Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
Not a member yet
4323 research outputs found
Sort by
Phonetic & Phonological Salience Effects in Different Speech Processing Tasks
Get PDFThis paper provides evidence for both effects of both phonetic and phonological salience in speech processing. Results from three experiments are presented, each examining the relative processing of two speech sounds by speakers of two different languages. In each experiment, one of the two sounds is more phonetically salient and the other is more phonologically salient given the morphophonological patterning of one of the langauges. Phonetic salience effects emerged in shorter-term tasks and phonological salience effects emerged in tasks that were longer-term and that required more phonological processing
Second-Position Clitics and Prosodic Recursion
Get PDFRecent work suggests that prosodic structure has the capacity to retain significant information about recursive syntactic constituency. This paper presents a novel argument for this view from the domain of second-position clitic linearization. In Mandar (Austronesian, Indonesia), many second-positon elements are linearized in domains which correspond to functional projections along the clausal spine (TP, vP). The process which positions these clitics is irreducibly postsyntactic in nature. This observation suggests that TP, vP, and other \u27functional\u27 phrases must remain constituents at a prosodic level of representation. This conclusion provides further evidence for the view that under ideal circumstances, syntactic phrases map to prosodic equivalents in a one-to-one fashion
Junctural Alignment in Kyoto Japanese Compound Nouns
Get PDFDescriptively, in Tokyo Japanese compound words whose second member measures up to four moras in length, compound accent is placed on the syllable immediately preceding or following the boundary, or "juncture," between compound members. The length of the second member of the compound determines which of the two possible syllables is accented. Kubozono (1995) proposes an analysis with a constraint which requires that compound accent be aligned with the juncture. However, Ito and Mester (2018) account for compound accent location without reference to the juncture.Kyoto Japanese compound accent placement is similar to that of Tokyo Japanese (Nakai 2002) with a crucial difference: compound accent is placed on the mora, not the syllable, immediately preceding or following the juncture. This results in a discrepancy in which compound accent is placed on the first mora of a heavy syllable in some cases and on the second mora of a heavy syllable in other cases. I demonstrate that this discrepancy makes alignment to the juncture indispensable for Kyoto Japanese and that general left and right alignment constraints relativized to three levels of recursive word (maximal, minimal, any) cannot by themselves place compound accent in the correct location in all cases
Binarity in Prosodic Morphology and Elsewhere
Get PDFThis paper explores the role of binarity in prosodic morphology by proposing that all representations are maximally binary branching, as stated in (1).(1) Binarity Hypothesis: All representations are maximally binary branching.Our evidence comes from examining patterns in which fission (Integrity violations) and fusion (Uniformity violations) of segments satisfies morphological and phonological constraints: multiple reduplication, haplology, coalescence, and breaking. Where there appears to be 1:3 or a 3:1 mapping between input and output segments, we propose that this must arise from two separate 1:2 or 2:1 mappings (perhaps at a stem and word level). We illustrate that a number of seemingly complex patterns of multiple reduplication in Salish, Wakashan and Uto-Aztecan languages follow naturally from the Binarity Hypothesis
The Projection Problem for Predicates of Taste
Get PDFUtterances of simple sentences containing taste predicates (e.g. "delicious", "fun", "frightening") typically imply that the speaker has had a particular sort of first-hand experience with the object of predication. For example, an utterance of "The carrot cake is delicious" would typically imply that the speaker had actually tasted the cake in question, and is not, for example, merely basing her judgment on the testimony of others. According to one approach, this \u27acquaintance inference\u27 is essentially an implicature, one generated by the Maxim of Quality together with a certain principle concerning the epistemology of taste (Ninan 2014). We first discuss some problems for this approach, problems that arise in connection with disjunction and generalized quantifiers. Then, after stating a conjecture concerning which operators \u27obviate\u27 the acquaintance inference and which do not, we build on Anand and Korotkova 2018 and Willer and Kennedy Forthcoming by developing a theory that treats the acquaintance requirement as a presupposition, albeit one that can be obviated by certain operators
Comparing Conventions
Get PDFWe offer a novel account of metalinguistic comparatives, such as \u27Al is more wise than clever\u27. On our view, metalinguistic comparatives express comparative commitments to conventions. Thus, \u27Al is more wise than clever\u27 expresses that the speaker has a stronger commitment to a convention on which Al is wise than to a convention on which she is clever. This view avoids problems facing previous approaches to metalinguistic comparatives. It also fits within a broader framework --- independently motivated by metalinguistic negotiations and convention-shifting expressions --- that gives linguistic conventions a role in the semantics
Composing reciprocity: An analysis of scattered reciprocal
Get PDFScattered reciprocals (SRs) are Brazilian Portuguese constructions built from two discontinuous phrases which can offer a new window into the issue of the building blocks of reciprocity. By investigating how reciprocity is compositionally built in sentences with SRs, a puzzle emerges: SRs can apparently take split scope around other quantifiers, but only if these quantifiers are pronounced in a position outside of the reciprocal\u27s scope domain. I argue that these are only apparent cases of split scope and, building on Murray (2008) and Dotlačil (2012), I propose a decompositional account of reciprocals which is formalized in Champollion, Bledin & Li\u27s (2017) Plural Predicate Logic, a static logic which makes use of sets of assignment functions to model plurals. The resulting analysis allows us to view SRs and reciprocal pronouns like each other as being built from the same pieces, with the only difference between them being in how they are syntactically built
Anti-uniqueness without articles
Get PDFWe report on the expression of singular nominals in Burmese, an articleless language, from original elicitation work. Bare nouns are interpreted as singular definites, to which the numeral tiq \u27one\u27 is added to form indefinites. We propose that tiq \u27one\u27 restricts the domain of the nominal to a singleton, and that its addition is subject to a Non-Vacuity constraint; this is the source of the anti-uniqueness inference of indefinites. We furthermore investigate the availability of tiq \u27one\u27 in anaphoric definites. Such behavior forms an argument that the compositional semantics of anaphoric definites does not involve contextual restriction via a situation variable, unlike unique definites
Positively polar plurals: Theory and predictions
Get PDFSeveral researchers have suggested that languages vary as to whether number marking on noun phrases is obligatory or optional. We develop an implementation of this idea within a theory that assumes that the plural is a semantically vacuous, unmarked number (Sauerland et al. 2015 and others). We then explore the semantic consequences of this proposal. One striking prediction of the proposal is that plural nouns should be ungrammatical in antitone environments in languages where number marking is optional, i.e. plurals should be positive polarity items in optional number languages. This prediction arises because the plural form is equivalent to the number neutral bare form in optional number languages. The Efficiency requirement of Meyer 2013 therefore predicts that plurals require local exhaustification in optional number languages since otherwise the bare form is more efficient. Because bare forms are impossible in obligatory number languages, plurals are not predicted to be positive polarity items in such languages. We conclude with an outlook on how to empirically verify the predictions of the theory we presented
Deriving polarity from granularity
Get PDFIn this paper, we present a way to unify Positive Polarity Items formed with some NP and minimizers, such as lift a finger. The connection is made via granularity properties of the two classes of polarity sensitive expressions. We begin with an observation in Strawson 1974 that the use of some NP involves an inference about the availability of a more precise identification of NP. Then, we show that the meaning of minimizers can be captured as the mirror image of the same granularity inference. To model our account, we use the granularity system in van Rooij 2011. We propose pragmatic requirements on the use of some NP and minimizers that explain both their granularity inferences and their polarity properties. Finally, we discuss how our proposal can be viewed as reconciliation of referential and alternative-based approaches to polarity