Monthly Archives: January 2018

Erteschik-Shir, Josefsson & Köhnlein (2017) – Variation in Mainland Scandinavian Object Shift and Prosodic Repair

Variation in Mainland Scandinavian Object Shift and Prosodic Repair
Nomi Erteschik-Shir, Gunlög Josefsson, Björn Köhnlein
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003688
October 2017
In this paper we argue for an analysis of Object Shift (OS) in Mainland Scandinavian (MSc) in which the shifted word order is the result of a prosodic repair to enable weak pronoun incorporation. We observe that varieties with optional OS also have a tone accent contrast. We argue that the in-situ word order is licensed in these dialects because tonal accent creates a prosodic domain licensing the incorporation of the weak pronoun. The proposal has important implications for our understanding of the architecture of the grammar – it provides evidence that at least some cases of word order can better be attributed to phonological computation, rather than to narrow syntax.

Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/003688
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:
keywords: object shift, prosodic repair, tone accent unit, match theory, swedish, ærø danish, syntax, phonology

Biro 2018: OT grammars don’t count, but make errors: The consequences of strict domination for simulated annealing

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1724_biro_1.pdf

ROA: 1336
Title: OT grammars don’t count, but make errors: The consequences of strict domination for simulated annealing
Authors: Tamas Biro
Comment: Published in: Beata Gyuris, Katalin Mady and Gabor Recski (eds.), K + K = 120. Papers dedicated to Laszlo Kalman and Andras Kornai on the occasion of their 60th birthdays (Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 2017).
Length: 30
Abstract: Our goal is to compare Optimality Theory (OT) to Harmonic Grammar (HG) with respect to simulated annealing, a heuristic optimization algorithm. First, a few notes on Smolensky’s ICS Architecture will bridge the gap between connectionist HG and symbolic HG. Subsequently, the latter is connected to OT via q-HG grammars, in which constraint C_i has weight q^i. We prove that q-HG converges to OT if q ? +?, even if constraint violations have no upper bound. This limit shall be referred to as the strict domination limit. Finally we argue that q-HG in the strict domination limit shares with OT a remarkable feature: simulated annealing does not always converge to 100% precision, even if the algorithm is offered ample time. Globally non-optimal local optima produced at slow pace will be viewed as irregular forms.
Type: Paper/tech report
Area/Keywords: formal analysis, implementation, simulated annealing, q-HG grammar, OT-HG connection, strict domination, ICS Architecture

Survey on academic climate

From Savithry Namboodiripad

Dear friends and colleagues,

Please complete and share in your departments this short anonymous survey about your experiences in linguistics and related fields — we want to hear from researchers at all stages of their careers, from all over the world, whose work relates to language in some way. We welcome responses from those who have left academia as well!

This survey is being undertaken by Lynn Y-S Hou (University of California, San Diego), Savithry Namboodiripad (University of Michigan), & Corrine Occhino (Rochester Institute of Technology). It is motivated by the recent discussions around climate and harassment in Linguistics and related fields.
We ask two main questions:
 
Q1: How have our identities shaped our professional experiences?
Q2: How can we improve the climate in our field(s)?

In order to address these larger questions, the questions in this survey address the following more specific topics: 

  • Who are we?
  • In what fields and departments are we working?
  • How do we perceive the climate in our field(s)?
  • What barriers have there been to a positive climate?
  • What has facilitated a positive climate? 

Ultimately, we wish to empower individuals to speak about their experiences as members of this community, and to collect information which can be used to offer solutions for those who would like to work toward a more inclusive community.

We know your time is valuable: the survey takes about 20 min if you complete every section, but just completing the multiple choice questions takes less than 5 minutes! And, you don’t have to do it all in one sitting!
Questions and comments can be directed to savithry@umich.edu
Thank you so much for your time!

NAPhCX Call for Papers

NAPhCX
Tenth North American Phonology Conference
Concordia University, Montreal
May 4-5, 2018
https://naphcx.wixsite.com/main

The Linguistics Program at Concordia University, Montreal will once again host the biennial North American Phonology Conference (NAPhC) May 4-5, 2018. For NAPhCX, our tenth iteration since 2000, we again invite abstracts on phonological representation and computation from an internalist, nativist, symbol-processing perspective.

Invited speakers:
Veno Volenec (Zagreb)
Keren Rice (Toronto)
Markus Pöchtrager (Wien)
Christina Bjorndahl (Cornell/Carnegie-Mellon)
Iris Berent (Northeastern)
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Abstract Guidelines
Deadline: March 1, 2018
Format: PDF file
Length: 2-5 pages
Submission by email to cognitivescience@concordia.ca
Anonymous abstract–In message give name and affiliation of author(s) (alphabetically)

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Results will be sent out by March 10, 2018. Talks will be 40 minutes including questions. Some abstracts will be accepted for poster presentation.

Charles Reiss for the NAPhCX Committee: cognitivescience@concordia.ca