Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Consonant-vowel Interactions Inform Paradigm Organization in Egyptian Arabic
Get PDFThis paper presents a quantitative study on vowel alternation in Egyptian Arabic verbs. Specifically, the vowels in perfective verb forms (of the prosodic shape CVCVC) and imperfective verb forms (-CCVC) are hard to predict from each other. This study investigates how probabilistic phonological generalizations involving the root consonants and vowel correspondences help predict the idiosyncratic vowel choice by collecting lexicon statistics and fitting regression models. Following the line of works which has shown that speakers have the ability to internalize statistical patterns into their phonological grammars (e.g., Zuraw 2000, Ernestus & Baayen 2003), the models were used as a means to investigate organization of the perfective-imperfective paradigm. Moreover, by showing that consonant and vowel information play distinct roles in paradigm predictability, this study provides evidence for lexical representations that separate consonants and vowels in Semitic languages (e.g., McCarthy 1979).
Incomplete neutralization and the blueprint model of production
Get PDFThe division of labor between the phonetic and phonological modules in generative linguistics has often been allocated such that phonology handles the discrete and symbolic aspects of a language\u27s sound system, while the phonetics transforms the symbols either into, or from, continuously varying acoustic and/or articulatory representations. This type of architecture struggles with accounting for incomplete neutralization where two segments are neutralized phonologically, but maintain a measurable phonetic distinction. While some explanations of this phenomenon blur the lines between phonetics and phonology, this paper provides an alternate approach by restructuring the architecture of "modular feedforward models". This is done by conceptualizing the language production pipeline as a series of functions and considering the types of each function. The resulting model is referred to as the `Blueprint Model of Production\u27 and maintains many of the assumptions of modular feedforward models while also being able to explain incomplete neutralization data. Final devoicing is used as an example case
The Effect of Iconicity on Weak Hand Drop in American Sign Language
Get PDFThe research community generally accepts that signed and spoken languages contain both iconicity and arbitrariness. Iconicity\u27s impact on statistical distributions of motivated forms throughout signed language lexicons is clear (e.g. Occhino, 2016). However, there has been little work to determine whether the iconic links between form and meaning are relevant only to a sign\u27s initial formation, or if these links are stored as part of lexical representations. In the present study, 40 Deaf signers of American Sign Language were asked to rate two-handed signs in their citation form and in one-handed (reduced) forms. Twelve signs were highly iconic. For each of these highly iconic sign, a less iconic but phonologically similar sign of the same grammatical category was also chosen. Signs were presented in carrier sentences and in isolation. Participants preferred one-handed forms of the highly iconic signs over one-handed forms of their phonolgogically similar but less iconic counterparts. Thus, iconicity impacted the application of a synchronic phonological process. This finding suggests that lexical representations retain iconic form-meaning links and that these links are accessible to the phonological grammar
Lexically triggered uniquenes in wh-questions: An argument from Brazilian Portuguese
Get PDFRecent discussion on the source of uniqueness in English singular which-question has debated whether this is due to a general requirement that questions have a maximally informative true answer (Dayal 1996), or whether uniqueness islexically triggered by which (Hirsch & Schwarz 2020). We present novel data from Brazilian Portuguese which argue that at least some wh-interrogatives are lexical triggers for uniqueness
Expressives and argument extension
Get PDFIn this article, we discuss expressive adjectives (\u27the damn keys\u27) and epithets (\u27that bastard John\u27). In recent literature (see Potts 2005 and Gutzmann 2019), these expressions have received a parallel semantic treatment. However, EAs and epithets present a remarkable difference, namely, only the former exhibit argument extension, an apparent mismatch between syntax and semantics whereby EAs affect a syntactic constituent other than the one they directly modify. After a brief introduction and the presentation of the puzzle (sections 1 and 2), we advance a novel semantico-pragmatic approach to EAs that explains this difference (section 3). According to this view, EAs are Isolated CIs, roughly put, expressions that bear propositional expressive meaning (and no at-issue meaning), and do not interact with the surrounding at-issue material in terms of functional application. In section 4, we present data that lends additional support to our proposal (and represents a prima facie challenge for some alternative approaches). Finally, in section 5 we discuss the alternative approaches to argument extension in Potts 2005 and Gutzmann 2019, and show some of their shortcomings
Perfect variations in dialogue: a parallel corpus approach
Get PDFThe variation in distribution and meaning of the English Present Perfect compared to its counterparts in other European languages raises a puzzle for the cross-linguistic semantics and pragmatics of tense and aspect. We apply Translation Mining, a form-based approach, to analyze the meaning of the HAVE-PERFECT across languages in a parallel corpus based on "Harry Potter and the Philosopher\u27s Stone" and its translations in Swedish, Spanish, Dutch, German and French. We use the alternation in the Harry Potter novel between narrative discourse (storytelling) and dialogue (the characters talking to each other) to establish the PERFECT as an indexical tense-aspect category that appears exclusively in dialogue. We then link the proposed information management roles of the Present Perfect (Portner 2003, Nishiyama & Koenig 2010) to moves in the language game. We find different distributions of PERFECT use across the sentence types corresponding to these moves (declarative vs. interrogative). This lends support to a cross-linguistically common rhetorical structure in sequences of PERFECT sentences (de Swart 2007)
Non-maximality and vagueness: Revisiting the plural Sorites paradox
Get PDFThis paper is an attempt at a synthesis of two superficially conflicting approaches to non-maximality: the issue-based approach (Malamud 2012, Križ 2015, Križ & Spector 2021 a.o.), which generates clear-cut truth conditions once the issue parameter has been fixed, and the strict/tolerant approach (Burnett 2017 a.o.), on which non-maximal construals involve vagueness. I argue that there are two classes of contexts that license non-maximality. One of them gives rise to the Sorites paradox once the non-embeddability of non-maximality is controlled for. The other class does not license vagueness at all. To model this distinction, I introduce a formal framework that combines the issue-based approach with the notion of strict and tolerant truth conditions (Cobreros, Egré, Ripley & van Rooij 2012a), which are defined via super-/subvaluation over different issues. This system provides two sources of non-maximality, only one of which involves vagueness
Attitude reports without complementation: The case of Amahuaca
Get PDFClassic analyses of propositional attitude reports assume that attitude verbs compose with a clausal argument that expresses a proposition. I use original fieldwork data to demonstrate that Amahuaca (Panoan; Peru) attitude reports involve high adjunct switch-reference clauses rather than clausal complements to an attitude verb. This structure raises issues for the traditionally assumed compositional semantics of attitude reports. I present two potential analyses that do not require the verb to compose directly with a complement CP, ultimately arguing in favor of an analysis that aligns with proposals by Kratzer (2006) and Moulton (2015) that the internal arguments of attitude verbs are individuals with propositional content. Amahuaca therefore provides novel empirical support for this approach to the semantics of attitude reports
Neg-raising with belief predicates as a scaleless implicature
Get PDFI give a new account of neg-raising with belief predicates as scaleless implicatures, inferences that are predicted by grammatical theories of scalar implicatures, when a quantifier projects subdomain alternatives but no scalar alternative. I argue that the neg-raising inference should be treated as an implicature because of parallels observed in its distribution and that of other known cases of implicatures (namely typical scalar implicatures, free choice effects, and other reported cases of scaleless implicatures). Furthermore, the scaleless implicature account of neg-raising is preferred over the previously proposed analysis by Romoli (2013) of neg-raising as a scalar implicature, because Romoli has to make the ad hoc assumption that \u27think\u27 has an excluded middle alternative, while in this new account, the lack of a scalar alternative is predicted by its absence in the lexicon of English, and the presence of subdomain alternatives for quantifiers has been assumed in a variety of other work
Against a generalized quantifier analysis of certain quantity expressions in Ch’ol
Get PDFThis paper discusses a quantity word alternation in Ch’ol, a Mayan language of southern Mexico. Drawing on fieldwork and additional texts, I show that numerals, pejtyel ‘all,’ and oñ ‘many/much’ may appear with additional possessive morphology. I present evidence against a generalized quantifier analysis of these expressions and provide an analysis where the possessed quantity expressions are adjuncts co-indexed with a null pronoun. I also consider the alternation between oñ ‘many/much’ and its possessed form, meaning ‘most’. While the morphosyntactic distribution is similar, there are certain semantic reasons to not treat the ‘many’/‘most’ alternation in the same way as ‘all’ and the numerals. I suggest that the form corresponding to ‘most’ has arisen via analogy with the other forms. I conclude with some observations on other quantity words in the language and cross-linguistic implications in the study of quantificational phrases