Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Interpreting the shifty first person inclusive pronoun in Marathi
Full text linkIn some languages, indexicals (e.g. I, you, today) can shift in attitude reporting clauses to be interpreted with respect to the attitude context rather than the utterance context (Schlenker 1999; Anand & Nevins 2004; Anand 2006; Deal 2020, i.a.). This paper demonstrates that Marathi is a language with shiftable indexicals, but one which exhibits non-canonical properties. First, Marathi indexical shift enables the first person inclusive pronoun, rather than the first person singular pronoun, to refer to the attitude holder. Second, the shifted reading of the first person inclusive pronoun is available in mental attitude reports but not typical speech reports, in apparent violation of Deal’s (2020) and Sundaresan’s (2021) implicational hierarchies of indexical shift licensors. I propose a shifty operator-based analysis (Anand & Nevins 2004; Anand 2006) of this unusual pattern, which has implications for the semantics of mental attitude ascription
Analyzing naturally-sourced Questions Under Discussion
Full text linkThe Question Under Discussion (QUD) framework of discourse has been a highly influential theoretical device in many accounts of various pragmatic phenomena, yet there has been comparatively little work assessing the extent to which the QUD can be reliably inferred from naturalistic contexts. In this paper, we focus primarily on measuring the variability across individuals in QUD inference, while also verifying other related, commonly held assumptions about QUD theory. To this end, we collect QUDs from many theoretically naive subjects tasked with processing a radio interview utterance by utterance. We consider various analyses designed to address the problem of measuring question similarity. Overall, we find that there exists moderate variability among subjects, consistent with possibly the insufficiency of context in determining QUD, or possibly also the simultaneous coexistence of multiple valid QUDs. To more adequately tease apart these possibilities, we also propose additional analyses for addressing the issue of question identity
Investigating fragment usage with a gamified utterance selection task
Full text linkNonsentential utterances, or fragments, like A coffee, please! can often be used to communicate a propositional meaning otherwise encoded by a complete sentence I\u27d like to order a coffee, please!). Previous research focused mostly on the syntax and licensing of fragments, but the questions of why speakers use fragments and how listeners interpret them are still underexplored. I propose a simple game-theoretic account of fragment usage, which predicts that (i) listeners assign fragments the most likely interpretation in context and (ii) that speakers are aware of this and trade-off production cost and the risk of being misunderstood when choosing their utterance. Using a corpus of production data, empirically founded and precise model predictions are generated. These predictions are evaluated with two experiments using a novel gamified utterance selection paradigm. The experiments suggest that, as predicted, speakers take into account both potential gain in efficiency and the risk of being misunderstood when choosing their utterance
Indirect discourse as mixed quotation? An experimental investigation
Full text linkThe results of an experimental rating study are reported suggesting that self-pointing gestures aligned with a third-person pronoun are acceptable in German indirect discourse (ID) utterances. Following a proposal by Ebert & Hinterwimmer (2022) for self-pointing gestures in free indirect discourse (FID), self-pointing gestures in ID are interpreted as character viewpoint gestures (CVGs) quoted from the matrix subject. Crucially, it is argued that in ID, a perspective shift to the matrix subject can take place. It is proposed that ID is an instance of mixed quotation involving a demonstration (cf. Clark & Gerrig 1990, Davidson 2015) where self-pointing is quoted from the matrix subject’s original utterance
Is there a superlative rabbit in the ordinal hat? A study of ordinals vs. degree modifiers in nested definites
Full text linkThis study probes how the semantics of ordinals relates to the semantics of comparatives and superlatives. We examine this question with the help of a picture task in which participants are asked to locate objects described by nested descriptions like the candle on the first/closer/closest table, with an ordinal, comparative or superlative modifier in the inner noun phrase. We show that ordinals systematically lack the ‘relative readings’ observed for unmodified nested descriptions like the rabbit in the hat, in which the inner definite is understood with enriched content, as in the rabbit in the hat with a rabbit in it, in contrast to superlatives. Our explanation for this relies on the idea that an ordinal expects an ordering that can be provided by context
Accounting for counting (crosslinguistically)
Full text linkThis paper proposes a universal account of counting constructions. The observable variation in such constructions can be categorized into four possible systems resulting from parametric variation of two linguistic properties - NP[+/- pred] (whether the NP starts out as a predicate or a kind term) and Card/CL (whether cardinal and classifier heads are fused). The four systems show different patterns vis-à-vis overt occurrence of number-marking plurals (of the English type) and numeral classifiers - they are either obligatorily complementary, or obligatorily absent, or they obligatorily co-occur. The first two systems have been extensively studied, and the third has been argued to be impossible. This paper introduces novel data from Khasi, which exhibits such a system. Independent support for the proposed typology comes from languages where the cardinal and classifier form a complex morphological unit. In one such language, Ch’ol, numeral classifiers are not grammatically compatible with borrowed Spanish cardinals, supporting that they too are cardinal/classifier units but morphologically non-transparent
A comparison of morphogram-driven linguistic innovations throughout the Sinographic Cosmopolis and beyond
Full text linkThis paper looks at six types of borrowings and contact-induced innovations in the Sinographic Cosmopolis that were driven by the use of morphograms as a borrowing medium. Namely, I look at the following phenomena, using examples from Sinitic languages, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese: pseudo-readings (Sinoxenic character readings with no apparent Sinitic model), loan derivations (patterns of derivation following a lexically flexible sinogram model), semantic modification (the reassociation of sinograms with words bearing no semantic relation), spelling innovation (the ad hoc use of sinograms as rebuses), loan styles (the use of Literary Sinitic as a means of encoding vernacular languages) and hybrid styles (a style of writing mixing Literary Sinitic and vernacular elements). Parallels are drawn with other contact scenarios involving morphographic scripts, such as Sumerian cuneiform in the ancient Middle East, emphasizing the often-overlooked role of written medium as an innovative force in language contact
Uncovering identity in lesbian voices: an analysis of variation in vowels and creak
Full text linkThis study provides evidence of intra-community variation among lesbian speakers related to individual differences in gender presentation and workspace environment. An analysis is performed on two cues of queer identity- creaky voice and vowel formants – and their variation within lesbian speech across three factors - gender presentation, queer community familiarity, and workspace type. Overall, vowel space expansion and total creak were found to correlate with a more masculine gender presentation; and different creak phrasal patterns were found to correlate with different workspace types. This variation demonstrates the need for a more nuanced investigation of indexing LGBTQ+ identities through speech.
Advocating & navigating in the (non-)Academic landscape
Full text linkIn recent years, the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) has reinforced its commitment not only to serve as a venue for the dissemination of current research, but also as a site of professionalization and capacity building for linguists of a variety of career interests and trajectories. This paper represents a collaboration between two bodies within the LSA: the First-Generation Access and Equity Committee and the Linguistics Beyond Academia Special Interest Group. It collects together insights from a workshop on mentorship, advocacy, and navigation of landscapes both within academia (with a special emphasis on R1/R2 institutions and liberal arts colleges) and beyond academia (with a special emphasis on the informational interview, a named genre of interaction that is likely to be new to linguists from more academia-focused contexts). Although the workshop centered the perspectives and leadership of first-generation scholars, the demystification of the hidden curriculum—including the hidden and unstated expectations of faculty on and off the tenure track—pursued here will be broadly useful to all linguists, including continuing-generation scholars who wish to support first-generation scholars
Dynamic Field Theory unifies discrete and continuous aspects of linguistic representations
Full text linkIn recent years, a growing body of research has sought to explain linguistic phenomena in terms of the dynamics of neural activity, through the lens of Dynamic Field Theory (DFT: Schöner, Spencer & DFT Research Group 2016). DFT is a general framework for understanding perception, action, and cognition as resulting from activity in interconnected populations of neurons. DFT formalizes neural activity in the language of nonlinear dynamical systems. This expression allows apparently categorical behavior to emerge from an underlyingly continuous state space. In this paper, I provide a review of research investigating linguistic phenomena through the lens of DFT, with a particular emphasis on how this research unifies discrete and continuous aspects of linguistic representations, and in doing so, unifies disparate empirical findings and theoretical insights from various domains of linguistics