Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Two ways to form a portmanteau: Evidence from ellipsis
Get PDFBengali negation forms a portmanteau in two cases: with present tense existential copulas and with all perfects. However, ellipsis of the complement of negation treats these two portmanteaux differently. While the negative perfect can be separated by ellipsis into sentential negation and a silenced perfect, the negative present existential cannot be likewise split, even though ellipsis of copulas is generally permitted. This project proposes the existence of two different ways to form portmanteaux and shows that ellipsis deletion is derivationally timed differently with respect to each in order to capture the patterns of elliptical divisibility
Sluicing cannot apply in-situ in Japanese
Get PDFRoss (1969) proposed that sluicing in English is derived by wh- movement and deletion. The wh-movement analysis, however, is not straight- forward in wh-in-situ languages like Japanese. A number of studies argued that sluicing in Japanese is based on wh-cleft structure with much empirical evidence. More recently, however, Kimura (2010) and Abe (2015) have proposed an in-situ analysis of sluicing in Japanese, which deletes everything but a wh-phrase (and the Q-complementizer) in situ, without movement. In this paper, building on immobile elements, I will provide decisive evidence against the in-situ deletion analysis of sluicing and for the wh-cleft analysis of sluicing
Sibilant harmony in Santiago Tz’utujil (Mayan)
Get PDFWe analyze sibilant harmony in the Santiago Atitlán dialect of Tz’utujil (Mayan), a phenomenon that was briefly described by Dayley (1985). Novel data show that the obligatory harmony process (i) is asymmetrical (triggered only by [+ant] sibilants), (ii) progressive, and (iii) applies long-distance. Furthermore, we argue that the process is not stem-controlled. In contextualizing the phenomenon within the typology of sibilant harmony (Hansson 2010), we conclude that it is unique. Finally, we suggest that Santiago Tz’utujil sibilant harmony has been stable diachronically because the target segment /ʃ/ is always in the stressed syllable, thus being salient in the input during acquisition
Mind your weight: ‘Motionlessly’ sitting between the object and the verb in Japanese
Get PDFThe object in Japanese is often displaced from its canonical position next to the sentence-final verb, due to motivations such as information structure or animacy. Such flexibility allows for an adverb to be placed between the object and the verb. In the literature, there are suggestions for an almost equal preference to place Japanese manner adverbs before or after the object, inferred from both online and offline results. We will present a corpus study with a representative Japanese manner adverb zitto ‘motionlessly’ to show that either order may be preferred in different accounts of word order variation, but none can satisfy both requirements of distance minimization and accessibility, which are manifested in competing directions in Japanese, a verb-final language. In both accounts, weight has immense effect and should not be neglected. By using two heuristic methods to measure the weight effect, we propose that this case study with an object and an adverb sheds new light on the explanatory power of the distance minimization account, in particular by the Mimimize Domains principle (Hawkins 1994), which operates at both levels of (1) the constituency construction of the full VP, which favors the object-first order, and (2) the Phrasal Combination Domain between the head of object and the verb, which favors the adverb-first order. It is also proposed to implement a complement-and-adjunct distinction in the MiD principle, as a step toward a more effective study method of weight effect which I shall call efficiency profiling
Ellipsis requires syntactic and semantic identity. Evidence from Fragment Questions in Spanish
Get PDFBased on novel data from an understudied type of ellipsis in Spanish-which I refer to as Fragment Questions-I argue for the need of both semantic and syntactic identity conditions to license ellipsis. In particular the TP is subject to syntactic identity, and the domain above that is subject to semantic identity. Fragment Questions are elliptical sentences interpreted as wh-questions. They have a follow-up meaning and, unlike other types of sentential ellipsis, they require a wh-phrase to go unpronounced, although there\u27s no explicit wh-question or wh-phrase in the antecedent. In this paper, I analyze Fragment Questions as the result of ellipsis of a wh-question from which a Contrastive Topic has moved
Exploring the connection between Question Under Discussion and scalar diversity
Get PDFPrevious research has revealed that different scalar expressions give rise to scalar inferences (SIs) at different rates. This variation has been termed scalar diversity. In this study, we investigate the role of Questions Under Discussion (QUDs) in explaining this variation in SI rates. Investigating 43 different scalar expressions, we first show that explicit QUDs robustly affect calculation rates: questions based on the stronger of two scalar terms lead to higher SI rates than questions promoting the weaker one. Second, we explore whether the likelihood of asking the stronger question in general (Question Availability) can explain the scalar diversity effect. Our results suggest that Question Availability is indeed a predictor of scalar diversity, but only for scales where both terms denote intervals (unbounded scales), and not for scales where the stronger member has a fixed meaning (bounded scales)
The role of gender in the acquisition of the Serbian case system
Get PDFSerbo-Croatian is marked for seven cases and has a noun class vs. gender distinction. Given the complexity of the inflectional system, we look at Serbo-Croatian as a case study in case acquisition. We explore different correlations available in the input that children could leverage to acquire the case system in Serbo-Croatian. We ask three main questions: 1) does a noun’s gender predict the noun’s nominative singular suffix? 2) does a noun’s nominative singular suffix predict the noun’s gender? and 3) does a noun’s noun class predict the noun’s gender? Specifically, we ask whether the language input provides children with sufficient evidence to form these three productive generalizations. To test this, we apply the Tolerance Principle (Yang, 2016) to a corpus of 270 inflected Serbian nouns. Within this set of data, we find that: 1) all nominative singular suffixes productively predict a gender; 2) all genders productively predict a nominative singular suffix (with the exception of the neuter gender which predicts two suffixes); and 3) two of the three noun classes predict a single gender. We conclude that the input provides sufficient evidence for these productive correlations and we argue that children can leverage these generalizations to infer the declension patterns or gender of novel nouns. We discuss how, given these findings, children could acquire most of the inflectional system by focusing on gender as a categorization system for nouns, without needing to posit abstract categories of noun class
Multi-script morphological transducers and transcribers for seven Turkic languages
Get PDFThis paper describes ongoing work to augment morphological transducers for seven Turkic languages with support for multiple scripts each, as well as preliminary work adding IPA transcription systems. Evaluation demonstrates that our approach yields coverage equivalent to or not much lower than that of the base transducers
Simulating semantic change: A methodological note
Get PDFThe current work discusses the Human Diachronic Simulation Paradigm (HUDSPA), a method to experimentally probe into historical meaning change set up to (i) scan for configurations similar to attested alterations of meaning but in (typically, but not necessarily, related) languages or varieties which did not actualize the change(s) under investigations; (ii) measure the reactions of native speakers in order to ascertain the verisimilitude as well as the particular semantic and pragmatic properties of the items scrutinized. Specifically, the present paper discusses the relative propensity of a particularizer (German eben) to be interpreted with comparatively high confidence as a scalar additive particle such as even and of a concessive item like English though to be interpreted similar to a modal particle along the lines of German doch
De re interpretation in belief reports: An experimental investigation
Get PDFDeterminer phrases (DPs) under intensional operators give rise to multiple interpretations, known as the de re/de dicto ambiguity. Formal theoretical approaches to modeling this ambiguity must rely on nuanced semantic judgments, but inconsistent judgments in the literature suggest that informal judgment collection may be insufficient. In addition, little is known about how these ambiguities are resolved in context and how preferences between these readings vary by context and across individuals, etc. We reported three controlled experiments to systemize the truth-value judgment collection of de re/de dicto readings. While the de dicto readings were robustly accepted by nearly all English speakers, de re readings exhibited strongly bimodal judgments, suggesting an inherent disagreement among speakers. In addition, the acceptability of de re judgments was affected by the DP\u27s internal structure as well as idiosyncratic scenarios. More broadly, our experimental results lend support to the practice of including quantitative data collection within semantics