Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Revisiting Tone Sandhi Domain in Xiamen Chinese
Get PDFThe tone sandhi domain in Xiamen Chinese was examined to demonstrate that Match gives a much elegant explanation than Align/Wrap because it allows for subcategorization. MATCHNONMIN and MATCHMAX, when interacting with general MATCHSP, are enough to predict the tone sandhi domain in Xiamen Chinese. Align/Wrap, on the other hand, needs a prosodic well-formedness constraint such as BINARITY to dominate Align/Wrap. Altogether, we take this as a piece of evidence for the richer and fine-grained prosodic subcategorizations.The comparison between Match and Align/Wrap is conducted in the SPOT and the automatic evaluation of all the possible candidates is done in the OTworkplace.
Student-built Theory, or You Only Really Learn What You Figure Out For Yourself
Get PDFIt can be difficult to get students to engage with questions of phonological theory. Students generally find it hard to understand how a new piece of formalism improves the model unless they are invested in building a better theory. A way to get students deeply invested is to put the advancements into their hands. Not only does it require real understanding to be able to propose new pieces of theory, it facilitates truly caring about the state of the formalism. Having students make the observations and proposals that move the class forward, where feasible, has a number of additional benefits, including verifying that they understand the model and giving them the satisfaction that comes with shaping what we as a class do. In this article I discuss strategies and specific examples from my undergraduate phonology class to lead students up to the point where something new is needed and then support them in stretching to make the proposals that move the theory, and the class, forward
Scalar diversity and ignorance inferences: An experimental study on \u27at least\u27 as a modifier of numerals vs. adjectives
No full textThis work presents results from an experiment that investigates whether at least as a modifier of gradable adjectives (e.g., at least misleading) triggers speaker ignorance inferences just as has been established for at least as a numeral modifier (e.g., at least two). I find that, while at least gives rise to ignorance inferences with both types of scalar expressions, this happens in varying degrees, contra existing accounts of at least (Geurts & Nouwen 2007; Cohen & Krifka 2014) and in line with experimental evidence on the scalar inferences of unmodified adjectives and numerals (Doran, Baker, McNabb, Larson & Ward 2009), known as scalar diversity. I also find indications that the scale structure of adjectives may affect the availability of ignorance inferences, as in the case of scalar implicature computation for unmodified adjectives (Gotzner, Solt & Benz 2018a), yet in a reverse manner
Granularity in the Semantics of Comparison
Get PDFThis paper makes the novel observation that definite comparatives, such as the bigger circle, impose restrictions on the cardinality of the comparison class (CC) against which their truth conditions are evaluated. We show that the corpus frequency counts of definite comparatives sharply drop when the comparison class used for their interpretation is formed by more than two individuals. Two alternative theories of these distributional facts are considered and tested experimentally through an acceptability judgment task. According to the first theory, the 2-Individuals Theory, definite comparatives presuppose that the CC is of cardinality 2; under the second theory, the 2-Degrees Theory, the meaning of the comparative is evaluated against a granularity γ that maps the individuals in the CC to degrees in the relevant adjectival scale, and definite comparatives presuppose that the set of the degrees resulting from this mapping is of cardinality 2. Our experimental results show that definite comparative descriptions are most frequent and felicitous when evaluated against comparison classes with two individuals, but also that acceptability drops off with higher cardinalities in a gradient manner that is sensitive to granularity. Taken together, these findings argue against the 2-Individuals theory of definite comparatives and lend support to the 2-Degrees theory
Modal semantic universals optimize the simplicity/informativeness trade-off
Get PDFThe meanings expressed by the world’s languages have been argued to support efficient communication. Evidence for this hypothesis has drawn on cross-linguistic analyses of vocabulary in semantic domains of both content words (e.g. kinship terms (Kemp & Regier 2012); color terms (Regier, Kay & Khetarpal 2007; Zaslavsky, Kemp, Regier & Tishby 2018)) and function words (e.g.quantifiers(Steinert-Threlkeld2021); indefinite pronouns(Deni ́c, Steinert-Threlkeld & Szymanik 2022)) approaching the hypothesis concretely in terms of a trade-off between simplicity and informativeness. We apply the analysis to modals (e.g. can, ought, might). Two proposed universals in this domain from Nauze (2008) and Vander Klok (2013) are used for generating many artificial languages with varying degrees of quasi-naturalness as a proxy for natural data. A computational experiment shows that most of the optimal solutions to the trade-off problem are predicted by Vander Klok; meanwhile, as languages more robustly satisfy Nauze’s universal, they also become more optimal. This suggests that efficient communication is a leading explanation for constraints on modal semantic variation
The selectional variability of \u27imagine whether\u27
No full textWhite (2021) has observed that some clause-embedding predicates (esp. doxastic attitude verbs like believe, non-veridical preferential predicates like hope) vary w.r.t. their selection properties: While these predicates commonly combine with declarative complements, they sometimes accept interrogative complements. My paper notes a similar selectional variability for fiction verbs like imagine: while imagine is typically taken to reject polar interrogative complements, some uses of imagine whether are acceptable. Curiously, this acceptability cannot be explained through the techniques (e.g., highlighting, no presupposition, multiple senses) that have recently been used to explain the acceptability of believe and hope whether. To still account for the ability of imagine to take whether-complements, I draw on recent work on attitudinal parasitism (see Blumberg 2019). This work assumes that some cases of imagination depend, for their reference, on the objects of another experience (e.g. visual perception). My semantics holds that imagine whether is felicitous only when the truth of the embedded TP is decided at the possible world of which the experienced scene is a spatio-temporal part. This condition is more easily satisfied when the verb in the TP has future tense (will), or when imagine is embedded under a negated ability modal or under try
German clefts address unexpected questions
Get PDFIn this paper, we provide empirical evidence for Tönnis\u27 (2021) hypothesis that German cleft sentences address relatively unexpected questions in discourse while their canonical variants address relatively expected questions. We present an experiment that measures the relative preference between the German cleft and its canonical variant in contexts that differ with respect to how expected the question is that they answer. The expectedness of the question was measured separately in a norming study. The result of the experiment supports analyses of German clefts that take discourse expectations into account when analyzing the acceptability of clefts in contrast to canonical sentences. Approaches that primarily focus on differences in exhaustivity (e.g., De Veaugh-Geiss et al. 2018) or contrast (e.g., Rochemont 1986) need to be adapted in order to account for the results
Classifiers and the mass-count distinction in Uzbek
Get PDFThe paper argues for the existence of the (NP-level) mass-count distinction in Tashkent Uzbek, an obligatory classifier dialect. Evidence is provided based on the distribution and interpretation of modifiers, classifiers and quantificational suffixes of different types, as well as properties of flexible and object mass nouns. A formal analysis is further provided that treats classifiers as sensitive to the mass-count distinction but not uniformly serving as “individuators” of otherwise mass nouns. Sortal classifiers are argued to differ from mensural ones in that only the latter contribute a measure function
Automatic categorization of prosodic contours in Bardi
Get PDFThis study presents preliminary results of an automated prosodic clustering analysis of Bardi, a Nyulnyulan language from Northern Australia, using methods from Kaland (2021). Previous work on Bardi prosody identified several functions of boundary tones and two main phrase types, but stressed that findings were preliminary. Here we extend that work and show evidence for several additional phrase types, as well as confirming the overall accuracy of automated clustering. This work adds to the prosodic typology of Australian languages (cf. Fletcher et al. 2002) and provides further evidence for the functions of intonation beyond demarcation in these languages. When coupled with evaluation by a knowledgeable researcher, this automated approach can greatly expedite prosodic analysis on a large scale and expand our typology of prosodic systems
Volga Bulgarian-Permic linguistic contact: Mutual influences on morphology
Get PDFIn this paper, I argue that three morphological (morphosyntactic) features in Udmurt, Komi, Volga Bulgarian and Chuvash show mutual influence between the Proto-Permic and Volga Bulgarian languages in the Volga-Kama area in the late first millennium CE: First, the formal identity of the Permic accusative and 3sg possessive suffixes which does not have parallels in Uralic but in Turkic. Second, the Volga Bulgarian and Chuvash plural marker -sem, which is unknown from other Turkic languages. Third, the prohibitive particle an in Chuvash, which does not have cognates in Turkic and is loaned from Proto-Permic