role of genres (pop, country, alternative, and indie) on laxing and diphthongization, processes characteristic of Quebec French (Walker 1984). Stigma facing formal varieties of Quebec French has vanished within dialect (Kircher 2012), yet remains for processes that vary regionally or socioeconomically (Côté 2012; Côté & Lancien, 2019). Whereas laxing is categorical and non-stigmatized (Côté 2012; Paradis & Dolbec, 1998), diphthongization is variable and stigmatized (Côté 2012). We use a novel corpus of ten Québécois singers who released multiple albums from 2011-2021 (29 albums; 326 songs). We find the emergence of genre-specific linguistic norms distinct from speech and argue that genres in music parallel sociolects
Dependency formation interacts with case: Evidence from Korean double nominative constructions
Get PDFThe subject-object asymmetry in relative clauses, where structures containing subject dependencies are typically easier to process than those with object dependencies, has been previously attributed to both grammatical function (subject > object) as well as morphological case (e.g., nom > acc). We investigate processing of Double Nominative Constructions (“DNCs”) in Korean, where the object exceptionally has nominative case like the subject (i.e., nom-nom). This enables isolation of grammatical function and case as possible factors driving the so-called “subject advantage.” We find that dependency formation is more costly in DNCs as compared with nom-acc structures, especially for object relative clauses. We tie this effect to distinctness in morphological case of the subject and object, suggesting that the less morphosyntactically distinct the subject and object are, the more difficult it is to process DNCs in dependencies
Against a low subject analysis of causatives of unergatives
Get PDFContrary to the long-standing assumption that the causative alternation is limited to unaccusative verbs, direct causatives of unergatives have recently been attested in a variety of languages (Massam 2009; Legate 2014; Nash 2017, 2021; Tollan 2018; Tollan & Oxford 2018; Kouneli 2021; Myler 2022; Krishnan & Sarma 2023). The question raised by these causatives is how the causee is realized syntactically and semantically. I argue that in Hindi-Urdu, Turkish and Sason Arabic, direct causatives of unergatives are regular transitives in which the causee is merged as an internal argument assigned a patient θ-role. I propose that such structures are built by coercing the normally unergative verb into an unaccusative use in causative environments, reflected in a deagentivized construal of the causee. I show that this analysis is preferable to a competing proposal according to which the subject of the intransitive unergative and the causee of the causativized variant are both merged in SpecvP. Contrary to the long-standing assumption that the causative alternation is limited to unaccusative verbs, direct causatives of unergatives have recently been attested in a variety of languages (Massam 2009; Legate 2014; Nash 2017, 2021; Tollan 2018; Tollan & Oxford 2018; Kouneli 2021; Myler 2022; Krishnan & Sarma 2023). The question raised by these causatives is how the causee is realized syntactically and semantically. I argue that in Hindi-Urdu, Turkish and Sason Arabic, direct causatives of unergatives are regular transitives in which the causee is merged as an internal argument assigned a patientθ-role. I propose that such structures are built by coercing the normally unergative verb into an unaccusative use in causative environments, reflected in a deagentivized construal of the causee. I show that this analysis is preferable to a competing proposal according to which the subject of the intransitive unergative and the causee of the causativized variant are both merged in SpecvP
The Diverse Names Generator: An app for decreasing bias and promoting inclusion
Get PDFIt has been well established that example sentences in linguistics use a remarkably non-diverse set of proper names in terms of gender, culture, and ethnicity (e.g., Macaulay & Brice 1997, Cépeda et al. 2021, and Kotek et al. 2021). Here, we introduce a new resource, the Diverse Names Generator (DNG), which provides randomly selected proper names with IPA transcriptions from a user-contributed, linguist-curated database of names from a wide range of languages and cultures. Generating names randomly helps users to overcome unconscious bias that may lead them to default to using Anglophone, male-gendered names. The DNG can be accessed both through a website interface and through a downloadable Android app, both with offline capabilities. This novel resource is the first of its kind and can be used both while preparing examples ahead of time and while generating examples live in the classroom
Languages put restrictions on large sonority distances
Get PDFAn underlying assumption in terms of sonority distances is that clusters with large sonority distances are more common than those with small distances, as captured in the unmarked status of large sonority distances and formalized in terms of sonority constraints on consonant clusters. A cross-linguistic survey of attested sonority distances in 357 languages reveals that large sonority distances are not most commonly attested. Rather, there is a point of sonority distance at which the largest number of languages is attested. When the sonority distance exceeds a particular value, the number of languages starts to decrease, regardless of the sonority scales tested. The finding puts the unmarked status of large sonority distances to the test, suggesting a potential constraint that prevents large distances from surfacing
Learning unaccusativity: Evidence for split intransitivity in child Spanish
Get PDFWe examine four features of unaccusativity in child-directed and child Spanish to determine what cues children might use to distinguish unaccusative and unergative verbs. Two are cross-linguistic lexico-semantic features: Subjects of unaccusatives are patients so we expect more inanimate subjects with unaccusatives; and unaccusatives tend to have an endpoint, hence may occur more frequently with perfective aspect. The other two are language-specific morphosyntactic features: VS order is grammatical with unaccusatives but not unergatives, and many unaccusative verbs allow/require the anticausative se clitic. We find all four features robustly in children\u27s input and that even 1-2-year-olds show discriminate use of them
Post-Syntactic Linearization of Yes/No-Question Particle in Turkish
Get PDFThis study focuses on the linear order of the yes/no-question particle mI in Turkish. The distribution of mI is intriguing, since it must reverse the linear order with the immediately adjacent morpheme unless the morpheme immediately follows the verb root. To account for such a distribution, the linear order of mI is attributed to the interaction between two post-syntactic concatenation statements under adjacency (Local Dislocation in Embick 2007). Assuming that the question particle spells out the C[+Q] head, two ordered Local Dislocation statements account for the distribution of mI: the first statement holds between the verb root and its immediately adjacent inflectional morpheme; and the second statement is particular to T and C[+Q]
Crosslinguistic differences on the Present Perfect Puzzle: An experimental approach
Get PDFIn this paper, we analyze how different temporal and referential properties of past-referring adverbials – specifically, hodiernality and deixis – are partially responsible for the crosslinguistic distribution of PAST and PERFECT markers across Dutch, Spanish, and English. To that end, we conducted an acceptability judgment task, where 160 subjects per language rated context-sentence pairs that display either a PAST or a PERFECT marker, and a temporal adverbial that is: (i) either temporally close to or temporally far from the speech time, and (ii), either deictic or not deictic. Results show that: (a) Dutch allows for its PERFECT marker to combine with any past-referring temporal adverbial, (b) Spanish only allows its PERFECT marker to combine with adverbials that locate the event temporally close to speech time, regardless of deixis, and (iii) that English prefers its PAST marker in all past-referring situations, but allows its PERFECT to combine with adverbials that are both deictic and temporally close to speech time, particularly when the adverb specifies an interval that is included in the day of utterance (e.g., this morning), as opposed to adverbs that describe an interval that includes it (e.g., this month).
The evolution of similarity avoidance: a phylogenetic approach to phonotactic change
Get PDFThe cross-linguistic under-representation of adjacent consonants sharing a place of articulation within uninflected lexical items is well documented. At the same time, little is known regarding the specific diachronic mechanisms involved in the emergence and maintenance of this pattern. Phylogenetic analyses provide some support for the idea that adjacent identical consonants within words arise infrequently, but stronger support for the idea that words containing such a pattern die out more frequently than those without. I highlight the value of tools used in this paper for exploring the evolution of sound patterns, and also discuss some limitations of the implementation used in the paper to be improved upon
A dynamic neural field model of leaky prosody: proof of concept
Get PDFRecent work has shown that lexical items come to take on the phonetic characteristics of the prosodic environments in which they are typically produced, a phenomenon referred to as "leaky prosody". Focusing on pitch patterns in Mandarin, we show that leaky prosody can be derived from a flat (i.e., non-transformational, non-optimizing) model of speech production. Formalized using Dynamic Field Theory, in our model, lexical, phonological, and prosodic inputs each exert forces on a Dynamic Neural Field representing pitch. Notably, the forces exerted by these inputs reflect surface distributions in a large corpus of spontaneous speech. Our simulations showed that the flat model derives the short timescale effect of prosodic prominence on pitch production as well as the longer timescale effect of leaky prosody. By updating lexical items based on surface phonetic form, words that are consistently produced in high/low prosodic prominence positions take on the phonetic characteristics of those environments