Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Penn Linguistics Conference
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10/01/2020
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Publication Preface(2020-10-01) Rhee, Nari; Budnick, RyanThe University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) is an occasional series published by the Penn Graduate Linguistics Society. The series has included volumes of previously unpublished work, or work in progress, by linguists with an ongoing affiliation with the Department, as well as volumes of papers from NWAV and the Penn Linguistics Colloquium/Conference. This volume contains selected papers from the 43rd Penn Linguistics Conference, held from March 22-24, 2019 in Philadelphia, PA, at the University of Pennsylvania. Thanks go to Jennifer Arlin, Johanna Benz, Spencer Caplan, Andrea Ceolin, Yiran Chen, Ava Creemers, Jordan Kodner, Aini Li, Daoxin Li, Ruaridh Purse, and Ruicong Sun for their help in editing. Since Vol. 14.2, PWPL has been an internet-only publication. As of September 2014, the entire back catalog has been digitized and made available on ScholarlyCommons@Penn. Please continue citing PWPL papers or issues as you would a print journal article, though you may also provide the URL of the manuscript. An example is below: Jeoung, Helen. 2020. Wh-agreement Across Three Domains in Indonesian. In University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 26.1, ed. Nari Rhee and Ryan Budnick, 115-123. Available at: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol26/iss1/14 Publication in the University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) does not preclude submission of papers elsewhere; copyright is retained by the author(s) of individual papers. The PWPL editors can be contacted at: U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, 3401-C Walnut Street, Suite 300, C Wing, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228 and working-papers@ling.upenn.edu. Nari Rhee and Ryan Budnick, Issue EditorsPublication Resultative Secondary Predicates and Prefixes in German and Dutch(2020-10-01) Creemers, AvaCertain prefixed verbs in German have been shown to be incompatible with adjectival Resultative Secondary Predicates (RSPs) (Kratzer 2005). Similarly, verbal prefixes have been shown to be incompatible with RSPs in Dutch (Hoekstra et al. 1987, Hoekstra 1988). In this paper, I give a unified account for the the incompatibility of verbal prefixes and RSPs in German and Dutch. I show that, similar to what has been argued for Dutch, it is not transitivity that precludes RSPs in German, but rather the prefixes themselves. I provide evidence that non-prefixed verbs that obligatorily express their internal argument (such as transitive and unaccusative verbs) can combine with RSPs in German. I propose that the right generalization for the incompatibility of prefixes and RSPs follows from a semantic restriction that prevents the occurrence of multiple states in a single event (Tenny 1987).Publication Mobile Affixes Across Western Armenian: Conflicts Across Modules(2020-10-01) Bezrukov, Nikita; Dolatian, HossepIn this paper, we discuss the cross-linguistically rare case of mobile affixation in three Western Armenian varieties, in which the Indicative marker alternates between a prefixal and a suffixal realization depending on the context. In Hamshen Armenian, conditioning is fully phonological: the Indicative is a prefix if the verb is vowel-initial and a suffix elsewhere. However, in Gyumri and Akhalkalaki Armenian, the placement of the Indicative marker is subject to a curious interleaving between phonological and syntactic conditions. First, if a consonant-initial verb is alone in some relevant syntactic domain, the affix takes a suffixal position, but if there is extra syntactic elements present, it surfaces as a prefix (syntactic condition). This domain is similar to syntactic phases but not always isomorphic to them. In Akhalkalaki, the Indicative is even capable of leaving the verb base and cliticizing onto the constituent bearing the sentential stress. We discuss the data and provide a preliminary analysis.Publication Wh-agreement Across Three Domains in Indonesian(2020-10-01) Jeoung, HelenCross-linguistically, morphological wh-agreement has been observed either on C/T or on verbs (Zaenen 1983; Reintges et al. 2006), coinciding with classic domains for successive-cyclic A' movement. This suggests that other phasal XPs may be also marked with morphological wh-agreement. The central claim of this paper is that in Indonesian, wh-agreement occurs in three domains: complementizers, verbs and nominals. Evidence for wh-agreement on C and wh-agreement on verbs comes from previously observed patterns in the literature, which I re-cast as wh-agreement. Next, by examining cases in which possessors undergo A' movement out of DP, I show that obligatory changes in morphology are an instantiation of wh-agreement within DP. This analysis contributes new patterns to the range of attested wh-agreement, and brings Indonesian morphosyntactic patterns under the umbrella of a wider cross-linguistic phenomenon.Publication Children (and Some Adults) Overgeneralize Negative Concord: the Case of Fragment Answers to Negative Questions in Italian(2020-10-01) Moscati, VincenzoRecent studies on language acquisition have shown that children may initially adopt a Negative Concord grammar also when this option is disfavoured or forbidden in the target language. If children overextend Negative Concord, they might do it not only in Double Negation languages, but also in Romance. This hypothesis will be tested by looking at Italian children’s comprehension of negative fragments used as answers of negative questions: in this context, Double Negation readings typically arise in adult speakers of Italian. The experimental results show that Italian 5-year-olds prefer Negative Concord interpretations to a larger extend than the adult control group, supporting the idea that Negative Concord might initially be overgeneralized by young children.Publication Documenting Eynu: A Case Study of Language Contact(2020-10-01) Liang, SiyuEynu is an alleged threatened contact language of Uyghur [Turkic; China] and Iranian languages, spoken in scattered enclaves in southwestern Xinjiang, China. We conducted fieldwork on the language in 2018 and provided a most up-to-date documentation of the language. Based on the data collected, we claim that Eynu is best classified as a Turkic language, since the majority of its grammar patterns with Uyghur. However, certain phonological and morphological features attest to language contact, notably with Persian languages. In addition, diachronic analysis with the help of previous data attest to an ongoing process of lexical replacement and language attrition.Publication Finite-State Locality in Semitic Root-and-Pattern Morphology(2020-10-01) Dolatian, Hossep; Rawski, JonathanThis paper discusses the generative capacity required for Semitic root-and-pattern morphology. Finite-state methods effectively compute concatenative morpho-phonology, and can be restricted to Strictly Local functions. We extend these methods to consider non-concatenative morphology. We show that over such multi-input functions, Strict Locality is necessary and sufficient. We discuss some consequences of this generalization for linguistic theories of the morphological template.Publication (Im)possible Constituent Orders: Nominals, Numerals, Classifiers and Ordinal Markers(2020-10-01) Tatsumi, YutaBy investigating ordinals in a wide range of languages, this paper addresses a puzzle regarding (im)possible constituent orders of nominals, numerals and ordinal markers, which is similar to Greenberg’s (1972) observation about constituent orders of nominals, quantifiers and classifiers. I propose that my observation and Greenberg’s (1972) observation can be captured by assuming that ordinal markers occur in the same positions as numeral classifiers.Publication Direct Causation: A New Approach to an Old Question(2020-10-01) Baglini, Rebekah; Siegal, Elitzur A. Bar-AsherCausative constructions come in lexical and periphrastic variants, exemplified in English by Sam killed Lee and Sam caused Lee to die. While use of the former, the lexical causative, entails the truth of the latter, an entailment in the other direction does not hold. The source of this asymmetry is commonly ascribed to the lexical causative having an additional prerequisite of “direct causation", such that the causative relation holds between a contiguous cause and effect (Fodor 1970, Katz 1970). However, this explanation encounters both empirical and theoretical problems (Nelleman & van der Koot 2012). To explain the source of the directness inferences (as well as other longstanding puzzles), we propose a formal analysis based on the framework of Structural Equation Models (SEMs) (Pearl 2000) which provides the necessary background for licensing causal inferences. Specifically, we provide a formalization of a 'sufficient set of conditions' within a model and demonstrate its role in the selectional parameters of causative descriptions. We argue that “causal sufficiency” is not a property of singular conditions, but rather sets of conditions, which are individually necessary but only sufficient when taken together (a view originally motivated in the philosophical literature by Mackie 1965). We further introduce the notion of a “completion event” of a sufficient set, which is critical to explain the particular inferential profile of lexical causatives.Publication Logophoricity and Mandarin Exempt Reflexives(2020-10-01) Liu, YingtongAnaphors in many languages do not obey the 'canonical' Binding Condition A (Chomsky 1986), such as Icelandic 'sig' and Mandarin 'ziji'. Two main competing approaches have been proposed to capture binding beyond the local domain: (i) The LONG-DISTANCE BINDING (LDB) theory derives non-local binding via covert cyclic movement and turns non-local binding into local binding which always obeys Condition A. (Pica 1987, Huang & Tang 1991) (ii) The LOGOPHORICITY (LOG) theory explains exempt anaphors by logophoric rather than pure structural constraints (Sells 1987, Huang & Liu 2001, Charnavel 2019). The two theories make distinct predictions on the referential dependencies between reflexives and their antecedents. The LDB theory predicts that antecedents should always c-command the reflexives, while the LOG theory predicts that reflexives need not be c-commanded by their antecedents if they are logophoric. This paper aims to experimentally test the two competing theories by investigating the binding conditions of Chinese reflexive 'ziji' and 'taziji' using acceptability judgment tasks. The results about 'ziji' support the LOG theory against the LDB theory. Furthermore, our results reveal that 'taziji', though usually considered as a local anaphor (e.g., Cole, Hermon & Huang 2006), can in fact similarly be exempt from binding under logophoric conditions.
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