Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
Not a member yet
4323 research outputs found
Sort by
Processing profile for quantifiers in verb phrase ellipsis: Evidence for grammatical economy
Get PDFQuantifier Raising leaves no overt marking to indicate movement has occurred, making the task of identifying when raising has occurred extremely difficult for the parser. Beyond this challenge, evidence from interpretation and judgement studies suggests that raising causes difficulty in processing. These two aspects taken together have led some to suggest that human sentence processor employs a strategy in which the construction of raised structures is avoided, commonly called processing scope economy. This contrasts to the traditional notion of grammatical scope economy, where Quantifier Raising is restricted in the grammar. In this paper we discuss the properties of these two theories. We conclude that the two approaches make different predictions about when raising should occur online, with processing scope economy predicting that the parser avoids raising whenever possible and grammatical scope economy predicting that the parser raises regularly and sometimes produces ungrammatical structures in the process. We then present an experiment which examines complex scope structures in verb phrase ellipsis to observe when penalties related to Quantifier Raising are observed online. We find that penalties appear in configurations where Quantifier Raising would be ungrammatical under grammatical scope economy, suggesting the parser attempts Quantifier Raising in these configurations. This evidence indicates that the parser’s behavior matches the predictions of grammatical scope economy rather than those of processing scope economy
On the phonetic realization and variation of consonant geminates in Sakha
Get PDFThis study examines the phonetic realization of geminates of different manners of articulation in an underdocumented Turkic language Sakha using production data from a native speaker. Meanwhile, the temporal compensation between geminates and their surrounding vowels is examined by varying the length of the vowels surrounding the target consonants. Results show that in Sakha, geminates differ from their singleton counterparts mainly by showing a longer overall consonant duration. Regardless, gemination is realized differently for consonants with different manners of articulation. Finally, vowel length is an enhancement cue for the realization of geminates
Losing a subject, keeping an indirect object: On the “semi-grammaticalized” speech verb in Meadow Mari
Get PDFThis paper investigates grammaticalization of speech verbs with special attention to the status of the indirect object (the goal argument). Based on a double dative construction and a semi-grammaticalized speech verb occurring in this construction in Meadow Mari, I suggest that there exists a stage of grammaticalization where the original speech verb loses its external argument (the subject) but retains its indirect object. I argue that this stage follows from Saito’s (2019, 2021) analysis of grammaticalization of speech verbs
On the properties of expressivity and counter-expectation in the Japanese minimizer NPI kakera ‘piece’
Get PDFThe Japanese expression kakera has a literal meaning of ‘piece’. However, when kakera is combined with mo ‘even’, it can behave as an idiomatic negative polarity item (NPI). The distinctive features of the NPI kakera are that it usually co-occur with a property-related positive noun (e.g., seijitsu-sa ‘sincerity’) and is used for expressing a feeling of complaint. I argue that unlike the typical minimizer NPIs, the NPI kakera has an expressive property in that it not only denotes a minimum degree of an NP, but conventionally implies that high degrees of NP are expected (as a desire), and a judge (typically a speaker) is complaining about the target in question. Previous studies have shown that the meaning of EVEN (explicitly or implicitly) contributes to the creation of the emphatic function of minimizer (e.g., Horn 1989; Chierchia 2013). However, the phenomenon of kakera suggests that in addition to EVEN, minimizers can have expectation/attitudinal components that further restrict the situation in which they are used. This study shows that the multidimensional approach (Potts 2005; McCready 2010; Sawada 2010, 2018; Gutzmann 2012) to meaning allows us to capture the item-specific pragmatic properties of minimizers in a systematic fashion
A unified analysis of polar particles in Farsi
Get PDFPolar Response Particles (PRPs) have been widely studied in the literature, discussing the essence of their ambiguity in polarity and (dis)agreement reading sys- tems (Pope 1976) and what affects the reading preference. In languages like English and Farsi, in which the same particles satisfy both readings, PRPs are ambiguous in response to negative initiatives (including questions and assertions). In Farsi, on the other hand, PRPs are not only used in assertive responses to polar initiatives, but they also appear in interrogatives like tag questions and alternative questions. In this paper, I propose a unified analysis of PRPs in Farsi in both forms. My analysis is based on the feature marking account (Roelofsen and Farkas 2015), and I propose a lexical ambiguity that can benefit the account for interrogative forms too. Moreover, I claim that bias in the initiatives affect the reading variation in ambiguous cases, in the sense that the stronger the bias in the antecedent the higher preference for the (dis)agreement reading over the comparison to polarity reading
Constraint-driven Agree
Get PDFRecent work (e.g. Deal 2015, Keine 2020) argues that the lexical specification of a probe has two components: (i) specification for constraints favoring Agree with prominent features on a person or discourse hierarchy and (ii) specification for constraints disfavoring Agree across particular features. In this paper, I propose that these are weighted, violable constraints (building on e.g. Murphy 2018, Georgi 2019). I provide a unified account of cross-clausal long-distance agreement, phi-feature hierarchy effects in multiargument agreement systems, dative intervention, and PCC effects
The closeness constraint on focus association and the syntax of Q-particles
Get PDFWhile in some languages focus association at a distance is possible, in some languages, focus particles must be as close to their associates as possible. In this paper, I argue that the closeness constraint is attested also in wh-questions. The evidence comes from Sinhala (Indo-Aryan) wh-questions, in which the Q-particle is restricted to positions that are as close to the wh-word as possible. I show that this constraint poses challenges for the existing analyses of Sinhala wh-questions, and present a new account under which the Q-particle undergoes phase-constrained overt movement
Adults regularize variation when linguistic cues suggest low input reliability
Get PDFChildren regularize inconsistent probabilistic patterns in linguistic input, yet they also acquire and match probabilistic sociolinguistic variation. What factors in the language input contribute to whether children will regularize or match the probabilistic patterns they are exposed to? Here, we test the hypothesis that low input reliability facilitates regularization. As a first step, we asked adult participants to acquire a variable plural marking pattern from a written (Exp 1) and a spoken (Exp 2) artificial language under different conditions, where they were led to believe input was more, or less, reliable. In both experiments, input reliability was manipulated through both information about the speaker (e.g., whether the speaker was likely to make mistakes) and linguistic cues (e.g., typos or pronunciation errors). Results showed that adults regularized the written language more only when they were told the speaker would make mistakes and the plural variants resembled typos (Exp 1), whereas they regularized the spoken language more when the plural variants resembled pronunciation errors regardless of the speaker’s said reliability in the spoken language. We conclude that input reliability is an important factor that can modulate learners’ regularization of probabilistic linguistic input, and that linguistic cues may play a more critical role than top-down knowledge about the speaker. The current study lays down an important foundation for future work exploring whether children are able to incorporate input reliability cues when learning probabilistic linguistic variation
Relative gradable adjective recursion such as small small big mushrooms is more challenging for children than possessive recursion such as the deer’s friend’s sister’s mushrooms
Get PDFOur experiment investigates whether children handle recursive possessives (R-Poss) in a more adult-like manner than recursive relative gradable adjectives (R-RGA). While the abstract notion of indirect recursion underlies both categories, we ask whether individual syntactic-semantic properties determine different acquisition paths in English for R-Poss and R-RGA at the 2-Level (the deer’s friend’s mushrooms, small big mushrooms) and at the 3-Level (the deer’s friend’s sister’s mushrooms, small small big mushrooms). The results indicate that older children perform better than younger children on 2- and 3-Level R-Poss. However, this trend is not observed for R-RGA where both age groups perform similarly, successfully handling 2- but not 3-Level R-RGA. Analysis of individual results reveal that children who are successful with comprehension and production at 3-Level R-RGA are also successful with 3-Level R-Poss, but not the other way around. We conclude that 3-Level R-RGA is more challenging than 3-Level R-Poss, arguing that this difficulty arises from R-RGA syntax-semantics which involves a set-subset relation and gradability relative to comparative scales
Phonologically motivated orthographic variation in Modern Uyghur: the voicing of h
Get PDFIn this paper, I present data from three corpora of written Uyghur showing that the conventionally voiceless letter h, which occurs in words of Arab-Persian etymology, sometimes patterns as voiced in stem-final environments where it is a trigger for morphophonemic voicing assimilation in a following segment. Results indicate that when authors omit root-final h from the spelling, they tend to use voiced suffix-initial consonants, but when the h is written there is considerable variation both between and within authors and lexemes. No other phonological or functional factors were identified as being strong predictors of the variation. I interpret this as reflecting a probabilistic process of lenition or deletion of root-final /h/ in the adaptation of these loanwords that has diffused at different rates across the lexicon for different speakers