Maria Gouskova (New York University) will present “Morpheme Structure Constraints Revisited” in the Linguistics colloquium series at 3:30 Friday February 18, by Zoom. An abstract follows. All are welcome!

Abstract:
Most constraint-based frameworks embrace Richness of the Base: the assumption that no interesting generalizations are stated as constraints on the lexicon (a.k.a. Morpheme Structure Constraints, or MSCs). The main argument against MSCs is that they introduce duplication into the theory. When the same constraints define the shapes of morphemes and restrict derived words, the latter, surface-oriented constraints should be sufficient. Unlike MSCs, surface-oriented constraints are less abstract, and are independently necessary. This echoes earlier criticisms of MSCs: they are redundant, abstract, and unlearnable.

In this talk, I revisit MSCs in the context of Russian voicing. Russian voicing was Morris Halle’s (1959) original battleground against structuralism—which he, incidentally, also criticized for having a duplication problem. By treating contrastive oppositions differently from non-contrastive ones, structuralism fails to capture the generalization that Russian voicing assimilation works on all obstruents alike, whether they contrast for voicing phonemically (/b/ vs. /p/) or are obligatorily voiceless (e.g., /t?/). My concern is not the undergoers; rather, it is the lack of certain contrasts predicted by the popular Positional Faithfulness account of voicing neutralization in Optimality Theory (Lombardi 1999 and many others). I will show that even though this account captures the phonetics and typology of voicing contrasts, it has a problem with Russian. There are several alternatives, but all encounter some kind of a duplication problem. I will argue for MSCs against consonants such as the affricate /d?/ in the lexicon. Another alternative would include a host of markedness constraints covering positions where [d?] does not occur, but this move introduces a duplication into the analysis: the phonology of certain consonants must be handled twice. These constraints, moreover, are neither phonetically grounded nor formally sensible; all they do is plug the holes in the analysis.

My account, like everyone else’s, has a duplication problem. But unlike other analyses, it explains facts such as the handling of loanword [d?], which is borrowed as a CC cluster in Russian, and which behaves as though it is never represented as an affricate in the system. I conclude with a discussion of a learnability proposal for MSCs within a constraint-based framework, Minimum Description Length (Rasin & Katzir 2016). I discuss some complications that arise in applying Minimum Description Length to learning certain kinds of hidden structure, especially structure that allows words to be shorter and grammars to be simpler

Brian Buccola (Michigan State University) will present “Higher-order plurality without conjunction” in the Linguistics colloquium series at 3:30 Friday November 19, in ILC S331. An abstract follows. All are welcome!

Abstract:
A simple DP like “the animals” refers to a plurality, while a DP conjunction like “the cats and the dogs” refers, at least prima facie, to a structured, or higher-order, plurality — that is, a plurality of pluralities. A great deal of debate has focused on how to model this additional structure (Link 1984; Landman 1989; Krifka 1991; Schwarzschild 1996), with renewed interest in the typology of readings that DP conjunctions may give rise to (Grimau 2020). In this talk, I will present data indicating that higher-order pluralities can sometimes, but not always, arise even in the absence of conjunction, a result that challenges two longstanding theories of plurality. I will sketch how these two theories can be extended to capture the data, and the diverging predictions they make. Time permitting, I will also discuss how these findings bear on recent work on higher-order readings of questions (Xiang 2021; Fox 2020; Gentile and Schwarz 2020). (Based on joint work with Jeremy Kuhn and David Nicolas.)

References:

Fox, Danny (2020). “Partition by Exhaustification: Towards a Solution to Gentile and Schwarz’s Puzzle”. Cambridge, MA. url: https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/TljZGNjZ.

Gentile, Francesco and Bernhard Schwarz (2020). “Higher-Order Quantification and Free Choice in How Many-Questions”. In: Sinn und Bedeutung. Vol. 24. Osnabrück, Germany, pp. 205–222. url: https://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/mZhNDA4Y.

Grimau, Berta (2020). “Structured Plurality Reconsidered”. In: Journal of Semantics 38.1, pp. 145–193. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffaa012.

Krifka, Manfred (1991). “How to Get Rid of Groups, Using DRT: A Case for Discourse-Oriented Semantics”. In: Texas Linguistics Forum. Vol. 32, pp. 71–109.

Landman, Fred (1989). “Groups, I”. In: Linguistics and Philosophy 12.5, pp. 559–605. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/ BF00627774.

Link, Godehard (1984). “Hydras: On the Logic of Relative Constructions with Multiple Heads”. In: Varieties of Formal Semantics: Proceedings of the Fourth Amsterdam Colloquium. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publications. Reprinted in Link 1998, pp. 77–88.

Link, Godehard (1998). Algebraic Semantics in Language and Philosophy. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.

Schwarzschild, Roger (1996). Pluralities. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer.

Xiang, Yimei (2021). “Higher-Order Readings of Wh-Questions”. In: Natural Language Semantics 29, pp. 1–45. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-020-09166-8.

Zahra Mirrazi has accepted a Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali post-doctoral fellowship to continue her research at the Department of Linguistics at UCLA. Starting September 2022, she will join the department there, working with Yael Sharvit and Ethan Poole. Congratulations Zahra! ?????!

“Anyone might but everyone won’t”, a new paper by Ana Arregui, has just been published by Semantics & Pragmatics.

https://semprag.org/index.php/sp/article/view/sp.14.10

Abstract:

This paper investigates the interaction between quantifiers and epistemic modals, focusing on the contrast between every and any. It builds on observations made in von Fintel & Iatridou 2003, who noted that quantifiers seem unable to take wide scope across an epistemic modal. The proposal at the heart of the paper is that modes of epistemic access to domains of quantification play a role in accounting for apparent restrictions on scope. The paper takes the characterization of conceptual covers in Aloni 2001 as a starting point to argue that in the context of epistemic modals, constraints on epistemic access to the domain of quantification can give rise to scope illusions.

Brown University will host the 31st meeting of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (virtually) on May 7-9. You will find the program here.

UMass linguists past and present will participate (see details below), with Seth Cable giving one of the invited plenary talks: Two Paths to Habituality: The Semantics of ‘Habitual Mode’ vs. ‘Imperfective Mode’ in Tlingit

In addition to SALT, this year will also have SALT(ED): a workshop on inclusive teaching in semantics organized by the SALT Equity and Diversity committee. Lisa Green will be one of the workshop panelists.

The Pop-Up Mentoring Program sponsored by the LSA’s Committee on Gender Equity in Linguistics will hold mentoring sessions at SALT.

UMass linguists (working with colleagues) at SALT 31:

Luis Alonso-Ovalle and Justin Royer: Modality in the nominal domain: The Chuj yalnhej + wh series

Andrea Beltrama and Florian Schwarz: Imprecision and speaker identity: How social meaning affects pragmatic reasoning

Justin Bledin and Kyle Rawlins: About what about: Topicality at the semantics-pragmatics Interface

Maria Biezma, Bettina Braun and Angela James: Prosody is adding what?

Kajsa Djarv and Maribel Romero: (Non-)factive islands from (non-)necessary triviality

Hary Chow and Marcin Morzycki: Zero, measurement, and nominal semantics in Cantonese

Our own María Biezma will present “Life on the loose” in the Linguistics colloquium series at 3:30 Friday March 26. An abstract follows. All are welcome!

Register here: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAsde6vrTMjHtCx7Az5AhCgXukmgiFYM5ti

Abstract:
Insubordinated clauses (see Evans 2007) across languages are often associated with a wide range of meanings not present in their subordinated counterparts. A given insubordinated clause is often said to be able to convey surprise, commands, reports etc., depending on the context of utterance. The disparity between the associated meanings has often led to proposals arguing that the original complementizer has acquired different meanings in insubordinated contexts and the speaker is then facing an ambiguity that is resolved in the context of utterance.

In this talk I will investigate a case of insubordination in Spanish that has been discussed in the literature in the terms described above. Instead of defending an ambiguity analysis, I will argue that a unified analysis is possible once we look beyond the sentence level and revisit the data from this perspective. At the theoretical level, the claim is that we can explain how potentially unrelated meanings are brought about by considering that utterances are proposals to update the context and taking into account the relation between utterances and the proposed update.

November 18, 2020, (8am EST, 4pm in Moscow) Barbara gives a Zoom talk “in Moscow” called “Language and Logic: Ideas and Controversies in the History of Formal Semantics”, as part of “Logical Perspectives Open Lectures” organized by Lev Beklemishev, Steklov Mathematical Institute, Moscow, for Nov 17-18. Open to all; Registration required at http://lp2020.mi-ras.ru/open_lectures/. I’d be delighted to have linguists there too to join in the discussion after the talk. The other two lectures in the series are on Nov 17 – one by Anil Nerode at 4pm Moscow and one by Yuri Gurevich at 6pm Moscow. I think the talks are all intended for students and younger scholars, so I expect the other two to be interesting and accessible as well.