Proceedings of the 35th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium
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05/10/2012
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Publication Redevelopment of a Morphological Class(2012-05-01) Fruehwald, Josef TCoronal stop deletion (or‚`TD Deletion‚`) is the paradigm sociolinguistic variable. It was first described in African American English (Labov et al., 1968) as a rule whereby word final /Ct/ and /Cd/ clusters simplify by deleting the coronal stop. It has since been found in many dialects and varieties of English. Aside from the very regular phonological and phonetic factors which condition whether TD Deletion applies, morphological structure also appears to have an effect. The three morphological categories of primary interest are (i) monomorphemes}, (ii) regular past tense verbs and (iii) semiweak past tense verbs. In almost every dialect studied, the order of morphological classes from least favoring deletion to most favoring deletion is as given in (1). (1) monomorphemes > semiweak > regular past tense In this paper, I will be focusing on the difference between semiweak and regular past tense. I will pursue a revised version of the analysis in Guy & Boyd (1990), casting it in terms of Competing Grammars and Distributed Morphology. Specifically, I will propose that the rate of phonological TD Deletion is the same for the regular past and the semiweak. What leads to higher TD Absence in the semiweak verbs is variable morphological absence of /t/, i.e., there is a competing morphological analysis where the past tense of keep is simply "kep", instead of "kept".Publication Change in Prosody as an Alternative: Evidence from Acquisition(2012-05-01) Mykhaylyk, RoksolanaThis study contributes to the issue of syntax-prosody-semantics interaction in child speech. It focuses on the prosodic realization of contextually-defined direct objects in a language allowing object scrambling. The empirical data are collected from 3-4-year-old children acquiring Ukrainian. The children’s speech samples were analyzed in order to find contrast between the prosody of sentences with various syntactic and semantic properties. The results show that child intonation is variable, but mostly predictable. The most evident contrast was detected for the structures with pronouns: when children failed to scramble pronouns, they still marked them prosodically by destressing. It can be concluded, then, that 3-4-year-old children are able to establish context relatedness for pronouns, and in order to mark their special status they can use one of two ‘options’ available in the grammar: syntactic movement or prosodic recontouring.Publication Semantic Effects on Pronouns and Reflexives in Picture-NPs: Similarities and Differences(2012-05-01) Kaiser, Elsi; Do, MonicaResearch on Binding Theory shows that the syntactically-conditioned complementarity normally exhibited by pronouns and reflexives breaks down in certain syntactic environments, including possessorless picture-NPs (e.g. picture of {her/herself}). We report two psycholinguistic experiments which investigate what kinds of factors influence how pronouns and reflexives in picture-NPs are interpreted, given that their antecedents are not determined by Binding Theory. The results show that the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in picture-NPs is governed by multiple factors. On the one hand, we corroborated the results of prior work which found that pronouns and reflexives are subject to opposing syntactic and semantic biases (Kaiser et al. 2009). However, on other hand, we provide evidence of shared biases: Both pronouns and reflexives dislike referentially underspecified antecedents, namely the indefinite existential ‘someone’ and wh-expressions. This pattern seems to fit well with claims that both forms prefer to pick out the antecedent whose point-of-view is being represented (Kuno 1987, Tenny 2003), assuming that referentially underspecified antecedents are not good point-of-view anchorsPublication Ellipsis as Movement and Silence: Evidence from French(2012-05-01) Authier, MarcFrench allows ellipsis after a number of verbs that express priority or dynamic modality. This phenomenon is known as ‘modal ellipsis’ and, in the past ten years, its syntactic status has been hotly debated in the literature on Romance syntax in ways reminiscent of the controversy surrounding the proper syntactic treatment of English VP ellipsis and Sluicing that started with the early works of Ross (1967) and Sag (1976). What has been established so far with some degree of certainty is that unlike English VP-ellipsis, French modal ellipsis is ellipsis of a TP (Dagnac, 2010). Also established by Busquets and Denis (2001) is the fact that modal ellipsis allow syntactic extraction out of the elision site. This weighs heavily in favor of a PF-deletion approach because it suggests that the ellipsis site has inner structure and therefore provides an extraction site that would remain unavailable under a pro-form approach. In this paper, I explore a novel formulation of the licensing conditions on modal ellipsis that takes as a point of departure a suggestion by Johnson (2001) that English VP-Ellipsis should be derived by way of movement and that elided VPs stand in a topic position though they are not spelled out at PF. I argue that adopting a similar approach to French modal ellipsis correctly predicts (a) the class of French verbs that license modal ellipsis, (b) some novel grammaticality contrasts involving infinitival forms of these verbs, and (c) the fact that French does not have VP-Ellipsis and that English does not have modal ellipsis.Publication The Information Structure of Subject Extraposition in Early New High German(2012-05-01) Light, CaitlinThis paper investigates the information-structural characteristics of extraposed subjects in Early New High German (ENHG). Based on new quantitative data from a parsed corpus of ENHG, I will argue that unlike objects, subjects in ENHG have two motivations for extraposing. First, subjects may extrapose in order to receive narrow focus, which is the pattern Bies (1996) has shown for object extraposition in ENHG. Secondly, however, subjects may extrapose in order to receive a default sentence accent, which is most visible in the case of presentational constructions. This motivation does not affect objects, which may achieve the same prosodic goal without having to extrapose.Publication The indefinite article – Indefinite? – Article?(2012-05-01) Leu, ThomasPerlmutter (1970) argued that the indefinite article is categorically different from the definite article and proposed that it is a clitic version of the numeral "one". But there are, as Perlmutter himself pointed out, instances of "a" as well as of "one" that don't seem to have the semantics of the numeral. Hence a divorce of "a" (and of "one") from "numeral"-hood is called for. Furthermore, there are instances of what looks like the indefinite article (e.g., German "ein" or its Dutch, etc. counterpart) which occur in contexts from which the indefinite article is supposed to be excluded: with plural nouns, with non-count nouns, in definite noun phrases, etc. This state of affairs was addressed by Bennis et al. (1998), and others since, by reference to a so-called 'spurious article,' homophonous with the traditional indefinite article "een/ein". The goal of the present paper is twofold: First of all, I argue that German "ein" is not always an `indefinite article,' and, pursuing the idea that there is only one "ein", it is hence never an `indefinite article.' Secondly, I explore some consequences for the structural representation of certain function words which contain "ein" as one of their components, in particular "kein" as well as its English counterpart "no". The discussion promotes a strongly non-lexicalist view, advocating a syntactic derivation of function words, including movement.Publication Numerical cognition among speakers of the Jarawara language: A pilot study and methodological implication(2012-05-01) Everett, CalebDixon (2004) suggests that the Jarawara language contains no native number terms. This assertion implies that Jarawara is one of the most extreme documented cases of a language with a paucity of number terms (Hammarström 2010), and helped to motivate an investigation into the numerical cognition of its speakers. Investigations among speakers of languages with limited number terminologies have proven useful to cognitive scientists interested in the language-cognition interface (see De Cruz & Pica 2008). For instance, it has been demonstrated that speakers of Pirahã, a numberless Amazonian language, face difficulties when performing basic tasks related to numerical cognition (Gordon 2004, Frank et al. 2008, C. Everett & Madora in press). In order to contrast the numerical cognition of the Jarawara with those of the Pirahã, and in so doing shed light on the interaction between anumeric language and thought, we replicated three of the basic tasks described in the aforementioned studies on Pirahã. Unlike speakers of Pirahã, the seven speakers of Jarawara tested generally performed quite well on the tasks in question. Differences between the two tribes were significant (at pdohave a native cardinal number system, contra Dixon (2004), and that this system can be used for numerosities as large as twenty. In addition to the experimental data presented, this paper includes the most extensive documentation to date of a number system in an Arawá language.Publication The Role of Negative and Positive Evidence in Adult Phonological Learning(2012-05-01) Finley, SaraOne of the great mysteries of language development is how children acquire language so efficiently while adults are never able to reach the same level of proficiency. Adding to this mystery is that child learners rarely receive negative evidence regarding the nature of the grammatical structure of their language, but adults are more likely to receive and use such evidence (in classes, corrections, etc.) (Baker, 1979). The present study tests the role of negative evidence in adult language learners, who were exposed to an artificial grammar characterized by round vowel harmony, a phonological process whereby vowels agree in the feature round. Participants were exposed to either positive evidence only (Positive Evidence Condition), or both negative and positive evidence (Positive Evidence Condition). In two experiments, participants in the Positive Evidence Condition outperformed participants in the Negative Evidence Condition, specifically for test items tat measured extension of learned items to novel items. These results suggest that negative evidence may hinder adult grammatical rule learning.Publication -Nibud’ Pronouns in Irrealis Infinitivals: Structure and Licensing(2012-05-01) Fitzgibbons, NataliaThis paper uses the distribution of ni- and –nibud’-series of irrealis pronouns in Russian to explore the structure of irrealis infinitivals. Members of the ni-series are negative concord items licensed by sentential negation (the head of NegP, which dominates TP); they cannot be licensed long across a CP phase boundary (Brown (1999), Fitzgibbons (2010), among others). -Nibud’-items are licensed by certain items that have been argued in the literature to be in the CP domain at LF, such as, for example, question operators ((Cheng (1991), Chomsky (1995), Rizzi (1997), (1999), Sportiche (1995))) and imperative operators ((Han (2001), (Belletti (1999), Schwager (2005), Zanuttini (2008)). This paper draws the following conclusions from the near-complementary distribution of these two pronominal series in irrealis infinitivals,: Russian irrealis infinitivals can be generated as either CPs or as TPs, and the irrealis infinitivals where–nibud’-items are licensed are CPs. -nibud’-items that are licensed in the subject position of moč’ ‘can’ undergo A-movement out of the infinitival complement CP. It is not the matrix modal word that licenses the –nibud’-items in irrealis infinitival complements. The licenseris the irrealis C of the embedded infinitival.Publication Preface(2012-05-01) Fruehwald, JosefThe University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL) is an occasional series published by the Penn Linguistics Club. 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. This volume contains selected papers from the 35th Penn Linguistics Colloquium, held from March 18-20, 2011 in Philadelphia, PA at the University of Pennsylvania. Alphabetic thanks go to Mao-Hsu Chen, Aaron Ecay, Sabriya Fisher, Aaron Freeman, Lauren Friedman, Kyle Gorman, Anton Ingason, Marielle Lerner, Laurel MacKenzie, Hilary Prichard, and Kobey Schwayder for help in editing, uploading, and general support. Since Vol. 14.2, PWPL has been an internet-only publication. Since Vol. 13.2, PWPL has been published both in print and online gratis via ScholarlyCommons@Penn. Due to the large number of hits these online papers have received, and the time and expense of managing a back catalog of PWPL volumes, the editorial committee decided in 2008 to cease print publication in favor of wider-scale free online dissemination. 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: Authier, Marc . 2012. Ellipsis as Movement and Silence: Evidence from French. U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 18.1: Proceedings of PLC 35, ed. J. Fruehwald, 1-9. http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol18/iss1/2 Ultimately, the entire back catalog will be digitized and made available on ScholarlyCommons@Penn. 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 619 Williams Hall University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104–6305 working-papers@ling.upenn.edu http://ling.upenn.edu/papers/pwpl.html Josef Fruehwald Issue Editor
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