Adam McCollum (Rutgers) will present, “The atoms of a theory of vowel harmony: Iterativity” on Friday April 22, 2022 at 330pm as part of the Linguistics colloquium series. The presentation will be both in-person and available through Zoom. Abstract can be found below. All are welcome!

The atoms of a theory of vowel harmony: Iterativity

Much linguistic research pursues the discovery of a limited set of atomic elements, e.g., parameters, operations, or constraints, to model human language. While this work is often informed by synchronic typology, diachronic approaches to the human language faculty need not be divorced from synchronic analysis. In this talk, I discuss how the historical decay of rounding harmony in various dialects of Crimean Tatar (Sevortjan 1966; Kavitskaya 2010, 2013) demonstrates the need for (non)iterativity as a core component of a theory of vowel harmony. Through examination of a corpus of 19th century texts, fieldwork, and a production study, I argue that both the diachronic analysis of decay in Crimean Tatar and the synchronic analysis of rounding harmony across Crimean Tatar dialects requires access to iterativity as a theoretical primitive. The centrality of (non)iterativity for a theory of vowel harmony is a challenge for constraint-based grammars with string-based representations (Kaplan 2008). I contend that modelling non-iterativity in a constraint-based grammar requires non-linear representations. As a corollary, any adequate constraint-based theory of vowel harmony must necessarily utilize non-linear representations. 

Ailís Cournane (NYU) will present “Dedicated markers for the hardest thoughts: learning epistemics and counterfactuals the “easy” way” as part of the Linguistics Colloquium series on Friday April 15th at 3:30pm, both in-person and via zoom. All are welcome!

Abstract:

Epistemic reasoning (thinking about possibilities from knowledge-based inferences) and counterfactual reasoning (thinking about possibilities from undoing facts) are among the most complex kinds of reasoning humans can do. The language that expresses these thoughts is likewise complex: e.g., modal verbs with polysemous meanings and functional syntax (like “must” or “could”), and conditional constructions (“if…then”)  with “fake” past-tense markers (Iatridou 2000). But, it doesn’t have to be, those constructions are simply the canonical ones that have received the most attention in the linguistics and psychology literature. There are “easier” constructions out there… I’ll talk about two main case studies, primarily based on extensive corpus studies of English-learning children: (1) epistemic adverbs (“maybe”, “probably”) and (2) counterfactual propositional wish-es (“I wish I was a bar of soap” – Abe, age 4) (joint work with Maxime Tulling), both of which are common in the input to children and linguistically dedicated: they always express epistemicity or counterfactuality, respectively (unlike modal verbs and conditional constructions). We’ll see that children learn to talk about complex epistemic and counterfactual possibilities earlier with these more dedicated markers, updating our understanding of both language and reasoning development in these areas of possibility reasoning.

Troy Messick (Rutgers University) will present, “Case-copying reflexives and reciprocals” as part of the Linguistics Colloquium Series on April 1st, 2022 at 3:30pm. The presentation will be held in-person and via Zoom. An abstract of the presentation follows. All are welcome!

Abstract:

In this talk, I provide an analysis of case-copying reflexives and reciprocals found in many of the world’s languages. As the name suggests, part of a case-copying reflexive or reciprocal “copies” its case from its antecedent. Take for example the Telugu reflexive in (1) and the Icelandic reciprocal in (2). In (1), the reflexive is made by doubling the element tanu and the second of the tanus appears in dative case, which is the same case as its antecedent. In (2) hvor (each) appears in nominative case, again the same as its antecedent. In the talk, I will provide minimal pairs that show that the antecedent’s case predicts the case features of these elements.

I argue that case-coping should be analyzed as an instance of morphosyntactic agreement in case features between these anaphors and their antecedents, hence providing evidence that at least some feature matching between an antecedent and a local anaphor is achieved via syntactic agreement. I also provide evidence from constituency and islands that these anaphors are not linked to their antecedents via overt or covert movement, and show how this analysis accounts for case agreement when the anaphor is embedded within a PP. The work reported here is being done with collaboration with Sreekar Raghotham (Rutgers University) and Gísli Harðarson (University of Iceland).

Paul de Lacy (Rutgers Uni. & Uni. of Auckland) and Shu-Hao Shih (National Taiwan Uni.) will present, `How we know what we don’t know,’ in the Linguistics colloquium series at 3:30pm on Friday March 25th via zoom. An abstract follows. All are welcome!

Abstract

We will talk about some pervasive problems with methods used for obtaining evidence for linguistic theories.  We will illustrate these problems by attempting to quantify uncertainty about our evidence for our theories of sonority-driven stress.  We will conclude that the field needs to focus on demonstrating method validity in order to advance.

Readings

For those who are interested in sonority-driven stress, the following articles catalogue the evolution of our theories and evidence.

Shih, Shu-hao and Paul de Lacy (2019) Evidence for sonority-driven stress.  Catalan Journal of Linguistics 18. https://tinyurl.com/shihdelacy2019

Shih, Shu-hao (2018). On the existence of sonority-driven stress in Gujarati. Phonology 35. https://tinyurl.com/shih2018

de Lacy, Paul (2014).  Evaluating evidence for stress systems.  In Harry van der Hulst (ed.) Word stress: Theoretical and typological issues, Cambridge University Press, pp. 149-193.  https://tinyurl.com/delacy2014

de Lacy, Paul (2004).  Markedness conflation in Optimality Theory. Phonology 21.2:145-199.

Amy Rose Deal will be giving the Linguistics Department Colloquium Friday March 11, 2022 in-person at 3:30pm in ILC S331. The presentation will also be live-streamed via Zoom. Amy Rose will be presenting work titled, `Interaction, satisfaction, and the PCC.’ Abstract can be found below. All are welcome!

Abstract: Interaction, satisfaction, and the PCC

Person-case constraint (PCC) phenomena involve restrictions on the relative person of the two objects of a ditransitive. In this talk, I present an account of four types of PCC patterns within the Interaction/Satisfaction theory of Agree (Deal 2015), and demonstrate some advantages of this view over various competitors. Advantages include the ability to account for both strong and weak PCC effects without invoking multiple types of Agree, and the ability to capture the rather complex relationship between PCC effects and morphological marking of Agree (i.e. in some languages PCC holds only when IO and DO clitics are combined, whereas in others PCC effects hold even though IO and DO clitics are not combined, and in still others IO and DO clitics combine without triggering PCC effects).

Canaan Breiss (MiT) will present, “When bases compete: experimental and computational studies of Lexical Conservatism” in the Linguistics colloquium series at 3:30pm on Friday March 4, in-person and via zoom. An abstract follows. All are welcome!

Abstract:

In this talk I examine the interaction of the phonological grammar and the lexicon through the lens of Lexical Conservatism (Steriade, 1997). This is a theory that addresses how the distribution of bases (existing stem allomorphs in a morphological paradigm) influence the way those paradigms accommodate novel members. The idea is that a phonological alternation only applies to novel words if there is an existing base form present elsewhere in the paradigm that offers the needed phonological material. Thus compénsable, for “able to be compensated”, undergoes stress shift (that is, *cómpensable) because the existing word compénsatory contains the compéns- allomorph. In contrast, *inúndable, for “able to be inundated” is judged worse than ínundable, since there is no existing base that can provide the stressed vowel (there is no foLrm in inúd-). Using experimental data from English and Mexican Spanish, I demonstrate that this dependency between paradigm structure and phonological process application generalizes to entirely novel words in a probabilistic manner. Further, contrary to previous assumptions, I find that all stem allomorphs in a paradigm play a role in determining the form of the novel word, rather than only those that could reduce the markedness of the novel form (per Steriade (1997), Steriade & Stanton (2020)). I propose a novel grammatical model where allomorphs in the lexicon exert analogical pressures on novel words, which are cross-cut by phonological markedness constraints.

References:

Steriade, D. (1997). Lexical conservatism. Linguistics in the morning calm, 157-179.
Steriade, D., & Stanton, J. (2020) Productive pseudocyclicity and its significance. Plenary at LabPhon 17, Vancouver.