Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Facial locations in ASL based on production and perception data
Get PDFThis study tests the phonological distinctiveness of eight facial locations in ASL, with both production and perception experiments. This kind of work is crucial because, due to scarceness of minimal pairs in sign languages, phonemic locations are difficult to determine. Moreover, claims made but not tested by previous theoretic models (Stokoe et al. 1960, Stokoe 1965, Battison et al. 1975, Battison 1978, Friedman 1977, Kegl & Wilbur 1976, Wilbur 1979, Sandler’s 1989, Brentari’s 1998) are here investigated, including whether locations that are predicted to be contrastive are indeed distinct (e.g. ‘chin’ vs ‘mouth’). The specific goal of the first experiment (elicited production) is to determine what are the places of articulation, the aim of the second experiment (perception) is to determine if these places are contrastive
On dissociating adjunct island and subject island effects
Get PDFIn this paper we defend non-unified approaches to subject and adjunct islands. We review syntactic and extrasyntactic approaches as well as unified and non-unified approaches to these two island effects. Since Huang (1982), these two islands have been treated as two strong island effects (i.e., extraction out of these domains is uniformly banned). This idea was inherited in some Minimalist literature (e.g, Nunes & Uriagereka 2000). However, following Stepanov (2007), much recent Minimalist literature pursues non-unified analyses wherein the two islands have distinct explanations. The opposite situation holds for recent extrasyntactic approaches, which seem to prefer a unified analysis. We argue that existing unified extrasyntactic approaches are inadequate, and that the data call for a non-unified approach involving both syntactic and extrasyntactic principles
The syntax of generics and the absence of generic articles
Get PDFCross-linguistically, no language has a dedicated generic article. To address why this is, I decompose GEN into its quantificational and modal components and locate them inside nominal structure. Adopting an event licensing analysis of pre- and post-verbal bare subjects in Modern Hebrew, I use the restriction of pre-verbal bare subjects to generic interpretations and unacceptability of pre-verbal bare singulars to argue that the quantificational component of GEN is best analyzed as a D-quantifier. Evidence from adnominal conditionals further identifies a modal source for GEN within the nominal, which I suggest is adjectival and derived from a reduced relative clause source. I propose that the formation of generic articles is blocked by the non-local (e.g. non-spanning) relationship between these quantificational and modal components
Narrow scoping content question items in shifty contexts: A case of surprising non-quotation in Uyghur
Get PDFThis paper analyses finite (indexically shifted) complements in Uyghur with narrow scoping content question items. Using novel data, this paper discusses the distribution of null subjects in Uyghur, which can be licensed without a controlle in embedded clauses except for interrogative intensional complements. I argue, following Suñer (1993), that complements with interrogative intensional interpretations (containing narrow scoping content question items) are syntactically larger than their extensional counterparts, containing a Force phrase (ForceP). Following Holmberg et al. (2009)’s theory of null subject licensing, I argue that Uyghur is a partial null subject language in which the heads of referential CPs contain a valued [D] feature which can check with the unvalued [uD] feature on typically controlled pronouns (in the Holmberg et al. 2009 sense), resulting in an interpretation in which the embedded (null) subject is not coreferent with a controller but rather some discourse provided individual. Referential CPs cannot be embedded directly under ForcePs, and so complements with narrow scoping content question items, which I take to be ForcePs, ban this kind of null subject
Successes and shortcomings of phonological accounts of Scandinavian object shift
Get PDFObject shift (OS) is a word order phenomenon in Scandinavian languages where under some circumstances the object appears before a sentential adverb. Despite the frequent assumptions that word order is determined in syntax, and despite the link of OS and syntactic phenomena like V2, there is no consensus that OS is a syntactic phenomenon. Particularly, it has been observed that OS targets specifically prosodically weak elements. This motivated recent analyses of OS as a prosodic phenomenon. We focus on two proposals that look for a synchronic motivation for OS in a correlation between its distribution and some prosodic property: (i) Erteschik-Shir et al. (2020) posit that OS is motivated and modulated by prosodic incorporation, and (ii) Hosono (2013) hypothesizes that shifted pronominal objects help facilitate downstep. We identify concrete predictions from both proposals (default prosodic incorporation, and no downstep in unshifted OS-context sentences, respectively) and test them using novel data. The results show that neither of the proposals can be maintained in its original form. In addition to the empirical shortcomings of the prosodic proposals, we explore a missed syntactic generalization regarding the role objecthood plays in OS
“You don’t know nothin’ bout no Earth, Wind, and Fire”: Reexamining negative concord and definiteness in African American English
Get PDFAAE is described as exhibiting negative concord, similar to other varieties of English, in which negation licenses c-commanded n-words as well as Negative Polarity Items (NPIs). Crucially, these are thought to be licensed only when the noun phrase they modify is indefinite. Here, our object of study is an under-described phenomenon in AAE: under certain discourse conditions, AAE licenses no before a definite noun phrase (as in “You don\u27t know nothin’ bout no Kendrick Lamar”). We argue that this phenomenon should not be situated in the syntax (as a previously unattested definite n-word), but rather in pragmatics, as speakers “demote” definite NPs to indefinite as part of a discourse strategy of signaling disagreement with, and rejection of, listener assumptions. This has implications for existing analyses of AAE negation, and for cross-dialect comprehension, camouflage constructions, and linguistic ideologies and discrimination. We also revisit existing canonical examples of AAE negation in light of this new analysis (eg., “it ain\u27t no cat can\u27t get in no coop” in Labov 1972)
Tree bahk or 3.0 Bark: Linguistic identity and the sociophonetic variation of rhotics in Gullah Geechee
Get PDFThe current study examines the speech of a Gullah Geechee personality who exhibits conscious shifts between sociolinguistic “styles” when speaking for an outsider audience. Her conscious use of this style shifting indexes specific identities, some for extracommunity consumption and some for demarcation of Gullah Geechee community membership. This ability to shift between lectal levels indicates a high degree of metadiscursive awareness, which is often not shared by the overt prestige status quo. This co-occurrence of style-shifting alongside both a creole continuum and cline of postvocalic r-lessness shows that singular features can co-index larger patterns of sociophonetic and discursive identity formation
Deriving a complex BIN through adverbial BIN complexes
Get PDFWork by Green (1998) discusses 3 sub-types of stressed BIN in African American English (AAE): stative, habitual, and completive. BIN constructions that co-occur with temporal adverbials exhibit limited grammaticality, with each sub-type differing in how they interact with these adverbials. Non-BIN constructions that involve multiple instances in the same clause of adverbials of the same class exhibit restrictions that resemble BIN + adverbial data. Drawing on works that analyze BIN as a remote past marker (Rickford 1975, Green 1998) and on works connecting adverbial position to interpretation (Ernst 2020), I argue that BIN is an adverbial itself that situates the initiation of an eventuality in the remote past. This adverbial BIN, in concert with certain combinations of tense and aspect, forms a complex that makes up the canonical BIN construction
High vowel shortening in Turkish
Get PDFHigh vowel weakening is a common phenomenon that usually depends on purely phonetic factors. This study aims to present the findings of an experiment we have conducted on a total of 14 native speakers to see if Turkish has high vowel weakening and if yes, to figure out whether it is phonological or phonetic. Our data show a large amount of variation and little correlation between a vowel’s F1 and its duration within the high ([+high], /i, u, y, ɯ/) and non-high ([-high], /a, e, o, ø/) categories in all environments (stressed and unstressed, in open and closed syllables, in all consonantal environments). On the other hand, comparing the duration of [+high] and [-high] vowels reveals that non-high vowels are rarely as short as, or shorter than, high vowels. However, this shortening process is not a purely phonetic phenomenon. What matters for this process to apply is the phonological category of the vowel. All [+high] vowels are shortened, largely irrespective of variation in their F1; conversely, [-high] vowels are not shortened, largely irrespective of variation in their F1
Figure and ground reflexives in Turkish
Get PDFAfter controlling for phonologically conditioned homophony, it is shown that Turkish has two distinct suffixes marking verbal reflexives that have distinct syntactico-semantic properties: -Il is syncretic with the passive and anticausative, and derives intransitive figure reflexives (Wood 2014); -In is not syncretic with the passive and anticausative, and derives ground reflexives, some of which have transitive uses. Goal phrases are compatible with some ground reflexives, as the reduced argument is not the location as a whole, but the DP at the bottom of an articulated locational structure (Svenonius 2006, 2008).