Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Towards a uniformitarian account of creole similarity: Gender loss in Martinican Creole
Full text linkThis paper argues that it is possible to develop a uniformitarian account of at least some of the similarities. With the adoption of the Interpretability Hypothesis (Hawkins & Hattori 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou 2007), it is predicted that uninterpretable features are particularly vulnerable and may be lost in creole genesis because of the critical role of L2 acquisition in this process. In contrast, inter-pretable features are more resilient. Thus, it is predicted that, under the assumption of a feature interpretability-based analysis of gender (Kramer 2014, 2015), grammatical gender is very likely to be lost during creolization, while natural gender is more likely to be retained. These predictions are shown to be borne out in Martinican Creole. Because the Interpretability Hypothesis does not rely on the assumption of an impoverished input, the study suggests that there is no need to postulate that creoles develop out of pidgin to account for some of their similarities. It is, therefore, a welcome result of the study that it suggests a way to improve the predictive power of a uniformitarian approach to creole formation
Upward agreement and syntactic counterfeeding in Lubukusu
Full text linkWhat are the constraints on agreement, and how does it interact with other syntactic operations? Recent studies suggest that syntactic dependencies are tier-based strictly local (TSL) over Minimalist Grammar derivation trees, a computationally restrictive model which closely fits many aspects of the formal typology (Graf 2022, Hanson 2025). Using this framework, I provide an analysis of upward complementizer agreement in Lubukusu (Diercks 2013), and show that it correctly predicts lack of agreement with hyperraised subjects without any additional assumptions. I argue further that the phenomenon should be understood as a kind of syntactic counterfeeding, which together with the existence of feeding, bleeding, and counterbleeding, suggests the need for a syntactic framework which can handle variable operation ordering
On the quantificational force of Negative Sensitive Items in Turkish
Full text linkNegative Sensitive Items (NSIs) in natural languages can manifest in either existential or universal forms. The equivalence in truth conditions between ¬∃ and ∀¬ obscures their underlying semantic import, complicating efforts to determine the true nature of NSIs. This paper addresses this issue within the context of Turkish - an agglutinative head-final language - where surface syntactic cues are insufficient to directly diagnose scopal relations. Through a series of controlled configurations, I distinguish between the two interpretations by (i) constructing non-anti-additive contexts where existential and universal analyses make different predictions, (ii) isolating the semantic locus of negation, and (iii) examining NSIs in conjunction with other neg-sensitive expressions. The empirical findings indicate that Turkish NSIs are best analyzed as wide-scope universal quantifiers, rather than narrow-scope existentials. Additional support comes from their complementary distribution with ordinary universal quantifiers, a pattern that not only reinforces the wide-scope universal analysis but also sheds light on the distributional constraints affecting ordinary universals in Turkish
On the interpretation of the participle -GAn in Uyghur
Full text linkMost previous research argue that the suffix -GAn in Uyghur is a past participle and conveys perfectivity, contrasting with the simple past tense marker -D (Asarina 2011; Major 2014). However, the translations presented in the previous research only indicate that sentences with -GAn have both a past and a perfective reading, but fail to determine the specific contribution of -GAn in such contexts.This study examines the tense and aspect contribution of -GAn in both root and complement clauses, comparing it with the simple past tense marker -D. I argue that -D always contributes to a past and a neutral perfective interpretation in both root and complement clauses. In contrast, -GAn functions as a neutral perfective marker but not a past marker as it does not consistently convey past tense. I also show that -GAn-clauses are indicative
Onset-tone interaction in Mundabli
Full text linkThis paper presents an acoustic study of Mundabli tones from original fieldwork data, specifically focusing on interactions of onset consonant type (voiceless obstruents, voiced obstruents, and sonorants) and f0 level and trajectory of tones. Our results reveal that voiceless obstruents condition an abrupt rise in f0 at vowel onset, while voiced obstruents and sonorants maintain similar, relatively steady f0 levels, providing evidence for an account of onset-f0 interaction in which only voiceless consonants condition f0 raising. In addition, we note that Mundabli\u27s dense tonal inventory does not appear to constrain these interactions, as might be expected under accounts of speech production that relate within-category variation to the density of contrast in an inventory
The CV coordination in English and Mandarin
Full text linkThere is no consensus on the phonetic basis of sonority, either in the articulation or the perception of speech (Albert 2023). This study explores sonority in speech production by following up on previous studies which suggest a positive correlation between CV lag and sonority difference (Crouch 2022; Crouch et al. 2023; Gao 2008; Shaw & Chen 2019). Based on Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) experiments participated by 10 English and 10 Mandarin speakers, we found that CV lag positively correlates with CV sonority difference in both languages. If we make an assumption that larger lags are preferred within a syllable, the finding forms a basis to explain universal constraints such as the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) and the Sonority Dispersion Principle (SDP)
Development of Tibetic verb paradigms: Diachronic and paradigm-based explanations
Full text linkThis paper examines two issues in the historical morphology of Tibetic verbs from the perspective of paradigm morphology. The first issue is why the historical future stem was lost after the Old Tibetan period, which we answer using the measure of paradigm conditional entropy. We hypothesise that the loss of the future stem may be due to its lower informativity compared to other paradigm cells. The second issue is diachronic restrictions on syncretism patterns in modern Amdo varieties, where we find that analogical extension never gives rise to imperfective-imperative syncretism to the exclusion of the perfective. We link this to the literature on *ABA, and show that discussions of synchronic morphological paradigms benefit from considering diachronic explanations.
A trans linguistic perspective on multiple pronoun use in English
Full text linkThis paper examines language ideologies surrounding the perceived indexicality of gendered pronouns among speakers who use multiple pronoun sets. Through a discourse analysis of research interviews with speakers who use multiple pronouns in English, I argue that these language ideologies must be understood as grounded in trans epistemologies—trans-affirming ways of thinking and knowing about gender that emerge from trans communities—to understand how such ideologies both resist and align with dominant understandings of the exclusive and constitutive relationship between pronouns and gender. The analysis not only expands our understanding of multiple pronoun use, but also broader gendered language practices among trans, nonbinary, and other gender-diverse speakers. In doing so, it further demonstrates the need for a trans linguistics (Zimman 2020) that highlights the relevance of trans ways of knowing to our understanding of language and gendered practice
Pattern deduction in linguistically attested and unattested grammars
Full text linkA popular hypothesis in linguistics posits that language learners are biologically predisposed to learn structures attested in human language – for example, a hierarchically nested phrase structure, while eschewing hypotheses for linguistically unattested structures – for example, one consisting of non-consecutive, linearly alternating “constituents”. The current study explores the robustness of such a predisposition within a controlled artificial language learning task as well as a non-linguistic, general puzzle-solving task. We find evidence that suggests learners more easily acquire linguistically attested hierarchically structured patterns compared to unattested non-hierarchical ones within the non-linguistic task, but not within the language task. We discuss the puzzling nature of this finding, and some work in progress to further unravel the source of this result
Asking (non-)canonical questions
Full text linkQuestions are classically taken to be requests for information, while acknowledging a wide variety of ‘non-canonical’ questions that do not have this function (e.g. rhetorical questions, exam questions, etc). A standard current approach is to take the request-for-information view as an analytical starting point and then weaken it for the counterexamples. This paper proposes an alternative view of questioning that encompasses many of these counterexamples directly: to ask a question is to open coordination on the public resolution of an issue. This coordination-centric view, I argue, accounts for much of the landscape of both canonical and non-canonical questions, while generalizing much previous work related to Questions Under Discussion in discourse