Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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How usable are digital collections for endangered languages? A review
Get PDFHere, we report on pilot research on the extent to which language collections in digital linguistic archives are discoverable, accessible, and usable for linguistic research. Using a test case of common tasks in phonetic and phonological documentation, we evaluate a small random sample of collections and find substantial, striking problems in all domains. Of the original 20 collections, only six had digitized audio files with associated transcripts (preferably phrase-aligned). That is, only 30% of the collections in our sample were even potentially suitable for any type of phonetic work (regardless of quality of recording). Information about the contents of the collection was usually discoverable, though there was variation in the types of information that could be easily searched for in the collection. Though eventually three collections were aligned, only one collection was successfully force-aligned from the archival materials without substantial intervention. We close with recommendations for archive depositors to facilitate discoverability, accessibility, and functionality of language collections. Consistency and accuracy in file naming practices, data descriptions, and transcription practices is imperative. Providing a collection guide also helps. Including useful search terms about collection contents makes the materials more findable. Researchers need to be aware of the changes to collection structure that may result from archival uploads. Depositors need to consider how their metadata is included in collections and how items in the collection may be matched to each other and to metadata categories. Finally, if our random sample is indicative, linguistic documentation practices for future phonetic work need to change rapidly, if such work from archival collections is to be done in future
Allocutive imposters in the form of referent honorification
Get PDFA special class of honorific constructions in Korean, dubbed as allocutive imposters in this paper, has the form of referent honorifics but expresses respect to the addressee. Allocutive imposters have unique properties that distinguish them from the well-known honorific constructions, referent honorifics and addressee honorifics. Furthermore, they are uniquely sales speech register. Focusing on their marked pragmatic function of being used only in sales discourse, this paper builds on Portner, Pak and Zanuttini (2019, 2022), a functional head c in the left periphery encodes [Formal] and [Status] features and contends that first, these features, in particular, the [Formal] feature which represents the source social relation between the speaker and addressee, can be utilized to encode the markedness of the allocutive imposters. Second, allocutive imposters have a clausal structure with multiple subject positions, the higher position of which is occupied by a null DP with 2nd person features that require checking by the Addressee in the left periphery. It will be shown that the proposed analysis provides an account for the unique properties of allocutive imposters without invoking any special syntactic mechanism
Linguistic and non-linguistic cues to acquiring the strong distributivity of each
Get PDFThe universal quantifier each is more strongly distributive than its counterparts every and all. It forces predicates to apply to individuals, it more often supports pair-list readings, it’s unfriendly to genericity, and, in psycholinguistic tasks, it encourages encoding and remembering individual properties. But what information leads learners to acquire this aspect of em>each’s meaning? We explore the hypothesis that, because of its meaning, parents are more likely to use each in situations that independently promote representing the domain of quantification as a series of individuals (as opposed to a group). In line with this, we find that in child-directed speech, parents often use each to quantify over small numbers of physically present things. The same cannot be said of every and all. Because such situations are independently known to trigger object-files – the mind’s system for representing individuals – we argue that these cases are ideal for acquiring the individualistic aspect of each
Meh contributes VERUM: A study of biased questions in colloquial Singapore English
Get PDFThis paper analyzes the contribution of the meh particle in biased questions in Colloquial Singapore English (CSE). Canonical CSE questions can be formed with inversion, or with declaratives with rising intonation (maintaining neutrality), while non-canonical questions typically require discourse particles. Meh occurs clause-finally (It’s raining meh?) and has been described to mark questions and express skepticism, encoding the opposite of what the speaker thinks to be true. Drawing from Romero and Han (2004), I propose that meh contributes the meta-conversational operator verum, which triggers the existence of an epistemic implicature
Animacy hierarchy and case/agreement in Okinawan
Get PDFIn languages like Japanese and Okinawan, morphological evidence for agreement is scarce, which has led to the long-standing controversy as to its existence. In this article, I argue that while φ-agreement is not morphologically realized on the predicates in Okinawan, it is nevertheless indirectly detectable in the form of animacy agreement in differential case-marking
The Open Letter: Responses and recommendations
Get PDFSince its publication in July 2020, the Open Letter to the LSA regarding Steven Pinker has evoked many passionate reactions. The letter argued that Pinker’s public statements are inconsistent with the LSA’s anti-racist values, asking to revoke Pinker’s status as LSA Fellow and to remove him from the LSA’s list of Media Experts. Signed by 600+ linguists, the letter has generated vigorous debate within and outside linguistics. This talk pushes the discussion forward by analyzing the responses to the letter using the tools of our profession – pragmatics and discourse analysis – and further suggesting an approach for examining the power of all individuals in the field
Diagnosing unaccusativity in Kawahíva
Get PDFUnaccusativity, the division of intransitive verbs into two distinct classes, is usually argued for based on a class of cross-linguistic diagnostics, e.g., passivization. However, I diagnose unaccusative verbs in Kawahíva, an endangered Amazonian language, despite the traditional diagnostics being missing. The argument draws on a pattern of i-marking found in several constructions involving object displacement and drop, as well as in a class of intransitive verbs which includes, among others, the verbs i-katu ‘be pretty, well’, i-rovia ‘be happy’. I suggest that, since i- is a result of object dislocation and drop, then the sole argument of i-marked intransitive verbs must be an object that undergoes dislocation. As a result of arguing that i-marked intransitive verbs select an object, as opposed to a subject, they fit into the definition for unaccusative verbs (Perlmutter 1978)
Italian poi as a trigger of expressive presupposition
Get PDFThis paper proposes an analysis of the discourseparticle (DiP) poi in the Italian as spoken in Vallecamonica, in the north of the country. The data discussed here show that the informal characterizations provided in the literature (e.g., Cognola & Cruschina 2021) are superfluous to capture the meanings of poi described in the paper. The import of the particle is, in fact, one of uncontroversiality and factuality, two concepts related to the notion of common ground management (Krifka 2008). Following Grosz (2020), I propose an analysis in terms of expressive presupposition to capture (i) the presuppositional content activated by poi and (ii) the doxastic dimension of the particle, which only relates to the speaker’s beliefs, rather than to the actual common ground
Verb Doubling in Turkish: Data from Trabzon Dialect
Get PDFThis study investigates verb doubling structures in Trabzon dialect of Turkish. Based on the similarities and the differences between this structure and the similar phenomena in other languages, I aim to identify the structural properties of VDbl in order to provide a representation of this structure within the Minimalist framework (Chomsky 1993). Following Harizanov and Gribanova’s analysis on Russian predicate clefts, I claim that this structure can be analyzed via the presence of two different movement processes: A focus related movement in narrow syntax, and a post-syntactic head movement
An experimental investigation of the deep double-o constraint in Japanese causative constructions
Get PDFThe double-o constraint (DoC) (Harada, 1973) was proposed to explain the ungrammaticality of having two or more noun phrases (NPs) marked by the accusative case marker -o in a single Japanese clause. Poser (2002) argued for two types of DoCs: the surface double-o constraint (SDoC) and the deep double-o constraint (DDoC). The DDoC prohibits two accusative arguments in a single argument structure and is not affected by the number of accusative case markers on the surface. The evidence is from Japanese causatives. Our study conducted an experiment to test the DDoC and found that it may not exist