Monthly Archives: January 2017

Pietraszko (2017) – Relative clauses and CP nominalization in Ndebele

Relative clauses and CP nominalization in Ndebele
Asia Pietraszko
January 2017
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003273
I argue that embedded clauses in Ndebele (Bantu, Zimbabwe) are nominalized — they project a DP shell. I provide syntactic and morphophonological evidence for DP shell in verb-complement clauses, noun-complement clauses and relative clauses in Ndebele. The DP-shell hypothesis is further shown to explain i) an asymmetry between verb- and noun-complement clauses, and ii) a similarity between noun-complement clauses and relative clauses. Unlike verb-attached clauses, noun-attached clauses are introduced by a functional head: the linker “a”. The linking structure of relative clauses additionally derives the apparently idiosyncratic paradigm of relative agreement prefixes from regular phonological rules.

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003273
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Ms.
keywords: clause nominalization, relative clauses, syntax, morphology, phonology, bantu, ndebele

Kawahara (2017) – Durational compensation within a CV mora in spontaneous Japanese: Evidence from the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese

Durational compensation within a CV mora in spontaneous Japanese: Evidence from the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese
Shigeto Kawahara
January 2017
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003269
Previous experimental studies showed that in Japanese, vowels are longer after shorter onset consonants; there is durational compensation within a CV-mora. In order to address whether this compensation occurs in natural speech, this study re-examines this observation using the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese. The results, which are based on about 200,000 tokens, show that there is a negative correlation between the onset consonant and the following vowel, which is shown to be significant by a bootstrap resampling analysis. The compensation was not perfect, however, suggesting that it is a stochastic tendency rather than an absolute principle.

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003269
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: submitted
keywords: japanese, vowels, the csj, duration, compensation, mora-timing, phonology

Kawahara (2017) – Vowel-coda interaction in Spontaneous Japanese utterances

Vowel-coda interaction in Spontaneous Japanese utterances
Shigeto Kawahara
January 2017
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003264
Japanese is often considered to be mora-timed, and the existence of syllables is sometimes questioned. Evidence for syllables comes from interactions between a vowel and the following consonant. Previous experiments show that vowels get longer before coda consonants. Using the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese, this study explores to what degree vowels lengthen before geminates and coda nasals. The results demonstrate that (i) vowels do lengthen before geminates and coda nasals, (ii) this lengthening occurs for all types of vowels, (iii) but degrees of lengthening differ by vowel, and (iv) vowels lengthen more before nasals than before geminates.

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003264
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: submitted
keywords: phonetics, japanese, corpus, the csj, duration, syllables, phonology

Ulfsbjorninn (2016) – Bogus Clusters and Lenition in Tuscan Italian: Implications for the theory of sonority

Bogus Clusters and Lenition in Tuscan Italian: Implications for the theory of sonority
Shanti Ulfsbjorninn
December 2016
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003267
It is widely believed that syllabification is determined by a sonority-driven algorithm like the Sonority Sequencing Principle (Selkirk 1984; Clements 1990, Vaux and Wolfe 2009). In this study, I evaluate this claim in light of Tuscan Italian. Using three phonological diagnostics, it will be possible to split the consonant clusters (CCs) of Tuscan into three types: Branching onset, Coda-Onset and Bogus clusters. Metrical lengthening and Gorgia Toscana filter out Branching onsets leaving behind Coda-Onset and Bogus clusters as remnant. Elsewhere, the process of Epenthesis (in non-standard dialects) filters out the Bogus clusters instead leaving Branching onsets and Coda-Onset clusters as remnant. Comparing the two sets of remnant allows for the extraction of the Coda-Onset set. Using a Sonority Differential analysis (Parker 2011), it becomes evident (process by process) that sonority is not the primary (or a preferable) mechanism in determining these sets. In seeking an alternative analysis, Gorgia Toscana will be presented in some detail along with its implications for sonority. Gorgia underapplies with Bogus clusters. I will provide a suggestive sketch for a competing representational solution based on Strict CV (in particular Lowenstamm 2003 and Brun-Trigud & Scheer 2010). Informed in part by interlude theory (Steriade 2008), it offers an alternative account for the lenition facts: compressible CCs (Branching onsets) are equivalent to a singleton stop, while non-compressible clusters (Coda-Onset and Bogus clusters) are equivalent to geminates. Unlike sonority based analyses, the phonological definition of the clusters offered here has a clear relationship with the phonological processes that occur to them.

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003267
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: To appear in Sonic Signatures. Nevins, A. (ed.). John Benjamins.
keywords: syllable structure, lenition, sonority, gorgia toscana, phonology, generative grammar, strict cv, interlude theory, phonology

Boskovic (2016) – Tone sandhi in Taiwanese and phasal spell-out

Tone sandhi in Taiwanese and phasal spell-out
Zeljko Boskovic
December 2016
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003263
The paper examines the C particle kong in Taiwanese. Following Simpson and Wu (2002), the paper argues that tone sandhi that kong participates in provides an argument for multiple spell-out. It is also shown that the kong construction can be used to tease apart different approaches to multiple spell-out and successive-cyclic movement. In particular, tone sandhi with kong provides evidence for the approach argued for in Boškovi? (in press), which dispenses with the PIC and where spell-out targets phases and successive-cyclic movement targets phrases above phases. The paper also provides a uniform account of the derivational PF effect regarding tone sandhi in Taiwanese and the derivational PF effect regarding primary stress assignment in English noted in Bresnan (1972).

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003263
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:
keywords: complementizers, multiple spell-out, phases, stress, successive-cyclic movement, taiwanese, the phase-impenetrability condition, tone sandhi, syntax, phonology

Creemers, Don, & Fenger (2016) – Some affixes are roots, others are heads

Some affixes are roots, others are heads
Ava CreemersJan DonPaula Fenger
December 2016
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003258
A recent debate in the morphological literature concerns the status of derivational affixes. While some linguists (Marantz 1997, 2001; Marvin 2003) consider derivational affixes a type of functional morpheme that realizes a categorial head, others (Lowenstamm 2015; De Belder 2011) argue that derivational affixes are roots. Our proposal, which finds its empirical basis in a study of Dutch derivational affixes, takes a middle position. We argue that there are two types of derivational affixes: some derivational affixes are roots (i.e. lexical morphemes) while others are categorial heads (i.e. functional morphemes). Affixes that are roots show ‘flexible’ categorial behavior, are subject to ‘lexical’ phonological rules, and may trigger idiosyncratic meanings. Affixes that realize categorial heads, on the other hand, are categorially rigid, do not trigger ‘lexical’ phonological rules nor allow for idiosyncrasies in their interpretation.

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003258
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:
keywords: derivational affixes, distributed morphology, stress-behaviour, categorial flexibility, phasal spell-out, morphology, phonology

De Clerq (2016) – Prosody as an argument for a layered left periphery

Prosody as an argument for a layered left periphery
Karen De Clercq
December 2016
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003240
Van Heuven and Haan’s (2000, 2002) experimental work on the prosody of Dutch question types found that the prosodic signalling of interrogativity is stronger for Dutch declarative questions, less so for yes/no-questions and even less so for wh-questions. This paper shows how the sequence established on prosodic grounds (declarative questions > yes/no questions > wh questions > statements) is mirrored in the functional hierarchy in syntax. Prosody therefore provides an argument for a detailed left periphery (Rizzi 1997, 2001; Haegeman and Hill 2013).

Format: pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003240
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: will appear in “Discussies” in Nederlandse Taalkunde in 2017
keywords: prosody, clause typing, left periphery, split cp, speech act layer, syntax, phonology

Call for papers: Réseau français de phonologie

http://www.gipsa-lab.fr/colloque/RFP-2017/accueil.html

The 2017 edition and the 15th meeting of the French Phonology Network (Réseau français de phonologie) will take place at the University of Grenoble, France, from the 5th to the 7th of July. The deadline is the 3rd of March.

The keynote speakers will be:

Sabrina Bendjaballah, LLING & Univ. Nantes
Monik Charette, SOAS London
John Harris, UCL London
Rachid Ridouane, LPP & Univ. Paris 3

AMP 2016 gender data

From Claire Moore-Cantwell

Below are some graphs of gender data collected at AMP 2016, by Jesse Zymet and Eric Bakovic. Note that unlike previous reports of this type, participants are broken down by gender, but also by whether they are a student or a professor. Post-docs and early-career linguists in visiting positions were counted in the ‘student’ category, although this choice does not change the numbers much.

To start off, I would like to point out that these graphs do not contain information about racial minorities, because phonology (and linguistics in general) is still overwhelmingly white. The fact that there are not enough racial minorities at our conferences to even include in the tallies is a serious problem with our field that should not be forgotten about.

Preregistered participants at AMP 2016, which were about 90% of total registrants, consisted of 59 male and 56 female participants. 72 participants were students and 43 were faculty. (Thanks to Karen Jesney for these numbers!)

Overall, AMP 2016 had a fairly balanced set of presenters (“Talkers”), though male presenters were slightly in the majority. These numbers include the invited speakers: two male and one female.

pieTalkers

Questions came more from faculty than from students by a small margin, and more from men than from women by a much larger margin.

pie

Note that the difference between men and women was greater among students than among faculty (a difference of 18% vs. 9%), and the difference between students and faculty was greater among women than among men (10% vs. 4%).

Below is the number of questions from each demographic, broken down by talk. Talks are arranged from left to right in order of occurrence in the conference, and speaker characteristics are notated below each bar.

rawishData

Note that this graph does not contain information about the order of questions asked for each talk. That information is represented in the graphs below. First, let’s consider the transitional probabilities between faculty and students:

SP

‘S’ indicated students, and ‘P’ indicated faculty (‘professors’). The probability inside each circle indicates how likely that category is to begin the questioning. Each arrow indicates the transition probability (or forward bigram probability) between two categories of questioner. For example, after a student asked a question, there was a 53% chance that a faculty member would ask a question and a 47% chance that another student would ask a question.

Interestingly, students are much more likely than faculty to begin a question period, but faculty end up asking more questions. This graph yields some insight into why: After a student asks a question, students and faculty members are about equally likely to ask the next question. However, after a faculty member asks a question, there is only a 29% chance that a student will then ask a question. Once the floor transitions to a faculty member, it tends to stay with other faculty members rather than transitioning back to students.

There are a couple of possible reasons for this dynamic – first, it might be explicitly encouraged via actual exhortations for students to talk first and faculty to hold back. I don’t remember this actually happening at AMP, but a second possibility is that the group implicitly follows this ‘rule’ simply because it’s common in linguistics, and the group generally believes in it. Yet another possibility is that students ask the first question more often just because there are more students in the audience.

Below is a similar graph illustrating question asking dynamics among the two genders for which data was gathered.

FM

Men and women are nearly equally likely to ask the first question, with only a slight advantage for men. However, after a woman asks a question the next questioner is more likely to be a man than another woman. On the other hand, after a man asks a question, the probability that a woman will ask the next question is quite low.

Finally, here is a graph illustrating the ‘flow’ of questioning between all four groups.

all

The same general flow of floor time towards faculty and towards men that the previous two graphs showed can be seen in this graph as well. Additionally, this graph reveals that the transition of floor time between female students and female faculty looks somehwat different than the transition of floor time between male students and faculty. For both genders, after a student asks a question the probability that the next question comes from a student of the same gender or a faculty member of the same gender is about equal. After a female student asks a question, female faculty members and other female students are about equally likely to ask the next question, and the same is true for male audience members. However, after a faculty member asks a question, the probability that the next question will be from a male student is much higher (29% after male faculty, and 14% after female faculty) than the probability that a female student will ask a question (0% after female faculty, and a mere 8% after male faculty).