Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
Not a member yet
4323 research outputs found
Sort by
Continuant Devoicing in Turkish: Reanalysis of Turkish Word-Final Devoicing
Get PDFPrevious research shows that Turkish voiced stops and affricates undergo devoicing in word-final position. There are some grammars claiming that rhotic [ɾ] is also affected by this phenomenon (Göksel & Kerslake, 2005 and Taylan, 2015) as well as liquid sonorants ([l] and [ʎ]) which can optionally undergo word-final devoicing, at least in the Istanbul dialect of Turkish (Kornfilt, 1990). This study tests the continuant consonants in Turkish for their devoicing properties in different environments. These environments include preceding phonemes of different voicing qualities, word-final position, sentence-final position, and isolation. Our experiment examines all the voiced continuant sounds of Turkish that can naturally occur in word-final positions ([ɾ], [l], [ɫ], [ʎ], [j], [v], [β], [z], and [ʒ]). The experiment involves 10 Turkish-speaking participants from different regional backgrounds in Turkey. Sets of words and sentences focusing on the target phones and environments were presented to the participants to read out loud while recording. The findings suggest that word-final devoicing does extend to the [+cont] consonants of Turkish in the word-final position, though it shows variance among the participants. This phonological process seems to be optional unlike stop devoicing in Turkish which is a systematic process. Another finding, also observed by Nichols (2016) for the rhotic only, was that the majority of the instances where “word-final” devoicing occurred, was in fact exclusively in utterance-final position. Environments that can be considered word-final but not utterance final, yielded mostly fully voiced consonants, showing evidence for [+cont] consonants having their own separate set of phonological rules and environments for devoicing than stop consonants. Overall, this analysis suggests an environment of devoicing for [+cont] consonants (voiced fricatives and non-nasal sonorants) in Turkish and reanalyzes the rhotic [ɾ] devoicing which was previously described as word-final only, similar to the stop consonants
Low applicatives and affected applicatives in Turkish
Get PDFThis paper argues that the dative beneficiary in Turkish has been incorrectly identified as a high applicative structure. While datives are felicitous with certain unergative and stative verbs, they show semantic restrictions that are unexpected on a high applicative analysis. I argue instead that Turkish has two applicative types: low (contra Tonyalı 2015a,b), relating the applied argument to the theme as possessor, and affected (Cuervo 2003), relating the applied argument to the state of the theme as beneficiary. Neither of these is a high applicative relating the argument to the event as a whole. This correctly captures the distribution of non-core datives in Turkish without overgenerating as the high applicative analysis does
Balkar X-marking: a change in progress
Get PDFThis paper explores patterns of morphological expressions employed by Balkar language (Turkic language spoken by ca. 300K people in Russia) to mark contexts of X-marking (von Fintel & Iatridou 2020): counterfactual conditionals, weak necessity modals, and counterfactual desires. The main oddity of Balkar with respect to X-marking is that its X-marking system appears to be transforming into a system without antecedent X-marking. The theoretical implications of this pattern are explored in this paper
The investigation of quantity implicatures during typical development: a systematic review
Get PDFThe present work is a systematic review on the acquisition of quantity implicatures in typically developing children. The references were selected through the PRISMA method. The criteria for eligibility were that the articles should be peer-reviewed, published articles written in English, containing empirical data on the comprehension of quantity implicatures in first language acquisition during typical development. The aim of this review is three-fold. First, to provide a picture of what empirical data tells us about the acquisition of quantity implicatures, based on both lexical and ad-hoc scales, potentially contributing to theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. Second, to analyze the methodologies that have been used to test children and their adequacy. And lastly to evaluate whether or not systematic review is an accurate analysis method for this type of varied and often complicated data. The results suggest that children improve in implicature derivation with age, especially with lexical scales, and that action-based tasks not based on meta-linguistic evaluations might be better suited to test these inferences, especially as opposed to Truth Value Judgment tasks. The fact that the systematic analysis confirms previously individuated trends in the acquisition of implicatures confirms that this is in fact a useful methodology to analyze the data, even with its limitations
Modeling the Role of Polysemy in Verb Categorization
Get PDFRecent work has indicated that static word embeddings can predict human semantic categories (Majewska et al. 2021). In this paper, we consider the role of polysemy in semantic categorization, by comparing sense-level embeddings with previously studied static embeddings in their prediction of human-produced categories. We find that the polysemy is crucial for predicting human categories; sense-level embeddings dramatically outperform static embeddings in predicting semantic categories. Our findings highlight the role of polysemy in semantic categorization that is exclusively based on linguistic input
Investigating a shared mechanism in the priming of manner and quantity implicature
Get PDFIn the current paper, we investigate the existence of a shared derivation mechanism between manner and quantity implicature. As per the Gricean-inspired perspective, both manner and quantity implicature are derived in a substantially analogous fashion, relying on the consideration of alternative ways in which the speaker could have spoken, but didn’t. In contrast, other accounts (e.g., grammatical accounts) of quantity implicature consider manner implicature and quantity implicature to be distinct in their derivational mechanisms.Previous studies have found that quantity implicature can prime the derivation of subsequent quantity implicature both within and between quantity implicature subtypes in a structural priming paradigm, suggesting that ad hoc, numeral and some quantity implicature are governed by the same derivational mechanism. We have applied a structural priming paradigm to the case of manner implicature to investigate 1) whether manner implicature can be primed, 2) whether manner implicature can prime manner implicature and 3) whether manner implicature can be primed by quantity implicature. Through manner-manner priming, the paper addresses the psycholinguistic reality of manner. While quantity-manner priming probes the existence of a shared derivational mechanism between the phenomena.We show that manner implicature can prime manner implicature under certain experimental circumstances and that ad hoc quantity, but not some quantity implicature can also prime manner implicature, whereas some quantity implicature cannot
Paraguayan Guaraní and the typology of free affix order
Get PDFCross-linguistically, affix order is commonly determined by semantic scope (Rice 2006) or a morphological template. Less frequently, affix order is free, which means that suffixes can be reordered without a concomitant change in scope. To address the question of what gives rise to and constrains free affix order (FAO), I present a case study of Paraguayan Guaraní (or PG, Tupí-Guaraní, Paraguay, ISO 639-3: gug). I argue that FAO in PG should be analyzed as driven by prosodic factors. The prosodic analysis has previously been proposed only for Chintang (Bickel et al. 2007). Two major analyses of FAO see the phenomenon as driven by either morphology (e.g. Ryan 2010) or prosody (Bickel et al. 2007). The morphological analysis proposes that FAO is a consequence of free variation within the morphological template. The prosodic analysis models FAO with prosodic subcategorization for phonologically prominent positions. I argue that the two analyses make different predictions as to the preconditions for and the extent of FAO. I show that both the morphological and the prosodic profile of FAO are attested. I propose that FAO in PG is an instance of the latter. Thus, I demonstrate that FAO is not a unified phenomenon, but rather should be typologized as driven by either morphological or prosodic factors
Re-evaluating Albanian’s place in Indo-European studies
Get PDFWhile Albanian has traditionally been marginalized in Indo-European (IE) studies, this has been due to the extensive borrowing in the Tosk Albanian dialect used by previous literature. However, the Malsia Madhe dialect of Albanian better preserves the phonotactics and lexicon of Proto-Albanian, Proto Illyrian, and Proto-Indo-European. Therefore, Malsia Madhe Albanian should be utilized when discussing the history of Albanian and its place in IE studies
The case of fragment answers
Get PDFThis paper investigates the case of bare-(pro)nominal fragment answers, and specifically the issues that arise in analyzing the case of fragment DPs from subject questions. I adopt a middle ground approach between competing theories of nonsententials—namely the Ellipsis Approach (Merchant 2004) and the approach of Direct Interpretation (Barton & Progovac 2005)—and propose fragment DPs to be derived from a null vP. For their case forms, I compare two different theories of case—assignment by functional heads and Dependent Case Theory—and hypothesize that fragment DPs construed as the internal argument are realized in dependent case for nominative-accusative languages. Fragment DPs construed as the external argument would be found in their default case form, which is language-specific. Fragment answer data from English, Korean, and Serbian is used to provide crosslinguistic support for this null vP analysis and discussion of case
Subjacency effects on overt wh-movement in wh-in-situ languages: Evidence for nominal structure
Get PDFThis paper investigates whether overt wh-movement in Korean, a wh-in-situ language, triggers Subjacency violations in the same set of bounding configurations as English. Yoon (2013) and Jung (2015) showed that Korean wh-islands display Subjacency effects, and we ask whether the Complex NP and Coordinate Structure Constraints are also observed. We find that they are not. We propose that this is because Korean nominal expressions need not project DP. Our analysis supports previous accounts of Korean nominal structure (Kim et al. 2010), which suggest (based on optionality of determiners) that “Korean NP structure is non-configurational or lacks the category D.