Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Back to restitutive readings again
Get PDFThis paper observes that adverbs meaning ‘back’ systematically give rise to restitutive readings which have long been thought of only as secondary readings of adverbs meaning ‘again’. Restitutive readings are argued to arise from two sources: repetition of a state, or reversal of an event. Languages like English and Hindi-Urdu have a separate dedicated adverb for each, showing the independence of these two sources. A single reversal-based/counterdirectional lexical entry (originally proposed for AGAIN) is demonstrated to capture an intuitive relationship that exists between three core readings of BACK. These readings are, however, shown to have several as yet unconsidered properties that necessitate a finer-grained expression of counterdirectionality than is afforded by the broad concept of reverse events. The paper significantly revises the counterdirectional presupposition, capturing the core readings of BACK-adverbs by appealing not to repetition or reversal but to elements that can be copied from the assertion itself: THEME, SCALE, and end point of scalar change
Weak necessity modals as homogeneous pluralities of worlds
Get PDFWe claim that weak necessity modals like English "should" are referential expressions that denote pluralities of worlds, against the standard analysis, according to which all modal auxiliaries are quantifiers. Weak necessity modals pattern like plural definites when tested for homogeneity effects (Löbner 2000, Križ 2016): they have scopeless readings under negation, they tolerate exceptions in certain discourse contexts, and they exhibit other properties characteristic of homogeneous definite plurals. We also discuss how to extend this analysis to French and Javanese, in which weak necessity modals are built compositionally from strong necessity modals by adding subjunctive morphology
As strong as an NPI in LSF, NGT and LIS
Get PDFNegative polarity items emerge from the interaction between some propertiesof the semantic module of human language and its lexicon. This leads tothe expectation that they should be equally common in spoken and sign language,contrary to what has been documented. We describe the sign UNTIL in French SignLanguage, Italian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands. We showthat under its punctual reading, UNTIL behaves as a strong negative polarity item,just like English until. We also discuss why more prototypical cases of polarityitems like any or ever are much harder to find in sign languag
Pre-DP only is a propositional operator at LF: a new argument from ellipsis
Get PDFBased on the scope possibilities of pre-DP only relative to modals and their interaction with ellipsis, we provide a new argument (following Benbaji 2021) for a theory according to which only is always a propositional operator at LF, despite surface appearance
A higher-order plurality solution to Xiang\u27s (2021) puzzle
No full textXiang (2021) notes the following puzzle: plural wh-questions involving certain collective predicates are predicted to carry a uniqueness presupposition (Dayal 1996), yet intuitively they don’t (cf. Gentile & Schwarz 2020). She proposes that such questions have ‘higher-order readings’ (Spector 2007, 2008), and crucially that they have answers naming boolean conjunctions. I show that for the data she considers, recourse to higher-order question readings is mistaken: Xiang’s puzzle should be solved with higher-order plurality, and I provide empirical justification for this approach, mirroring for questions the recent findings for declaratives by Buccola, Kuhn & Nicolas (2021)
Rhetorically-based scalar-additivity: The view from Italian addirittura
Get PDFEven-like particles have widely been analyzed as inducing scalar andadditive presuppositions (cf. Horn 1969; Karttunen & Peters 1979; Rooth 1992; Gast& van der Auwera 2011). However, the additivity of even has been controversialsince at least Rullmann 1997 and increasingly called into question (see Greenberg& Umbach 2021 for references); Greenberg specifically argues that scalar even-likeparticles can vary in additivity. This claim is surprising in light of the typologicalstudy in Gast & van der Auwera 2011, which subsumes even and similar expressionsunder a larger class of additive particles. Against this background, we present ananalysis of Italian addirittura, which with perfino has been described as scalaradditive(Visconti 2005) – but only optionally so – and is chosen preferentially overperfino precisely in those contexts that Greenberg takes to challenge the additivity ofeven. We argue, drawing on observations in Atayan 2017, that addirittura contrastswith perfino in deriving its scalar alternatives from rhetorical structure rather thanfocus structure. Once this is recognized we can view addirittura as additive, afterall, in a rhetorical sense we describe below
Prosody drives Paraguayan Guaraní suffix order
Get PDFIn Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupian, ISO 639-3: gug), suffix order is determined by several factors, including syntactic scope, morphotactic restrictions, free variation, and prosody.Paraguayan Guaraní suffixes form two syntactic classes: predicate-level suffixes and clause-level suffixes. Both syntactic classes include stressable and stressless suffixes. Predicate-level suffixes typically precede clause-level suffixes. However, stressable suffixes always precede stressless ones. Furthermore, within both groups (stressable or stressless), the order of suffixes is largely free.I propose that stressable suffixes are independently prosodified phonological words and stressless suffixes are non-prosodified. I analyze the Paraguayan Guaraní suffix order as an interaction of mirroring between the order of suffixes and the order of syntactic operations, on the one hand, and prosodic subcategorization and demands on phonological well-formedness, on the other. Thus, I document and analyze an unusual agglutinating system, whose highly non-prototypical prosodified and freely-ordered suffixes challenge the notion of a phonological word, contributing to ongoing research on phonological and syntactic domains as well as the interfaces of phonology, morphology, and syntax
What can children’s spelling tell us about underlying representations?
Get PDFThis paper examines the written productions of first and second grade Catalan children in an attempt to tap into their understanding of the underlying forms of Catalan unstressed vowels for which alternations are not present (and for which multiple inputs are thus possible). The paper also explores the differences in spelling between alternating and non-alternating [ə] and [u], in order to find out whether morphophonemic alternations are taken into consideration in children’s spellings choices, as well at which stage these start to be considered.The results for first graders show generalized misspellings in which schwa and [u] are systematically associated with the graphemes a and u, regardless these vowels alternate with vowels in stressed position or do not. This behavior clearly supports the Lexicon Optimization Hypothesis, according to which there is a first stage in language acquisition in which, from all possible input candidates (Richness of the Base), the learner selects the one that matches the adult output representation as the optimal input (Smolensky 1996).The results for second graders show a noticeable decline in misspellings for alternating schwa and [u]. This leads to think that morphophonemic alternations are progressively incorporated and taken into account in the process of UR construction. Of course, this better performance in the spelling of alternating vowels might also be a consequence of a better familiarity with conventional spelling. Importantly, though, the decline in misspellings for alternating schwa and [u] coincides with an increase in spelling mistakes for non-alternating vowels. In our view, this undescores the influence of conventional orthography in children’s spelling choices, points to the influence of phonology, and more specifically to a stage of vacillation with respect to the UR of non-alternating forms, with apparent overgeneralizations. This behavior, thus, may support the free-ride approach to morphophonemic learning (McCarthy 2005).The results for both first graders and second graders show differences in the spelling between back vowels (with fewer mistakes) and non-back vowels (with more mistakes), and we argued this might be related to the fact that the children have to deal with a more reduced typology of output-input alternations for back vowels (two-to-one) than for non-back vowels (three-to-one). This is evidence, again, for the role of morphophonemic alternations (i.e. morphology) in children’s spelling choices. The results for both graders also reveal that more productive alternations, such as the ones found between a base and the diminutive, are more transparent to the kids than others: whereas diminutives were generally spelled correctly, non-diminutives were not, giving support again to the influence of morphophonemic alternations, and their transparency, in children’s spelling choices
Recursive Prosodic Structure in Nez Perce Double Reduplication
Get PDFFull and double reduplication are found in Nez Perce (nimipuutímt), a Sahaptian language spoken in Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Full reduplication is characteristic of many nouns and adjectives, while double reduplication occurs when fully-reduplicated forms are subject to an additional reduplicative process, a Ci- prefix indicating plural. This paper describes the quantity-sensitive primary stress pattern of fully- and doubly-reduplicated adjectives, demonstrating a systematic departure from the usual pattern of quantity-insensitive penultimate stress in Nez Perce. It then use patterns of vowel length and plural exponence to show that fully-reduplicated adjectives exhibit a bimoraic stem minimum (though fully-reduplicated nouns do not), and argues that these facts can be understood as a manifestation of a complex recursive prosodic word structure where each stem is its own prosodic word and the Ci- prefix is adjoined as an affixal clitic
Phonological contrasts are maintained despite neutralization: an intracranial EEG study
Get PDFThe existence of language-specific abstract sound-structure units (such as the phoneme) is largely uncontroversial in phonology. However, whether the brain performs abstractions comparable to those assumed in phonology has been difficult to ascertain. Using intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) recorded during a passive listening task, this study investigates the representation of phonological units in the brain and the relationship between those units, auditory sensory input, and higher levels of language organization, namely morphology. Leveraging the phonological neutralization of coronal stops to tap in English, this study provides evidence of a dissociation between acoustic similarity and phonemic identity in the neural response to speech. Moreover, leveraging morphophonological alternations of the regular plural and past tense, this study further demonstrates early (<500ms) evidence of dissociation between phonological form and morphological exponence. Together these results highlight the central nature of language-specific knowledge in sublexical language processing and improve our understanding of the ways language-specific knowledge structures and organizes speech perception in the brain