Congrès de l’ACL 2014
CLA Conference 2014
L’Association canadienne de linguistique tiendra son congrès de 2014 lors du
Congrès des sciences humaines à l'Université Brock, St. Catharines (ON), du
samedi 24 mai au lundi 26 mai 2014.
!e Canadian Linguistic Association will hold its 2014 conference as part of the
Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Brock University, St.
Catharines, ON, from Saturday May 24 to Monday May 26, 2014.
Programme
dernière mise à jour: 17 mai 2014 | latest update: May 17, 2014
Samedi 24 mai | Saturday, May 24
9:00–9:30
Thistle 255
Thistle 256
Thistle 257
Acquisition (L1)
Variation & changement | Variation & change
Syntaxe | Syntax
Yvan Rose (MUN)
Kazuya Bamba (Toronto)
Tomokazu Takehisa (NUPALS)
Interfaces entre domaines phonétique et phonologique dans
l’acquisition de la phonologie
!e interaction between impersonal re"exives and syntactic #ange
Non-selected arguments and the ethical strategy
Alena Barysevich (York)
Carlos de Cuba (Calgary)
9:30–10:00 Marina Sherkina-Lieber (Carleton)
Monolingual and bilingual #ildren’s production of Russian embedded Emergence des normes communautaires : cas de la variation lexicale
yes–no questions
10:00–10:30 Anna Frolova (Toronto)
Développement de la transitivité verbale en russe L1
In defense of the truncation hypothesis for main clause phenomena
Philip Comeau (O!awa) & Anne-José Villeneuve (Toronto)
Paul Poirier (Toronto)
!e expression of future temporal reference in Picardie Fren#
Malay/Indonesian voice and pseudo-incorporation
PAUSE | BREAK
10:30–10:45
Thistle 255
Thistle 256
Thistle 257
Acquisition (L2+)
Pragmatique | Pragmatics
Syntaxe | Syntax
10:45–11:15 Johannes Knaus & Mary Grantham O’Brien (Calgary)
Stress and morphology in second language production and processing
Johannes Heim, Hermann Keupdjio, Zoe Wai-Man Lam, Adriana
Osa-Gómez & Martina Wiltschko (UBC)
Julianne Doner (Toronto)
Dimensions of variation of the EPP
How to do things with particles
11:15–11:45 Gabrielle Klassen & María-Cristina Cuervo (Toronto)
An imperfect representation: !e preterit–imperfect contrast in
syntactic theory and SLA
11:45–12:15 Ma!hew Patience (Toronto)
E. Allyn Smith (UQAM), Laia Mayol (UPF) & Elena
Castroviejo-Miró (CSIC)
Daniel Milway (Toronto)
Null pronouns in English: evidence from particle verb constructions
Di$erences between predicates of personal taste and epistemic modals
across languages
Naomi Francis (Toronto)
!e L3 acquisition of Spanish rhotics by native Mandarin speakers
!is predicate is tasty: Predicates of personal taste, faultless
disagreement, and the ideal judge
DÉJEUNER | LUNCH
12:15–1:30
Session des a!iches | Poster session
Thistle North Hallway
1:30–3:00
Ewelina Barski (SUNY Brockport)
Is there a di$erence? Interpretation in advanced vs. intermediate Hispanic heritage speakers
Veranika Barysevich (Western)
L’accentuation des “petits” mots
Paul De Decker (MUN)
!e nasal ‘ash’ system in English: how does it get so tense?
Veena Dwivedi, Hope Magnus, Leslie Rowland & Kaitlin Curtiss (Brock)
!e cost of a%ention in semantic processing
Julie Goncharov (Toronto)
Many and determiner systems in English and Russian
Margaret Grant (McGill), Julie!e Thuiller (Rennes 2/LLF), Benoît Crabbé (Paris
Diderot/ALPAGE) & Anne Abeillé (LLF/Paris Diderot)
!e role of animacy in sentence production: Evidence from Fren#
Rick Grimm (York)
L’emploi variable du subjonctif et des expressions de nécessité dans le français parlé des
locuteurs restreints à Pembroke (Ontario)
PAUSE | BREAK
3:00–3:30
3:30–4:00
Thistle 255
Thistle 256
Thistle 257
Morphologie | Morphology
Psycholinguistique | Psycholinguistics
Syntaxe | Syntax
David Heap (Western), Michèle Oliviéri (Nice) & Jean-Pierre Lai
(Nice)
Les sujets des verbes météorologiques dans les dialectes occitans
transitionnels du Nord
4:00–4:30
Je"rey Lamontagne (O!awa)
Examining ‘opposing’ processes in &ebec Fren# mid vowels
Gary Libben (Brock), Kaitlin Curtiss (Brock), & Silke Weber (Calgary)
Compound representation and individual experience
Olivia Marasco (Toronto)
L2 Spanish speakers’ perception of secondary cues in Y/N question and statement intonation
Monica McMillan (Western)
Because Twi%er: Linguistic strategies for brevity in Internet speak
Maida Percival (Toronto)
Variation in ejectives in Harar Oromo
James Porteous (Western)
Redundant adjective is redundant: An analysis of Adj1 N is Adj1
Malina Radu, Gabrielle Klassen, Laura Colantoni, Ma!hew Patience, Ana Teresa PérezLeroux, & Olga Tararova (Toronto)
!e perception of intonational contours: a cross-linguistic study
Joyce Bruhn de Garavito & Silvia Perpiñán (Western)
Will Oxford (Manitoba)
Subject pronouns and clitics in the Spanish interlanguage of Fren# L1 !e rise and fall of split-ergative agreement in Algonquian
speakers
Daniel Schmidtke & Victor Kuperman (McMaster)
Laura Sabourin, Jean-Christophe Leclerc, Michele Burkholder &
Mass counts in the World Wide Web: A corpus linguistic study of noun Christie Brien (O!awa)
countability across varieties of English
Bilingual lexical organization: Is there a sensitive period?
Richard Compton (McGill)
An argument for genuine object agreement in Inuit
5:00–5:15
Musée canadien des langues | Canadian Language Museum
Ouverture de l’exposition «Le français au Canada» | Opening of the “French in Canada” exhibit
Thistle Eye Corridor
5:30–7:30
Assemblée générale | Annual general meeting
Academic South 215
Dimanche 25 mai | Sunday, May 25
9:00–9:30
Thistle 257
Thistle 258
Thistle 259
Phonologie & phonétique | Phonology & phonetics
Psycholinguistique | Psycholinguistics
Syntaxe | Syntax
Emily Clare (Toronto)
Kaitlin Falkauskas & Victor Kuperman (McMaster)
Olena Kit (McMaster)
Evidence of phonological knowledge from perceptual learning
Individual di$erences in the strategies used to read morphologically
complex words
On propositional complexity of middles and its consequences for
syntax
Kathleen Currie Hall, Claire Allen, Tess Fairburn, Kevin McMullin,
Michael Fry & Masaki Noguchi (UBC)
Kumiko Murasugi (Carleton)
9:30–10:00 Sara Mackenzie (MUN), Erin Olson (MIT), Meghan Clayards
(McGill) & Michael Wagner (McGill)
Allophonic variation in English /l/: production, perception, and
segmentation
A hierar#ical view of the ergative and antipassive in Inuktitut
&antifying perceived morphological relatedness
10:00–10:30 Avery Ozburn (Toronto)
Jianxun Liu (Victoria)
Statistical co-occurrence restrictions in Oromo consonants
!e optionality property of Kiswahili applicatives
PAUSE | BREAK
10:30–10:45
Thistle 257
Thistle 258
Thistle 259
Phonologie & phonétique | Phonology & phonetics
Sémantique | Semantics
Syntaxe | Syntax
10:45–11:15 D. Sky Onosson (Victoria)
Igor Yanovich (Tübingen)
A prosodic account of Canadian Raising
No weak necessity
11:15–11:45 Christopher Spahr (Toronto)
Restricting non-segmental contrasts
11:45–12:15
Bronwyn Bjorkman & Elizabeth Cowper (Toronto)
Heather Bliss (Victoria)
Possession and necessity: from individuals to worlds
Partial (non-)con'gurationality in Bla(foot
Dennis Ryan Storoshenko (Calgary) & Robert Frank (Yale)
Clarissa Forbes (Toronto)
Whi# questions do you like the movements in? A semantic constraint On the absence of nominal coordination in Gitksan
on extraction
DÉJEUNER | LUNCH
12:15–1:30
Assemblée générale du Musée canadien des langues | Annual general meeting of the Canadian Language Museum
Thistle 257
Session des a!iches | Poster session
Thistle North Hallway
1:30–3:00
Louise Beaulieu (Moncton) & Wladyslaw Cichocki (UNB)
Les formes comme / comme que en français acadien du nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswi(
Sophia Bello (Toronto)
Null indirect objects in &ebec Fren#
Christie Brien & Laura Sabourin (O!awa)
Age of L2 acquisition has a greater in"uence on L1 metalinguistic awareness than pro'ciency
Veena Dwivedi & Kaitlin Curtiss (Brock)
!e role of event knowledge in semantic interpretation
Brandon J. Fry (O!awa)
!e (un)interpretability of {)}: A derivational approa#
Philippe Gauthier (Western)
Faisons at(tension) aux voyelles hautes : le relâ#ement et l’harmonie vocalique en français de
Windsor et de Hearst
David Heap, Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, Je" Tennant & Angélica Hernández (Western)
Aspiration et e$acement du /-s/ en espagnol d’Holguín (Cuba) : variables phonologiques et leur
conditionnement
PAUSE | BREAK
3:00–3:30
3:30–4:00
4:00–4:30
4:30–5:00
Je"rey P. Hong, Todd R. Ferre!i & Deanna Hall (Laurier)
Imagining events: In"uences of temporal information in verbs and perspective taking
Danica MacDonald (Calgary)
From a classi'er language to a mass-count language: What can historical data show us?
Nesrine Mejri & E. Allyn Smith (UQAM)
Étude expérimentale de l’interprétation des questions rhétoriques
Nicholas Moroz (Rimouski) & François Poiré (Western)
Variation prosodique dia#ronique : René Lévesque en trois temps
François Poiré, Je" Tennant & Antony Cloutier (Western)
Adaptation à l’accent français européen par une comédienne québécoise : Changements
acoustiques des voyelles et perception des accents queébécois et hexagonal
Danielle Tomas & Kristen Don Paul (York)
Spanish nominal word order in early and late bilingualism
Thistle 257
Thistle 258
Thistle 259
Phonologie & phonétique | Phonology & phonetics
Acquisition (L2)
Syntaxe | Syntax
Daniel Currie Hall (Saint Mary’s)
Antonio A. González-Poot (Calgary)
Gabriela Alboiu & Ruth King (York)
On substance in phonology
Con"ict resolution in the Spanish SLA of Yucatec ejectives: L1, L2 and
universal constraints
Emphatic ‘quite’ in Acadian Fren# as Focus operator
Liisa Duncan (Toronto)
Danielle Thomas & Katie Tetzlo" (York)
María Luisa Rivero & Vesela Simeonova (O!awa)
Syn#ronic productivity of Finnish vowel harmony
Language-internal context and VOT in bilingualism: A view from
Spanish and English
An evidential modal in Bulgarian: !e inferential future
Laura Colantoni (Toronto), Alana Johns (Toronto), Michelle Yuen
(MIT) & Marta Ortega-Llebaria (Pi!sburgh)
Solveiga Armoskaite (Rochester) & Carrie Gillon (Arizona State)
Perception of English corrective focus by native Inuktitut speakers
5:00–7:00
Réception du président | President’s reception
Centre du Congrès | Congress Centre
(Walker Complex)
Aspectual conditions on (in)de'niteness
Lundi 26 mai | Monday, May 26
Thistle 258
Thistle 259
Phonétique | Phonetics
Syntaxe & sémantique | Syntax & semantics
9:30–10:00 Anthony Brohan (MIT)
Mireille Tremblay (Montréal)
Licensing Catalan laryngeal neutralization by cue
Les pronoms en français : pluralité et individuation
10:00–10:30 Svetlana Kaminskaïa (Waterloo)
Jessica Mathie (Toronto)
Di$érences rythmiques dans les styles de parole en français ontarien
10:30–11:00
Markedness in number features: Evidence from Ganggalida (Yukulta)
Blake Lewis (Calgary)
!e syntax and semantics of demonstratives: A DP external approa#
11:00–11:15
PAUSE | BREAK
11:15–12:15
Communication plénière | Plenary talk
Jila Ghomeshi (Manitoba)
Who are we talking to when we talk to ‘the public’ about linguistics?
Récipiendaire du Prix national d’excellence | Recipient of the National Achievement Award
Thistle 243
12:15–1:15
1:15–4:50
DÉJEUNER | LUNCH
Session conjointe avec l’Association canadienne de linguistique appliquée | Joint session with the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics
Revitalizing Aboriginal Languages
Organizer: Keren Rice (Toronto)
Upper level of Pond Inlet
Gra#on Antone
Tea#ing the On*yota’a·ka language in an urban se%ing
Eileen Antone
Learning the On*yota’a·ka language as an adult
Carrie Dyck & Amos Key, Jr.
An immersion program for intermediate-level speakers
Marie-Odile Junker
Pu%ing information te#nologies to work for Aboriginal languages preservation and revitalization
Marguerite MacKenzie
Language maintenance in East Cree, Naskapi and Innu: A forty-year perspective
Alex McKay & Connor Pion
Kiiwepiskaapiimon! Revitalizatize your language!
EMPHATIC ‘QUITE’ IN ACADIAN FRENCH AS FOCUS OPERATOR
Gabriela Alboiu (York University) and Ruth King (York University)
Introduction. The Baie Sainte-Marie, Nova Scotia variety of Acadian French (henceforth, AF)
has borrowed the English degree modifier quite in constructions such as (1):
(1) a. Vous aviez fait une quite de visite.
(King 2013: 102)
‘You had had quite a visit’
b. C’était une quite de Carole.
‘Carole was quite something’
Semantically, the presence of quite emphatically evaluates the lexical noun. Furthermore, the
presence of de in (1) indicates a complex nominal construction whose syntax begs clarification.
Analysis & Conclusions. King notes that the hyperbolic connotation of the data in (1) resemble
the French construction containing epithet nouns, like un espèce de cochon (“a real pig”,
literally, “a sort of pig”) and ce putain de livre (“this bloody book”, literally, “a whore of book”).
French has a number of binominal constructions of the (Det) N1 DE N2 type (on par with
Romance, more generally): (i) partitive: un verre d’eau (“a glass of water”), (ii) quantitative:
beaucoup de livres (“many books”), (iii) possessive: la soeur de Marie (“Mary’s sister”), and
(iv) qualitative: un bijou de voiture (“a jewel of a car”). Since both the AF quite construction and
the epithet N construction are semantically evaluative, they would fall under (iv), for which both
Kayne (1994) and den Dikken (2006) propose a predicate inversion structure. For Kayne, de is a
C head in a reduced relative clause, for den Dikken, it is the overt realization of a relator (i.e. a
nominal copula). However, there is no comparison between quite and visite, as there is between
bijou and voiture. Nor does quite in AF behave as a predicate: *La visite est (une) quite so a
subject-predicate analysis is difficult to maintain. Doetjes/Rooryck (2001) argue against
predicate inversion for qualitative binominals and propose (2) with N1 in Spec,EvalP instead:
(2) [EvalP [DP ce phénomène] [Eval [DP [D de [NP fille]]]]]
The structure in (2) is appealing in view of presence of an adverbial Evaluative head (à la Cinque
1999) and the likely adverbial status of quite – (3) shows that, while N2 can be modified by an
Adj in AF, quite cannot, clearly indicating that quite is not of N category:
(3)
J'avons eu un (*bon) quite de bon souper.
However, while (2) correctly rules out en-cliticization for French epithet N constructions given
the D nature of de, assuming en is a pro PP (Kayne 1975), it also rules out en-cliticization with
evaluative quite in AF, which is empirically incorrect. Compare (4a)-(4b):
(4)
a. *Il en est un espèce de cochon.
b. Il en contait une quite d’histoire.
Rather, (4b) points to similar en extraction properties as in partitives (Kayne 1975) and
quantitatives: Il en a acheté une douzaine de pommes, and where [PP de NP] (Kayne 1975, 1994).
As with qualitative binominals (Hulk/Tellier 2000), N(2) must be a bare NP in (1). As only DP
(but not NP) needs Case (Kayne 1999), de is not a P case-assigner (pace Jones 1996). Likely, its
function is to indicate N(2) as a property/kind, on par with the IE genitive it has replaced (Ihsane
2008). In sum, we propose (5), which captures both syntactic & semantic properties of AF quite:
(5) [DP [D une[FocP quite Foc SCALAR EMPHASIS [dP [d de [NP visite/Carole]]]]]
(5) capitalizes on Giusti’s (2006) proposal that DPs have left peripheries hosting TopP and FocP
on par with clauses (Rizzi 1997), with D equivalent to Force and ‘d’ equivalent to Fin. Quite is
an operator in Spec,FocP, checking scalar/emphatic Focus (à la Krifka 2007), and ensuring a
greatest/hyperbolic alternative reading on N. In effect, on par with de/di in Romance infinitives
(Kayne 1999, Rizzi 1997), de in (5) is the C/P category of reduced nominals (NumP in Giusti
2012), forced to lexicalize whenever D and ‘d’ project separately.
References.
Cinque, G. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford: OUP.
Den Dikken, M. 2006. Relators and Linkers: The Syntax of Predication, Predicate Inversion,
and Copulas. MIT Press.
Doetjes, J. and J. Rooryck. 2001. Generalizing over quantitative and qualitative constructions.
Ms. Univ. of Leiden.
Giusti, G. 2006. Parallels in clausal and nominal periphery. In Phases of Interpretation, M.
Frascarelli (ed): 151-172. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Giusti, G. 2012. On Force and Case, Fin and Num. Enjoy Linguistics! Papers offered to Luigi
Rizzi on the occasion of his 60th birthday. http://www.ciscl.unisi.it/gg60/papers/giusti.pdf
Hulk, A. and M. Tellier. 2000. Mismatches: Agreement in Qualitative Constructions. Probus 12:
33-65.
Ihsane, T. 2008. The Layered DP: Form and Meaning of French Indefinites. John Benjamins.
Jones, M.1996. Foundations of French Syntax. Cambridge University Press.
Kayne, R. 1975. French Syntax. MIT Press.
Kayne, R. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. MIT Press.
Kayne, R. 1999. Prepositional complementizers as attractors. Probus 11: 39-73.
King, R. 2013. Acadian French in Time and Space. Duke University Press.
Krifka, M. 2007. Basic notions of information structure. In Interdisciplinary Studies of
Information Structure 6, eds. Caroline Fery, Gisbert Fanselow and Manfred Krifka.
Potsdam. http://www.sfb632.uni-potsdam.de/publications/A2/volumeInfo.pdf.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of Grammar, ed. Liliane
Haegeman, 281-339. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
aspectual conditions on (in)definiteness
Solveiga Armoskaite
University of Rochester
Carrie Gillon
Arizona State University
Introduction In this paper, we investigate the behavior of Lithuanian (Baltic) bare nominal
objects in different aspectual contexts. Bare nouns in articleless languages like Lithuanian are
often ambiguous in their interpretation (indefinite or definite). Often, in the presence of certain
aspectual morphology, the bare noun must receive a definite interpretation. However, this is not
true for all verbs; with some verbs the bare noun continues to be ambiguous. We investigate the
origins of this variability.
The Problem Bare nominal objects may be interpreted as either definite or indefinite in cases
like (1a), but may only receive a definite interpretation in cases like (1b) (cf. Piñon 2006 on
Hungarian constraints for overt DPs with particular verbs):
(1)
a.
Sara rašė laiškus.
b.
Sara wrote letters
‘Sara was writing the letters.’
‘Sara was writing letters.’
Sara parašė
laiškus.
Sara PERF-wrote
letters
‘Sara wrote up the letters.’
*‘Sara wrote up letters.’
The prefix pa- forces a definite interpretation on the bare object laiškus ‘letters’. However, in
cases like (2), pa- does not have this effect, and the interpretation remains ambiguous:
(2)
a.
Sara mėgo šunis.
Sara liked dogs
‘Sara liked the dogs.’
‘Sara liked dogs.’
b.
Sara pamėgo
šunis.
Sara INCEP-liked dogs
‘Sara started to like the dogs.’
‘Sara started to like dogs.’
Why doesn’t the prefix always force a definite interpretation on the bare object nominal? How
can we account for the observed differences in interpretation?
Proposal
The interpretations of bare nominal objects in Lithuanian is conditioned by the
interplay of grammatical and lexical aspect. Although both verbs rašė ‘wrote’ and mėgo ‘liked’
are both transitive, they belong to different lexical aspectual categories. Therefore the prefix has
a different effect on the internal arguments.
In (1), rašė is an accomplishment verb. Such verbs have a potential endpoint (Rothstein
2004, Verkuyl 1972, 1993, among others). When pa- is affixed to rašė, it introduces an actual
termination point. The verb phrase is therefore interpreted as telic, and, crucially, the internal
argument must be interpreted as definite. The addition of pa- enforces a quantized/atomic
interpretation on the nominal (cf. Filip 1999 for Slavic perfectives).
In (2), mėgo is a state. States do not have natural endpoints. The prefix pa- therefore
cannot introduce an actual endpoint; instead, it introduces an onset of the event. Thus, the bare
object nominal cannot be quantized, because only endpoints can quantize over internal
arguments.
Conclusions We argue that in each case a prefix introduces a point into the event structure, but
that the effect of this point depends on the lexical aspectual class of the verb. Accomplishments
+ prefix result in a terminal endpoint, which enforces a quantized/atomic structure; states +
prefix result in an inchoative. Nominals are only quantized by an introduced endpoint, but not by
an introduced onset. Thus, the interplay of the lexical and grammatical aspects conditions the
variance in the definiteness interpretations in Lithuanian.
reference
Filip, H. 1999. Aspect, Eventuality Types, and Nominal Reference. NY: Routledge.
Krifka, M. 1998, ‘The origins of telicity’. In Rothstein, S. (ed.) Events and Grammar, 197-235.
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Piñon, C. 2006. Definiteness effect verbs. In Kiss, K. (ed.) Event structure and the Left
Periphery studies in Hungarian, 75-90. Amsterdam: Springer.
Rothstein, S. 2004. Structuring events. Oxford: Blackwell.
Verkuyl, H. 1972. On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Verkuyl, H.1993. A Theory of Aspectuality: The Interaction between Temporal and Atemporal
Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The interaction between impersonal reflexives and syntactic change
Kazuya Bamba
University of Toronto
A number of synchronic analyses (Geniušiené, 1987; Kemmer, 2003 a.o.) have revealed
that reflexives can be found not only in reflexive constructions, but also in middle, impersonal
and intransitive statements. One of the major topics of investigation on reflexives today is a
cross-linguistic variation of their appearance. I present a contrast in how impersonal statements
are expressed among Romance languages, and argue that diachronic observation is essential in
accounting for this difference.
The following examples demonstrate how such statements can be expressed with a
reflexive clitic. In Spanish, the clitic is commonly found in the statements (1a), so is it in
Portuguese, except that in some dialects an overt subject a gente can also be present (1b). This
use of reflexive, however, is in general highly marked in French (1c).
(1) a. Se
come
pasta todos los
días
3.REFL eat.3.SG.PRES pasta
all.PL the.PL day.PL
‘One eats (people eat) pasta every day’ (Spanish)
b. E
era
assim
que
a
gente
vivia!
se
COMP
3.REFL the people
and be.PST so
live.3.SG.IMP
‘And that’s how we used to live’ (Portuguese; Martins (2005:18))
c. Il
rencontre
à Paris des
gens
de toutes origines
se
he 3.REFL meet.3.SG.PRES in Paris some people of all.PL origin.PL
‘In Paris, one meets people from all over the world’ (French; Turley (1998:137))
This contrast illustrates the different degrees of use of reflexive clitics among the languages. The
fact that these three languages also exhibit distinctive syntactic properties (e.g., word order, prodrop, inflectional agreement etc.) clearly suggests there to be a strong correlation between the
reflexive use and the language’s syntax.
My study thus makes two theoretical claims. First, through examination of how the
syntactic properties listed above are related to the different realisations of reflexives, I argue that
any change in these properties be responsible for the divergence observed in (1). Lahousse &
Lamiroy (2012), for instance, argue that modern French exhibits the most restricted word order
as a result of grammaticalisation of its originally flexible word order. Adams (1987) also shows
that French used to exhibit pro-drop property, just as Spanish does today, but lost it by the time
of Middle French. I provide evidence of a diachronic shift in how impersonality is expressed
with reflexives by examining these independent observations.
Additionally, I argue how changes of the two modes expressing impersonality, reflexive
and non-reflexive, are related to the cross-linguistic differences of reflexive uses. Spanish and
French can express the same propositions in (1) by having an overt subject argument, uno (‘one’)
and on (‘we’) respectively. Portuguese, in contrast, cannot express the same statement without
the reflexive clitic, even though the “a gente” phrase is absent in most dialects (Martins, 2005).
Following up de Schepper (2007)’s discussion, I discuss how these two forms of expression are
employed differently in Romance languages and demonstrate how the uses may have contributed
to the divergence of interest.
In this study, by examining these two types of diachronic changes, I demonstrate how the
different patterns of use of impersonal reflexives in Romance are strongly tied to historical
syntactic changes. The study ultimately shows how such a theoretical approach will be useful in
analysing the diverse syntactic realisations of reflexives observed cross-linguistically.
References
Adams, M. (1987). From Old French to the theory of pro-drop. Natural Language & Linguistic
Theory, 5(1), 1-32.
De Schepper, K. (2007). Reflecting the past: Mapping the development of the Indo-European
SE-form. Linguistics in the Netherlands, 211-222.
Geniušiené, E. (1987). The Typology of Reflexives. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin.
Kemmer, S. (2003). The Middle Voice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lahousse, K. & Lamiroy, B. (2012). Word order in French, Spanish and Italian: A
grammaticalization account. Folia Linguistica, 46(2), 387-415.
Martins, A. M. (2005). Passive and impersonal se in the history of Portuguese. In C.D. Pusch., R.
Kabatek., & W. Raible. (eds.), Romance Corpus Linguistics II: Corpora and Diachronic
Linguistics (pp.441-430). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Turley, J.S. (1998). A prototype analysis of Spanish indeterminate reflexive constructions.
Language Sciences, 20(2), 137-162.
Is there a difference? Interpretation in Advanced vs. Intermediate Hispanic
Heritage Speakers
Ewelina Barski
The College at Brockport, SUNY
Studies looking at the language of heritage speakers are interested in learning about the
stability of language before the critical period and how grammar develops under reduced
input conditions (Benmamoun et al. 2010). In this study the aim is to investigate the
impact of reduced input on a component within the Null-Subject Parameter - the Overt
Pronoun Constraint (OPC) (Montalbetti 1984) - by focusing on the mental representation
of the OPC in Hispanic heritage speakers (2nd generation immigrants of Hispanic
background). The goal in this study is to probe into the interpretations that bilingual
heritage speakers assign to overt pronouns in the subordinate clause with quantified and
wh-word antecedents.
The OPC restricts the possible antecedents that an overt pronoun can have. Specifically,
it states the restrictions on this pronoun when it has a quantified expression (someone, no
one) or a wh-phrase (who, which) as its antecedent. As a null subject language, Spanish
allows the speaker to omit the subject of the sentence. Examples (1a) and (1b) below
show that unlike the null pronoun, the overt pronoun in the subordinate clause can never
bind with the quantified expression or wh-phrase: The overt pronoun needs to refer to a
third person within the discourse. On the other hand, if the pronoun is covert, the
sentence becomes ambiguous and allows for a less restrictive interpretation.
Following Montalbetti (1984), I assume that all quantifiers will be treated equally.
Moreover, following a generative framework, it is assumed that that the Null Subject
Parameter is set early in the grammars of these null-subject heritage languages
(Chomsky, 1981; Jaeggli, 1982; Rizzi, 1982), and thus they will demonstrate
understanding of the interpretative restrictions found with subordinate overt pronouns
with quantified antecedents.
20 Hispanic heritage speakers participated in the experiment. Participants were asked to
complete a picture matching task, which looked at a forced interpretation of the OPC and
a sentence selection task, which allowed participants to provide their own interpretation
of the sentence by choosing between two pictures. Both tasks tested interpretation of the
implicit knowledge of the OPC with quantified antecedents.
Results for the Picture-Matching task show that advanced heritage speakers understand
the interpretative contrast present with overt and null pronouns within OPC contexts.
However, a difference is found between advanced and intermediate heritage speakers,
where the intermediate group appears to have more difficulty in the Sentence-Selection
task: They do not differentiate between null and overt pronouns. Results suggest lowerproficiency participants have difficulty with the reading/comprehension component of the
task, but the OPC remains in their grammars.
Examples:
Overt (1a)
cree
Nadiei
No one believes
que élj/*i va a ganar
that he
will win.
Null
Nadiei
cree
No one believes
que Øi/j va a ganar
that pro will win.
(1b)
References:
Benmamoun, E., S. Montrul & M. Polinsky. (2010). White Paper: Prolegomena to
Heritage Linguistics. Harvard University Press.
Chomsky, Noam. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Jaeggli, Osvaldo. (1982). Topics in Romance Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.
Montalbetti, M. (1984). After binding. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Rizzi, Luigi. (1982). Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.
Emergence des normes communautaires: cas de la variation lexicale.
Alena Barysevich
(York University, Glendon)
Cette communication démontre une émergence des normes communautaires distinctives au fil
des générations dans le contexte de la globalisation et du nivellement du langage. Nous
analysons l’expression des notions d’«automobile» et de «travail rémunéré» dans le français de
la région d’Ottawa-Hull. Nous nous appuyons sur trois corpus (Ottawa-Hull, RFQ et FdO)
recueillis à trois points du temps (les années 1950-1960, 1983-1984 et 2004-2006). En recourant
à l’analyse sociolinguistique variationniste, nous démontrons comment l’emploi des lexemes
peut être conditionné par le changement culturel à un moment précis de l’histoire. Une attention
particulière est portée à la relation entre la structure des groupes sociaux et les relations
integroupes au sein des communautés (Gadet 2007; Mougeon 2005).
Dans notre echantillon, la dynamique lexicale des jeunes des communautés francophones
majoritaires (Vieux-Hull, Mont-Bleu et Vanier) semble converger, en partie, à celle observée
parmi les jeunes des communautés unilingues (Armstrong 1998, 2001 ; Labov 1972b ; Lodge
1989), notamment on observe un rapprochement des jeunes au parler local (usage des formes
vernaculaires comme marque de l’appartenance communautaire). Par contre, dans les
communautés francophones minoritaires (West-End et Basse-Ville), on observe plutôt
l’assimilation à l’anglais (langue de prestige), attribuable à l’insécurité linguistique des
francophones dans les communautés avec une forte concentration de la population anglophone.
Nous soulignons l’importance de considérer autant les facteurs sociaux statiques que de
rajouter les facteurs mettant en relief la dynamique communautaire, avec ses normes sociales et
ses valeurs de prestige. Cette communication montre que dans le cas de la variation lexicale, il
apparaît plus rigoureux de considérer la dynamique lexicale des groupes sociaux (et non pas des
locuteurs individuels), par exemple en fonction de la classe sociale ou de l’âge des répondants.
Nous avons prêté une attention très particulière à l’analyse micro-variationnelle, c’est-à-dire
l’étude de chaque communauté séparément. Notre étude a également comparé la dynamique
lexicale dans les communautés francophones majoritaires versus minoritaires de la région à
l’étude.
References:
Gadet, Françoise. 2007. La variation sociale en français. 2nd ed. Paris: Ophrys.
Laforest, Marty. 2002. Attitudes, préjugés et opinions sur la langue. In C. Verreault, L. Mercier, & T.
Lavoie (eds.), Le français, une langue à appri-voiser. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.
82-91.
Mougeon, Raymond. 2005. Rôles des facteurs linguistiques et extralinguistiques dans la
dévernacularisation du parler des adolescents dans les commu-nautés francophones minoritaires.
In A. Valdman, J. Auger, & D. Piston-Hatlen (eds.), Le français en Amérique du Nord: État
présent. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. 261-286.
Mougeon, Raymond, Katherine Rehner, and Terry Nadasdi. 2010. La variation lexicale dans le parler des
adolescents franco-ontariens. In W. Remysen & D. Vincent (eds.), Hétérogénéité et homogénéité
dans les pratiques langa-gières: Mélanges offerts à Denise Deshaies. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. 169-206.
Poplack, Shana. 1989. The care and handling of a mega-corpus: The Ottawa-Hull French project. In R.
Fasold & D. Schifrin (eds.), Language Change and Variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 411-451.
Rand, David and David Sankoff. 1988. GoldVarb. Logistic regression package for the Macintosh.
Montreal: Université de Montreal.
Veranika Barysevich
Université Western
Départements d'études françaises
L'ACCENTUATUION DES "PETITS" MOTS.
La problématique de la nomenclature du terme de clitique en tant qu’un « cover term »
pour désigner des unités prosodiquement déficientes ou en tant que primitive
linguistique (Spencer 1991) a fait couler beaucoup d'encre dans la théorie linguistique
(la phonologie, la morphologie et la syntaxe). Cette recherche apporte un nouvel
éclairage à la problématique de la réalisation accentuelle des clitiques dans le cadre de
la phonologie prosodique.
Notre recherche propose une analyse comparative des propriétés acoustiques (la
durée, la fréquence fondamentale et l'intensité) des mots de fonction ou 'Little words'
(Leow et al. 2009) nommés souvent "clitiques" et qui ne sont pas rare accentués dans
le discours spontané (Selkirk 1984). Mertens (1993) explique ce phénomène par le fait
que l’accent secondaire ( l'accent qui tombe sur la syllabe initiale du mot lexical ou sur
la deuxième syllabe si ce mot lexical commence par une voyelle (Mertens 2011)) est
indifférent au trait [+/-clitique]. En partant de l’observation de Mertens (1993) nous
testons l’hypothèse que l’accent qui tombe sur un mot grammatical dans le domaine
de la réalisation du mot prosodique est différent de l’accent initial et/ou secondaire se
réalisant à l’intérieur du mot lexical. Nous proposons également l’hypothèse que la
structure accentuelle en français peut être reproductive, c’est-a-dire qu’elle peut
reproduire/générer de nouveaux types d’accent. Pour tester cette hypothèse, nous
identifions et caractérisons l'accentuation des mots de fonction dans les trois variétés
du français spontané européen de trois styles de parole en provenance du corpus multistyle du français parlé C-PROM (Avanzi et al. 2010). Nous examinons les mots
grammaticaux transcrits et annotés à l'aide du logiciel d'analyse acoustique PRAAT
(Boersma et Weenink 2010) et segmentés en phonèmes, syllabes et mots avec le scipt
EasyAlign (Goldman 2008) qui est implanté dans PRAAT. À partir du corpus de 9
locuteurs natifs du français européen provenant de la France métropolitaine, de la
Belgique francophone et de la Suisse romande, nous suivons l’étude de Poiré et
Kaminskaïa (2004) sur la F0 normalisée pour mesurer les valeurs normalisée en cote-z
des trois variables (la durée, la fréquence fondamentale et l'intensité). Cela nous aide à
mettre en question les facteurs acoustiques exploités pour produire l'accentuation sur
les mots de fonction. Nous testons également l’hypothèse de Woehrling et al. (2008)
sur la non-variation prosodique des noyaux vocaliques des clitiques en français
spontané.
Références
Avanzi, M., A.-C. Simon, J. P. Goldman et A. Auchlin. 2010. C-PROM : Un corpus de
français parlé annoté pour l’étude des proéminences. Dans Proceedings of
JEP, Mons, Belgium, mai 2010. http ://sites.google.com/site/corpusprom.
Boersma, P. et D. Weenink. 2010. Praat : doing phonetics by computer (Version
5.1.24). http ://www.praat.org.
Goldman, J.-P. 2008. EasyAlign: a semi-automatic phonetic alignment tool under Praat.
http://latlcui.unige.ch/phonetique.
Leow, R., H. Campos et D. Lardiere. 2009. Little words: their history, phonology, syntax,
semantics, pragmatics, and acquisition. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown
University Press.
Mertens, P. 1993. Accentuation, intonation et morphosyntaxe. Dans Travaux de
Linguistique 6, 21-69
Mertens P., 2011. Prosodie, syntaxe, discours : autour d’une approche prédictive. Dans
Actes du colloque IDP2009 (Interface Discours Prosodie), Paris, 9-11
septembre 2009.
Poiré, F. et S. Kaminskaïa, 2004. La variation intonative dans deux variétés de
français, XXIVe Congrès de linguistique et de philologie romane , University of
Alberystwyth, England.
Selkirk, E. 1984. Phonology and Syntax: The Relation between Sound and Structure.
London: The MIT Press.
Spencer, A. 1991. Clitics. Dans Morphological theory, 350-394. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Woehrling, C., Ph. B. de Mareüil et M. Adda-Decker. 2008. Aspect prosodiques du
français parlé en Alsace, elgique et Suisse. Dans 27es Journées d'Etude sur la
Parole,Avignon.
Les formes comme / comme que en français acadien du nord-est du
Nouveau-Brunswick : variation synchronique et variation diachronique
Louise Beaulieu & Wladyslaw Cichocki
Université de Moncton & University of New Brunswick
Cette communication présente une analyse diachronique de type transversal (trend study) de la
variation dans les expressions en tête des adverbiales tensées en comme dans la grammaire du
français acadien. Une première analyse synchronique de cette variable (Beaulieu et Cichocki
2002) dans le français acadien du nord-est du Nouveau-Brunswick (FANENB) a montré des
tendances statistiquement non significatives dans les fréquences de la variante traditionnelle
comme que, en ce qui a trait à l’âge. Selon l’hypothèse du temps apparent, la variable semble
stable. L’étude de suivi présentée dans cette communication a pour but de réexaminer cette
conclusion à partir de données provenant de décennies antérieures.
Dans les adverbiales en comme du FANENB, la forme comme, la variante standard, et comme que,
la variante vernaculaire, sont utilisées en contexte formel et informel. Notons que la variante
comme que n’est pas spécifique au FANENB ; on la retrouve dans d’autres variétés informelles de
français parlé (voir Holder et Starets 1982 et King et Nadasdi 2006, parmi d’autres).
Les données proviennent de deux corpus enregistrés dans la même communauté acadienne. Le
premier a été recueilli en 1975 auprès de 22 locuteurs nés entre 1882 à 1909. Le deuxième (qui a
fait l’objet de la première analyse) a été enregistré en 1990 auprès de 16 locuteurs dont les années
de naissance varient de 1936 à 1968. Ces deux corpus sont stratifiés selon l’âge, le sexe et le
réseau social. La présente étude, réalisée à l’aide d’analyses de régression logistique (avec
Goldvarb X), examine la variation selon quatre générations de locuteurs.
Les résultats montrent une augmentation intergénérationnelle de la fréquence de la variante
comme que : de 23,7% dans la génération 1882-1895 à 40,3% dans la génération 1958-1968. Il
s’agit donc d’un changement dans le temps, ce qui ne correspond pas à la conclusion inférée suite
à l’analyse du corpus de 1990. L’analyse des deux corpus met en évidence le rôle, au niveau
intra- et intergénérationnel, des facteurs réseau social et sexe sur la trajectoire de la variante
traditionnelle. À l’instar de Sankoff (2005), la présente étude montre l’importance de valider, à
partir de données en temps réel, les conclusions basées sur l’hypothèse du temps apparent.
Références
Beaulieu, L. et W. Cichocki. 2002. Le concept de réseau social dans une communauté acadienne
rurale. Revue canadienne de linguistique 47 : 123-150.
Holder, M. et M. Starets. 1982. Étude sur les formes simples et les formes composées du type
si/si que, quand/quand que/quand ce/quand ce que, etc. dans le parler acadien de Clare,
Nouvelle-Écosse. Si que 5 : 117-128.
King, R. et T. Nadasdi. 2006. Another look at que deletion. Communication présentée à NWAV
35, Ohio State University.
Sankoff, G. 2005. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. In U. Ammon et al. (éds)
Sociolinguistics. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. De
Gruyter : Berlin.Vol. 2 : 1003-1013.
Null indirect objects in Quebec French
Sophia Bello
University of Toronto
The notion that a transitive verb can appear without a direct object (DO) has been widely
explored throughout various experimental and theoretical studies in French (Jakubowicz et al.
1996; Hamann 2003; Cummins & Roberge (C&R) 2004, 2005; Pérez-Leroux et al. 2008).
Previous analyses have construed this object to have a generic, non-referential interpretation (1)
or to be classified as referential null objects (NOs) as in (2); both cases have been identified in
French (cf. C&R 2004, 2005). The goal of this presentation is to expand the analyses of NOs
from transitive to ditransitive constructions and observe how they can account for missing
indirect objects (IOs) in Quebec French.
(1) Wild Guns est un jeu qui défoule ___.
(Larjavaara 2000: 88)
‘Wild Guns is a game that destresses ___.’
(2) “Tu as lu les pages?” Il avait lu ___.
(Larjavaara 2000: 43)
‘“Did you read the pages?” He had read ___.’
I adopt C&R’s (2004: p. 133) approach and assume that all nominals should be interpreted as
‘coreferential’:
[lexical noun…pronoun…NO]
If we take the idea that a NO must have a referent that is salient in the previous discourse, then
the absence of the object clitic (whether direct or indirect) should not render the sentence to be
considered ungrammatical. Note that the difference between direct and indirect objects is of a
structural nature, in terms of argument position and their association with the verb (i.e., DO
merges with V while IO merges with P). Thus, this presentation will focus on analyzing the
structural representation of transitive and ditransitive constructions and see how this could affect
child language acquisition of object clitics in Quebec French.
In acquisition, Pérez-Leroux and her colleagues (2008) propose that a null object stage exist in
child grammar. The notion is that a child has the option of producing a referential null object N
or a clitic. Then, it is the experience, depending on the context presented, that guides the child
into producing a null object. Using transitive constructions, they found that French and Englishspeaking children (i.e., 34.5% and 8.3%, respectively) start off by omitting DOs early on. Costa
and his colleagues (2007, 2008) conducted an experiment eliciting ditransitive constructions in
European Portuguese. Their results suggest a high rate of IO omissions (~52%) in 3-4 year-olds.
Finally, I conducted an experiment using ditransitive verbs in obligatory contexts and found that
3-4 year-old French-speaking children omit IOs 83% of the time (3). These findings suggest that
children go through a null object stage where they generalize NOs (direct or indirect) in
obligatory contexts until they have acquired the adult grammar.
(3)
Question:
Qu’est-ce que Marc fait pour que Julie puisse manger ses céréales?
‘What does Mark do so that Julie can eat her cereal?’
Child:
elle Ø
donne du
lait.
(C17, 3;09)
She Ø-DAT gives some milk
‘She gives Ø some milk.’
This presentation provides structural and experimental evidence on null objects in Quebec
French. Such a study is fundamental to understanding the role of the verb, the status of the verb’s
internal arguments, and ultimately, what causes children’s grammar to diverge from the adult
grammar.
References
Costa, J. and Lobo, M. (2007). Clitic omission, null objects or both in the acquisition of
European Portuguese? In S. Baauw, F. Drijkoningen and M. Pinto (Eds.), Romance
Languages and Linguistic Theory 2005. Amsterdam/Philadephia: John Benjamins, pp.
59-71.
Costa, J., Lobo, M., Carmona, J. and Silva, C. (2008). Clitic Omission in European Portuguese:
Correlation with Null Objects? In A. Gavarró and M. João Freitas (Eds.), Language
Acquisition and Development: Proceedings of GALA 2007. Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Press, pp. 133-143.
Cummins, S. and Roberge, Y. (2004). Null Objects in French and English. In J. Auger, C.
Clements, & B. Vance (Eds.), Contemporary Approaches to Romance Linguistics.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 121-138.
Cummins, S. and Roberge, Y. (2005). A modular account of null objects in French. Syntax
8(1): 44-64.
Hamann, C. (2003). Phenomena in French normal and impaired language acquisition and their
implications for hypotheses on language development. Probus 15: 91-122.
Jakubowicz, C., Müller, N., Kang, O., Riemer, B., & Rigaut, C. (1996). On the acquisition of the
pronominal system in French and German. In A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, E.
Huges, & A. Zukowski (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Annual Boston University
Conference on Language Development. Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press 1, pp. 331342.
Larjavaara, Meri. (2000). Présence ou absence de l’objet. Limites du possible en français
contemporain. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica.
Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., and Roberge, Y. (2008). Null Objects in Child
Language: Syntax and the Lexicon. Lingua 118: 370-398.
Possession and necessity: from individuals to worlds
Bronwyn M. Bjorkman and Elizabeth Cowper, University of Toronto
This paper investigates the use of possessive morphosyntax for modal necessity, as in (1). Possessive modality (PM) occurs both in languages with a verb have (English, German, Spanish, Catalan), and in those expressing possession with be (Hindi, Bhatt 1997; Russian, Jung
2011). We claim that PM constructions arise because both possession and necessity express an
INCL (usion) relation between two arguments of the same semantic type: possession expresses
INCL between two ⟨e⟩-type arguments, while necessity expresses INCL between sets of worlds.
This relation arises in two distinct structures: possessive have is syntactically transitive, while
modal have conceals one argument within the modal head.
(1)
a. That cyclist has a helmet. (poss’n)
b. Cyclists have to obey traffic laws. (nec.)
The semantics of clausal possession are not well understood, but one aspect is the partwhole or INCL relation (Aikhenvald, 2013), expressed in the syntax by a transitive head relating
two nominal arguments (Boneh and Sichel, 2010; Harley, 1995; Levinson, 2011; Ritter and
Rosen, 1997). Just as possession in (2) involves inclusion between individuals, the formal
semantics of necessity involve inclusion between sets of worlds. Since Kratzer (1981, 1986),
modal constructions are taken to include a modal operator (∀ or ∃), which composes first with
a modal base (a set of accessible worlds), and then with a proposition (also a set of worlds).
With a universal modal operator, the proposition is true in all accessible worlds—i.e. the set
of worlds corresponding to the modal base is included in the set of worlds corresponding to
the proposition. Extending have to modal necessity requires only reanalysis of an interpretable
feature INCL, broadening the arguments it relates from individuals to sets of worlds.
(2)
a. the tree with branches
b. coffee with milk
If both possession and necessity are semantically transitive, however, why is only possession syntactically so? Syntactic transitivity has been argued to be the defining property of
possessive have (Hoekstra, 1984; Cowper, 1989), but modals, including modal have (to) are
intransitive, with raising syntax (Bhatt, 1997, a.o.). Semantic work often assumes complex
structure within modal heads (allowing composition under sisterhood between a modal operator and modal base, e.g.). Syntactic Merge, however, cannot create head-internal structure:
a first-merged argument is by definition a syntactic complement. We resolve the mismatch
by proposing instead that the head-internal structure of modals consists of two interpretable
features, encoding modal force and modal base. Function Application can apply not only
to structures created by Merge, but also to heads bearing more than one semantically interpretable feature: the semantic transitivity of modals arises due to their featural, rather than
structural, complexity. The morphology can realize either of these features (or both): while
English modals primarily express modal force, Matthewson et al. (2006, et seq.) show that
modal systems can also primarily express the modal base.
The advantage of this proposal, in contrast to previous approaches to PM (e.g. Bhatt 1997
and Bybee and Pagliuca 1985, who treat PM as expressing the possession or existence of an
obligation), is that it directly explains why necessity, but not possibility, is expressed by possessive morphosyntax. For Bhatt, PM expressions assert the existence of an obligation, expressed
by a silent necessity operator, making it mysterious why there is no corresponding silent possibility operator. For us, the universal force PM constructions follows from the inclusion semantics of possession.
PM constructions thus shed light not only on the semantics of possession but also on the
compositional syntax of modal operators. Our account supports the idea that inclusion is at least
part of the semantics of possession, and also explains possible mismatches between syntactic
and semantic transitivity.
1
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2013. Possession and ownership: A cross-linguistic perspective. In Possession
and ownership: A cross-linguistic typology, ed. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon, 1–64.
Oxford University Press.
Bhatt, Rajesh. 1997. Obligation and possession. In The proceedings of the UPenn/MIT workshop on
argument structure and aspect, number 32 in MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. MIT Department
of Linguistics and Philosophy.
Bybee, Joan L., and William Pagliuca. 1985. Cross-linguistic comparison and the development of grammatical meaning. In Historical semantics, historical word-formation, ed. Jaˇcek Fisiak, 59–83. Berlin:
Mouton.
Cowper, Elizabeth. 1989. Thematic underspecification: the case of have. Toronto Working Papers in
Linguistics 10:85–94.
Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The
view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, ed. Kenneth Hale and
Samuel Jay Keyser, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hoekstra, Teun. 1984. Transitivity: Grammatical relations in government-binding theory. Dordrecht:
Foris Publications.
Jung, Hakyung. 2011. The syntax of the BE-possessive: Parametric variation and surface diversities.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kratzer, Angelika. 1981. Partition and revision: The semantics of counterfactuals. Journal of Philosophical Logic 10:201–216.
Kratzer, Angelika. 1986. Conditionals. In Papers from the parasession on pragmatics and grammatical
theory: Twenty-second regioual meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, volume 2, 1–15. Chicago:
University of Chicago.
Levinson, Lisa. 2011. Possessive WITH in Germanic: HAVE and the role of P. Syntax 14:355–393.
Matthewson, Lisa, Hotze Rullmann, and Henry Davis. 2006. Modality in St’´at’imcets. In Studies in Salishan, ed. Shannon T. Bischoff, Lynika Butler, Peter Norquest, and Daniel Siddiqi, volume 7 of MIT
Working Papers in Linguistics on Endangered and Less Familiar Languages, 93–112. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
Boneh, Nora, and Ivy Sichel. 2010. Deconstructing possession. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
28:1–40.
Harley, Heidi. 1995. Subjects, events and licensing. Doctoral Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
Ritter, Elizabeth, and Sara T. Rosen. 1997. The function of have. Lingua 101:295–321.
2
Heather Bliss
University of Victoria
Partial (Non-)Configurationality in Blackfoot
Introduction Algonquian languages are often described as non-configurational, yet there is
variation in the underlying source(s) of non-configurationality. Some languages are argued to
pattern as Pronominal Argument (PA) languages, in which argument expressions (AEs) are
adjoined to the clause and bind pronominal arguments (Reinholtz & Russell 1995, Reinholtz
1999 for Swampy Cree; Brittain 2001 for Western Naskapi; Junker 1994, 2004 for East Cree).
However, the PA analysis is rejected for other languages (Bruening 2001, LeSourd 2006 for
Passamaquoddy; Christianson 2002 for Odawa; Hamilton 2012 for Mi’qmaq).
Main Claims Blackfoot is a partial PA language, exhibiting a split conditioned by obviation (a
reference-tracking system for 3rd persons). In particular, proximate AEs are generated as clauseexternal adjuncts, but obviative AEs are generated in argument positions inside the clause.
Clitics and Agreement Proximate AEs exhibit canonically adjunct-like behaviour, consistent
with a PA analysis. For example, they can be freely moved or omitted (1). Obviative AEs, on the
other hand, must be resumed by an enclitic –áyi if moved to a preverbal position or omitted (2).
(1)
a. A’páwaawahkaawa
anna
Piohkomiaaki.
A’p-a-waawahkaa-wa
ann-wa
ipi-ohkomi-aakii
around-IMPF-walk.AI-PROX DEM-PROX far-sound-woman
“Far Sounding Woman is walking around.”
b. (Anna Piohkomiaaki) a’páwaawahkaawa.
“{Far Sounding Woman/ she} is walking around.”
(2)
a. Áókatakiyini
anni
ónssts.
a-okataki-yini
ann-yi
w-insst-yi
IMPF-bead.AI-OBV DEM-OBV 3-sister-OBV
“His sister does beadwork.”
b. (Anni ónssts) áókatakiyin*(áyi).
“{His sister /she} does beadwork.”
Under the PA analysis, agreement affixes either occupy argument positions (Jelinek 1984) or
absorb case (Baker 1991, 1996). Either way, the prediction is that agreement affixes and clitics
should not co-occur. This is borne out for proximate but not obviative arguments.
C-Command If proximate but not obviative AEs are clause-external (3), then we predict that
proximate AEs should asymmetrically c-command obviative ones, regardless of grammatical
function. This is borne out: whether an obviative AE is construed as an object (4) or subject (5),
it can be bound by a (null) proximate AE. (Conversely, proximate AEs cannot be bound.)
(3)
[CP DPPROX [CP … DPOBV… ]]
(4)
Ikáóhkanawáákomiimmiiyaa
oksísts.
ik-a-ohkana-waakomii-mm-yii-yi-aawa w-iksist-yi
INTNS-IMPF-all-love-TA-3:4-3PL-3PL.PRN 3-mother-OBV
“Everybodyi loves hisi/j mother.”
(5)
Otáóhkanawáákomiimokyaa
oksísts.
ot-a-ohkana-waakomii-mm-ok-yi-aawa w-iksist-yi
3-IMPF-all-love-TA-INV-3PL-3PL.PRN
3-mother-OBV
“Hisi/j mother loves everybodyi.”
Implications Blackfoot exhibits a split system, in which proximate but not obviative AEs are
adjuncts that bind pronominal arguments. That such a split exists provides evidence against the
view of non-configurationality as a macro-parameter (Chomsky 1981, Hale 1983, Baker 1996)
and supports a finer-grained approach to the typology of (non-)configurationality.
Heather Bliss
University of Victoria
References
Baker, Mark C. 1991. On some subject/object non-asymmetries in Mohawk. Natural Language
& Linguistic Theory 9(4): 537-576.
Baker, Mark C. 1996. The polysynthesis parameter. New York: Oxford University Press.
Brittain, Julie. 2001. The morphosyntax of the Algonquian conjunct verb: A minimalist approach.
New York: Garland.
Bruening, Benjamin. 2001. Syntax at the edge: Cross-clausal phenomena and the syntax of
Passamaquoddy. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Christianson, Keil T. 2002. Sentence processing in a “nonconfigurational” language. PhD
dissertation, Michigan State University
Hale, Ken. 1983. Warlpiri and the grammar of non-configurational languages. Natural Language
& Linguistic Theory 1(1):5-47.
Hamilton, Michael David. 2012. (Non-)Configurationality in M’igmaq. Paper presented at the
44th Algonquian Conference. University of Chicago, October 25-28, 2012.
Junker, Marie-Odile. 1994. La syntaxe du quantifieur universel en algonquin. Canadian Journal
of Linguistics 39(1): 1-13.
Junker, Marie-Odile. 2004. Focus, obviation, and word order in East Cree. Lingua 114(3): 345365.
LeSourd, Philip S. 2006. Problems for the pronominal argument hypothesis in MaliseetPassamaquoddy. Language 82(3): 486-514.
Reinholtz, Charlotte. 1999. On the characterization of discontinuous constituents: Evidence from
Swampy Cree. International Journal of American Linguistics 65(2): 201-227.
Reinholtz, Charlotte and Kevin Russell. 1995. Quantified NPs in pronominal argument
languages: Evidence from Swampy Cree. In Proceedings of the North East Linguistic
Society 25, ed. Jill Beckman, 389-402. Amherst, Mass: GLSA.
Age of L2 acquisition has a greater influence on L1 metalinguistic awareness than proficiency.
Brien, C. and Sabourin, L.
University of Ottawa
The age at which a speaker acquires a second language (L2) has been found to influence homonym
processing in the first language (L1). In a combined ERP and cross-modal lexical decision task,
monolinguals were found to reveal a context-by-frequency-interaction which slowed their processing of
target words that were appropriately-related to the subordinate reading of the priming homonym,
supporting the Reordered Access Model1. The results of the bilingual groups did not, even though the
task was carried out in English, the L1 of all participants. The diverging performances of the bilinguals
from the monolinguals were apparent in behavioural responses as well as in the amplitude, scalp
distribution, and latency of ERPs. Bilingual effects were found that varied by age of L2 acquisition (AoA)
suggesting that AoA influences processing in the L12. Specifically, the later bilingual groups exhibited a
marked divergence from the monolingual group which was correlated with AoA. The later bilinguals
revealed greater priming effects (p<.001) and ERP modulations compared to the simultaneous bilinguals
and the monolinguals, suggesting a heightened metalinguistic awareness due to the L2 influencing
homonym processing in the L13,2.
The current study intends to discount proficiency as a factor influencing these particular results.
Participants were grouped according to proficiency levels using French cloze tasks4 and were compared
to the above-reported AoA-grouped results. As anticipated, participants with the highest proficiency
scores correlate with the earliest AoA. However, the remaining participants revealed a continuum of
proficiency scores which did not correlate with the heightened metalinguistic awareness that was found
by AoA. These results are anticipated to support these previous findings and suggest that AoA, rather
than proficiency, has the greatest influence on a second language influencing the first in regards to a
speaker’s metalinguistic awareness of lexical relationships in homonym processing.
1. Duffy, S.A., Morris, R.K., & Rayner, K. (1988). Lexical ambiguity and fixation times in reading. Journal of
Memory and Language, 27, 429-446.
2. Dussias, P.E., & Sagarra, N. (2007). The effect of exposure on syntactic parsing in Spanish- English
bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 101-116.
3. Cook, V. (2003). Effects of the Second Language on the first. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
4. Tremblay, A. (2011). Proficiency assessment standards in second language acquisition research:
“Clozing” the gap. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33, 339-372.
Licensing Catalan Laryngeal Neutralization by Cue
Anthony Brohan - MIT
Catalan has a pattern of voicing neutralization which has been analyzed under a licensingby-prosody framework as coda neutralization [4]. Word-internally and across wordboundaries, stops neutralize before nasals (hipnosi [bn]) and [tl] clusters are neutralized
(atleta [dl]). [s] is neutralized before nasals (esnob [zn]) and before laterals (legislar [zl],
deslletar [zL]. This pattern of neutralization is problematic under a basic licensing by
cue approach [2], which holds that contrast follows from cue availability, and that all
pre-sonorant cues are equal. Catalan licenses contrast before sonorants in tautosyllabic
sequences (a.kla ∼ a.gla) , but not in heterosyllabic TR sequences (ab.na).
This paper elaborates on the licensing by cue approach for the licensing of stops contrast in
Catalan. The pattern of neutralization is a result of stop voicing cues being impoverished
when the release of a stop is obscured by a following sonorant. Acoustic inspection of
Catalan neutralized TN sequences indicates that stops are nasally released. Furthermore,
Catalan has an prevalent process of realizing TN and [tl] clusters as geminates (ritme [dm]
∼ [mm], atleta [dl] ∼ [ll]). I take this to be a reflex of more general coarticulatory constraint
in Catalan. In Catalan TR clusters, velum lowering and C2 gestures are timed earlier
than in other languages, which provides for nasal releases of stops in non-geminated
stop-nasal sequences.
To test the perceptibility of a stop voicing contrast is less perceptible with an obscured
burst, a perceptual experiment (currently being piloted) was conducted to determine
perceptibility stop-sonorant clusters with obscured and clear releases in Russian. In
Russian, homorganic [tn] and [tl] are nasally and laterally released, heterorganic [kn] and
[kl] have clear release. Aggregated d0 measures from a 2AFC identification task in noise
with 5 native Russian speakers show decreased discrimination of voicing in clusters with
obscured releases.
Contrast
d0
t ∼ d tn ∼ dn tl ∼ dl kn ∼ gn kl ∼ gl
1.64
1.18
0.93
1.49
1.75
This approach holds Catalan neutralization as a product of a pervasive process of coarticulation masking release bursts, yielding a poorer environment for cue realization. Extensions of this proposal to sandhi voicing and behavior of TN clusters cross-linguistically
will be discussed. The pattern of fricative neutralization is accounted for separately as
a gemination contrast [3]. Data from West Flemish [2] suggests a separate licensing
mechanism to account for fricative neutralization, as fricatives but not stops neutralize
before sonorants across word boundaries (dat men [tm], ‘that person’, zes noten [zn] ‘six
nuts’).
References
[1] Steriade, Donca (1999). Phonetics in phonology: the case of laryngeal neutralization. In Matthew Gordon (eds.)
Papers in Phonology 3. (UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 2) Los Angeles Department of Linguistics,
UCLA, 25-146) [2] Strycharczuk, Patrycja, and Ellen Simon. Obstruent voicing before sonorants. The case of
West-Flemish. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory (2013): 1-26. [3] Kawahara, Shiegeto (2012) Amplitude
changes facilitate categorization and discrimination of length contrasts. IEICE Technical Report - The Institute Of
Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers - 112: 67-72 [4] Wheeler, Max (2005). Phonology of
Catalan. Oxford University Press
Subject pronouns and clitics in the Spanish interlanguage of French L1 speakers
Joyce Bruhn de Garavito & Silvia Perpiñán
The University of Western Ontario
There has been a recent debate regarding the initial state in L3 acquisition and the
conditions for syntactic transfer in this type of multilingualism. According to the Cumulative
Enhancement Model (Flynn et at., 2004), all previous linguistic knowledge (L1 + L2) may affect
the attainment of the L3; on the other hand, Bardel and Falk (2007) proposed that it is the L2 that
plays a key role in L3 acquisition. On the other hand, Rothman (2011) believes that syntactic
transfer is selective and that typological proximity plays a crucial role in L3 transfer:
independently from the order of acquisition, it will be the typological closer language the source
of transfer. In this study, we investigate further this issue by examining the initial state of L3
Spanish learners in French native speakers, with English as their L2.
Certain grammatical categories such as personal pronouns appear to be similar in nature
but may belong to different classes, a crucial distinction that entails important syntactic
differences (Cardinatelli & Starke, 1999). Spanish is uncontroversially a null subject language.
When subject pronouns are present, they are strong pronouns; that is, they may be separated
from the verb, they may appear alone, they may be focused and they may be coordinated (1).
They behave in a similar fashion to English pronouns. French is considered by many a non-null
subject language because subject pronouns are obligatory. Following Roberge’s (1990) seminal
work, we assume that these pronouns are clitics, that is, they cannot be separated from the verb,
they cannot be focused, nor can they appear alone. In other words, they behave more in line with
morphological agreement features than strong pronouns.
The question that arises is whether third language learners at the initial stages of
acquisition will be able to distinguish the different nature of subject pronouns in Spanish and
French, and whether they will resort to English, a typologically different language but more
proximate than French with respect to subject pronouns when acquiring Spanish. In particular,
we wonder whether they will be able to recognize in sentences such as (1-3) that Spanish
pronouns have different syntactic behaviour than their French counterparts, and that the default
pronoun in Spanish is in nominative case, unlike in English or French.
(1) Élnom y yonom estudiamos español por la mañana.
He and I
study-we Spanish in the morning.
no élnom.
(2) *Míobl, yonom como el helado de fresa,
Me, I
eat the ice-cream of strawberry, not him.
(3) *Eres tiobl quien canta bien, no Jaime.
are you
who sings well, not Jaime
We tested 20 native speakers of French and 20 native speakers of English learning Spanish
as their L3 in their third week of exposure to Spanish. Participants completed a written and oral
Acceptability Judgment Task with coordinated pronouns (1), pronouns in contrastive focus (2),
cleft-sentences (3) and other similar constructions in which French pronouns would act
differently from Spanish pronouns. They also completed an oral task in which they had to answer
with one word who the actor of several house duties was. This task elicited responses with
pronouns, such as (4) “Who has to clean the dishes?, and the expected response was: “Yo”.
Results indicated that learners at early stages of exposition to Spanish as L3 had significant
problems restructuring their grammars, presenting pronouns in the wrong case (i.e.: they
produced ‘mí’, and sometimes ‘ti’ for second person to answer to questions such as (4). At the
same time, they had indeterminate knowledge about the possibility of coordination of pronouns,
or their appearance in isolation, showing that their source of transfer can be both, the L1 and the
L2, as the Cumulative Enhancement Model (Flynn et al., 2004) would predict.
References:
Bardel, C., & Falk, Y. (2007). The role of the second language in third language acquisition: The
case of Germanic syntax. Second Language Research, 23(4), 459–484.
Cardinaletti, A., & Starke, M. (1999). The typology of structural deficiency: A case study of the
three classes of pronouns. In H. C. V. Riemsdijk (Ed.), Clitics in the Languages of Europe
(pp. 145–233). Walter de Gruyter.
Flynn, S., Foley, C., & Vinnitskaya, I. (2004). The Cumulative-Enhancement Model for
Language Acquisition: Comparing Adults’ and Children’s Patterns of Development in
First, Second and Third Language Acquisition of Relative Clauses. International Journal
of Multilingualism, 1(1), 3–16.
Roberge, Y. (1990). The syntactic recoverability of null arguments. Kingston, Ont.: McGillQueen’s University Press.
Rothman, J. (2011). L3 syntactic transfer selectivity and typological determinacy: The
typological primacy model. Second Language Research, 27(1), 107–127.
Evidence of phonological knowledge from perceptual learning
Emily Clare, University of Toronto
In a groundbreaking study of perceptual learning, Norris et al. (2003) found that listeners shift the boundary between
two phonemes along a perceptual continuum following brief exposure to speech exhibiting that pattern. Further studies, such as Kraljic and Samuel (2006) and Nielsen (2011), have tested whether participants would extend their knowledge about the continuum they were exposed to (e.g. [d]-[t]) on the basis of natural classes; listeners indeed shifted the
boundary of a related continuum (e.g. [b]-[p]) that was absent from exposure. Although it is tempting to attribute this
to speakers’ knowledge of phonological features, it is not clear that this is the case. The difference between [d] and [t]
acoustically is the same as the difference between [b] and [p], which creates a confound; participants could have been
generalising across acoustic traits rather than accessing phonological categories. In this paper, I present results from a
new method designed to circumvent this issue, which show that natural classes can aid perceptual learning.
Experiment 1 replicated past studies, where participants shifted their category boundary after listening to speech
including an ambiguous sound [?] which was consistently disambiguated via lexical knowledge. For example, an
ambiguous sound [?] between [d] and [t] in the word dash ([?]ash) would be categorised as D because tash is not a
word. Hearing [?] as [d] caused listeners’ VOT boundary to increase (from 30ms to 40ms, for example), as evidenced
by their subsequent categorisation of that same [?] in nonsense syllables as D. The rate of D responses by group is
shown in Figure 1 (left). A mixed-effects logistic regression model indicated that the main effect of group is significant,
showing that participants are adjusting their VOT boundary based on exposure, as has been shown before.
Experiment 2 introduced second-order learning (along the lines of Onishi et al., 2002), whereby the direction of the
VOT boundary shift was dependent on the neighbouring vowel. For example, one group of listeners heard [?] in place
of [t] before [i] and [?] in place of [d] before [u]. At test, these participants more often identified the ambiguous [?]
token as D before [i], but as T before [u], following their exposure. This shows that listeners are able to make perceptual
adjustments which are conditioned by a particular adjacent vowel. The difference between D response rates in the two
environments by group is shown in Figure 1 (centre). A mixed-effects logistic regression model indicated that the
interaction between vowel and group is significant; thus participants succeeded at learning this complex pattern.
Experiment 3 examined whether new participants could learn a shift that was dependent on groupings of vowels rather
than individual vowels. For one group of participants, the conditioning vowels were grouped by the natural classes
formed by [±high] ([i, I] vs. [e, E]); for the other group of participants, the conditioning vowels were grouped by an
unattested feature, which split those same four vowels into ([i, E] vs. [I, e]). The difference between D response rates in
the two environments by group is shown in Figure 1 (right). Only the group whose conditioning environment formed
a natural class showed a difference in D response rates between the two environments, meaning only they learned the
pattern. This suggests that the natural class facilitated learning, which is the first evidence of this kind.
Figure 1: (Left) Results of Experiment 1, current N=28, total N=32; (Centre) Experiment 2, current N=30, total N=32; (Right)
Experiment 3, current N=11, total N=32.
These findings show that phonological features are not only psychologically meaningful for representing contrasts
and patterns, but also for the constant subconscious accommodation to complex phonetic patterns. The method itself,
second-order perceptual learning, constitutes an additional contribution to this area of study: it supplies a mechanism for future work that can directly compare the salience of different phonological features in learners’ minds and
therefore straightforwardly test a theory’s predictions about the structure of speakers’ phonology.
References
Kraljic, T. and Samuel, A. G. (2006). Generalization in perceptual learning for speech. Psychonomic Bulletin &
Review, 13(2):262–268.
Nielsen, K. (2011). Specificity and abstractness of VOT imitation. Journal of Phonetics, 39:132–142.
Norris, D., McQueen, J. M., and Cutler, A. (2003). Perceptual learning in speech. Cognitive Psychology, 47(2):204–
238.
Onishi, K. H., Chambers, K. E., and Fisher, C. (2002). Learning phonotactic constraints from brief auditory experience.
Cognition, 83:B13–B23.
Perception of English corrective focus by native Inuktitut speakers
Laura Colantoni1, Alana Johns1, Michelle Yuan2 & Marta Ortega-Llebaria3
1
University of Toronto, 2MIT, 3University of Pittsburgh
What happens when native speakers of a language with very limited use of intonation acquire an
intonational language? We seek to answer this question by analyzing the perception of English
corrective focus (e.g. Is Bobby the dog? No, TOBY is the dog) by native speakers of Inuktitut, a
language in which the use of intonation is restricted to phrasing (Fortescue 1984; Shokeir 2009);
i.e. pitch movements appear only at the end of utterances. As a result, the contrastive meaning
expressed by sentence prominence in English is expressed by means of morphology in Inuktitut;
the use of polysinthesis is a characteristic of Eskimo-Aleut languages (Johns 2010). Therefore, it
is expected that Inuktitut speakers will find it difficult to associate pitch movements with
prominence, because their L1 meaning-form association will direct their attention to
morphology. However, given that form-meaning mappings are not available in low-pass filter
stimuli, we expect to find better identification scores in a task that targets auditory processing.
To test these predictions, we compared the performance of a group of 22 speakers of Inuktitut
against 13 English controls. All the Inuktitut speakers were first exposed to English in
elementary school and use English in their daily lives but not to the same extent. Most speakers
(N= 16) rated themselves as Advanced or Near Native, while the remaining 6 speakers rated
themselves as Intermediate in some but not all the language skills. The test included two forcechoice identification experiments plus two production tasks (not reported here). Experiment 1
was designed to test the use of acoustic cues, and consisted of non-speech like stimuli (i.e. lowpass filtered utterances of original English sentences with focus on the subject, verb or object).
Participants heard an English sentence followed by three low-pass filtered utterances and were
asked to choose the contour that matched the sentence more closely. Experiment 2 was a
contextualized task designed to test intonation-meaning mappings. Participants heard the story
“Frog, where are you?” by M. Meyer, and they were asked to chose the most appropriate answer
to a question out of three possible answers. In both cases, there were 15 target stimuli (5 each
with focus on the subject, verb or object) plus distractors. Results showed that native and L2
learners behaved consistently across task but diverged in their overall performance. As predicted
both groups performed better in Experiment 1, which focused on acoustic cues (Mean correct
responses: English 4.89 vs. Inuktitut 1.98) than in Experiment 2 (English 4.69 vs. Inuktitut 1.48),
where the answers were related to the comprehension of a story. The results of our experimental
group also support our predictions based on L1 transfer. Interestingly, and in spite of the low
number of correct responses, there was a relatively wide-range of variability across participants
(Experiment 1: 1.3-3.5; Experiment 2: 0.3-2.3) and, to a lesser extent, across focus conditions
(with the lowest number of errors when the object was focalized and the highest when the verb
was on focus). Thus, although results are expected based on patterns of cross-linguistic
influence, and are consistent with recent findings suggesting that L1 prosodic transfer affects
auditory as well as non-auditory perception (e.g. Ortega Llebaria & Colantoni 2013), they should
be taken with caution considering the variability in the linguistic experience of each of the
speakers (Dorais 2010; Johns 2010) and their relatively lack of familiarity with more
metalinguistic tasks.
Works Cited:
Dorais, L-J. (2010). The Language of the Inuit. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press.
Fortescue, M. (1984). West Greelandic. New York: Routledge.
Johns, A. (2010). Eskimo-Aleut languages. Language and Linguistics Compass 4.1041-1055.
Ortega-Llebaria, M. & L. Colantoni. (2013). The L2 acquisition of English intonation: Relations
between form-meaning associations, access to meaning and L1 transfer. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition 36 (2).
Shokeir, V. (2009). Intonation in Inuktitut. Ms. University of Toronto.
The expression of future temporal reference in Picardie French
Philip Comeau
(University of Ottawa)
Anne-José Villeneuve
(University of Toronto)
The expression of future temporal reference (FTR) has been widely studied across Romance
languages (e.g. Poplack & Malvar 2007; Aaron 2010), including spoken French varieties. For
centuries, French grammarians (Maupas 1607, Antonini 1753) described the choice between two
main variants—the periphrastic future (ça va être cette année ‘it’s going to be this year’) and the
inflected future (ça sera au mois d'octobre ‘it’ll in October’)—as influenced by temporal
distance; specifically, periphrasis was argued to express a proximate future (i.e. le futur proche).
However, results from different varieties of French display surprising heterogeneity with
respect to this linguistic variable. For instance, studies of Laurentian (Poplack & Turpin 1999,
Wagner & Sankoff 2011) and Continental French (Roberts 2012) have challenged grammarians’
descriptions by showing that the temporal distance constraint is weak or inoperative. In these
varieties, the strongest predictor of variant choice is sentential polarity: negative clauses strongly
favour the inflected future. In contrast, conservative varieties of Acadian (King & Nadasdi 2003)
and Martinique French (Roberts 2013) show a lack of polarity effect: in these varieties, temporal
distance is the strongest constraint on variant choice, a finding that supports grammarians’
description. Thus, varieties of spoken French appear to be divided between two types of systems
with respect to future temporal reference.
To contribute to these lines of research, we examine FTR in a recent corpus of 24 French
interviews collected in a rural area of northwestern France where Picard, a Gallo-Romance
language in which the inflected future is strongly preferred, still enjoys a relative vitality. By
analyzing this contact variety, we also tap into the role that Picard may have played on the
development of FTR variation in the area. To determine the factors that condition variant choice,
we analyze spoken French data from Picard–French bilinguals and French monolinguals and
consider a number of social (sex, age, class, bilingualism status) and linguistic (temporal
distance, sentential polarity, subject type, etc.) factors proposed in the literature.
Our results show that the inflected future is used at a rate of 38% in Picardie French,
much higher than in Laurentian varieties. Bilingualism status was also found to play no role on
this variable. Instead, socioeconomic class was the only social statistically significant factor:
upper-class speakers had higher rates of the inflected future variant (54%, N=66) than middleand lower- class speakers (33%, N=125 and 30%, N=76). Linguistic conditioning also differed
not only from Laurentian but also from other Continental French varieties: preliminary results
from multivariate analyses reveal that polarity, despite its strong effect in most varieties of
French studied to date, does not constrain variant choice in Picardie French. Instead, temporal
distance highly constrains variant choice, with proximate events (within the hour or sooner)
strongly favouring periphrasis. This finding, while a contrast to other studies, mirrors closely the
patterns reported for Acadian and Martinique French.
Our study contributes to our understanding of this variable in French by showing that
varieties of Continental French, like their Canadian counterparts, can fall along either type of
systems with respect to future temporal reference.
References
Aaron, J. E. (2010). Pushing the envelope: Looking beyond the variable context in Iberian
Spanish futures. Language Variation and Change, 22.1: 1-36.
Antonini, A. (1753). Principes de la grammaire françoise, pratique et raisonnée. Paris:
Duchesne.
King, R. and Nadasdi, T. (2003). Back to the future in Acadian French. Journal of French
Language Studies, 13.3: 323-337.
Maupas, C. (1607). Grammaire et syntaxe françoise. Paris: Adrian Bacot.
Poplack, S and Malvar, E. (2007). Elucidating the transition period in linguistic change: The
expression of the future in Brazilian Portuguese. Probus, 19.1: 121-169.
Poplack, S. and Turpin, D. (1999). Does the futur have a future in (Canadian) French? Probus,
11.1: 133-164.
Roberts, N. S. (2012). Future Temporal Reference in Hexagonal French. University of
Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 18.2: Article 12.
Roberts, N. S. (2013). The influence of linguistic factors on the expression of futurity in
Martinique French. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics, 19.1: 138-151.
Wagner, S. E. and Sankoff, G. (2011). Age grading in the Montréal French inflected future.
Language Variation and Change, 23.3: 275-313.
An argument for genuine object agreement in Inuit
Richard Compton, McGill University
Claim: I argue that ϕ-indexing morphology in Inuit includes genuine cases of object agreement
exponence, contra recent work (see below) that has called into question the existence of object
agreement cross-linguistically and recast apparent instances thereof as pronominal clitics (and thus
clitic doubling when an object is present). While tense-variance—proposed by Nevins (2011) as a
diagnostic for differentiating agreement from clitics—is inadequate to diagnose the status of Inuit
ϕ-indexing morphology, mood-variance can instead serve to distinguish real agreement.
Background: Recent work by Preminger (2009), Woolford (2010), Arregi & Nevins (2008),
Nevins (2011), and Kramer (to appear) has recast a number of apparent cases of agreement as
actually being clitics. Kramer suggests that further instances of “purported object agreement”
(p.30) cross-linguistically may in fact also be clitics and Nevins (2011) proposes “an analysis of
all cases of object agreement as pronominal clitics in languages with agreement with both subject and object” (p.967). For Inuit, such analyses would mean that the subject/object ϕ-indexing
elements in (1)-(2) would consist (at least in part) of object clitics (Dorais 1988; Lowe 1985).
(2)
taku-ja-git
(1)
arna-up
niri-ja-Na
aapu
see-DECL . TR -1 SG .2 SG
woman-ERG . SG eat-DECL . TR -3 SG .3 SG apple
‘The woman is eating the apple.’
‘I see you (sg.).’
While Nevins (p.959) argues that “morphophonolgical clitichood and morphosyntactic clitichood
are orthogonal” and that phonological criteria should not be used to establish syntactic clitichood,
he proposes that pronominal clitics can be distinguished from agreement using the criterion of
tense-invariance (along with Person-Case Constraints and Omnivorous number). If pronominal
clitics belong to the category D, as argued by Nevins and a number of other works cited above (or
perhaps pro-ϕ heads; D´echaine & Wiltschko 2002), we do not expect them to be sensitive to tense.
Conversely, genuine agreement can be conditioned by tense (e.g., she walks vs. she walked).
However, the structure of Inuit verbal complexes is such that tense markers are separated from
ϕ-indexing morphemes by mood and often elements such as the perfective marker and negation.
Despite the lack tense-variance, which Nevins identifies as crucial to identifying genuine agreement, I argue that all this ϕ-indexing morphology is agreement—object agreement included.
Evidence from mood: While Inuit ϕ-indexing morphemes are invariant with respect to tense, we
instead observe that they are variant with respect to mood. For example, in Eastern Inuktitut we
find distinct agreement morphology for 2 SG .1 SG in the indicative and interrogative moods:
(3)
taku-va-rma
(4)
taku-viNa
see-INDIC . TR -2 SG .1 SG
see-INTERR . TR .2 SG .1 SG
‘You (sg.) see me.’
‘Do you (sg.) see me?’
While some ϕ-indexing morphemes are stable across moods, others exhibit distinct forms between
the participial, declarative, interrogative and conditional, and conjunctive moods (not shown). Just
as there is no principled reason why pronominal clitics of category D should vary with tense, it is
also unexpected that they should vary with mood. Conversely, agreement often conditions mood.
Discussion: While Chomsky (2004) proposes that ϕ-features are inherited from C in languages
like English, the C head itself is the locus of agreement in Inuit. This explains (i) the position
of agreement, (ii) its form being conditioned by mood, and (iii) the existence of portmanteau
mood/agreement (not shown). This paper expands Nevins’ (2011) criteria for distinguishing agreement from clitics, adding mood-variance to the set of properties exhibited by genuine agreement.
1
His diagnostic of variance is crucial, but what kind of variance depends on the locus of agreement
(D´echaine & Wiltschko, to appear; Oxford, to appear, on object agreement in Algonquian.)
References:
Arregi, Karlos & Andrew Nevins (2008). Agreement & Clitic Restrictions in Basque. In Roberta
D’Alessandro, Susann Fischer and Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson (eds.) Agreement Restrictions, 49–86. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
D´echaine, Rose-Marie & Martina Wiltschko (2002). Decomposing Pronouns. LI 33.3:409–442
D´echaine, Rose-Marie & Martina Wiltschko (to appear). Micro-variation in Agreement, Clausetyping and Finiteness: Comparative Evidence from Blackfoot and Plains Cree. The Proceedings of the 42nd Algonquian Conference.
Dorais, Louis-Jacques (1988). Tukilik: An Inuktitut Grammar for All. Inuit Studies, Occasional
Paper, no. 2. Q´ebec: Association Inuksiutit Katimajit and Groupe d’´etudes inuit et circumpolaires (GETIC).
Johns, Alana (to appear). Anaphoric arguments in Unangax and Eastern Canadian Inuktitut.
Johns, Alana (2013). Ergativity lives: Eastern Canadian Inuktitut and *clitic doubling. Presented
at the annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association, University of Victoria.
Lowe, Ronald (1988). Kangiryuarmiut uqauhingita ilihautdjutikhangit—Basic Kangiryuarmiut
Eskimo Grammar. Inuvik, NWT: Committee for Original Peoples Entitlement.
Lowe, Ronald (1985). Siglit Inuvialuit Uqausiita Ilisarviksait—Basic Siglit Inuvialuit Eskimo
Grammar. Inuvik, NWT: Committee for Original Peoples Entitlement.
Merchant, Jason (2011). Aleut Case Matters. In Etsuyo Yuasa, Tista Bagchi and Katharine Beals
(eds.) Pragmatics and Autolexical Grammar. In honor of Jerry Sadock, pp. 193–210. New
York: John Benjamins.
Nevins, Andrew (2011). Multiple agree with clitics: person complementarity vs. omnivorous
number. NLLT 29.4:939–971
Oxford, Will (to appear). Multiple Instances of Agreement in the Clausal Spine: Evidence from
Algonquian. Proceedings of WCCFL 31.
Pittman, Christine (2009). Complex verb formation revisited: Restructuring in Inuktitut and Nuuchah-nulth. In M.-A. Mahieu and N. Tersis (Eds.), Variations on Polysynthesis, pp. 135–
147. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Preminger, Omer (2009). Breaking Agreements: Distinguishing Agreement and Clitic Doubling
by Their Failures. LI 40.4.
Woolford, Ellen. 2010. Active-Stative Agreement in Choctaw and Lakota. ReVEL 8:6–46. (Revista Virtual de Estudos da Linguagem) Special Issue No.4 Optimality Theoretic Syntax,
edited by Gabriel de vila Othero and Srgio de Moura Menuzzi.
2
In defense of the truncation hypothesis for main clause phenomena
Carlos de Cuba
University of Calgary
Introduction: In order to account for the fact that main clause phenomena (MCP) like
topicalization are available in peripheral adverbial clauses (PACs) but not central adverbial
clauses (CACs), Haegeman (2006a,b) proposes that the CP layer of CACs is structurally
deficient, while PACs are fully articulated. Haegeman (2006b) extends the truncation analysis to
finite that clauses, claiming that the CP layer of factive complements is also truncated, providing
an explanation for why factive complements resist MCP. However, in subsequent work
Haegeman (2012:189-193) argues against the truncation hypothesis, providing a series of what
she sees as problems with this type of analysis. In this paper I make two main claims: (a)
Haegeman’s (2006a,b) truncation account is problematic; (b) Haegeman’s (2012) arguments
against truncation are specific to her (2006a,b) view of the left periphery, and they do not create
serious problems for other truncation analyses (such as de Cuba 2007, de Cuba & Ürögdi 2009).
Problems with Haegeman’s (2006a,b) account: Although she takes a cartographic view,
Haegeman’s truncation account assumes a left periphery, shown for English in (1a-c), that
deviates substantially from a more standard Rizzian (1997 et seq.) implementation (1d).
(1)
a.
Root clauses:
Mod Top Foc Top Force Mod Fin
b.
Embedded MCP clauses/PACs: Sub Mod Top Foc Top Force Mod Fin
Embedded factive clauses/CACs: Sub
Mod Fin
c.
d.
Rizzi (2004):
Force Top Int Top Foc Mod Top Fin
Note the innovations that Force is below a number of projections and that Sub is the highest
projection in both adverbial clauses and that clauses. For the latter innovation Haegeman appeals
to Bhatt & Yoon (1992), who differentiate a pure subordinator position from a position encoding
illocutionary force. For adverbial clauses this position hosts the subordinating conjunction,
which can then select a PAC with Force or a CAC without Force. Haegeman then extends the
analysis to embedded that clauses, treating that as a subordinating conjunction. However, this is
a curious move given that Bhatt & Yoon (see also Szabolcsi 1994) specifically analyze English
as a language that conflates subordinators and force in one position, as opposed to say Yiddish,
Korean or Hungarian. If this is correct, then an analysis like (1b-c), which crucially depends on
the independence of Sub and Force, is untenable for English that clauses. Also problematic is the
fact that that does not seem to pattern syntactically with subordinating conjunctions (before,
when, because, etc.) externally (2), or in extraction (3).
(2)
a.
I closed the door before/when/because/*that John was yelling at Mary.
b.
I said *before/*when/*because/that John was yelling at Mary.
(3)
a.
*Who did you close the door before/when/because John was yelling at?
b.
Who did you say that John was yelling at?
An existing alternative: Haegeman (2012:261) claims that her arguments against truncation in
adverbial clauses hold for truncation accounts of that clauses. However, the majority of the
arguments are against the innovations in (1a-c). I argue specifically that the truncation account of
de Cuba & Ürögdi 2009 (truncated referential [CP], fully articulated non-referential [cP [CP])
stands up to the challenges posed by Haegeman (additionally, de Cuba & Ürögdi do not appeal
to the problematic concept “assertion”). Thus, the truncation hypothesis remains as a challenger
to the event operator intervention account of MCP (Haegeman & Ürögdi 2010, Haegeman 2012).
References:
Bhatt, Rakesh, and James Yoon. 1992. On the composition of COMP and parameters of V2. In
Proceedings of WCCFL, Vol. 10, pp. 41-52.
de Cuba, Carlos. 2007. On (Non)Factivity, Clausal Complementation and the CP-Field. Doctoral
Dissertation. Stony Brook University.
de Cuba, Carlos, and Barbara Ürögdi. 2009. Eliminating factivity from syntax: Sentential
complements in Hungarian. In: Approaches to Hungarian: Vol. 11. Marcel Den Dikken and
Robert Vago (eds.). John Benjamins. 29-63.
Haegeman, Liliane. 2006a. Argument fronting in English, Romance CLLD and the left
Periphery. In: Zanuttini, R., Campos, H. Herburger, E., Portner , P. (eds.), Negation, Tense
and Clausal Architecture: Cross-linguistic Investigations. Georgetown University Press, 2752.
Haegeman, Liliane. 2006b. Conditionals, factives and the left periphery. Lingua 116:1651-1669.
Haegeman, Liliane. 2012. Adverbial Clauses, Main Clause Phenomena, and the Composition of
the Left Periphery: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Volume 8. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Haegeman, Liliane, and Barbara Ürögdi. 2010. Referential CPs and DPs: An operator movement
account. Theoretical linguistics, 36(2-3), 111-152.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. In: Elements of Grammar: A
Handbook in Generative Syntax. Liliane Haegeman (ed.). Kluwer: Dordrecht. 281–337.
Rizzi, Luigi. 2004. Locality and left periphery. In Belletti, A., (Ed.), Structures and Beyond. The
Cartography of Syntactic Structures, Vol. 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 223-251.
Szabolcsi, Anna. 1994. The noun phrase. Syntax and semantics, 27, 179-274.
The Nasal 'Ash' System in English: how does it get so tense?
Dr. Paul De Decker
Memorial University of Newfoundland
This paper investigates the production of the low front vowel /æ/ which undergoes “tensing” and
“raising” (Ferguson, 1972; Labov, 1989) when followed by a nasal consonant in some dialects of
English (Labov, Ash and Boberg 2006). Speakers in their early twenties, and life long residents of the
province of Newfoundland read a word list which included five tokens of both hand and hat. All
speakers exhibited significantly lower F1 and higher F2 values for the vowel in the word hand
compared to hat. As a way to explain the acoustic differences found in nasal systems, we test the model
outlined by Krakow et al. (1988), that such lowering and raising is a result of co-articulation between
the vowel and the following nasal consonant. We predict that:
1. If nasal co-articulation is responsible for tensing, then nasality, measured by A1-P0 (Chen 1997,
Chen et al. 2007) should be higher in the nasal environment compared oral ones (i.e.
elsewhere).
2. (a) Nasality and (b) its concomitant effects on F1 and F2 should be weakest early in the vowel
and strongest immediately preceding the nasal consonant. This follows from Cohn's (1993)
formulation of co-articulatory nasalization as a phonetically gradient rule as opposed to a
categorical phonological one.
All acoustic analyses were conducted using Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2013) at two temporal
locations (20% and 80%) into each vowel token. Two-tailed t-tests revealed significantly lower A1-P0
values (more nasality) in the nasal environment for Speaker 1 (t (18) = 5.5011, p < 0.0001), but not for
Speaker 2 (t (18) = 1.9266, p = 0.07) or Speaker 3, (t (18) = 0.2687, p = 0.79). This presents a
challenge to Hypothesis (1) above suggesting that tensing might not directly related to nasalization.
To test Hypothesis (2), three two-tailed t-tests were run for each speaker to examine the effect of
nasality over the course of /æ/. No statistically significant differences were found in A1-P0 across the
duration of the vowel for Speaker 1 (t (8) =1.008, p = 0.34). However, significant differences were
found for F1 (t (8) = 2.8361, p = 0.02, and for F2 (t (8) = 16.6312, p < 0.0001), though not in the
direction expected if affected by nasalization. Likewise, no significant differences were found in A1-P0
over the duration of /æ/ for Speaker 2 (t (8) = 0.399, p = 0.70). While a significant difference was found
for F2 of Speaker 2 (t (8)= 3.1884, p = 0.01), and not in the direction expected, no effect was found for
F1 (t (8) = 0.5862, p = 0.57). Finally, for Speaker 3 neither A1-P0 (t (8) = 1.0342, p = 0.33), F1 (t (8) =
0.0224, p = 0.98) nor F2 (t (8)= 1.1659, p = 0.0.28) were significantly different over the course of the
vowel. These results suggest that the level of nasality is as high at 20% into the vowel as it is at 80%
and that /æ/ was no higher or more fronted 80% into the vowel than at 20%.Taken together, these
results run against hypothesis (2).
Two critical findings are discussed. First, some speakers may not have higher levels of nasality
for /æ/ in the nasal environment. Therefore, nasalization is not likely responsible for tensing in the
speech of these speakers (contra Hypothesis 1). This is consistent with observations of other tensing
systems (De Decker and Nycz 2012) where more fronted and raised lingual gestures were found in the
nasal environment. Second, speakers who do exhibit higher levels of nasality for /æ/ in the nasal
environment, show that co-articulatory nasalization does not apply in a gradient manner (contra
Hypothesis 2). Rather, nasalization is applied categorically, affecting the acoustics of the whole vowel.
The overall significance of this study reveals two types of nasal systems mediated through either a)
lingual specification or b) nasalization. In both sub-systems /æ/-tensing is understood as a categorical,
phonological phenomenon, not one driven by phonetic implementation.
References
Boersma, P., Weenink, D. 2013. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. Retrieved from
http://www.praat.org/.
Chen, M. 1997. Acoustic correlates of English and French nasalized vowels. The Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America 102(4), 2360–2370.
Chen, N. F., J. S., Stevens, K.N. 2007. Vowel nasalization in American English: acoustic variability due
to phonetic context. Proceedings of 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 905–908.
Cohn, A. 1993. Nasalisation in English: phonology or phonetics. Phonology 10(1), 43–81.
De Decker P., Nycz, J. 2012. Are tense [æ]s really tense? The mapping between articulation and
acoustics. Lingua 122(7), 810–821.
Ferguson, C. 1972. ‘Short a’ in Philadelphia English, in: Smith, E. (Ed.), Studies in Linguistics in
Honor of George L. Trager. Mouton.
Krakow, R.A., Beddor, P.S., Goldstein, L., Fowler, C.A. 1988. Coarticulatory influences on the
perceived height of nasal vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 83, 1146–1158.
Labov, W. 1989. The exact description of the speech community: Short a in Philadelphia, in: Fasold, R.,
Schiffrin, D. (Eds.), Language Change and Variation. John Benjamins, 1–57.
Labov, W., Ash, S., Boberg, C. 2006. The Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology, and
Sound Change: A Multimedia Reference Tool. Walter de Gruyter.
Dimensions of Variation of the EPP
Julianne Doner, University of Toronto
Two different dimensions of cross-linguistic variation for the EPP have been proposed.
First, Alexiadou and Anagnastopoulou (1998) propose a contrast between languages which
check the EPP with a phrase, and those which check it with a head. Second, analyses such as
Davies and Dubinsky (2001) and Massam and Smallwood (1997) propose a contrast between a
verbal and a nominal EPP. I argue that these two dimensions of variation cross-classify to create
a total of four EPP types, as shown in the table in (1) (see also Doner 2012).
(1) The EPP checked by… A Nominal Element
A Verbal Element
A Phrasal Element
DP-EPP (e.g., English) vP-EPP (e.g., Niuean)
A Head Element
Dº-EPP (e.g., Greek)
Vº-EPP (e.g., Irish)
At this point, the notion of the EPP covers such a large number of distinct processes that it
becomes less clear that they are all the results of the same requirement. However, I show that the
EPP varies along these dimensions within a single language, giving evidence that they are, in
fact, equivalent. I show this for Arabic, which alternates between a Dº-EPP and a DP-EPP, and
for Afrikaans, which alternates between DP-EPP and vP-EPP.
Modern Standard Arabic exhibits two different word orders, each associated with a
different mechanism of EPP-checking. The VSO word order, which has only partial subject-verb
agreement, has a DP-EPP, as shown by the insertion of the expletive in spec,Infl in (2). Note that
Aoun et al. (2010) argue that the verb raises above Infl in the VSO word order.
(2)
kaana
hunaaka Taalib-un
fii l-ħadiiqati
(Aoun et al. 2010: 70)
student-NOM in the-garden
was.3M.SG there
‘There was a student in the garden.’
In contrast, the SVO order (3) has rich agreement and allows null subjects. Here, as wth pro-drop
languages (Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998), the EPP is checked by a Dº on the verb.
(3)
a.
l-muʕallim-uun
ʔakal-uu
(Aoun et al. 2010: 76)
the-teacher-M.PL.NOM ate-3M.PL
‘The teachers ate.’
b.
ya-drus-uun
(Aoun et al. 2010: 59)
3-study-M.PL
‘They study.’
While Arabic alternates between a DP-EPP and a Dº-EPP, modern spoken Afrikaans
shows an alternation on the other dimension, between a vP-EPP and a DP-EPP. Biberauer (2010)
argues that the word order difference shown below occurs because in some cases (4a), the entire
vP raises to spec,Infl to check the EPP, while in other cases (4b), only the subject pronoun raises.
(4)
a.
Ek weet [CP dat [InflP [vP sy dikwels Chopin gespeel] het <vP>]].
I know that
she often Chopin played has
b.
Ek weet [CP dat [InflP [DP sy] het [vP <DP> dikwels Chopin gespeel]]].
I know
that
she has
often Chopin played
‘I know that she often played Chopin.’
(Biberauer 2010: 171)
Thus, the typology in (1) is supported empirically by synchronic intra-linguistic variation
in Arabic, which varies as to the size of the element which checks the EPP, and in Afrikaans,
which varies as to the kind of element which checks the EPP. This typology allows us to
maintain that the EPP is cross-linguistic, that the EPP is obligatorily checked in some form in
every instance of Infl, and that it must always be satisfied by a local relationship.
Selected References
Alexiadou, Artemis and Elena Anagnostopoulou. 1998. Parametrizing AGR: Word order, Vmovement and EPP-checking. NLLT 16: 491-539.
Aoun, Joseph, Elabbas Benmamoun, and Lina Choueiri. 2010. The Syntax of Arabic. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Barbosa, Pilar. 2011. Pro-drop and theories of pro in the Minimalist Program. Language and
Linguistics Compass 5(8): 551-587.
Biberauer, Theresa. 2010. Semi null-subject languages, expletives, and expletive pro
reconsidered. In Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts, and Michelle
Sheehan, eds. Parametric Variation: Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 153-199.
Davies, William D. and Stanley Dubinsky. 2001. Functional architecture and the distribution of
subject properties. In William D. Davies and Stanley Dubinsky, eds. Objects and Other
Subjects: Grammatical Functions, Functional Categories, and Configurationality.
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 247-279.
Doner, Julianne. 2012. A Typology of EPP-Checking Mechanisms. MA Forum Paper, University
of Toronto.
Massam, Diane and Carolyn Smallwood. 1997. Essential features of predication in English and
Niuean. In Kiyomi Kusumoto, ed. Proceedings of NELS 27. Graduate Linguistics Student
Union, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. 263-272.
Synchronic Productivity of Finnish Vowel Harmony
Liisa Duncan University of Toronto
Finnish has a well-studied palatal harmony system whereby front and back vowels cannot co-occur in
non-compound words. Suffixes alternate according to the stem’s harmonic class. This paper examines the
phonetics of stem and suffix harmony, showing it is not synchronically productive for all speakers.
To determine whether harmony is synchronically productive, a phonetic experiment examining the stem
and suffix harmony of harmonic and disharmonic loanwords was performed. The experiment included a
language game involving the transposition of initial CV sequences of adjacent words, providing a nonce
test for both types of harmony. While 29% of disharmonic loans were harmonized in the normal reading,
re-harmonization varied in the game from 10-43%, depending on the original word type and the harmonic
class of the switched vowel and the remaining word portion. Though some harmonization did occur, these
results run counter to claims by Campbell (1980) and Harrikari (2000) that re-harmonization is automatic
and fully productive in such games. The lack of productive harmonization of stems in the nonce setting of
the game indicates that stem harmony is no longer fully productive, at least for some speakers.
Many studies addressing suffixal harmony utilize orthographic data, assuming it is representative of the
spoken realizations. However, phonetic studies indicate that this is not necessarily the case. VälimaaBlum (1999) found that 5-19% of her loan tokens were affixed with a central vowel rather than the
expected harmonic vowel; this vowel is not distinctly realized orthographically. My experiments on loans
found that some speakers, especially females, produced almost exclusively front suffixes, which did not
conform with their written forms.
The unusual suffixation of loans, though of interest, does not necessarily indicate that suffixal harmony is
in a state of decline as these words could form a separate stratum or be lexical exceptions. However,
acoustic studies of native words indicate that suffixal harmony in these words may also be less than fully
productive, at least for some speakers or dialects. For certain speakers/dialects, the low vowels may be
only barely distinct. Kuronen’s (2000) examination of Tampere Finnish vowels shows that low vowels
were situated extremely close. Iivonen & Harnud (2005: 65) state that “it is a well-known phenomenon
that an auditory confusion of /æ/ and /a/ is possible in the region.” Eerola & Savela’s (2012) work in
south-west Finland also shows a similar small difference between these vowels. In Mahonen’s (2011)
study of suffix vowels of Helsinki speakers, 20% of her speakers showed overlap of front and back
suffixes. In my game data, speakers produced a significant number of neutral suffixes and more front
harmonic suffixes.
There thus appears to be evidence that stem and suffixal harmony may not be synchronically productive
for all speakers/dialects. If there has been a weakening of the system, what might cause such a shift?
Many languages which have lost harmony have been influenced by massive borrowing of disharmonic
loans or have succumbed to the influence of internal pressures on the system including vowel mergers
and shifts or a change of the [±back] distinction from vowels to consonants (Comrie 1981). Though
Finnish does not have these pressures, it has other internal pressures. Most inflectional suffixes contain
low vowels which, of the harmonic vowels, are closest in the vowel space. Sentence and word intonation
typically employ falling intonation (Suomi et al 2008). Glottalization, breathy voice, and devoicing are all
common on final vowels, which are normally unstressed. This conspiracy of phonetic factors may result
in lessened prominence of the final vowels, which are often the very harmonic vowels under discussion.
Together, these internal pressures may have conspired to reduce the perceptibility of the harmonic suffix
vowels, leading to the weakening of harmony.
References
Campbell, L. 1980. The Psychological and Sociological Reality of Finnish Vowel Harmony. In R. Vago
(ed.) Issues in Vowel Harmony. Amsterdam: john Benjamins. pp. 245-266.
Comrie, B. 1981. The Languages of the Soviet Union. London: Cambridge University Press.
Eerola, O. and J. Savela 2012. Production of Short and Long Finnish Vowels with and without Noise
Masking. Linguistica Uralica. 48/3. pp. 200-2008.
Harrikari, H. 2000. Segmental length in Finnish - studies within a constraint-based approach. Doctoral
dissertation, University of Helsinki.
Iivonen, A. and H. Harnud 2005. Acoustical Comparison of the Monophthong Systems in Finnish,
Mongolican, and Udmurt. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 35/1. pp. 59-71.
Mahonen, K. 2011. The Productivity of Finnish Vowel Harmony: An analysis of disharmonic words.
Doctoral Dissertation, The University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
Suomi K., J. Toivanen, and R. Ylitalo 2008. Finnish Sound Structure: Phonetics, phonology,
phonotactics, and prosody. Oulu: University of Oulu Press.
Välimaa-Blum, R. 1999. A Feature Geometric Description of Finnish Vowel Harmony Covering both
Loans and Native Words. Lingua 108. pp. 247-268.
The role of event knowledge in semantic interpretation
Veena Dwivedi & Kaitlin Curtiss
In order to investigate the role that heuristic vs. algorithmic mechanisms play in language
comprehension, we conducted a picture verification study with word triplets that described a
conceptual script, such as KID CLIMB TREE (cf., Chwilla & Kolk, 2005). These words formed the
N1VN2 lexical skeleton from quantifier scope ambiguous sentences such as Every kid climbed a
tree. Such sentences are semantically ambiguous; either one or several trees were climbed on
inverse vs. surface scope interpretations, respectively. This ambiguity is attributed to the
algorithmic computation of quantifier scope, where it has been shown that participants prefer the
plural interpretation (Kurtzman & MacDonald, 1993; Raffray & Pickering, 2010). However,
perhaps the interpretation is not derived via computation but instead from heuristic knowledge
regarding events (Kim & Sikos, 2011; Kuperberg, 2007) and the likely number of participants in
events. This hypothesis emerges from a previous norming study (Dwivedi et al., 2010),
discussed in our recent publication (Dwivedi, 2013), where 32 participants judged tree in Every
kid climbed a tree as plural 100% of the time but diamond in Every jeweler appraised a
diamond was judged as plural at 60%. Given that these sentences are exactly alike in terms of
syntactic structure, differences in interpretation must be due to the individual lexical items, and
their contribution to a schema (Schank & Ableson, 1977). In the current word triplet study, 45
subjects were instructed to interpret word chunks such as KID CLIMB TREE as telegrams, and select
a picture via button press regarding the number associated with TREE. The hypothesis was that
responses to word triplets could serve as a predictor for judgments of full sentences, that is, those
displaying quantifier scope ambiguity. In the present work, a binary logistic regression analysis
was conducted to test the likelihood of a plural judgment in the norming study using the word
triplet responses as a predictor. Results confirmed that the triplet judgments were reliable
predictors of the sentence judgments. Implications for the on-line computation of meaning are
discussed.
References
Dwivedi, V.D. (2013). Interpreting quantifier scope ambiguity: Evidence of heuristic first,
algorithmic second processing. PLoS ONE 8(11): e81461. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081461
Dwivedi, V.D., Phillips, N.A., Einagel, S. & Baum, S.R. (2010). The neural underpinnings of
semantic ambiguity and anaphora. Brain Research, 1311, 93-109.
Chwilla, D. J. & Kolk, H. H. J. (2005). Accessing world knowledge: Evidence from N400 and
reaction time priming. Cognitive Brain Research, 25, 289-606.
Kim, A., & Sikos, L. (2011). Conflict and surrender during sentence processing: An ERP study
of syntax-semantics interaction. Brain and Language, 118, 15-22.
Kuperberg, G. R. (2007). Neural mechanisms of language comprehension: Challenges to syntax.
Brain Research, 1146, 23-49.
Kurtzman, H. S. & MacDonald, M. C. (1993). Resolution of quantifier scope ambiguities.
Cognition, 48, 243-279.
Raffray, C. N. & Pickering, M. J. (2010). How do people construct logical form during language
comprehension? Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610375446.
Schank, R. C. & Abelson, R. P.(1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
The cost of attention in semantic processing
Veena Dwivedi, Hope Magnue, Leslie Rowland & Kaitlin Curtiss
In a recent paper (Dwivedi, 2013), 3 self-paced reading experiments examined the processing of
quantifier scope ambiguous (QSA) sentences such as Every kid climbed a tree. A new model of
language comprehension was proposed, where it was argued that the parser operates in a serial
manner but grammatical algorithms are not primary (in contrast to claims by Frazier & Clifton,
1996). Instead, the parser operates in a heuristic first, algorithmic second manner. It is assumed
that heuristic processing is a shallow form of perception, whereas algorithmic processing
requires higher levels of attention. As such, it is hypothesized that factors contributing to
allocation of attention would affect heuristic vs. algorithmic processes. The present experiment
used the paradigm as developed in Kurtzman & MacDonald (1993), with a slight change
modification to Control unambiguous contexts in order to ensure their referential nature
(Kaplan,1978)
AMBIGUOUS CONTEXT UNAMBIGUOUS CONTROL PLURAL CONTINUATION Every kid climbed a tree.
The trees were in the playground. (surface scope)
SINGULAR Every kid climbed a tree.
?? The tree was in the playground. (inverse scope
condition)
Every kid climbed those trees
The trees were in the
playground.
Every kid climbed that tree.
The tree was in the playground.
CONTINUATION The table above summarizes which condition should be dispreferred on algorithmic grounds: the
inverse scope interpretation of QSA sentences. This pattern of results was found (Exp2 in
Dwivedi, 2013)) in the question response accuracy of participants who had just read QSA
context sentences followed by singular vs. plural continuation sentences. That is, even after
having just read the singular continuation sentence The tree was in the playground, when asked
How many trees were climbed? ONE SEVERAL, participants performed at chance levels.
However, RTs for continuation sentences did not pattern as expected on algorithmic grounds,
instead, these showed patterns consistent with lexical-pragmatic biases. This is consistent with
Ferreira et al.’s claim that the parser operates using ‘good enough’ processing strategies. Deep
processing of stimuli is not predicted in real-time language comprehension.
The present work seeks to test this claim by investigating whether the addition of an appropriate
linguistic ‘pre- context’ could modulate attention. Perhaps participants do not process QSA
sentences deeply because the strong quantifier every does not have a context set over which it
can be interpreted. At least 30 participants will be run by April; 10 have been run so far. Results
reveal a 10% drop in accuracy rates, surprisingly, for the Control conditions, whereas accuracy
rates did not change for the Ambiguous conditions. This could be due to the fact that whereas
the Ambiguous pre-context sentence merely sets the scene for the upcoming QSA context, The
kids spotted the park on the long walk. Every kid climbed a tree. The tree(s) was/were… for
Control conditions, the pre-contexts had a synonym for the referential direct object NP, such as
The kids spotted the oak(s) on the long walk. Every kid climbed that/those tree(s). The tree(s)
was/were… Thus, when participants had to answer How many trees were climbed? they would
have undergone what Garrod & Sanford (1994) call the ‘resolution’ phase of co-reference, which
is integration of the NP trees in the question. In the Ambiguous condition, no extra integration
for the meaning of trees is required at the question. Thus, at this early phase of data collection, it
seems that there is a cost in terms of accurately responding to the question How many trees were
climbed?; where the cost does not have to do with scope computation but instead has to do with
the attentional resources required to interpret trees in the question itself.
References
Dwivedi, V.D. (2013). Interpreting quantifier scope ambiguity: Evidence of heuristic first,
algorithmic second processing. PLoS ONE 8(11): e81461.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0081461
Ferreira, F. (2003). The misinterpretation of non-canonical sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 47,
164-203.
Ferreira, F., & Patson, N. D. (2007). The “good enough” approach to language comprehension.
Language and Linguistics Compass, 1, 71–83.
Frazier, L, & Clifton, C., Jr. (1996). Construal. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Garrod, S., Sanford, A., (1994). Resolving sentences in a discourse context: how discourse representation affects language understanding. In: Gernsbacher, M. (Ed.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Academic Press, pp. 675–698. Kaplan, D. (1978). Dthat. In P. Cole (Ed.), Pragmatics: Syntax and semantics (pp. 221-243).
New York: Academic Press.
Kurtzman H. S., & MacDonald, M. C. (1993). Resolution of quantifier scope ambiguities.
Cognition, 48, 243-279.
MacDonald, M. C., Pearlmutter, N. J., & Seidenberg, M. S. (1994). The lexical nature of
syntactic ambiguity resolution. Psychological Review, 101, 676-703.
Individual differences in the strategies used to read morphologically complex words
Kaitlin Falkauskas & Victor Kuperman (McMaster University)
Background
When reading morphologically complex words, there is a growing consensus that individuals can
simultaneously access the lexical form of the whole word (catcher) and the morphemes of that
word (catch, -er). The lexical properties of words, including word frequency, and other sources
of information affect the balance between the use of these processing routes (Kuperman,
Bertram, & Baayen, 2010). For example, words that are shorter and more frequent are more
likely to be recognized as whole words rather than via their morphemes. It is unclear, however,
how individual differences in reading skill and differences in the strength of individuals' lexical
representations for complex words and their component morphemes may affect the extent to
which these routes are used. Following the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti, 2007), we
hypothesized that individuals with different levels of reading skill or experience will vary in the
strengths of their lexical representations for complex words and morphemes, and thus will make
differential use of the processing routes. We take an effect of whole word frequency as indication
that the whole word route is used, and effects of the stem frequency as an indication that the
word is being decomposed into its morphemes. To explore this hypothesis we conducted an eyetracking study in which participants read sentences, such as (1), containing derived words with
the suffixes: -er, -ness, -ment and -ation.
(1) The only catcher had heartburn so the game was postponed.
Method
Twenty-eight undergraduate students read sentences containing the derived words while their
eye-movements were monitored. The target words varied in whole word frequency and stem
frequency. Participants also completed a battery of tests including tests of verbal and cognitive
skills (Wechsler, 1999), phonological awareness (Torgesen, Wagner & Rashotte, 1999),
exposure to print (Acheson, Wells, & MacDonald, 2008), and word segmentation. We fitted
linear mixed effect regression models to the eye-movement measures, with critical interactions
of the test scores and either whole word frequency or stem frequencies.
Results
Individuals with both higher and lower scores on the reading experience test read higherfrequency words faster, with less-proficient individuals being facilitated more by higher wholeword frequencies. At the same time, only individuals less proficient in reading benefitted from
higher-frequency stems when reading derived words, while the best-performing individuals were
not affected by the words' morphological structures.
Discussion
The results suggest that individuals with higher scores on a number of skill measures are more
likely to recognize words as whole lexical items, rather than decomposing the words into their
morphemes. Although these individuals are likely better at segmenting words into morphemes,
they do not appear to be using this as a word processing strategy. This suggests that individual
differences in the component skills of reading are a major factor in shifting the balance between
the processing routes used.
References
Acheson, D. J., Wells, J. B., & MacDonald, M. C. (2008). New and updated tests of print
exposure and reading abilities in college students. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 278-289.
Kuperman, V., Bertram, R., & Baayen, R. (2010). Processing trade-offs in the reading of Dutch
derived words. Journal of Memory and Language, 62, 83-97.
Perfetti, C. A. (2007). Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of
Reading, 11, 357–383.
Torgesen, J., Wagner, R. & Rashotte, C. (1999). Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE).
Austin, TX: Pro-ED Inc.
Wechsler, D. (1999). Wechsler abbreviated intelligence scale. San Antonio: The Psychological
Corporation.
On the absence of nominal coordination in Gitksan
Clarissa Forbes; University of Toronto
The syntactic structure of coordination has been the subject of discussion for many years.
Under the generally accepted analysis (Munn 1993, Kayne 1994), a coordinating element serves
as the head of a functional projection &P which takes conjuncts in its complement and specifier
positions. In this paper, I show that Gitksan (Tsimshianic, northern interior BC) definitively
lacks an element which conjoins nominals in such a fashion, and may also lack an element with
this structure to coordinate clauses. This claim lies in contrast to Johannessen's (1998) proposal
that the functional structure of coordination is crosslinguistically available.
Gitksan's apparent nominal coordinator, an, has previously been described as having a
number of properties unexpected for a traditional coordinator (Rigsby 1986, Tarpent 1987). The
first conjunct may be a pronominal affix; in addition, the rest of the "conjunction" may dislocate
from the first conjunct and appear clause-finally. Both these properties are exemplified in (1).
(1) Jap-i-'y=hl
ts'el
ky'oots
make-CTRL=1SG.II=CN half.dried.sal yesterday
'You and I made half-dried salmon yesterday.'
and=CN
'niin
2SG.III
Livingston's (1989) analysis of this morpheme (in mutually-intelligible
the traditional coordinate structure, utilizing pro; however, I present additional data that suggests
such an analysis in Gitksan would be at best uneconomical, if not entirely untenable. As noted by
Davis & Brown (2011), the first conjunct of a set linked by an can be A'-extracted. This directly
violates the Coordinate Structure Constraint (Ross 1967), which prevents the extraction of full
conjuncts and is known to hold crosslinguistically of coordinate constructions. In light of this
evidence, I analyze an as a comitative oblique which adjoins to either full nominals or clauses.
Johannessen (1998) argues that the structure of coordination is universal. When
considering languages with no overt coordinator, where nominal elements are simply juxtaposed,
a null coordinator is assumed. However, in Gitksan, it is ungrammatical to link two nominals
only by juxtaposing them; nominals are linked via the an-oblique or they are not linked at all. It
is consequently impossible to posit an additional null element which projects the &P structure.
Where clausal coordination is concerned, the distinct morphology of pronouns in clauses
which appear before versus after the clausal coordinator ii presents a similar obstacle to
straightforward analysis of this element as a coordinator rather than a subordinating oblique.
(2) a) Di-dal -'y=hl
sim'oogit
ii
na=di=hl
TR-speak-1SG.II=CN chief
and
1SG.I=TR-speak=CN
'I talked to the chief and (then) I talked to his/her spouse.'
b) *…
-
naks-t
spouse-3SG.II
-'y=hl naks-t
To conclude, this paper shows that a standard coordination structure is incompatible with
the facts of nominal "coordination" in Gitksan. I present an alternative analysis where the
morpheme
adjoins to either the level of the DP or the clause; such a structure is useful for
comparison with similar comitative constructions in other languages (e.g. Slavic, Dył 1988).
Finally, while further work remains to be done on the structure of coordination in the clausal
domain, Gitksan so far appears to be a counterexample to the claim that true coordinate phrases,
containing two conjuncts linked by a single functional head, are universal linguistic structures.
References
Davis, H. & J. Brown. 2011. "On A'-dependencies in Gitksan." In Proceedings of the 46th
International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages. 43-80.
Dył , S. 1988. "Qu
-comitative coordination in Polish." Linguistics 26: 383-414.
Johannessen, J. 1998. Coordination. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kayne, R. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. MIT Press.
Livingston, E. 1989. "Conjoined arguments in Nisgha." In Proceedings of the 24th International
Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages.
Munn, A. 1993. Topics in the syntax and semantics of coordinate structures. PhD dissertation,
University of Maryland.
Rigsby, B. 1986. Gitxsan grammar. Ms. University of Queensland.
Ross, J. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Tarpent, M.-L. 1987. A grammar of the Nisgha language. PhD dissertation, University of
Victoria.
Naomi Francis
University of Toronto
This predicate is tasty: Predicates of personal taste, faultless disagreement, and the ideal judge
This investigation examines the behaviour of predicates of personal taste (PoPTs) –
expressions such as fun and tasty – in English. Their truth depends on whose tastes are under
discussion. They also exhibit faultless disagreement, illustrated in (1); native speakers routinely
judge that Bill and Sue are disagreeing, but that neither of their utterances is false. This is in
contrast to disagreement over non-subjective predicates, as in (2).
(1) Bill: This cake is tasty!
Sue: No it’s not! This cake isn’t tasty at all.
(2) Bill: It’s raining outside.
Sue: No it isn’t! It’s snowing.
This investigation seeks to answer the following research question: What are the semantics of
PoPTs, and how can we account for their behaviour in discourse? I propose a new analysis of these
predicates; along the way, I also discuss the question of whether faultless disagreement truly exists.
Two analyses of PoPTs are dominant in the literature. Lasersohn’s (2005) indexical approach
holds that they are evaluated relative to the tastes of a judge, formalized as a parameter on
evaluation parallel to world (w) and time (t) indices. Thus, in (1) Bill and Sue disagree because
they assert contradictory contents, but their utterances can both be true because they are evaluated
relative to different judges. Stephenson’s (2007) null argument analysis, in contrast, holds that
PoPTs are two-place predicates which can take the judge as a covert pronominal argument in the
syntax. However, a null argument analysis makes problematic predictions; if PoPTs involve covert
pronominal arguments in the syntax, we might reasonably expect these arguments to behave like
overt pronouns. However, this is not the case; given a rich enough context, multiple overt pronouns
in a sentence can have different referents (3), but multiple PoPTs cannot have different judges (4).
(4) Bill: ??It’s tasty, but it’s not tasty.
(3) Bill: He1 likes it, but he2 doesn’t.
Intended: Fido likes it, but Spot doesn’t. Intended: It’s tasty for Fido, but it’s not tasty for Spot.
While Lasersohn’s (2005) treatment of the judge as a parameter on interpretation instead of an
argument in the syntax avoids the above problem, dialogues such as (1) do not behave like other
cases where contradictory contents are evaluated relative to different contextual parameters.
(5) A: Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street.
B: No he doesn’t! He doesn’t even exist.
A: Well, I just meant in the books.
w = the world of the novels
w = the actual world
(Bouchard 2012: 3)
Whereas the dialogue in (5) feels like a simple misunderstanding, Bill and Sue seem to be having
a real disagreement in (1), suggesting that parameters on interpretation may not be the locus of
faultlessness. I propose an alternative analysis where PoPTs are evaluated relative to an ideal judge
which is selected by an ordering source similar to Kratzer’s (1991) modal ordering source; possible
judges are ranked according to a contextually determined ideal set of dispositional traits. This
analysis holds that, when conversation partners disagree about PoPTs, they do not disagree about
whether something is tasty for anyone in the discourse context; instead, they disagree about
whether it would be tasty for the ideal judge. Thus, I argue that Bill and Sue are making objective
and contradictory claims in (1) as to whether the cake would be tasty for the ideal human judge;
the intuition of faultlessness comes from the fact that, as humans, they are equally entitled to make
claims about what a human might find tasty. This proposal offers an alternative to the current
analyses of PoPTs and makes testable predictions about their behaviour in context. It will therefore
have consequences for our understanding of both these subjective predicates and the intuition of
faultless disagreement.
Naomi Francis
University of Toronto
References
Bouchard, D. (2012). The partial factivity of opinion verbs. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung
17, 133-148.
Egan, A., Hawthorne, J., & Weatherson, B. (2005). Epistemic modals in context. Contextualism
in philosophy, 131–168.
Kaplan, D. (1989). Demonstratives. In J. Almog, J. Perry, & H. Wettstein (Eds.), Themes from
Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kratzer, A. (1991). Modality. In A. von Stechow & D. Wunderlich (Eds.), Semantik. Ein
internationals Handbuch der zeitgenössischen Forschung (pp. 639–650). Berlin: de
Gruyter.
Kratzer, A. (2009). Modals & Context Dependency. Colloquium, Harvard University, February
20, 2009.
Lasersohn, P. (2005). Context-dependence, disagreement, and predicates of personal taste.
Linguistics and Philosophy 28, 643-686.
Link, G. (1995). Generic information and dependent generics. In G. Carlson & F. Pelletier (Eds.)
The generic book (pp. 358-382). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stephenson, T. (2007). Judge dependence, epistemic modals, and predicates of personal taste.
Linguistics and Philosophy 30, 487-525.
Stojanovic, I. (2007). Talking about taste: Disagreement, implicit arguments, and relative truth.
Linguistics and Philosophy 30, 691–706.
Anna Frolova
Développement de la transitivité verbale en russe L1
Cette étude explore le développement de la transitivité verbale en russe L1 dans le cadre de la
grammaire générative avec une attention particulière aux omissions illicites de l’objet direct, et
ce en comparaison avec le développement du français et de l’anglais L1. Les omissions
optionnelles de l’objet direct dans différentes langues sont normalement étudiées dans des
contextes référentiels et associées à l’acquisition du clitique accusatif (Wexler 1998 ; Hamann
2003, entre autres). Pourtant, une période d’omissions est également attestée dans les langues
sans clitique, comme l’anglais (Pérez-Leroux et coll. 2008). En russe, l’objet direct non
référentiel est obligatoire dans certains contextes perfectifs. Un objet lexical est requis dans ces
contextes téliques, contenant une projection d’aspect (AspQ) qui permet au verbe et à l’objet de
s’accorder en quantité (Borer 2005). En revanche, l’objet est optionnel dans les contextes
imperfectifs qui sont atéliques. Nous avons examiné l’emploi de l’objet direct en russe L1 à
partir d’une étude de production induite d’enfants monolingues russes âgés de 3 à 5 ans afin de
mieux comprendre la nature des omissions illicites en L1. L’expérience a été basée sur la
méthodologie de Pérez-Leroux et coll. (2008) et ciblait l’emploi de l’objet dans les contextes
optionnellement ou fortement transitifs. Les participants devaient répondre aux questions de
l’expérimentateur après avoir écouté des histoires illustrées. Les résultats de notre étude
expérimentale, qui s’inscrivent dans le cadre théorique du développement langagier continu
(dans sa version faible), révèlent que, premièrement, les enfants russes de 3 à 5 ans omettent
optionnellement l’objet dans le contexte perfectif fortement transitif, tandis que les adultes y
emploient seulement l’objet lexical. La comparaison des groupes selon le nombre d’objets nuls à
l’aide du test Mann-Whitney a démontré des résultats significatifs entre les adultes et les enfants
de 3 ans (U = 15 ; p = 0,034 ; r = 0,5), les adultes et les enfants de 4 ans (U = 15 ; p = 0,006 ; r
= 0,56), les enfants de 4 et de 5 ans (U = 85 ; p = 0,033 ; r = 0,34). Une diminution des
omissions entre 4 et 5 ans indique un développement graduel. Bien que la différence entre le
groupe de 5 ans et les adultes ne soit plus statistiquement significative, on constate encore 16 %
d’omissions illicites dans la production des enfants de 5 ans. Deuxièmement, ces omissions
semblent être indépendantes du développement de l’aspect parce que les enfants utilisent de
manière adulte la morphologie verbale, les verbes perfectifs sont préfixés et correctement
conjugués. Cependant, les enfants de tous les âges ont occasionnellement employé les verbes à
l’imperfectif dans le contexte perfectif (dans 15 - 20 % des cas pour tous les groupes d’âge). La
comparaison des groupes selon l’emploi de l’imperfectif dans le contexte perfectif au moyen du
test Mann-Whitney a établi une différence significative entre les adultes et les enfants de 3 ans
(U = 12 ; p = 0,037 ; r = 0,58) ; les adultes et les enfants de 4 ans (U = 21 ; p = 0,027 ; r = 0,48) ;
les adultes et les enfants de 5 ans (U = 18 ; p = 0,027, r = 0,53) ; il n’y a pas de différence entre
les groupes dʼenfants. Ce comportement des enfants correspond aux résultats des recherches
antérieures et peut être attribué au développement des compétences discursives (Van Hout 2005,
Kazanina et Phillips 2007). L’emploi incorrect de l’imperfectif ne semble pas influencer la
production de l’objet nul dans le contexte perfectif. En plus, les tests statistiques montrent une
différence significative dans le taux d’omissions entre les enfants qui utilisent l’aspect
correctement et les adultes (Mann-Whitney : U = 12 ; p = 0,025 ; r = 0,56). En nous basant sur ce
résultat, nous pouvons conclure qu’au moins une partie des objets nuls illicites dans la
production L1 n’est pas liée au développement aspectuel. Nous proposons que les omissions
illicites de l’objet direct en russe L1 sont causées par le développement de la quantification
nominale.
Bibliographie
Borer, H. 2005. Structuring sense. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
Hamann, C. 2003. Phenomena in French normal and impaired language acquisition and their
implications for hypotheses on language development. Probus 15, 91-122.
Kazanina, N. et C. Phillips. 2007. A developmental perspective on the imperfective paradox.
Cognition 105 : 65-102.
Pérez-Leroux, A.T., M. Pirvulescu et Y. Roberge. 2008. Null Objects in Child Language :
Syntax and the Lexicon. Lingua 118 : 370-398.
Van Hout, A. 2005. Imperfect imperfectives : on the acquisition of aspect in Polish. Dans
Aspectual Inquiries, sous la direction de P. Kempchinsky et R. Slabakova, 317-344.
Wexler, K. 1998. Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint : a new
explanation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106 : 23-79.
The (un)interpretability of {α}: a derivational approach
Brandon J. Fry
University of Ottawa
This paper proposes that the interpretability of a syntactic object (SO) of the form {α} depends on its
derivational origin. If this object is derived by Self Merge, it is uninterpretable because it delivers ambiguous
instructions to the interfaces. If it is derived by Transfer, it is interpretable because ambiguous instructions
are not generated. This lends support to a derivational approach to syntax.
Epstein (2007) notes that Transfer creates objects which are not SOs according to Chomsky (1995). Based
on his definition of Merge as Merge(α, β) = {α, β}, Chomsky defines SOs as (i) lexical items (LIs) or (ii) of
the form {α, β} where α, β are SOs. Transfer is triggered by phase heads (PHs) and removes the complements
of PHs (PHCs) from the workspace, relaying these PHCs to the interfaces. However, the product of Transfer
is not an SO. Consider the derivation in (1), where α is a PH.
(1)
a.
b.
c.
Merge(γ, β) = {γ, β}
Merge(α, {γ, β}) = {α, {γ, β}}
Transfer({α, {γ, β}}) = {α}
The object created by Transfer in (1-c) is not an SO because it is neither (i) an LI, nor (ii) of the form {α, β}.
This generation of a non-SO should cancel the derivation. The problem, then, is that Transfer creates objects
which should result in the cancellation of the derivation. Let us call this Epstein’s Problem.
The claim here is that there is an unprincipled condition on the application of Merge and that once this
stipulation is lifted, Epstein’s Problem dissolves. The argument is as follows.
It has been claimed that Merge should apply freely (i.e. without constraints). However, there is a
(implicit) distinctness condition in the standard definition of Merge such that α 6= β. This unprincipled
condition should be eliminated. Once this is accepted, the definition of SO must be amended such that SOs
may be (i) LIs or (ii) of the form {α, β} where α, β are SOs and where α = β or α 6= β.
By eliminating the distinctness condition, objects of the form {α} are SOs, since SOs may be of the form
{α, β} where α = β, and since {α, α} = {α}. Therefore, objects created by Transfer are now SOs. Epstein’s
Problem, thus, dissolves.
The elimination of the distinctness condition also results in the possibility of Self Merge (Adger 2013).
Thus, objects of the form {α} derived by Merge(α, α) are generable by the narrow syntax. However, they do
not survive at the interfaces. Since α undergoes Merge with α in the narrow syntax, the SO {α} instructs the
interfaces to order α before α. This is an ambiguous instruction, which the interfaces reject (Boeckx 2008).
In summary, this paper hypothesizes that objects of the form {α} may be derived by Transfer or by Self
Merge, but that only those derived by Transfer are interpretable at the interfaces.
References
Adger, David. 2013. A syntax of substance. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Boeckx, Cedric. 2008. Bare syntax . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Epstein, Samuel David. 2007. On i(nternalist) functional explanation in minimalism. Linguistic Analysis
33:20–53.
1
Faisons at(tension) aux voyelles hautes : le relâchement et l’harmonie vocalique en
français de Windsor et de Hearst
La situation linguistique du français laurentien (dorénavant FL) en Ontario est compliquée par plusieurs
facteurs sociaux, géographiques et langagiers, dont la question de l’influence de l’anglais ainsi que le
statut majoritaire ou minoritaire des locuteurs au sein de la communauté figurent parmi les plus
saillantes voies de recherches (ex. Mougeon, 1997). Cette œuvre a pour but la description et la
comparaison de deux dialectes du FL en Ontario, à savoir celui de Windsor et de Hearst, dans l’intention
d’élaborer une analyse du relâchement des voyelles hautes en FL en Ontario, phénomène encore mal
connu. Ce projet analyse les données de deux corpus du projet phonologie du français contemporain
(PFC) avec le logiciel Praat pour pouvoir être dans la mesure de déterminer avec précision les
caractéristiques du relâchement des voyelles hautes.
Cette communication présente d’abord les deux dialectes du FL. Nous soutenons que le relâchement
des voyelles hautes manifeste des propriétés intéressantes dans la mesure où les deux dialectes ne
démontrent des tendances de relâchement unique. Pour ce faire, nous faisons une première distinction
entre le français de l’Ontario et celui du Québec. Avec quelques exceptions, le FL sortant de Montréal
est souvent pris pour la forme standard (ex. Dumas, 1981, 1987; Poliquin, 2007). Bien qu’il existe de la
variation dans les divers dialectes parlés au Québec, elle est encore plus marquée entre ceux-ci et ceux
en Ontario. Également, les deux dialectes mis en évidence dans le présent papier font preuve d’une
deuxième distinction marquée. À première vue, le FL à Windsor et à Hearst existe dans deux contextes
nettement différents. Hearst compte 86,9% de sa population qui est francophone comme langue
primaire, comparé à 2,6% à Windsor; également, 69% de la population de Hearst sont capable de mener
une conversation en anglais et français, comparé à 8,3% à Windsor (Recensement 2011, Statistique
Canada). Il est donc fort probable que le relâchement des voyelles se manifeste de façon différente dans
ces deux milieux.
Selon l’analyse standard (Dumas, 1987; Ostiguy & Tousignant, 1993; Poliquin, 2007; Walker, 1984), les
voyelles hautes en FL, à savoir [i y u I Y U], sont caractérisées par une opposition non-contrastive de
tension. En général, ces voyelles sont réalisées de façon tendue sauf dans les contextes suivants : une
voyelle haute est relâchée quand elle se trouve (A) en position finale de mot au sein d’une syllabe
fermée; et (B) en position non-finale de mot si la syllabe est ouverte mais aussi suivie d’une syllabe
comprenant une voyelle haute relâchée. Ce dernier contexte est souvent nommé un processus
d’harmonie vocalique. À titre d’exemple, observons les données suivantes :
(1)
(2)
(3)
si
[i]
pipe [I]
pilule [i…Y]
~
*[sI]
*[pip]
[I…Y]
(syllabe ouverte : relâchement non-permis)
(syllabe fermée : relâchement obligatoire)
(syllabe non-final : relâchement facultatif)
L’analyse standard propose que le relâchement en (2) est obligatoire tandis que celui en (3) n’est que
facultatif. Par contre, les résultats démontrent que les locuteurs de Hearst et de Windsor ont tendance à
ne pas relâcher la voyelle haute en (2). Ceci va à l’encontre de l’analyse standard. Il semble aussi que
l’harmonisation des voyelles (3) manifeste des caractéristiques uniques à Windsor, en raison de
l’influence de l’anglais, mais non à Hearst.
Bibliographie
Dumas, D. (1981). Structure de la diphtongaison québécoise. The Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 26(1), 1–61.
Dumas, D. (1987). Nos façons de parler. Sillery, Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec.
Mougeon, R. (1997). La recherche sociolinguistique sur le français du Canada. In De la polyphonie à la symphonie. Méthodes, théories, et faits
de la recherche pluridisciplinaire sur le français du Canada (pp. 183–208). Leipzig: Leipziger Universitäts Verlag.
Ostiguy, L., & Tousignant, C. (1993).
usages. Montréal: uérin universitaire.
Poliquin, G. C. (2007). Canadian French vowel harmony. Thesis dissertation. Harvard University.
Walker, D. (1984). The pronunciation of Canadian French. Ottawa, Canada: University of Ottawa Press.
Many and determiner systems in English and Russian
Julie Goncharov, University of Toronto
The ambiguity of quantity expressions in English, such as many, is traditionally identified as
the distinction between cardinal and proportional determiners, e.g. Milsark 1977, Barwise and
Cooper 1981. Although many can appear in canonical adjectival and quantificational positions,
the ambiguity holds only for quantificational many. The adjectival many in English is unambiguously cardinal (Partee 1989: 9). This creates an asymmetric picture, see (1-a). Russian
many is also ambiguous and has two morphological forms - an adverbial uninflected mnog-o
‘many-ADV’ and an agreeing adjectival mnog-ie ‘many-AGR’, see Krasikova 2011. The Russian system is also asymmetric, but it is strikingly different from English, see (1-b). These
observations raise a number of questions. The present paper answers two of them: 1) Why do
the gaps in (1-a) and (1-b) exist in the first place? 2) Why do these particular gaps exist?
(1) a.
b.
Quantificational Adjectival
Adverbial Adjectival
prop. many
prop.
mnogie
card. many
card. (ind.) mnogo
the many
(group) mnogo
Proposal In this paper, I argue that the differences between the Russian and English many
are attributed to the differences between the determiner systems of these languages. Building on
the proposals in Kyriakaki 2011 and Pereltsvaig 2006, I propose to decompose the D-head into
three heads: i that spells out the uniqueness, Fam that carries the information about familiarity
and Ind that provides an ability to have individual referents, see (2):
(2) [ iP i [ FamP (AP) [ Fam0 Fam [ IndP Indf [ QP Q [ NumP (AP) [ NumP Num [ NP Nf ]]]]]]]]
Formally, Ind has a set of unvalued f -features that are valued by the closest nominal in its
c-command domain and then are used to value the features of the main predicate. The presence/absence of Ind is responsible for the ambiguity of Russian mnogo. This proposal captures
naturally the correlation between the individual/group reading of a nominal and the main predicate agreement/its absence, see Pereltsvaig 2006. This proposal also makes correct predictions
with respect to pseudo-partitive constructions, such as a bunch of flowers, in which the Q-head
is occupied by an interfering nominal that values the features of Ind triggering singular agreement on the main predicate. In addition, this proposal allows room for parametric variation:
if Ind merges below the measure nominal in Q or the two nominals are equidistant, we expect
to find the agreement with the low nominal or with either. The latter situation is attested in
Greek, see Alexiadou et al. 2007. I propose to analyze mnogie as a definite adjective merging
in the specifier of FamP, as in Aljovi`c 2002. This treatment of mnogie explains its obligatory
adjectival inflection, the absence of genitive of quantification on the following nominal, the
agreement of the main predicate (via Ind) and the definiteness effects observed with mnogie.
Asymmetry explained: Russian Suppose that Russian once had two adjectival manys:
definite (a long-form which we see today as mnogie) and indefinite (a short-form without AGR
merged as an adjunct to NumP). When Russian lost short-form adjectives in the attributive
position, the cardinal adjectival many was lost; its role now is performed by mnogo with Ind
(to some extent). Russian does not have a proportional adverbial many simply because it does
not have (and has never had) means to add definiteness apart from as an inflection on adjectives.
Asymmetry explained: English Suppose that English spells out iP and FamP as the, as in
Kyriakaki 2011. The adjectival many will merge low in NumP and combine with NP intersectively; then combined with the, it would be interpreted as unique, definite and cardinal. English
does not have definite adjectives that can combine with a noun to acquire familiarity reading
with the exclusion of uniqueness, thus English cannot have a proportional adjectival many.
References Alexiadou, Artemis, Liliane M. V. Haegeman, and Melita Stavrou. 2007. Noun
Phrase in the Generative Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter; Aljovi´c, Nadira. 2002.
Long adjectival inflection and specificity in Serbo-Croatian. In Recherches linguistiques de
Vincennes, volume 31, 27-42; Barwise, Jon, and Robin Cooper. 1981. Generalized quantifiers
and natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy 4:159-219; Krasikova, Sveta. 2011. On proportional and cardinal ‘many’. Generative Grammar in Geneva 7:93-114; Kyriakaki, Maria.
2011. DETs in the Functional Syntax of Greek Nominals. Doctoral Dissertation, University of
Toronto; Milsark, Gary. 1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential
construction in english. Linguistic Analysis 3:1-29; Partee, Barbara H. 1989. Many Quantifiers. ESCOL 89, 383-402; Pereltsvaig, Asya. 2006. Small Nominals. Natural Language and
Linguistic Theory 24: 433-500.
Conflict resolution in the Spanish SLA of Yucatec ejectives:
L1, L2 and universal constraints
Antonio A. González-Poot
This study focuses on the Spanish second language (L2) acquisition of plain-ejective plosive (pp’, t-t’, k-k’) and affricate (ts-ts’, tʃ-tʃ’) Yucatec contrasts, an interesting learning situation given
the inactive status of constricted glottis ([CG]) – the contrasting feature – in the learners’ native
(L1) grammar. It has been claimed (Brown 2000) that second language learners (L2ers) filter
incoming perceptual input through their featural system: If a feature is inactive in the L1, it will
preclude acquisition of new contrasts. It is shown here, however, that Spanish L2ers are able to
accurately perceive target [CG]-based contrasts in Yucatec.
A review of the L2 perceptual literature strongly suggests that the first check that the
interlanguage grammar makes when in the process of acquiring a new L2 contrast is whether or
not the contrasting feature is active or inactive in the learner’s L1 grammar. If active, as predicted
by Brown, acquisition of the new contrast will be given a head start. However, evidence from
both L1 and L2 acquisition suggests that not all active target features are acquired at the same
time: some features are acquired earlier than others. It is claimed here that this differential rate of
acquisition is dependent upon 1) the intrinsic perceptual saliency of the feature, 2) the
place/manner specifications of its segmental host, and 3) the syllabic position of this host. As
shown by the result of the Spanish L2 acquisition of Yucatec ejectives, new L2 contrasts based
on a feature inactive in the learner’s L1 grammar are still likely to be acquired, but they will also
be subject to these 3 criteria.
These predicted differences in the perceptual acquisition of L2 contrasts are formalized
here within an OT framework (Prince & Smolensky 2004 [1993]) via a set of perceptually and
prosodically motivated constraints, introduced in the grammar in the form of both prominence
hierarchies (e.g. IDENT[AirStreamMechanism] >> IDENT[Manner] >> IDENT[Place]), and
faithfulness-based
harmonic
scales
(Howe
&
Pulleyblank
2004),
such
as
IDENT[CG]/ONSStop[Periph] >> IDENT[CG]/ONSStop[Cor]. It is claimed here that the interaction
of harmonically aligned faithfulness constraints with structural restrictions (e.g. *CG) accounts
for the attested perceptual patterns among Spanish L2ers. An OT analysis also allows illustrating
the conflict of L1, L2 and universal constraints in the gradual processing of perceptual L2 input.
The analysis of the Spanish L1-Yucatec L2 learning situation constitutes a first within the
field of studies in SLA. By providing new L1-L2 data, this study significantly contributes to a
theory that greatly relies on cross-linguistic surveys in order to test the validity of hypotheses
about Universal Grammar.
References
Brown, Cynthia A. (2000). The interrelation between speech perception and phonological
acquisition: from infant to adult. In John Archibald (Ed.) Second Language Acquisition and
Linguistic Theory (pp. 4-63). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Howe, Darin & Douglas Pulleyblank (2004). Harmonic Scales as faithfulness. Canadian Journal
of Linguistics, 49, 1-49.
Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky (2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative
Grammar. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
The role of animacy in sentence production: Evidence from French Margaret Grant1, Juliette Thuilier2,3, Benoît Crabbé4,5 and Anne Abeillé3,4 1McGill University, 2Univ. Rennes 2, 3LLF, 4Univ. Paris Diderot, 5ALPAGE We present evidence from a sentence recall paradigm in French bearing on the role of conceptual information, specifically animacy, in sentence production. Previous studies have found that rates of inversion errors in production indicated a preference to produce more conceptually accessible DPs (on a scale such as that of Keenan and Comrie, 1977) earlier in a sentence. However, there is a debate as to the stage of sentence production at which accessibility plays a role. Models of sentence production have proposed separate stages for the assignment of lexical items to grammatical roles and for the linear ordering of constituents (see Bock and Levelt 1994). Previous studies have found evidence for an accessibility effect on grammatical assignment only (Bock and Warren 1985, Tanaka 2011) or an effect on both levels (see Branigan et al., 2007 for a review). We studied the recall of three sentence types: transitives with voice alternations [1], sentences with coordinated DPs [2], and ditransitives [3]. Modern French does not have an equivalent to the English dative alternation, however word order variation in ditransitives is attested; postverbal arguments of ditransitive verbs may appear in NP-­‐PP order or PP-­‐NP order, although NP-­‐PP order is considered to be canonical (see Thuilier 2012 for corpus evidence). Preliminary results show that for transitives (N=30), speakers were more likely to produce inversions from passive to active when doing so would avoid having an inanimate argument in subject position (39% of otherwise correct recalls) than when both arguments were animate (11.4%, p < .01 in a mixed-­‐effects logistic regression analysis). Active-­‐to-­‐passive inversions were very rare (only 2 instances) and were therefore excluded from analysis. No significant differences were found for inversions in coordinations (N=32) based on animacy. For ditransitives (N=33), the results did not show a preference for ordering animate arguments before inanimates. On the contrary, there was an interaction (p < .01) such that ditransitives with inanimate themes had the most inversions from PP-­‐NP to NP-­‐PP order (22%) and the lowest percentage of inversions from NP-­‐PP to PP-­‐NP order (4.5%), with animate argument in between (15% and 12%, respectively). Our results for transitives and coordinations support a role for animacy in grammatical role assignment but not for simple linear order. The ditransitive result, however, is not predicted by conceptual accessibility. Because of the free recall nature of the task, subjects were able to vary factors such as length and definiteness that were controlled in the presented items. We are in the process of coding the productions for these factors to gain insight into the nature of this surprising effect. Example sentence (animacy alternatives shown in {}, recall prompt, translation) 1 Au bout de la ruelle, {le voleur/le revolver} a été trouvé par le policier. ‘At the end of the alley, the thief/revolver was found by the policeman.’ 2 Ce jeune homme a toujours fui les traîtres et {les lâches/les échecs} ‘This young man has always avoided traitors and cowards/failures.’ Ce jeune homme a toujours fui {les lâches/les échecs} et les traîtres ‘This young man has always avoided cowards/failures and traitors.’ 3 Le chef de projet a confié {un agent commercial/un nouveau budget} à un décorateur. Le chef de projet a confié à un décorateur {un agent commercial/un nouveau budget}. ‘The project manager assigned a commercial agent/new budget to a decorator.’ The role of animacy in sentence production: Evidence from French Margaret Grant1, Juliette Thuilier2,3, Benoît Crabbé4,5 and Anne Abeillé3,4 1McGill University, 2Univ. Rennes 2, 3LLF, 4Univ. Paris Diderot, 5ALPAGE References: Bock, J. K. and Warren, R. K. 1985. Conceptual accessibility and syntactic structure in sentence formulation. Cognition 21:47–67. Bock, J.K. and Levelt, W. 1994. Language Production: Grammatical Encoding. In the Handbook of Psycholinguistics, M.A. Gernsbacher (ed.). Academic Press. Branigan, H. P., Pickering, M. J., & Tanaka, M. 2008. Contributions of animacy to grammatical function assignment and word order during production. Lingua, 118(2), 172-­‐189. Keenan, E. L. and Comrie, B. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8(1): 63-­‐99. Tanaka, M. N., Branigan, H. P., McLean, J. F., and Pickering, M. J. 2011. Con-­‐ ceptual influences on word order and voice in sentence production: Evidence from Japanese. Jounal of Memory and Language, 65:318–330. Thuilier, J. 2012. Contraintes préférentielles et ordre des mots en français. Thèse de doctorat en sciences du langage, Université Paris Diderot (Paris 7), Paris. L’EMPLOI VARIABLE DU SUBJONCTIF ET DES EXPRESSIONS DE NÉCESSITÉ
DANS LE FRANÇAIS PARLÉ DES LOCUTEURS RESTREINTS À PEMBROKE (ONTARIO)
Rick Grimm, Université York
En français, diverses constructions verbales régissent le mode subjonctif. Les études ayant
examiné l’emploi du subjonctif en français parlé au Canada, et qui reposent sur des données
tirées de corpus sociolinguistiques, ont trouvé qu’au moins deux tiers des occurrences du
subjonctif suivent un seul verbe, soit le verbe impersonnel falloir + que (Comeau 2011, Grimm
2012, Poplack 1990, Poplack et al. 2013). Non seulement ce verbe est-il le plus abondamment
utilisé dans la matrice, mais il amène aussi le subjonctif systématiquement ou presque dans la
subordonnée. Donc, parmi tous les verbes susceptibles d’entraîner le subjonctif, c’est le verbe de
nécessité falloir + que qui en fournit la majorité des occurrences analysables.
La présente étude examine l’emploi variable du mode subjonctif, avec un accent
particulier sur falloir + que, dans le français parlé à Pembroke (Ontario), localité où les
francophones ne constituent qu’une faible minorité (6% des 13 000 habitants). Les données
analysées proviennent d’un corpus d’entrevues sociolinguistiques (177 000 mots) menées auprès
de 31 adolescents francophones inscrits dans une école de langue française. Il s’agit de locuteurs
‘restreints’ qui déclarent favoriser le français (versus l’anglais) comme langue de communication
de 4% à 44% du temps. Bon nombre d’entre eux se servent peu ou jamais du français au foyer,
ce qui fait de l’école l’un des seuls milieux où ils sont exposés à cette langue (voir Mougeon &
Beniak 1991).
Selon nos analyses quantitatives, à la fois le mode subjonctif et les constructions verbales
pouvant le régir sont assez rares à Pembroke : il existe 42 cas du mode dans seulement 68
contextes possibles. Nous constatons que la maigre présence du subjonctif est en grande partie
attribuable à un emploi marginal de falloir + que (N=19). Ce résultat a suscité une question
importante : si ces locuteurs évitent falloir + que, quelle(s) expression(s) privilégient-ils pour
exprimer la nécessité ? En pareil contexte, falloir + que (N=37, 14%) est plus ou moins évité au
profit de structures suivies d’un complément infinitif, surtout devoir (N=141, 53%), et dans une
moindre mesure falloir à titre de verbe personnel (N=34, 13%) (p. ex., je faut conduire), falloir +
infinitif (N=16, 6%), et avoir à, être obligé de et avoir besoin de (N=39, 14%). La distribution
des variantes à Pembroke diffère de manière marquée de celle calculée pour les communautés
dont la population francophone est plus forte : falloir + que (58%–72%) représente l’expression
de choix par rapport à devoir (1%–9%), qui conserve son statut de variante formelle (Lealess
2005, Thibault 1991).
Il semble que l’emploi prépondérant de devoir dans le parler semi-informel des locuteurs
à Pembroke puisse s’expliquer par l’input auquel ces derniers ont accès. Il ressort d’une analyse
du discours de 13 enseignants (15 heures d’interactions enregistrées) que dans la salle de classe,
c’est devoir qui prévaut (36,5%). Qui plus est, le logiciel Rbrul, lequel permet de traiter la
restriction linguistique en tant que variable continue (vs. une catégorie fixe), révèle que le choix
des variantes est corrélé avec le niveau relatif de restriction dans l’emploi du français. Par
exemple, plus un locuteur se sert du français, plus il utilise falloir + que; inversement, moins un
locuteur se sert du français, plus il utilise devoir. En somme, notre étude démontre, d’une part,
comment le comportement d’une variable sociolinguistique peut influer sur celui d’une autre et,
d’autre part, qu’il est possible de déceler des corrélations statistiquement significatives à
l’intérieur d’un seul groupe de restriction linguistique lorsque l’effet de ce facteur social est
mesuré à l’aide d’un continuum plus étendu.
OEUVRES CITÉES
Comeau, P. (2011). A window on the past, a move toward the future: sociolinguistic and formal
perspectives on variation in Acadian French. Thèse de doctorat inédite, Université York,
Toronto.
Grimm, D. R. (2012). L’emploi variable du mode subjonctif dans le français parlé à Hawkesbury
(Ontario). Communication livrée au colloque Les français d’ici, Université de
Sherbrooke, juin.
Lealess, A. (2005). En français, il faut qu’on parle bien: Assessing native-like proficiency in L2
French. Mémoire de maîtrise inédit, Université d’Ottawa.
Mougeon, R., & Beniak, É. (1991). Linguistic consequences of language contact and restriction:
The case of French in Ontario. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Poplack, S. (1990). Prescription, intuition et usage: le subjonctif français et la variabilité
inhérente. Langage et société, 54, 5–33.
Poplack, S., Lealess, A., & Dion, N. (2013). The evolving grammar of the French subjunctive.
Probus, 25(1), 139–195.
Thibault, P. (1991). Semantic overlaps of French modal expressions. Language Variation and
Change, 3, 191–222.
On substance in phonology
Daniel Currie Hall, Saint Mary’s University
While ‘substance-ee’ phonology owes its name to Hale & Reiss (2000), the idea echoes Fudge’s
(1967: 26) proposal that phonologists “ought to burn their phonetic boats and turn to a genuinely
abstract amework.” One motivation for this is the desire to avoid the redundant formal encoding of
physiological facts: Hale & Reiss (2000) argue that no insight is to be gained by positing phonetically
motivated universal markedness constraints, and Mielke (2008) argues against attributing to UG an
inventory of features that could be derived om the properties of the human vocal and auditory apparatus. However, theories in which phonetic substance is altogether banished om phonology can
end up looking surprisingly similar to phonetically based theories in the explanations they posit for
phonological patterns that are phonetically ‘natural.’ If phonology is oblivious to phonetic content,
then the fact that many phonological patterns are natural must be attributed to phonetics itself. In the
case of substance-ee theories, the influence of phonetics can exert itself only through acquisition and
diachrony, rather than through phonetically based synchronic rules or constraints, but if phonology
is “a genuinely abstract amework,” much of its explanatory burden must be shied to phonetics.
Is anything lost in this transfer? This paper argues that something is lost; that it can be regained
through the moderate use of phonetic substance in phonology; and that the banishment of substance
has been based in part on unwarranted assumptions about the rigidity of phonological representations.
Mielke’s case for emergent features draws support om the existence of phonological patterns involving unnatural classes of sounds. If phonology is “a genuinely abstract amework,” it offers little reason
for skepticism about such patterns. They may arise diachronically through uncommon combinations
of phonetically natural changes, but the synchronic learner can easily represent them. However, Hall
(2010) and Godey (2012) show that several of the ‘unnatural’ patterns reported by Mielke are subject
to reanalysis either as natural or as combinations of natural patterns with independent motivation. For
example, what Mielke treats as deletion of nasals before the unnatural class of nasals and icatives (to
the exclusion of obstruent stops) in Bukusu, Hall (2010) analyzes as independently motivated patterns
of nasal effacement before icatives, nasal place assimilation, and a systematic ban on geminates. There
is, then, at least a methodological case for pursuing a theory that forces one to look for naturalness.
The proponents of substance-ee approaches are correct in observing that the phonetic properties
of phonemes do not dictate their phonological behaviour. But there is a way to curtail the role of
substance without eliminating it altogether. Contrastive specification based on a cross-linguistically
variable hierarchy of features, as proposed by Dresher (2009), offers a principled explanation for the fact
that phonemes with a particular phonetic property are sometimes ignored by phonological processes
that refer to the corresponding feature. Consider an example om Mackenzie (2013). A three-way
contrast among implosives and voiced and voiceless plosives may be encoded by either of two hierarchical orderings of [voice] and [constricted glottis]. If [c.g.] takes wider scope, it distinguishes the
implosives, and [voice] is relevant only for the plosives; if [voice] takes wider scope, it distinguishes the
voiceless plosives, and [c.g.] is relevant only for voiced stops. As Mackenzie shows, both possibilities
are attested. Ngizim [voice] harmony requires agreement between plosives, but ignores implosives.
Hausa [c.g.] harmony requires agreement between (homorganic) voiced stops, but ignores the voiceless plosives. Under this view, the task of the learner in acquiring phonological representations is to
set up a system of features that is just sufficient to differentiate the phonemic inventory and that allows
for the encoding of observed patterns. If the features themselves must be phonetically interpretable,
then the learner’s job is simplified, and the analyst’s hypothesis space is constrained. Representations
are substantive enough to make ‘natural’ patterns the norm, but also abstract enough to account for
the fact that phonetics does not determine phonological destiny.
References
Dresher, B. Elan. 200⒐ The contrastive hierarchy in phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Fudge, Erik C. 196⒎ The nature of phonological primes. Journal of Linguistics ⒊ 1–3⒍
Godey, Ross. 20⒓ “Crazy” classes are not crazy: An argument against Mielke 200⒏ Ms., University
of Toronto.
Hale, Mark & Charles Reiss. 2000. ‘Substance abuse’ and ‘dysfunctionalism’: Current trends in
phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 31⑴. 157–16⒐
Hall, Daniel Currie. 20⒑ Probing the unnatural. In Jacqueline van Kampen & Rick Nouwen (eds.),
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2010, 71–8⒊ Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mackenzie, Sara. 20⒔ Laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions in Aymara: Contrastive representations
and constraint interaction. Phonology 30⑵. 297–34⒌
Mielke, Jeff. 200⒏ The emergence of distinctive features. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Quantifying Perceived Morphological Relatedness
Kathleen Currie Hall, Claire Allen, Tess Fairburn, Kevin McMullin, Michael Fry, Masaki Noguchi
A key tool in a phonologist’s toolkit is the use of morphophonological alternations, i.e.,
cases where a single morpheme has multiple phonological representations, varying by context.
Most predictable phonological processes are known through their application in alternations.
Whether a single morpheme is undergoing alternation is in many cases fairly trivial; e.g.,
inflections of a single verb provide easily interpretable data. But there are other cases in which
determining whether two words are morphologically related is not so easy: does the morpheme
face occur in face-lift? facial? surface? Etymologically speaking, the answer may be yes, but this
does not necessarily reflect the morphological awareness of speakers. And yet, the recognition of
such relatedness is crucial to the identification of alternations and thus to phonological processes.
Much of the morphological literature has focused on processing models (e.g., Stockall &
Marantz 2006) and/or mostly dealt with inflection (e.g., Ackerman et al. 2009). In this paper, we
present a quantification that does not attempt to isolate individual morphemes but rather gives an
overview of perceived word similarity. An AXB discrimination task was used to elicit similarity
judgments from English speakers. 180 individual key words (base morphemes, e.g, press) were
matched with each of nine different words of the following types (given with examples): (1)
inflection (pressed), (2) relatively transparent derivation (pressure), (3) relatively opaque
derivation (expressway), (4) primary semantic sense (push), (5) secondary semantic sense
(media), (6) rhyme (mess), (7) cohort (preppy), (8-9) unrelated words (sofa, table). For any given
key word, two of these nine words were presented in orthographically; participants indicated
which was “more similar” to the key. No instructions on what defines similarity were given. All
combinations of all pairs were presented, randomly, with a single participant seeing only two
samples of any given key word in 360 total trials. Results here are based on 26 pilot participants.
For each type of comparison word, the percentage of the time that that type was chosen when
it was an option is given in the table below. Morphologically related forms are indeed interpreted
as being most similar to the key, followed by semantically and then phonetically related forms.
The behavioural (AXB) results were also correlated with similarity scores for spelling and
pronunciation (cf. Khorsi 2012) and semantic relatedness (cf. Han et al. 2013), as shown below;
R2 values for the three are 0.31, 0.22, 0.30, respectively. Given, however, that morphological
relatedness should really reflect a combination of sound and meaning relatedness, a logistic
mixed-effects regression model of the behavioural results was developed. The model has a
classification accuracy of 75% and a McFadden’s R2 value of 0.49. It crucially relies on spelling,
pronunciation, and semantics as factors, suggesting that all three are relevant for predicting
perceived morphological relatedness. This model can thus be used to independently approximate
the degree to which any two words are morphologically related in the minds of speakers, which
in turn can be used to determine the extent to which phonological processes that depend on
alternations between morphologically related words are in fact psychologically viable.
1.00
0.75
0.50
0.25
0.00
1.00
AXB Relatedness Score
1.00
AXB Relatedness Score
Percent
0.83
0.74
0.65
0.60
0.51
0.48
0.38
0.17
AXB Relatedness Score
Relation
Inflected
Derived1
Derived2
Meaning1
Meaning2
Rhyme
Cohort
Unrelated
0.75
0.50
0.25
0.00
−50
−25
0
25
Spelling Relatedness Score
−60
0.75
0.50
0.25
0.00
−40
−20
0
20
Transcription Relatedness Score
0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00
Semantic Relatedness Score
References:
Ackerman, F., Blevins, J. P., & Malouf, R. (2009). Parts and wholes: Patterns of relatedness in
complex morphological systems and why they matter. In J. P. Blevins & J. Blevins
(Eds.), Analogy in grammar: Form and acquisition (pp. 54-82). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Han, L., Kashyap, A., Finin, T., Mayfield, J., & Weese, J. (2013). UMBC_EBIQUITY-CORE:
Semantic Textual Similarity Systems Proceedings of the Second Joint Conference on
Lexical and Computational Semantics.
Khorsi, A. (2012). On Morphological Relatedness. Natural Language Engineering, 1-19.
Stockall, L., & Marantz, A. (2006). A single route, full decomposition model of morphological
complexity. The Mental Lexicon, 1(1), 85-123.
Les sujets des verbes météorologiques dans les dialectes occitans transitionnels du Nord
David Heap (UWO), Michèle Oliviéri et Jean-Pierre Lai (Université de Nice)
Alors que la plupart des langues romanes sont des systèmes « à sujet nul », certains dialectes ont
développé des paradigmes complets ou partiels de clitiques nominatifs. Entre les grammaires avec un
paradigme complet de clitiques sujets (français standard) et le cas non-marqué des parlers qui n’en ont
pas (espagnol, italien, la plupart des dialectes occitans), se trouve un continuum de variétés
transitionnelles dont les paradigmes présentent entre un et cinq clitiques nominatifs.
Dans ces langues « partiellement à sujet nul », les verbes météorologiques requièrent typiquement soit
l'absence de pronom sujet, soit la présence d'un clitique sujet explétif qui est le plus souvent
formellement identique à celui de la troisième personne du masculin singulier (comme en français
standard ou en rhéto-roman). Cependant, les dialectes occitans du nord de l'aire (les NODs), qui se
trouvent dans une zone de transition dans le centre de la France, rompent avec ce choix binaire : ils
présentent des pronoms sujets avec des verbes météorologiques, qui sont de la troisième personne du
singulier mais avec des formes complètement différentes (kɔ ou ka, comme dans (1ab)) des pronoms
référentiels du masculin singulier (1c).
En outre, les pronoms sujets dans les NODs font preuve d’autres particularités. Dans les dialectes de
l’Italie du Nord (NIDs, mieux documentés), les verbes météorologiques sont parmi les derniers à
présenter des sujets réalisés, qui apparaissent après les autres pronoms de la troisième personne (P3, cf.
Oliviéri 2011). Des enquêtes récentes en Corrèze, en Creuse et en Dordogne four-nissent de nouvelles
données qui montrent que dans cette aire, le sujet des verbes météorologiques peut parfois être le
premier et seul clitique du paradigme, comme dans (2). Dans le sud de la région considérée (en Corrèze
notamment), ce ko apparaît de manière variable dans les constructions météorologiques, et avec moins
de fréquence dans certains contextes (Kaiser et al. 2013). Plus au nord (en Creuse), ce phénomène
s'étend à d’autres constructions impersonnelles, mais toujours avec une forme distincte des tous les
autres clitiques nominatifs, comme on le voit en (3), où la seule forme verbale sans pronom sujet réalisé
est le verbe impersonnel équivalent de « falloir ». Ce même élément apparaît aussi dans d’autres
contextes où il n'est manifestement pas clitique, comparable au ça du français, comme sujet (4a) ou objet
(4b).
La structure précise des différents paradigmes qui apparaissent dans ces NODs est d’une importance
considérable pour la typologie morpho-syntaxique. Bien que l'apparition de ces éléments ne soit pas
contrainte au point de ne suivre qu'un seul chemin linéaire (de 0 à 6), le nombre de paradigmes attestés
est beaucoup plus réduit que ce qu'on pourrait prédire si la variation entre les personnes grammaticales
était aléatoire. La forme de ces paradigmes partiels correspond moins à l’ordre dans lequel apparaissent
les pronoms qu'à l’ordre d’apparition des contrastes entre les pronoms (Heap & Oliviéri 2013). Les
différentes progressions observées dans l'émergence des clitiques nominatifs des NODs fournissent des
indices sur la structure interne des contrastes entre les traits morphologiques, d’après une analyse sousspécifiée inspirée de Harley & Ritter (2002).
Notre modèle de l’introduction progressive des contrastes suppose des traits monovalents, organisés
hiérarchiquement pour refléter des dépendances implicationnelles. Si dans les NIDs (Poletto 2000,
Tortora 2002, Manzini & Savoia 2005), le clitique de P2 apparaît en premier, dans les NODs, cela peut
également être ceux de P3 ou de P1. Cela indique que le premier contraste implique le trait Participant
(soit P2 ou P1) qui s’oppose au trait Individu (P3 et P6), mais cela n'explique pas les faits observés pour
les constructions météorologiques des NODs. Cependant, dans un système qui permet la sousspécification variable, il peut y avoir une option encore moins spécifiée : le clitique « nu », qui n’est ni
Participant ni Individu. Nous proposons que cette configuration soit celle des sujets météorologiques
comme ko, précisément parce qu’elle est dénuée de tout trait morphologique et peut donc représenter des
éléments non référentiels. Cette perspective nous permet alors de préciser le statut de ces éléments, que
l'on peut considérer comme des quasi-arguments (cf. aussi Kaiser et al. 2013), dans le sens de Chomsky
(1981).
Exemples
(1) a. [ka pl'øw], [kɔ pl'øj]
b. [ka gr'ɛlø], [kɔ gʁ'ɛlə]
‘il pleut’
‘il grêle’
(2) Paradigmes verbaux en Corrèze
Treignac
ˈvɔw
ˈva
'vaj
aˈnã
aˈna
Le Vedeix
ˈvɔw
ˈva
'vaj
aˈnɛ̃
aˈna
‘aller’
P1
P2
P3
P4
P5
c. [ɔ e fatiɡˈa]
‘il est fatigué’
ˈvɔ̃
ˈvɔ̃
P6
ka ˈpløw
kɔ ˈpløj
‘il pleut’ P3
(3) Émergence progressive de ko
Corrèze
Treignac
ka pløu
faj fʁɛ
fɛ nɥɛ
mø ʃɑ̃blə
sɔu
Creuse
Faux-Mazurat
Royère-de-Vassivière
ka plo
ka fe frɛ
ka fɛ nœʲ
me sẽblᵊ
fo
kɔ mɔʎɔ
kɔ fej fʀe
kɔ faj nɛ
kɔ me semblɔ
fo
‘il pleut’
‘il fait froid’
‘il fait nuit’
‘il me semble’
‘il faut’
(4) Le Vedeix
a. [kɔ vɔ la pɛnø] ‘ça vaut la peine’, [kɔ to plɛi] ‘ça te plaît?’, [kɔ ʃɛ̃ bu] ‘ça sent bon’
b.
[j a di kɔ] ‘tu lui as dit’, [ʃe a vi kɔ] ‘si vous aviez vu ça’,
[pyʁki fa kɔ] ‘pourquoi tu fais ça?’
Références
Chomsky, N. (1981), Lectures on Government and Binding. The Pisa Lectures, Dordrecht, Foris.
Harley, H. & E. Ritter (2002), "Person and number in pronouns: A feature-geometric analysis",
Language 78, 482–526.
Heap, D. (2002), "Split subject pronoun paradigms : Feature geometry and underspecification" In T.
Satterfield et al. (eds.) Current Issues in Romance Languages : Selected Papers from the 29th
Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Ann Arbor, 8-11 April 1999, AmsterdamPhiladelphia, John Benjamins, 129-144.
Heap, D. & M. Oliviéri (2013), "On the emergence of nominative clitics in Romance dialects", paper
presented at Workshop European Dialect Syntax VII, Konstanz, 13-15 juin 2013.
Kaiser, G.A., Oliviéri, M. & Palasis, K. (2013). "Impersonal constructions in northern Occitan", In X.A.
Álvarez Perez, E. Carrilho, and C. Magro (eds.) Current Approaches to Limits and Areas in
Dialectology. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press/CSP, 345-366.
Manzini, M.R. & L.M. Savoia (2005), I dialetti italiani e romanci: morfosintassi generativa,
Alessandria, Edizioni dell'Orso.
Oliviéri, M. (2011), "Typology or Reconstruction: the Benefits of Dialectology for Diachronic Analysis"
In J. Berns et al. (eds.) Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2009. Selected papers from
'Going Romance' Nice 2009, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 239-253.
Poletto, C. (2000), The Higher Functional Field : Evidence from Northern Italian Dialects, New York &
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Tortora, C.M. (ed.) (2002), The Syntax of Italian Dialects, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Aspiration et effacement du /-s/ en espagnol d’Holguín (Cuba) :
variables phonologiques et leur conditionnement.
David Heap, Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, Jeff Tennant, Angélica Hernández (UWO)
En espagnol, la fricative sifflante sourde /s/ peut apparaître dans deux positions syllabiques différentes :
en attaque et en coda (Hualde 2005:74). En position de coda, ce phonème /s/ peut être interne au mot
(position médiane) ou bien en finale absolue (frescos “frais” masc. pl.) et il subit ou bien l’aspiration (/s/
-> [h]/__$) ou bien l’effacement (/s/ -> [Ø]/__$) (Lipski 1999:198) dans plusieurs variétés de
l’espagnol.
Comme l’observe Hualde (2005:28), tous les locuteurs des variétés antillaises de l’espagnol “aspirate
preconsonantal and word-final /s/ to a certain extent [...], [therefore] this is a highly variable process.”
Cette étude se concentre sur l’aspiration et l’effacement de /-s/ dans un corpus de l’espagnol cubain de la
ville et la province d’Holguín, dans un cadre variationniste labovien (Labov 1972). L’importance de
cette étude réside en partie en la nature du corpus. D’autres études de l’aspiration et de l’effacement de /s/ en espagnol cubain (Terrel 1977, 1979 ; Lynch 2009 ; entre autres) se basent sur la langue d’émigrants
cubains établis à Miami. Notre corpus, en contraste, inclut uniquement des locuteurs et des locutrices
cubains—spécifiquement d’Holguín) —qui ont vécu toute leur vie dans le pays et qui représentent donc
plus précisément le parler actuel de cette région de Cuba.
Notre étude se base sur des échantillons de trois styles (liste de mots, passage de lecture, conversation)
pour 10 locuteurs. Ces passages sont d’abord transcrits orthographiquement par le biais du logiciel Praat
afin de faciliter le codage ainsi que l’analyse acoustique de cette variable (s). Nous nous concentrons
dans cette étude sur les variables phonologiques qui conditionnent ces deux phenomènes, à savoir la
position syllabique, les pauses, l’accent tonique t la longueur du mot, ainsi que les traits phonologiques
des segnments qui suivent : par exemple [± vocalique], [± continuant] et [± voix].
Notre analyse démontre que la variable dépendante (s) est conditionnée par sa position dans le mot, par
la longueur du mot, et par l’accent. De façon significative, on voit aussi que le trait [±voix] du segment
suivant joue aussi un rôle important : les consonnes voisées défavorisent le maintien du /-s/. Le style et
le niveau d’éducation des locuteurs semble aussi représenter des variables significatives.
Références
Hualde, José Ignacio. 2005. The sounds of Spanish. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lipski, John M. 1999. The many faces of Spanish /s/-weakening: (re)alignment and ambisyllabicity. In
Advances in Hispanic linguistics. Papers from the 2nd Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, Vol I., ed.
Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach and Fernando Martínez-Gil, 198-213. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press.
Lynch, Andrew. 2009. A sociolinguistic analysis of final /s/ in Miami Cuban Spanish. Language
Sciences 31(6): 766-790.
Terrell, Tracy D. 1977. La aspiración y elisión en el español cubano: implicaciones para una teoría
fonológica dialectal. In Estudios sobre el español hablado en las principales ciudades de América, ed.
Juan M. Lope Blanch, 39-48. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Terrell, Tracy D. 1979. Final /s/ in Cuban Spanish. Hispania 62(4): 599-612.
How to Do Things with Particles
Johannes Heim, Hermann Keupdjio, Zoe Wai-Man Lam, Adriana Osa-Gómez and Martina Wiltschko
University of British Columbia
According to classic definitions of speech acts,
(1)
S asserts p if i) S believes p and ii) S wants A to believe p (Bach & Harnish 1979).
This view forms the basis for current assumptions regarding the syntax of speech acts. For
example Speas & Tenny (2003) propose a complex speech act phrase (SAP; see also Ross 1970).
(2)
[SAP S [gives [SAP p [to A]]]].
According to this view, a declarative clause maps onto the assertion speech act. If this was the
case, we would expect that declaratives are only felicitous if the two conditions above are met.
This is however not the case. i) A declarative may be uttered by a speaker who does not believe p,
namely in the form of a declarative with rising intonation (Gunlogson 2003). ii) A declarative
may be uttered even if S knows perfectly well that A already knows p. This takes the form of a
declarative with surprise intonation.
(3)
You have a new dog.
This demonstrates that intonation may serve as a speech act modifier. In this talk we explore the
formal and functional properties of speech act modification. In particular, we explore two types
of speech act modifiers: intonation and sentence peripheral particles such as those in (4):
(4)
Du host an neichn Hund goi?
Goi Du host an neichn Hund ?
Prt you have a new dog
The existence of speech act modifiers such as intonation and sentence peripheral particles, we
argue, requires a more complex and nuanced understanding of speech acts. And indeed,
according to current semantic analyses it is essential to take into consideration the fact that S
doesn’t necessarily aim to change A’s Set of Beliefs (SoB) but instead propositions are tabled
and are required to be accepted by A before they are considered to be in the common ground
(CG; Stalnaker 2002). We propose that speech act modifiers are explicit linguistic means to
encode this tabling function. In particular, we explore speech act modifiers in two non-tone
languages (German and Spanish) as well as in two tonal languages (Medumba and Cantonese).
We observe that in tonal languages, a particle encodes the orientation of the speech act, whereas
in non-tonal languages the intonational contours perform this function. Based on the interaction
of particles with intonational contours, we argue that intonational contours are best analysed as
intonational morphemes/tunes (Truckenbrodt 2012, Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990).
We further propose that complex speech acts such as in (3-4) are indicative for another
layer above SAP which introduces the S’s representation of the A’s SoB. We refer to this layer
as GroundP.
(5)
[GroundP SoB(A) [Ground SAP]]
Evidence for the syntactic representation of A-orientation comes from the properties of speech
act modifiers. They may attach to the different layers in (5) resulting in systematic semantic
differences. Moreover in German dialects they agree with A depending on whether S addresses
A informally (6a) or formally (6b). In some dialects we also find number agreement (6c).
(6)
a. Es regnt goi?
b. Es regnt goi-ns? c. % Es regnt, goi-ts
It rains prt.2inf
It rains prt-2form
It rains prt-2pl
Finally, we show that both the linear order of speech act modifiers as well as their scopal
properties lend support to the structure in (5).
References
Bach, K., & Harnish, R. M. (1979). Linguistic communication and speech acts (Vol. 4, pp. 624648). Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
Gunlogson, C. (2013). True to form: Rising and falling declaratives as questions in English.
Routledge.
Pierrehumbert, J. (1990). The Meaning of Intonational Contours in the Interpretation of
Discourse Janet Pierrehumbert and Julia Hirschberg. Intentions in communications, 271.
Ross, John R. (1970). On Declarative Sentences. In Readings in English Transformational
Grammar, ed. R. A. Jacobs and Peter S. Rosenbaum. Waltham, Mass.: Ginn.
Speas, M. & Tenny, C. (2003). Configurational properties of point of view roles. Asymmetry in
grammar, 1, 315-343.
Stalnaker, R. (2002). Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy, 25(5), 701-721.
Truckenbrodt, H. (2012). The interface of semantics with phonology and morphology. In
Maienborn, von Heusinger and Portner (eds.) Semantics. De Gruyter, 2039-2069.
Imagining Events: Influences of Temporal Information in Verbs and Perspective Taking
Jeffrey P. Hong
Todd R. Ferretti
Wilfrid Laurier University
Deanna Hall
Recent psycholinguistic research shows that grammatical aspect (GA; imperfective,
perfective) interacts with lexical aspect (LA; activities, accomplishments) to influence language
comprehension difficulty (Yap et al., 2009; Becker et al., 2013). The purpose of the present
research is to examine how these variables interact to influence the ease in which people imagine
events described in simple phrases. A second goal is to examine how taking a first person
perspective (as if performing the event) or third person perspective (looking at self performing
event) influences the ability to imagine events. This research also employed event-related brain
potential methodology to examine slow cortical brain potentials. These brain potentials are
known to be sensitive to the ease of integrating text into developing situation models (King &
Kutas, 1995), and to the ease of imagining events (Conway et al., 2003).
In the first experiment, participants read and imagined sentences that contained either
accomplishments (build) or activities (act) that were grammatically marked as ongoing or
completed (I was acting/I acted). Our slow potential results show that participants had less
difficulty imagining events when the temporal properties of the two forms of verb aspect matched
(imperfective activities, perfective accomplishments) versus mismatched (perfective activities,
imperfective accomplishments). Furthermore, participants reported they imagined the events
more often from a first person perspective for activities than accomplishments. GA had the
strongest influence on imagined accomplishments; the first-person perspective was used more
often for perfective than imperfective accomplishments.
In the second experiment, participants were told to take either a first or third person
perspective when imagining events described in imperfective activity phrases (e.g., I was
exercising). The slow potential findings demonstrated that SCP amplitudes were more negative
for third-person than for first-person event representation, in left-frontal regions. This difference
is taken to indicate that greater cognitive effort is required for the generation of imagined events
from the third-person perspective, as compared to the first-person perspective.
This research provides novel neurocognitive and behavioural insight into how event
representation is influenced by temporal information associated with verbs and the perspective
from which an event is represented.
References
Becker, R. B., Ferretti, T. R., & Madden-Lombardi, C. J. (2013). Grammatical aspect, lexical
aspect, and event duration constrain the availability of events in narratives. Cognition,
129(2), 212–220.
Conway, M. A., Pleydell-Pearce, C. W., Whitecross, S. E., & Sharpe, H. (2003).
Neurophysiological correlates of memory for experienced and imagined events.
Neuropsychologia, 41(3), 334–340.
King, J. W., & Kutas, M. (1995). Who Did What and When? Using Word- and Clause-Level
ERPs to Monitor Working Memory Usage in Reading. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,
7(3), 376–395.
Yap, F. H., Chu, P. C. K., Yiu, E. S. M., Wong, S. F., Kwan, S. W. M., Matthews, S., et al.
(2009). Aspectual asymmetries in the mental representation of events: Role of lexical and
grammatical aspect. Memory & Cognition, 37(5), 587–595.
Différences rythmiques dans les styles de parole en français ontarien
Svetlana Kaminskaïa
Université de Waterloo
Les mesures rythmiques (Ramus et al. 1999, Dellwo 2006, White and Mattys 2007, Low et al.
2000, Grabe and Low 2002) appliquées à des langues différentes ont permis d’explorer
largement la variation typologique et régionale. La présente analyse s’adresse à l’effet du style
sur le rythme prosodique en français parlé en Ontario en situation minoritaire (corpus Windsor,
PFC, Durand et al. 2002). Les lectures du texte sont comparées aux extraits de la parole
spontanée produits par les mêmes locuteurs.
Notre analyse antérieure des lectures du texte a démontré que malgré la situation du
contact linguistique, l’ensemble des données se caractérise par une rythmicité syllabique propre à
la langue française et que la convergence avec le rythme accentuel anglais n’a pas vraiment lieu.
Cependant, dans ce type de production les locuteurs tendent vers une prononciation plus
normative (Simon 2003, Hambye 2008), alors que la parole spontanée démontre une prosodie
plus régionale (Carton 1984). Cela permet de supposer que dans les entrevues libres le rythme
peut ressortir affecté par le contact avec l’anglais, donc plus accentuel.
La parole spontanée et la lecture du texte se caractérisent normalement par des
différences de vitesse d’articulation. Dans le contexte du contact linguistique où la lecture en
français n’est pratiquée que dans le contexte d’école, on suppose une production plus rapide en
parole spontanée. Le débit plus rapide amène typiquement à une moindre variabilité des
intervalles et donc une rythmicité plus syllabique, ce qui entre en conflit avec l’hypothèse
formulée tout à l’heure. Ici, nous explorons donc l’effet du style sur le débit et sur le rythme en
français en situation minoritaire.
Pour l’analyse, nous appliquons les méthodes suivantes de l’analyse métrique : le modèle
CCI (« Control and Compensation Index », Bertinetto et Bertini 2008) sensible aux changements
du débit, ainsi que les méthodes normalisant le débit qui se sont démontrées les plus
performantes dans les études antérieures (VarcoV, nPVI-V et %V). Les résultats démontrent que
tous les locuteurs ont le débit significativement plus rapide en parole spontanée que lors de la
lecture, et que malgré cela la rythmicité dans ce sous-corpus se révèle plus accentuelle, car les
valeurs VarcoV, nPVI-V et CCI démontrent plus de variabilité des intervalles. En même temps,
les résultats pour %V suggèrent le contraire.
Cette analyse permet de conclure que pour une langue en contact les observations
antérieures sur le rapport entre le changement du débit et la rythmicité ne s’appliquent pas et que
les caractéristiques de la prononciation locale doivent être prises en considération, aussi bien que
la situation du contact linguistique.
References
Bertinetto Pier Marco & Chiara Bertini 2008. On modeling the rhythm of natural languages.
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Speech Prosody, Campinas 2008,
427‐430.
Bertinetto Pier Marco & Chiara Bertini 2010. Towards a unified predictive model of natural
language rhythm. In Russo Michela (cur.), Prosodic Universals. Comparative studies in
rhythmic modeling and rhythm typology. Napoli, Aracne: 43-77.
Durand Jacques, Bernard Laks & Chantal Lyche 2002. Synopsis du projet PFC, la Phonologie du
Français Contemporain : Usages, Variétés et Structure. Bulletin PFC #1: Protocole,
conventions et directions d’analyse. 5-7.
Grabe Esther & Ee Ling Low. 2002. Durational variability in speech and the rhythm class
hypothesis. In Warner Natasha & Carlos Gussenhoven (eds.) Papers in Laboratory
Phonology 7. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 515-546.
Hambye, Philippe 2008. Convergences et divergence: quelques observations sur la
standardisation du français en Belgique. Standardisation et déstandardisation: le français
et l’espagnol au XXe siècle. Éd. Jürgen Erfurt et Gabriele Budach. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
35–62.
Low Ee Ling, Esther Grabe & Francis Nolan 2000. Quantitative characterizations of speech
rhythm: Syllable-timing in Singapore English. Language and Speech 43(4). 377-401.
Pike Kenneth 1945. The Intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
Ramus Franck, Marina Nespor & Jacques Mehler 1999. Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the
speech signal. Cognition 73(3). 265-292.
Simon, Anne-Catherine 2003. Analyse de la variation prosodique du français dans les données
conversationnelles: propositions théoriques et méthodologiques. Bulletin Phonologie du
Français Contemporain 3, 99–13.
White Laurence & Sven L. Mattys 2007. Calibrating rhythm: First and second language studies.
Journal of Phonetics 35. 501-522.
On propositional complexity of middles and its consequences for syntax
Olena Kit (McMaster University)
Though linguistic properties of middle constructions, as in (1), have been extensively studied, the
syntactic structure remains debated. Recent work argues that middles are structurally identical to
passives (Stroik, 1992; Hoekstra and Roberts, 1993; Medová, 2009), unergatives (Fagan, 1992;
Ackema and Schoorlemmer, 1994), or reflexives (Massam, 1992; Steinbach, 2002). In this talk, I
provide evidence that middle constructions are unlike passives, unergatives, and reflexives in
that they form propositionally complex structures. I argue that even though the structure of
middles is transitive-like, the structural complexity is not a result of two arguments being merged
in the structure. Instead, the two-proposition structure arises as a result of the internal argument
undergoing an operator triggered A’-movement, followed by A-movement.
(1)
a. The book reads easily.
b. The bread cuts easily.
Puzzle: Bale (2007) observes that there is an interesting correlation between the propositional
complexity of a VP and its internal structure. Specifically, non-stative, transitive verbs allow
again to introduce presuppositions that do not involve the verb’s subject, whereas intransitive
verbs and stative, transitive verbs must include the subject. We can use this observation as a
diagnostic for the structure of middles. An example of this paradigm is in (2):
(2)
Context: John drove the car quickly, but then he sold it. Assuming Mary buys the car for
its rapid acceleration, it is safe to say that…
a. Mary drives the car quickly again.
c. The car drives quickly again.
b. #Again Mary drives the car quickly.
d. Again the car drives quickly.
Middle sentences, (1c) and (1d), do not pattern with intransitive or stative, transitive verbs,
instead they share propositional properties with non-stative transitive verbs. This finding
suggests middles are propositionally complex. In other words, the understood subject is not a
functional argument of the verb and the understood object and verb form one propositional level.
This evidence is further supported by reconstruction diagnostics, namely the Coordinate
Structure Constraint (Fox 2000) and the Epistemic Containment Principle (von Fintel and
Iatridou, 2003), where middles and active transitives pattern alike. Consider the examples in (3):
(3)
a. John must boil the noodles and a chef stir the sauce.
Active
Passive
b. *Eggs must have been cracked and a vegetable have been chopped.
c. Cakes must cut easily and flour mix without difficulty.
Middle
Since middles seem to be transitive-like in their propositional properties, the question that arises
is: What causes this behaviour? As the following examples in (4) show, this structurally complex
behaviour cannot result from having a covert external argument in the structure as there is a ban
on agent-oriented adverbs (4a) and agentive by-phrases (4b) in middles constructions.
(4)
a. *The bread cuts carefully.
b. *The bread cuts easily by the chef.
Therefore, middle constructions are propositionally complex structures without an agent present
in syntax. This raises the question of whether an alternative approach can account for the
syntactic behaviour of middles.
Proposal: I propose that the internal argument is extracted using a two-step derivation, similar to
Collins’s (2005) smuggling strategy. Specifically, an operator triggers the internal argument to
move out of its functional projection (A’-movement). The operator introduces a generic
interpretation with modal properties, which are necessary for the dispositional reading (Lekakou,
2005). After the initial step, the internal argument moves to the subject position (A-movement).
References
Ackema, P., & Schoorlemmer, M. (1994). The middle construction and the syntax-semantics
interface. Lingua, 93(1), 59-90.
Bale, A. C. (2007). Quantifiers and verb phrases: An exploration of propositional complexity.
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 25(3), 447-483.
Collins, C. (2005). A smuggling approach to the passive in English. Syntax, 8(2), 81-120.
Fagan, S. M. (1992). The syntax and semantics of middle constructions: A study with special
reference to German (Vol. 60). Cambridge University Press.
Fox, D. (2000). Economy and semantic interpretation (Vol. 35). The MIT Press.
Hoekstra, T., & Roberts, I. (1993). Middle constructions in Dutch and English. Knowledge and
language, 2, 183-220.
Massam, D. (1992). Null objects and non-thematic subjects. Journal of Linguistics, 28(1), 115137.
Medová, L. (2009). Reflexive Clitics in the Slavic and Romance Languages. A Comparative View
from an Antipassive Perspective. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway, PO Box
1346, Ann Arbor, MI 48106.
Lekakou, M. (2005). In the middle, somewhat elevated (Doctoral dissertation, University College
London).
Steinbach, M. (1999). Argument structure and reflexivity: Middle constructions in German.
In Proceedings of TLS Conference on Argument Structure.
Von Fintel, K., & Iatridou, S. (2003). Epistemic containment. Linguistic Inquiry, 34(2), 173-198.
An Imperfect Representation: the Preterit-Imperfect contrast in Syntactic Theory and SLA
Gabrielle Klassen & María Cristina Cuervo
(University of Toronto)
This study examines the contrast between the two simple tenses with past reference in Spanish, the
preterit and the imperfect. We employ an experimental design in second language acquisition with a
twofold aim. First, we use L2 data to test Cowper’s (2005) analysis of the contrast in terms of the
features of inflection. Second, we discuss our findings alongside previous L2 findings in terms of
feature (under)specification rather than (missing) syntactic heads, and avoiding lexical aspect as a
confounding factor.
Arguing against analyses of the preterit-imperfect contrast in terms of (viewpoint) aspect, Cowper
(2005) captures the complex distribution of the Spanish preterit and imperfect via one simple feature:
[Entirety], dependant on the feature [Precedence] which distinguishes past reference. The Spanish
preterit consists of the features [Precedence] and [Entirety]. That is, the preterit denotes that all the
moments associated with the event precede the temporal anchor (1a). The imperfect, in contrast, only
encodes [Precedence] and is therefore ambiguous (non-specified) with respect to whether the
eventuality (the state of being in Montreal) holds at the moment of speech (1b). The feature
[Entirety] is absent from the English tense system, which explains the ambiguity in this respect of the
simple past (1c).
(1) a.Bill estuvo en Montreal ayer. (preterit)
b. Bill estaba en Montreal ayer. (imperfect)
c. Bill was in Montreal yesterday.
Recent studies have found a pattern in the morphosyntactic production of second language learners:
L2 learners tend to overuse the least specified form as a “default” form in contexts consistent with
the more specified form (see Bruhn de Garavito & White 2002; McCarthy 2008 for gender
morphology; McCarthy 2006 for tense morphology). McCarthy (2006) captures this in terms of her
Underspecification Theory. We combine this hypothesis with Cowper’s featural analysis, and so it is
predicted that the imperfect would be the default form, as it is not specified for [Entirety], and would
be therefore overused by L1 English L2 Spanish speakers. The preterit, in contrast, should only
appear in appropriate contexts once the feature [Entirety] has been acquired. This prediction differs
crucially from previous studies based on the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) or some form thereof
(e.g. Andersen 1986; Salaberry 2003, 2011; Slabakova & Montrul 2003, 2007 a.o.), which analyse
acquisition in terms of verbal telicity (lexical aspect). These studies, however, fail to tease apart the
acquisition of lexical aspect and the acquisition of the past tense morphology and its function,
independent of the lexical aspect, and their results are more easily explained by our proposal,
providing independent support for Cowper.
Our study tested these predictions on two tasks performed by 10 intermediate and 10 advanced L1
English L2 Spanish speakers, as well as 5 native Spanish control speakers. The first task was a truthvalue judgement task in which participants responded to written stimuli, answering questions that
probed the comprehension of the feature [Entirety]. The second task was a narrative elicitation task
based on a picture story. Preliminary results of the first task show that the L2 participants (advanced)
have acquired the feature [Entirety]. The narrative elicitation task, in contrast, showed some deviance
from the native speakers: L2 learners overextend the use of the imperfect to a strictly preterit context
(9.8% errors), but not vice versa (0.006% errors). These results are consistent with an analysis of the
imperfect as the less specified form (contra Salaberry 1999), providing initial support for Cowper’s
featural analysis. Further analysis of the data allows us to discuss alternative analyses of the contrast,
mostly based on aspect (but see Bello 1847; Rojo & Veiga 1999), and the analyses of L2 data from
the literature based on those aspectual approaches which rely on the association of the verb with
telicity.
References
Andersen, R. (1986). El desarrollo de la morfología verbal en el español como segundo idioma
[The development of verbal morphology in Spanish as a second language]. In J. Meisel (Ed.),
Adquisición del lenguaje—Aquisic¸a˜o da linguagem (pp. 115–137). Frankfurt: Klaus-Dieter
Vervuert Verlag.
Bello, A. (1847). Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los Americanos.
Bruhn de Garavito, J., & White, L. (2002). L2 acquisition of Spanish DPs: The status of
grammatical features. In A. T. Pérez-Leroux, & J. M. Liceras (Eds.), The Acquisition of
Spanish Morphosyntax: The L1/L2 Connection (pp. 151-176). Dordrecht, The
Netherlandsadrecht: Kluwer.
Cowper, Elizabeth A. (2005). The Geometry of Interpretable Features: Infl in English
and Spanish. Language, 81(1), 10-46.
McCarthy, C. (2006). What’s Missing from Missing Inflection?: Features in L2 Spanish. McGill
Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume, 20(2), 21-37.
McCarthy, C. (2008). Morphological variability in the comprehension of agreement: an
argument for representation over computation. Second Language Research, 24(4), 459- 486.
Rojo, G., & Veiga, A. (1999). El tiempo verbal. Los tiempos simples. In I. Bosque & V.
Demonte (Eds.), Gramatica descriptiva de la lengua española (pp. 2867-2934). Madrid,
Spain: Espasa.
Salaberry, R. (1999). The development of past tense verbal morphology in classroom L2 Spanish.
Applied Linguistics, 20, 151–178.
Salaberry (2002). Tense and Aspect in the Selection of Spanish Past Tense Verbal Morphology. In R.
Salaberry & Y. Shirai (Eds.), The L2 Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology (pp. 397- 416).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Salaberry, R. (2003). Tense Aspect in Verbal Morphology. Hispania, 86(3), 559-573.
Salaberry, R. (2011). Assessing the effect of lexical aspect and grounding on the acquisition of
L2 Spanish past tense morphology among L1 English speakers. Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition, 14(2), 184–202.
Salaberry (2013). Contrasting Preterite and Imperfect use among advanced L2 learners: Judgments of
iterated eventualities in Spanish. IRAL, 51, 243-270.
Slabakova, R., & Montrul, S. (2003). Genericity and aspect in L2 acquisition. Language
Acquisition, 11(3), 165–196.
Slabakova, R., & Montrul, S. (2007). L2 acquisition at the grammar–discourse interface:
Aspectual shifts in L2 Spanish. In J. M. Liceras, H. Zobl, & H. Goodluck, (Eds.), Formal
features in second language acquisition (pp. 452–483). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
!
Stress and Morphology in Second Language Production and Processing
Johannes Knaus & Mary Grantham O’Brien
Department of Linguistics, Languages and Cultures, University of Calgary
[email protected]
[email protected]
Second language (L2) learners often produce incorrectly stressed words, which can have a negative impact on the comprehensibility of utterances (e.g., Trofimovich & Isaacs, 2012). However,
the source such errors is still unknown: Is it merely an issue of performance or are the underlying
representations of the words non-nativelike? Morphologically complex words provide an interesting test case for this question, as suffixes can influence stress placement in a principled way.
We examine how English-German L2 learners process licit and illicit word stress patterns in
morphologically complex words in an ERP (event related potential) study. In a further production
study, we determine how they produce similar words with predictable lexical stress. Finally, we
gain further insight into participants’ metalinguistic awareness of lexical stress assignment rules
through the use of a think-aloud protocol. Taken together, the data enable us to determine the role
of explicit awareness in the processing and production of L2 German word stress.
!
In the ERP study, 22 intermediate (B1 and B2) level English-German L2 learners heard a series
of trisyllabic German words from one of the following conditions over loudspeakers:
a. morphologically complex German words with a predictable stress pattern based on the
word’s suffix (e.g., ˈ Heiter+keit, Univers+iˈtät, Demonsˈtr+ant); or
b. morphologically complex German words of Latin origin (neoclassical word-formation)
with English cognates in which the cognate differs in stress assignment (e.g., Eleˈf+ant,
Mineˈr+al).
Half of the words were correctly stressed, and the remainder incorrectly stressed. The participants’ task was to evaluate whether the word they heard was stressed correctly or not, as has been
done in previous studies (e.g., Domahs et al., 2008). Responses to the explicit task along with
electrophysiological (i.e., EEG) responses were measured to determine whether there are differences in the processing of correctly vs. incorrectly stressed words. !
For the production portion of the study, a comparable group of 24 English-German L2 learners
produced similar German words as in the processing task, but the words in production study contained both three and four syllables, and an additional condition was also added: words with a
final syllable containing schwa. After they produced the words, participants completed a thinkaloud protocol along the lines of Osbourne (2003). That is, they listened to their own productions
and provided information about the rule they followed when they assigned stress to the words.
!
Preliminary findings indicate that participants are relatively unaware of morphological and
phonological regularities in lexical stress assignment in German and that they tend to rely upon a
single across-the-board rule for lexical stress assignment when making their decisions. !
References
Domahs, U., Wiese, R., Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I., & Schlesewsky, M. (2008). The processing
of German word stress: Evidence for the prosodic hierarchy. Phonology, 25,1–36.
Osbourne, A. G. (2003). Pronunciation strategies of advanced ESOL learners. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 41, 131–141.
Trofimovich, P., & Isaacs, T. (2012). Disentangling accent from comprehensibility. Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 15(4), 905–916.
Examining ‘opposing’ processes in Quebec French mid vowels
Jeffrey Lamontagne, University of Ottawa
INTRODUCTION
The mid vowels in French are reportedly subject to the loi de position, a long-proclaimed
tendency to be pronounced as mid-high when in open final syllables and as mid-low when in
closed final syllables, thereby losing their contrast (Walker, 1984). This study examines this
claim in Quebec French, which is notably cited for its apparent counterexample to the
process: an “opposite” alternation causing [ɛ] in open syllables to lower to [æ] rather than to
raise to [e], as would be predicted by the loi de position (Morin, 1988). Although the dialect
figures prominently in the debate as a result of this apparent exception, empirical and
quantitative analysis of the two processes have not be conducted in tandem and are sparse
individually.
METHOD
This study exploits the Laurentian sub-corpus (Côté, 2012) of the Phonologie du français
contemporain corpus (Durand et al., 2002, 2009) to examine data from twenty-three speakers,
chosen such that there were two speakers for each combination of age class (young or old),
gender (male or female) and region (Chicoutimi, eastern Quebec and western Quebec) except for
young males from eastern Quebec due to data availability. The recordings were aligned using
Milne’s (2011) forced aligner and then the final-syllable mid vowels were extracted using a Praat
script, which notably measures the first formant and stress correlates (pitch and intensity), in
addition to coding for the surrounding segments and syllable type. As this pilot study uses
GoldVarb (Sankoff, Tagliamonte and Smith, 2005), the vowels’ distributions were used to
generate discrete allophone categories for the statistical analyses.
RESULTS
In total, 18 340 tokens were analysed. Regarding contexts refused by the loi de position,
younger speakers produced mid-low vowels in open syllables 11% of the time (718 of 6244
tokens), compared to older speakers’ 16% of the time (1220 of 7531 tokens), and the younger
speakers produced mid-high vowels in closed syllables 48% of the time (922 of 1939 tokens) as
compared to older speakers’ 43% (1171 of 2716 tokens). Stress correlates were found to be more
significant than syllable structure (more significant for younger speakers for raising and
lowering, but not longer significant for mid-low variant selection) in the case of underlying midlow vowels. For underlying mid-high vowels, syllable structure was not selected as significant,
but the stress correlates showed an important contribution that increases in apparent time.
DISCUSSION
This pilot study suggests that the loi de position may be gaining influence in Quebec
French. However, the significance of stress correlates has greater implications. This pilot study
firstly lends credence to claims of a developing weight-sensitive stress pattern in Quebec French,
whereas Standard French is traditionally analysed as having strictly word-final (or purely
prosodic) stress (Armstrong, 1999). Secondly, it also suggests that the loi de position may more
importantly describe a conspiracy against mid-low vowels in open syllables and against mid-high
vowels in closed syllables not finally, but in stressed syllables.
REFERENCES
Armstrong, Susan Dawn. 1999. Stress and Weight in Québec French. Master’s thesis, University
of Calgary: Calgary, Canada.
Côté, M.-H.2012. “Le projet PFC et la géophonologie du français laurentien”. Presented at the
Les Français d'Ici colloquium 2012, Sherbrooke.
Durand, J., B. Laks & C. Lyche 2002. “La phonologie du français contemporain: usages, variétés
et structure”. In C. Pusch & W. Raible, réd. Romanistische Korpuslinguistik- Korpora und
gesprochene Sprache/Romance Corpus Linguistics - Corpora and Spoken Language.
Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 93-106.
Durand, J., B. Laks & C. Lyche 2009. “Le projet PFC: une source de données primaires
structures”. In J. Durand, B. Laks & C. Lyche, réd. Phonologie, variation et accents du
français. Paris : Hermès, 19-61.
Milne, Peter. 2011. The acoustic properties of /R/ allophones and their distribution in a corpus
of Canadian French. University of Ottawa comprehensive exam.
Morin, Yves-Charles. 1988. “La loi de position?”. Revue québécoise de linguistique 17 (1): 237242.
Sankoff, David, Sali Tagliamonte, & Eric Smith. 2005. Goldvarb X: A variable rule application
for Macintosh and Windows. Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto.
Walker, Douglas C. 1984. The Pronunciation of Laurentian French. Ottawa, Canada : University
of Ottawa Press.
Blake Lewis
The Syntax and Semantics of Demonstratives: A DP External Approach
Issue: Standard syntactic and semantic theories preclude the notion that Dems, (e.g. this
and that) and Det(erminers) (e.g. the and a) can co-occur in the same noun phrase, since
they are traditionally classified as the same category (Wiltschko 2009). However, Classical
Greek data is problematic for such a theory, as the data in (1) shows that Dems and Dets
do in fact co-occur.
(1) a.
ekeinos ho anthropos
that
the man
'that man'
(Morwood 2001: 145)
Where are Dem(onstratives) located in syntactic and semantic structures and what
information and features do they express?
Syntax: Using Classical Greek data, I show that Dems are neither Dets (contra Wiltschko
2009), nor adjectives (contra Leu 2008). The primary evidence to support this claim is due
to the behaviour of Dems in definiteness spreading constructions (Alexiadou et al. 2007).
Giusti (1994), Rosen (2003), Guardiano (2012), and Roberts (2011) claim that Dems are
DP internal (below Dº) and that they are located in a low position above nP. I suggest that
Dems are in their own phrase projection above the DP, which I base on empirical
evidence from Greek, Latin, Michif, Irish, and Basque. I show that this alternative solution
accounts for all the data, without movement violations (Chomsky 1995), which is found in
DP internal accounts. Also, I show that this alternative solution is optimal, since it can
handle all the data in the literature, including Dem extraction data, where a Dem can
appear in a final position with the rest of the DP extracted into a higher position such as in
Latin (Iovino 2011), or as shown in the Basque surface order data in (2).
(2)
lau sagar eder
hauek
four apple beautiful these
‘these four beautiful apples‘
(Artiagoitia 2013: 74)
Semantics: I further show that co-occurrence is problematic for semantic reasons as well,
since Dets are standardly analyzed as the type <<e,t>e> (Heim & Kratzer 1998). If Dems
and Dets are understood to have the same semantic function, one would not be able to
take the other as an argument. I suggest that Dems would need to be of the type <e,e>,
which takes an obligatory Det, even if it is unpronounced. I base this on the presence/
absence of features, such as definiteness, since Dems can, but do not need to be definite,
as shown in (3), where the Dem is comparable to the indefinite article in English.
(3) a.
so this guy bumped into me at the pub and spilt my drink!
b.
so a/*the guy bumped into me at the pub...'
Features: Additionally, Dems appear to show temporal features in Languages like
Blackfoot (Algonquian) and Aleut (Bergsland 1997). Certain Dems exhibit a situational
time (time relative to the main verb) reading (Elbourne 2008), where only the change in
Dem alters the tense interpretation of the entire clause. For instance, in Blackfoot “that
man kicks the rock” is interpreted as past time, while “this man kicks the rock” would be
interpreted as present time. Furthermore, by keeping the Dems external to the DP,
temporal features can easily be read by the verb to provide situational time interpretations.
References:
Alexiadou, Artemis, Liliane MV Haegeman, & Melita Stavrou. 2007. Noun phrase in the
generative perspective. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Blake Lewis
Artiagoitia, Xabier. 2013. Some arguments for complement-head order in Basque DPs.
Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca Julio de Urquijo. 71-92.
Bergsland, Knut. 1997. Aleut Grammar: Unangam Tunuganaan Achixaasix. A Descriptive
Reference Grammar of the Alteutian, Pribilof, and Commander Islands Aleut Language.
Alaska Native Language Center Research Paper Number 10.
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Elbourne, Paul. 2008. Demonstratives as individual concepts. Linguistics and Philosophy
31: 409-466.
Giusti, Giuliana. 1994. Enclitic articles and double definiteness: A comparative analysis of
nominal structure in Romance and Germanic. The Linguistic Review 11.3-4: 241-255.
Guardiano, Cristina. 2012. Demonstratives, word order and the DP between syntax and
semantics: Crosslinguistic remarks. Studies in Greek Linguistics 32: 100-115.
Heim, Irene, & Kratzer, Angelika. 1998. Semantics in generative grammar. Blackwell
Publishing. Malden: MA.
Iovino, Rossella. 2011. Word Order in Latin Nominal Expression: The Syntax of
Demonstratives. Formal Linguistics and the Teaching of Latin. Cambridge Scholars
Publishing: Newcastle. 51-64.
Leu, Thomas. 2008. The internal syntax of determiners. PhD dissertation. New York
University: New York.
Morwood, James. 2001. Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek. Oxford University Press:
New York.
Roberts, Ian. 2011. FOFC in DP: Universal 20 and the nature of demonstratives.
Manuscript, University of Cambridge.
Rosen, Nicole. 2003. Demonstrative Position in Michif. The Canadian Journal of
Linguistics. 48(1/2). 39-69.
Wiltschko, Martina. 2009. What’s in D and how did it get there? In J Ghomeshi, I. Paul, M.
Wiltschko, eds. Determiners: universals and variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
25-66.
Compound representation and individual experience
Gary Libben1, Kaitlin Curtiss1 & Silke Weber2
1
Brock University
2
University of Calgary
In recent years, new psycholinguistic research has advanced the understanding of the
conditions under which the meanings of compound constituents are activated in online
lexical processing (e.g., Marelli & Luzzatti, 2012). At the same time, there has been
considerable evidence that patterns of individual experience drive the development of
meaning relations within compound words (Libben, Westbury & Jarema, 2012). This
paper presents new evidence regarding the effect of such experience and the role of
individual variation in compound representation and processing.
The results of two experiments are presented. Experiment 1 employed a combined lexical
recognition-production experiment using the P3 paradigm (Libben, Weber, & Miwa,
2012). The paradigm employs Primed Progressive Demasking, reading aloud, and typed
word production to yield dependent variables for reading latency and accuracy, interletter typing times, and whole-word production time.
In Experiment 2, the P3 paradigm was employed in dyadic word recognition and
production. In this experimental paradigm, two participants are tested at the same time.
One member of the dyad sees progressively demasked stimuli and says them aloud. The
other participant types the compound stimuli (as one would in a classic dictation task).
In total, 98 participants were tested. Experiment 1 yielded evidence that individual
participant characteristics including education, linguistic background and metalinguistic
knowledge affected performance on both tasks. The results of Experiment 2 showed than
persons tested in pairs showed higher levels of accuracy and lower latencies that those
tested alone. Moreover, there were effects of the differences between the two participants
of a dyad in terms of their individual characteristics. These effects are captured using
Visual Participant Profiles, a new data visualization technique. This technique may
enable us to capture multivariate participant data and their relations to patterns of
experimental results.
References
Libben, G., Westbury, C., & Jarema, G. (2012). Embracing complexity. In G. Libben, G.
Jarema, & C. Westbury (Eds.) Methodological and Analytic Frontiers in Lexical
Research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins (pp. 1-12).
Libben, G., Weber, S., & Miwa, K. (2012). P3: A technique for the study of perception,
production, and participant properties. The Mental Lexicon, 7:2, 237-248.
Marelli, M., & Luzzatti, C.G. (2012). Frequency Effects in the Processing of Italian
Nominal Compounds: Modulation of Headedness and Semantic Transparency. Journal of
Memory and Language, 66, 644-664.
The optionality property of Kiswahili applicatives
Jianxun Liu
University of Victoria
This paper reports the optionality properties of Kiswahili applicatives observed in
fieldwork. Adjunct thematic roles can be introduced in prepositional phrases (PP) or realized as
applicatives in Kiswahili (Ngonyani, 1998; Port, 1981). Ngonyani (1998) observes that in a
clause containing both a direct object (DO) and an instrumental in post-verbal positions, the
instrumental cannot be realized as applicative. Ngonyani attributes this to the existence of the
post-verbal DO and generalizes this with the restriction on the post-verbal realization of both
DO and applied instrumental. Based on our fieldwork, we argue that whether or not an
instrumental can be realized as applicative is not affected by the existence/absence of the
post-verbal DO, but is related to its position in the clause, pre-verbal or post-verbal. Our
argument is evidenced by the following data.
First, in some intransitives, the instrumental still cannot be realized as applicative in a
post-verbal position. In (1) the instrumental kisu ‘knife’ is obligatorily introduced in a PP,
though this clause contains no DO.
(1). [m.tʍu huju' a- li- khath (*-i) -a *(kua) kisu]
man this 3sg. Past chop Appl FV by knife
The man chopped with a knife.
Second, for some clauses when the DO is fronted to a pre-verbal position, the instrumental
cannot be realized as an applicative in a post-verbal position notwithstanding (2).
(2). [hi ' ni ɟ iama ambajɔ m.ʧuhuju a- li- khath (*-i) -a *(kua) kisu]
this is meet that
man 3sg. Past cut Appl FV with knife
This is the meat that the man chopped with a knife.
Third, when appearing in a pre-verbal position, instrumental can, or even must, be realized
as an applicative (3).
(3) [hikhi ni khisu amɓaʧɔ mʧu huju a- li- khath *(-i) -a anijama]
this is knife which man this 3sg. Past cut Appl FV meat
This is the knife with which the man chopped the meat.
This pre-verbal tendency of applicatives also holds for other thematic roles including goals
and locatives. Goals in Kiswahili, for example, when appearing in a post-verbal position, can be
realized in either applicatives or PPs. However, only the applicative form is grammatical when
the goal is extracted to a pre-verbal position (4).
(4) [huju n̩diɔ m̩bwa (*kwa) ambajɛ paka a- li- m- kimbi *(-li) -a]
this be dog with which cat 3sg. past OM run Appl FV
This is the dog toward which the cat ran.
In summary this study finds that in Kiswahili the applicative construction is preferred or
even obligatory when an adjunct thematic role appears in a pre-verbal position. To account for
these word order facts in Kiswahili within the current minimalist framework can be an
interesting topic in future studies.
1
References
Baker, Mark. (1988). Theta theory and the syntax of applicatives in Chichewa. Natural
Language and Linguistic Theory 6: 353-389.
Gerdts, Donna B., and Lindsay Whaley. (1991). Two types of oblique applicatives in
Kinyarwanda. In Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics 4, ed. by K. Hunt,
T. Perry, and V. Samiian, 138-151. California State University, Fresno, CA.
Jeong, Youngmi. (2006). The landscape of applicatives. Doctoral dissertation, University of
Maryland.
Kimenyi, Alexandre. (1980). A Relational Grammar of Kinyarwanda. University of California
Press, Berkeley.
Ngonyani, Deo. (1998). Properties of applied objects in Kiswahili and Kindendeules. Studies
in African Linguistics 27: 67-97.
Peterson, David. (2007). Applicative constructions. Oxford University Press, New York.
Port, Robert. (1981). The applied suffix in Swahili. Studies in African Linguistics 12: 71-15.
2
From a classifier language to a mass-count language: What can historical data show us?
Danica MacDonald, University of Calgary
This paper investigates both the historical development and the modern-day uses of the
Korean morpheme -tul. Korean, like other Eastern Asian languages, is considered to be a
classifier language. A predominant property of classifier languages is that they lack pluralmarking (Allen 1980, Chierchia 1998); however, Korean poses an interesting problem for this
claim since it appears to have an optional plural-marker: -tul (Kang 1994, Baek 2002, Kim 2005).
Some researchers propose that it is not a plural-marker at all, but rather a marker of information
structure marking distributivity (Park 2008) or focus (Song 1975). Korean -tul has been studied
extensively; however, there is little consensus as to its distribution or function. My research takes
a new approach to the analysis of -tul by examining the historical development of this morpheme.
The goal of this paper is to shed light on the modern-day uses of -tul through its past. The general
question this paper addresses is whether the development of -tul is consistent with the properties
of a classifier language and whether, based on that development, Korean still qualifies as a
classifier language.
Park (2010) proposes that Modern Korean -tul has grammaticalized from an autonomous
noun to an inflectional morpheme and then, subsequently, develops into an agreement marker. I
observed a different developmental path for Korean -tul. Like Park (2010), I suggest that Middle
Korean -tul underwent grammaticalization. However, I also suggest that -tul was originally used
to mark focus on nouns that should be interpreted as plural, rather than functioning as a uniquely
plural-marking morpheme. Under this approach, -tul would not have been optional, but would
have only been used in certain specific contexts. I also propose that if –tul functions like an
plural-marker today, it is not due to the development from Middle Korean, rather, it is, at least
partially, due to language contact. My study is based on a corpus analysis which investigates the
historical use and development of -tul. The study comprised 125 newspaper articles which
covered, approximately, a 100-year period (1924 – 2011). I specifically looked for data relevant
to the distribution of -tul, the number of instances of -tul in the article, the type of nouns which tul attached to, as well as cases where a plural interpretation was clear, but -tul was not used.
This research revealed that in the earlier data, there were very few cases of -tul. The cases
which were found were limited to use with human nouns (e.g. haksaeng ‘student’) and the use of
-tul did not extend to other animate (e.g. khokkiri ‘elephant’) or inanimate (giep ‘enterprise’)
nouns. In the early data, -tul did not seem to be functioning as a plural marker. Rather, -tul
seemed to be functioning as a way to place emphasis or focus on the noun to which it attached. In
the later texts, -tul is used more frequently and its use is extended to additionally include nonhuman nouns, and later concept-denoting abstract nouns. Corbett (2000) proposes an
implicational ranking of semantic classes for languages that do not mark number for all count
nouns: if a language marks number on nouns referring to inanimates, then it must also mark it on
animate nouns. We could expect that Corbett's Animacy Hierarchy is mirrored in diachrony, such
that if number is introduced as a morphological category, it will first appear on human nouns,
then be extended to other animates, next to inanimates, and finally to nouns referring to abstract
concepts. This appears to be supported by the Korean data.
The newspaper data challenges Korean’s status as a classifier language. It appears that
Korean started out as a classifier language, not unlike other typical classifier languages, but the
language appears to be undergoing a shift towards a mass-count system. Addressing the issue
from a historical perspective is something not previously undertaken, but it provides a unique
insight into the question of the status of Korean. My presentation will focus on the corpus data
and its analysis and will discuss the implications of these findings for the modern-day uses of –tul
and Korean’s status as a classifier language.
References
Allan, K. (1980). Nouns and countability. Language 56: 541-67.
Baek, M.-H. (2002). Handkwuke pokswu uymi yenkwa. [A study on Korean plural senses.]
Discourse and Recognition. 9(2): 59-78.
Chierchia, G. (1998). Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6:339405.
Corbett, G. (2000). Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kang, B.-M. (1994). Plurality and other semantic aspects of common nouns in Korean. Journal
of East Asian Linguistics 3: 1-24.
Kim, C.-H. (2005). The Korean plural marker tul and its implications. PhD Dissertation
(University of Delaware).
Park, S. (2010). Grammaticalization of plurality marker tul. Seoul International Conference on
Linguistics.
Park, S.-Y. (2008). Plural marking in classifier languages: a case study of the so-called plural
marking –tul in Korean. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 28, 281-295.
Song, J.-J. (1997). The so-called plural copy in Korean as a marker of distribution and focus.
Journal of Pragmatics 27, 203-224.
Allophonic variation in English /l/: production, perception, and segmentation
Sara Mackenzie1, Erin Olson2, Meghan Clayards3, Michael Wagner3
Memorial University1, Massachusetts Institute of Technology2, McGill University3
The distribution of allophones often depends on word, morpheme, or syllable boundaries,
and thus encodes prosodic or morphological information. One such case is the distribution of
dark and light /l/ in North American English. Light [l] is often claimed to appear in onsets and
dark [ɫ] in rimes (e.g. Halle & Mohanan 1985). Instrumental studies have provided evidence for
a more complex pattern, with the darkness of intervocalic /l/ being affected by morphological
constituency (e.g. Sproat & Fujimura 1993, Lee-Kim et al. 2013). If the distribution of dark and
light /l/ reliably correlates with the location of word, morpheme, and syllable boundaries, it may
provide important cues to speech segmentation in perception. This talk reports on a series of
experiments on the production and perception of dark and light /l/. These studies investigate the
question of how speakers use allophonic cues to encode linguistic boundaries and whether
listeners make use of these cues in determining the location of boundaries in perception.
In the perception study, subjects listened to two-word nonce strings. All strings had a
C1VC2VC3VC4V shape in which C3 is ambiguous between the final C of word 1 and the initial C
of word 2 (e.g. [desiledu]). For each string they heard, subjects were asked to choose between
two, 2-word orthographic representations with the choices varying only in the location of a space
indicating a word boundary (e.g. desi ledu vs. desil edu). Some strings contained a dark /l/ in C3
position and others contained a light /l/. Stimuli were produced by one of the authors reading the
strings aloud without a pause. Sound files were cross-spliced; the dark [ɫ] condition consists of a
C1VC2VC3 string containing a dark [ɫ] followed by a VC4V originally produced following a
light [l] and vice versa.
Results from 60 participants show that presence of dark versus light /l/ played a
significant role in segmentation. Light [l] was a strong cue to word-initial position, with listeners
choosing the orthographic representation with /l/ in the initial position of word 2 at a rate of
92.4% when presented with a string containing light /l/. When participants heard a string
containing dark [ɫ], they chose the orthographic form with /l/ in the initial position of word 2
43.8% of the time.
This perception study shows that listeners make use of the distinction between light and
dark /l/ when locating word boundaries. However, because word boundaries coincide with
morpheme and syllable boundaries, this result does not clarify the specific environments which
condition the variation in production - or the type of boundaries which listeners’ recover in
perception. We attempt to address these questions in a series of production studies which elicit
productions of /l/ in a variety of morpho-syntactic contexts. Productions of /l/ were measured for
F2-F1 values, an acoustic property known to play a role in the distinction between light and dark
/l/ (e.g. Sproat & Fujimura 1993). We found word-initial /l/s (woo lasses) to be lighter than
word-final ones (fool asses). Within words, we found morpheme-initial /l/s (free-ly) to be lighter
than morpheme-final /l/s (meal-y). Contrary to Hayes (2000) and Sproat and Fujimura (1993),
we found no difference in /l/ darkness between morpheme-final /l/s (kneel-ing) and morphemeinternal ones (ceiling), with /l/ being realized as dark in both environments.
Overall, our production studies found light /l/ only in morpheme-initial position and dark
/l/ in morpheme-final and morpheme-internal position. This is consistent with an account in
which dark /l/ is the basic variant for our speakers and /l/-lightening is a form of articulatory
strengthening which occurs following prosodic boundaries with the presence of such boundaries
being triggered by morphological structure. This constituent-initial /l/-lightening serves as a cue
for listeners to disambiguate between multiple structural parses of a segmental string.
References
Halle, M. & Mohanan K. P. (1985) Segmental phonology of modern English. Linguistic Inquiry
16. 57-116.
Hayes, B. (2000) Gradient well-formedness in Optimality Theory. In Dekkers, J., van der Leeuw,
F. and van de Weijer, J. (eds.) Optimality Theory: Phonology, Syntax, and Acquisition
Oxford University Press. 88-120.
Lee-Kim, S., Davidson, L., & S. Hwang. 2013. Morphological effects on the articulation of
English intervocalic /l/. Laboratory Phonology 4(2).
Sproat, R. & O. Fujimura. (1993) Allophonic Variation in English /l/ and its implications for
phonetic implementation. Journal of Phonetics 21. 291–311.
L2 Spanish speakers' perception of secondary cues
in Y/N question and statement intonation
Olivia Marasco
University of Toronto
English broad focus statements and yes-no (Y/N) questions differ not only in their intonation
pattern but also in their word order. In Spanish, however, the only difference between these two
types of utterances is the intonation pattern. The word order and number of words is exactly the
same:
(1) Rompió la mesa del comedor.
(2) ¿Rompió la mesa del comedor?
(He broke the dining room table.)
(Did he break the dining room table?)
English speakers acquiring Spanish must learn that in their L2 they rely solely on intonation
patterns to distinguish these two types of utterances. While Y/N questions in both languages
make use of a final rising contour, other intonation cues differ, in some cases, quite significantly.
The specific focus of the current project is the initial part of the utterance, particularly initial
boundary tone height and pre-nuclear peak height .
The research questions guiding this project are: 1) Can L2 Spanish (L1 English) listeners
detect intonational phonetic differences not present in the equivalent structures of their L1? 2) Do
advanced L2 speakers possess the form-meaning mapping of these structures? Spanish signals a
Y/N question from the very beginning of the utterance by making use of a higher initial boundary
tone as well as a higher pre-nuclear peak with respect to its comparable statement. This height
difference is not used in English to signal the presence of Y/N questions and comparable
statements (English: Pierrehumbert, 1980; Bartels, 1999; Spanish: Sosa, 1999; Hualde, 2005).
The predictions for this study were: 1) participants would be more successful in the
discrimination of acoustic differences rather than the identification of the form-meaning
mapping; 2) the discrimination task would have a categorical outcome while the form-mapping
meaning will show a greater variety of answers that would distribute along a continuum.
Ten advanced L2 Spanish (L1 English) speakers took part in the current study, which
consisted of discrimination and identification tasks. The discrimination task was an AX task
where participants heard 3 blocks of 15 pairs of utterances that were one of the following: i)
identical, ii) different in pre-nuclear peak height or iii) different in initial boundary tone height.
Half of these utterances had one manipulated parameter. Both declarative and interrogative bases
were used for manipulation. The identification task used the same recordings from the previous
task but in this case participants were explicitly asked whether they were hearing a statement or a
question. In order to avoid interference from the primary cue, the final boundary tone of each
utterance was masked by a barking dog sound.
Preliminary findings of both tasks are reported here. In the discrimination task, differences of
peak height resulted in a 'different' response while differences in initial boundary tone did not
have the same response, even in cases where two utterances had initial boundary tone differences
of over 200 Hz. In the identification task, utterances with both bases were identified as questions
or as statements when their prenuclear peak height was raised or lowered respectively. This
means that if a statement base had its peak raised, it would be identified as a question. The same
did not occur, however, when the initial boundary tone was raised or lowered even by several
hundred hertz. When it comes to intonation not all phonetic parameters carry the same weight.
Although the initial boundary tone is the first thing listeners hear, the cue for utterance type
1
seems to come from the pre-nuclear peak for these L2 listeners. The expected outcome was a
difference between tasks, but what emerges from the findings thus far is that listeners are
successful within each task based on the particular intonational feature that is being highlighted.
References
Bartels, C. (1999). The Intonation of English Statements and Questions. New York: Garland
Publishing Inc.
Hualde, J. I. (2005). The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge, M.A., Cambridge University Press.
Pierrehumbert, J. (1980). The Phonology and Phonetics of English intonation (Doctoral
dissertation). MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Sosa, J. M. (1999). La entonación del español: su estructura fónica, variabilidad y dialectología.
Madrid: Cátedra.
2
Markedness in number features: Evidence from Ganggalida (Yukulta) Jessica Mathie, University of Toronto This paper presents data from Ganggalida (Tangkic family, Australia) which suggests that the featural representation of plural number is more highly marked than dual in this language. This challenges the number feature geometry proposed by Harley and Ritter (2002), in which dual is more highly marked than plural. I show that the Ganggalida facts follow naturally from Cowper’s (2005) geometry. Ganggalida normally has a three-­‐way singular/dual/plural distinction in its pronominal clitic system. However, in particular contexts (namely, clauses with third person non-­‐singular subjects acting on second person non-­‐singular objects) the contrast between dual and plural is neutralised. In neutralised contexts the normal dual clitic ‘rr’ cross-­‐references both dual (1a) and plural (1b) entities. In these contexts it has a ‘non-­‐singular’ meaning, analogous to the meaning of a plural in a two-­‐way singular/plural number system. (1a) 3DU>2DU ngamathu-­‐yarrngga=rrawa-­rra garna-­‐ja wurlank-­‐i girrwa gunawuna-­‐ntha mother-­‐two.ABS=2DU.DAT-­‐DU cook.IND food-­‐LOC 2DU.DAT child-­‐DAT Your mothers are cooking food for you two children. (Keen 1983:206#34b) (1b) 3PL>2PL dathin-­‐da=rrawa-­rr-­‐ingg-­‐a gurri-­‐ja gilwan-­‐ji that-­‐ABS=2DU.DAT-­‐DU-­‐NPRES-­‐RLS look-­‐IND 2PL-­‐OBL Those fellows are looking at you lot. (Keen 1983:236#155a) This pattern is captured naturally by Cowper’s (2005) feature geometry, given in (2). In Ganggalida’s regular three-­‐way system (2a) the dual vocabulary item (VI) ‘rr’ spells out [>1] and the plural VI ‘l’ spells out the dependant feature [>2]. In the neutralised system, however, only a subset of the plural features is spelled out; spellout of [>2] is blocked and [>1] is spelled out by the dual VI instead. This model accounts for the distribution of VIs and allows for unique and consistent lexical feature specifications for each VI. (2) Cowper (2005) (boxed features are spelled out) (a) three-­way system (b) neutralised system (singular) (dual) (plural) (singular) (dual) (plural) [#] [#] [#] [#] [#] [#] >1 [>1] [>1] [>1] [>2] [>2] VI Ø/rn rr l Ø/rn rr rr The geometry proposed by Harley and Ritter (2002), given in (3), does not effectively capture the Ganggalida system. Under Harley and Ritter’s approach the dual VI would normally spell out [group, minimal] while the plural VI spells out [group] (3a). In neutralised contexts, the dual must also be able to spell out [group] in order to cross-­‐
reference plural entities (3b). (3) Harley & Ritter (2002) (a) three-­way system (b) neutralised system (singular) (plural) (dual) (singular) (plural) (dual) [#] [#] [#] [#] [#] [#] [minimal] [group] [group][minimal] [minimal] [group] [group][minimal] Ø/rn l rr Ø/rn rr rr This forces us to claim that the dual VI has two lexical representations, [group, minimal] and [group], and also results in there being two VIs with the identical lexical representation [group]. This account has less explanatory power due to these added specifications. Ganggalida data, therefore, provides evidence in support of a highly marked plural featural representation, and against a highly marked dual. References Cowper, Elizabeth. 2005. A note on number. Linguistics Inquiry 36(3). 441-­‐455. Harley, Heidi & Elizabeth Ritter. 2002. Person and number in pronouns: a feature-­‐
geometric analysis. Language 78. 482-­‐526. Keen, Sandra. 1983. Yukulta. In RMW Dixon & BJ Blake (eds.) Handbook of Australian Languages Vol. 3 Canberra: Australian National University Press. 190-­‐304. Monica McMillan University of Western Ontario Because Twitter: Linguistic Strategies for Brevity in Internet Speak
Twitter is a social networking site with 280 million active users every month. It provides
brief and interactive communication and is used for everything from advertising and
networking to sharing big news with friends. Twitter, along with other social networking
sites (e.g. Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit), is playing a pivotal role in the current evolution of
the English language. Its famous 140-character limit for status updates forces users to be
brief, precise, and creative in order to convey their message.
The primary research question posed in this paper is: What linguistic strategies do
Twitter users employ to clearly convey meaning in such a brief space? The secondary
line of inquiry examines the pragmatic inferences these usages carry. This work-inprogress corpus study will examine 3 linguistic strategies that have evolved from this
unique linguistic environment.
First, ‘because X.’ This construction conveys (roughly): “I’m so engrossed by this that I
can’t be bothered to explain further” or “the reasoning is so obvious it doesn’t need to be
elaborated.” As in 1):
1) “@OhLookItsNiamh: Can’t study because sleep but can’t sleep because study”
Second: ‘I can’t even,’ which conveys a sense of “This is so
exciting/outrageous/ridiculous (etc.) that I’ve lost the ability to form proper sentences.”
2) “@niskakayla: MY MISSION CALL IS HERE!!! I can’t even. I’m unable to
even. Ahhhh!!”
The third phrase in 2) “I’m unable to even” is also interesting, as it goes against the
briefness constraint that normally limits tweets.
Third: abbreviations, such as ‘imo’ (in my opinion), ‘lol’ (laugh out loud) and ‘idk’ (I
don’t know), among others. It has been said that common Internet-speak abbreviations
have evolved into pragmatic particles. Specifically, that ‘lol’ is now used to convey
empathy, rather than it’s traditional meaning that the speaker finds something funny
(McWhorter, 2013). An example of this usage can be seen in 3):
3) “@marquiepeyton: if it wasn’t for whit I would run away lol bc I hate everyone”
4) “@elfifaplayer: Voice > X factor. Much better signers and judges IMO”
5) “@CapedCrusaider: idk who’s Girl Scout cookies those were but I ate some.”
The presentation will examine instances of these three structures found in a corpus of
Tweets; when they are used, who is using them, and what they mean in the various
contexts in which they appear. Conclusions will be made regarding the intended meaning
of these structures and the overall effectiveness of them. Inferences will be drawn
regarding the overall effect of Internet speak and online social interactions on language
evolution.
References
McWhorter, John. 2013. Txting is killing Language. JK!!! Electronic Document.
www.ted.com/talks/john_mcwhorter_txtng_is_killing_language_jk.html. Accessed
December 18, 2013.
Monica McMillan University of Western Ontario Étude expérimentale de l’interprétation des questions rhétoriques
Nesrine Mejri et E. Allyn Smith, L’Université du Québec à Montréal
Dans cette communication, on examine les facteurs sémantico-pragmatiques qui rentrent en jeu dans
l’interprétation des questions rhétoriques (QR) en français. Notre travail représente la première étude
consacrée aux QR dans un cadre expérimental.
Travaux antécédents: Les QR représentent un phénomène complexe très peu étudié, surtout en français.
Elles se distinguent des questions de demande d'information (QI) dans la mesure où elles sont assertives et
n'exigent pas de réponse informative (voir (1)).
(1) Est-ce que l'argent fait le bonheur ? Oui/Non. (réponse informative)
C’est vrai. (réponse non-informative)
Borillo (1981) propose que les verbes d’opinion comme penser et les adverbes épistémiques (vraiment,
réellement) favorisent l’interprétation rhétorique d’une question en français. Rohde (2006) considère que la
présence du contenu véhiculé par la question dans le savoir partagé (SP) des locuteurs favorise son
interprétation rhétorique. Des travaux connexes (Romero et Han 2004, Romero 2005, 2006) portant sur les
questions biaisées (des QI où la polarité de la réponse attendue devient claire, avec l’ajout de n’est-ce pas,
par exemple) sont consacrés au mot anglais really (‘vraiment’). Romero propose l'opérateur VERUM pour
la dénotation du mot vraiment dont le rôle est de changer la dénotation d’une question comme ‘Est-ce que
Marie viendra vraiment?’ d’une question où on demande si Marie va venir à une question où on demande si
on est certain de vouloir ajouter l’information qu’elle va venir à notre SP. Par contraste, les théories avancés
par vanRooy (2003) et Rohde (2006) proposent un calcul de la prévisibilité d'un ensemble de réponses pour
expliquer le même phénomène. Nous voulions savoir si : (i) les facteurs proposés par Borillo et Rohde
correspondent aux perceptions des locuteurs, (ii) certains facteurs biaisent l'effet rhétorique plus que
d’autres, (iii) il y a un effet de renforcement qui se produit quand 2 ou 3 facteurs se combinent, et (iv) la
perception des locuteurs pourrait être modélisée avec VERUM ou le calcul de la prévisibilité des réponses.
Expérience : Nous avons conçu un sondage où nous avons testé les 3 facteurs suivants: vraiment, penser, et
SP à travers la manipulation des 2 valeurs présence/absence de chaque facteur. Cela nous a donné 8
conditions pour chacune des 8 questions testées en contexte; il y avait donc 8 sondages écrits en design
carré latin. 60 étudiants universitaire ont complété ces sondages. Leur tâche consistait à : (i) lire un contexte
particulier faisant état du SP ou non de 2 locuteurs (Éric et Julie) ; (ii) lire à chaque fois un dialogue entre
ces deux locuteurs comprenant une question cible comme en (2) ; et (iii) répondre à la question : « Selon
vous, est-ce que Julie attend une réponse informative de Éric ? » en choisissant un numéro sur une échelle
Likert de 6 points.
(2) Éric : Geneviève pleure encore dans sa chambre. Julie : Est-ce que tu penses vraiment que Geneviève
pleure parce qu'elle a raté son permis?
Résultats : L’analyse statistique (via t-test) des résultats normalisés montre que les seuls conditions qui
favorisent l’interpretation rhétorique sont (i) vraiment, (ii), vraiment + SP, et (iii) vraiment + SP + penser.
En d'autres termes, contrairement aux hypothèses avancées respectivement par Borillo et Rohde, penser ne
favorise pas l’interprétation rhétorique, et le SP ne le favorise pas systématiquement (seulement s'il est
combiné avec vraiment). Vraiment favorise l’effet rhétorique, ce qui est renforcé particulièrement en
combinaison avec le SP. Nous montrons comment ces résultats posent problème pour VERUM et pour le
calcul de van Rooy et Rohde avant de proposer l’analyse suivante : si on suppose que vraiment implicite
que notre loculteur sera surpris par la proposition en question (Romero 2005, Potts 2003), alors l’emploi de
ce mot est incompatible avec la certitude réprensentée par le SP. Par conséquent, leur co-occurence signale
l’impossibilité d’une vraie question et déclenche l’interprétation rhétorique.
Bibliographie :
Borillo, A. (1981). Quelques aspects de la question rhétorique en français. Documentation et recherche en
linguistique allemande, Vincennes (DRLAV) 25. 1-32.
Potts, Chris. (2003). Expressive content and conventional implicature. In Proceedings of the North East
Linguistic Society 33. Amherst, MA: GLSA.
Rohde, H. (2006). Rhetorical questions as redundant interrogatives. San Diego Linguistic Papers 2. 134168.
Romero, M. (2005). Two approaches to biased yes/no questions. In Proceedings of the 24th West Coast
Conference on Formal Linguistics. 352-360.
Romero, M. (2006). Biased yes/no Questions: The Role of verum. Sprache und Datenverarbeitung, 30(1).
Romero, M., & Han, C. H. (2004). On negative yes/no questions. Linguistics and Philosophy, 27(5). 609658.
Van Rooy, R. (2003). Negative polarity items in questions: Strength as relevance. Journal of semantics,
20(3), 239-273.
Null pronouns in English: evidence from particle verb constructions
Daniel Milway
University of Toronto
English is widely considered to lack the null pronoun, pro, null arguments being restricted to
traces, PRO and bound variables. Evidence presented in this paper, however, demonstrates
that pro is present in certain English particle verb (PV) constructions. Furthermore, English
null pronouns differ from other null pronouns discussed in the literature by having both
discourse and syntactic requirements.
The PVs in question, demonstrated below in (1), are members of the class that show an
argument structure alternation known as ground promotion (McIntyre, 2007), and have a
complementary alternation which I refer to as figure retention.
(1)
a. V + Full PP
Alex rinsed [F igure the dust] out of [Ground the coffee pot].
b. Ground Promotion
Alex rinsed out [Ground the coffee pot]. ∼ Alex rinsed [Ground the coffee pot] out.
c. Figure Retention
Alex rinsed out [F igure the dust]. ∼ Alex rinsed [F igure the dust] out.
While both ground promotion and figure retention constructions are able to undergo particle
shift, the characteristic syntactic property of PVs, Levin and Sells (2007) note an asymmetry between the two constructions with respect to their interpretation, namely, that figure
retention PVs require contextual support for proper interpretation, while ground promotion
does not. This paper shows that this asymmetry is due to the presence of a null argument
in figure retention which is interpreted as the contextually salient ground argument.
(2)
a. Figure Retention
Whenever Jim wears his blazer, [he wipes the fingerprints off.]
Interpretation: He wipes the fingerprints off his blazer.
b. Ground Promotion
Whenever Sheila sees fingerprints, [she brushes her blazer off.]
Interpretation: She brushes something off her blazer.
Not:She brushes fingerprints off her blazer.
These null arguments do not show the syntactic dependencies that are characteristic of PRO,
traces, or bound variables, and are interpreted as definite and specific like pronouns. As such,
they are properly treated as null pronouns.
Beyond showing the presence of these null pronouns, this paper provides a structual
analysis for them, and places them in a typology null pronouns. The structural analysis
comes from the fact that these null pronouns are predicted by a small clause type analysis of
PVs (Svenonius, 2003). Null pronouns in figure retention are discourse-linked in the same way
as null objects are in Colloquial Brazillian Portuguese (Farrell, 1990) and French (Cummins
and Roberge, 2004). Unlike other discourse-linked null objects, English null grounds are also
linked to a syntactic context, namely figure retention PVs. This adds strength to the claim,
made by Iten et al. (2005), that semantic-pragmatic recoverability is not sufficient to explain
null complements, but that they must be syntactically licensed as well.
1
References
Cummins, Sarah, and Yves Roberge. 2004. Null objects in french and english. Amsterdam
Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science Series 4 258:121–138.
Farrell, Patrick. 1990. Null objects in brazilian portuguese. Natural Language & Linguistic
Theory 8:325–346.
Huang, C-T James. 1984. On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. Linguistic
inquiry 531–574.
Iten, Corinne, M-O Junker, Aryn Pyke, Robert J Stainton, and Catherine Wearking. 2005.
Null complements: Licensed by syntax or by semantics-pragmatics? In CLA Annual
Conference Proceedings, 1–15.
Levin, Beth, and Peter Sells. 2007. Unpredicated particles. In Redpill (reality exploration
and discovery: Pattern interaction in language and life), ed. Lian Hee Wee and Uyechi
Linda. CSLI Publications.
McIntyre, Andrew. 2007. Particle verbs and argument structure. Language and Linguistics
Compass 1:350–367.
Svenonius, Peter. 2003. Limits on p: filling in holes vs. falling in holes. In Nordlyd 31.2 , ed.
Anne Dahl, Kristine Bentzen, and Peter Svenonius, 431–445. University of Tromsø.
2
Variation prosodique diachronique: René Lévesque en trois temps
Nicholas Moroz (Collège de Rimouski) et François Poiré (The University of Western Ontario)
À l’exception des travaux développés dans le cadre de la sociolinguistique contemporaine et
basés sur des corpus relativement récents, peu d’études ont été menées sur le changement
prosodique du français à partir d’enregistrements de qualité. Martin (2005), en utilisant des
enregistrements radiophoniques couvrant le XXième siècle a documenté la disparition graduelle
de l’accentuation sur la syllabe pénultième du groupe accentuel et une variation certaine dans la
réalisation des contours intonatifs exprimant la continuité. Boula de Mareüil et al (2008), en se
basant aussi sur des enregistrements radiophoniques faits depuis la seconde guerre mondiale, ont
pu préciser que le mouvement de l’accent de la pénultième vers la syllabe finale repose en fait
sur une augmentation de la différence de durée entre ces deux syllabes. Ils ont aussi observé que
la moyenne de fréquence fondamentale des journalistes a aussi diminué durant la même période,
sans toutefois préciser les conséquences fonctionnelles de cette diminution sur la forme des
contours intonatifs. Dans les deux cas, ces études portent sur le français de France. Comme le
mentionne Harrington (2006) au sujet des études phonétiques diachroniques: « what is lacking in
most of the very few studies that are available is an analysis over several decades from the same
person, which would eliminate the confounding influences due to the substantial differences
between different speakers’ anatomical vocal tracts » (Harrington 2006 : 441).
Nous proposons une étude du changement prosodique chez un locuteur unique, René Lévesque
(1922-1987), ancien journaliste à la radio puis à la télévision et politicien bien connu au Canada,
à partir de trois enregistrement datés de 1957 (animateur de l’émission Point de mire, RadioCanada), 1968 (discours public devant les membres du Mouvement Souveraineté-Association) et
1984 (invité à l’émission Le Point, Radio-Canada) provenant des archives de la société RadioCanada à Montréal. Cette recherche s’inscrit dans le cadre de la phonologie métriqueautosegmentale (Ladd 1996) adaptée au français par Jun et Fougeron (2000). La méthodologie
reprend principalement celle de Kaminskaïa (2009) développée pour l’étude de la variation
prosodique régionale en français. L’analyse a été menée à l’aide du logiciel Praat (Boersma et
Weenink 2006).
Nos principaux résultats montrent premièrement que le nombre de groupes accentuels plus longs
exprimant la continuité (nombre de syllabe plus élevé, contour bbH) augmente pendant la
période étudiée. Deuxièmement, la valeur moyenne de la fréquence fondamentale diminue tout
au long de cette période mais cette baisse concerne principalement les contours intonatifs réalisés
dans la partie supérieure du registre du locuteur. Enfin, et contrairement aux données
européennes de Boula de Mareüil et al (2008), l’écart dans la durée des syllabes pénultièmes et
finale est stable mais la durée des deux positions syllabiques augmente de manière similaire entre
1957 et 1984.
Nous discutons ces résultats dans la perspective de la stabilisation du système prosodique des
variétés européennes et canadiennes de la langue française au cours des dernières décennies
(tendance des groupes accentuels à être plus longs, perte de diversité dans la réalisation des
contours intonatif) tout en soulignant le maintien de différences entre le Canada et l’Europe
(utilisation différente de la durée afin de marquer la frontière des groupes accentuels, utilisation
différente de l’étendue de registre dans la réalisation de l’intonation).
Boersma P. et D. Weenink. 2006. Praat: doing phonetics by computer. [Computer Program].
Institute of Phonetic Sciences, University of Amsterdam.
Boula de Mareüil, Ph., Albert Rilliard et Alexandre Allouzen. 2008. A diachronic study of
prosody through French audio archives. Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2008. Campaninas,
Brazil, pp. 539-542.
Harrington, Jonathan. 2006. An acoustic analysis of 'happy-tensing' in the Queen's Christmas
broadcasts, Journal of Phonetics, 34(4) 439-457.
Jun, S.-A. et C. Fougeron. 2000. A phonological Model of French Intonation. In A. Botinis (éd.)
Intonation. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 209-242.
Kaminskaïa, S. 2009. La variation intonative dialectale en français. Une approche phonologique.
LINCOM Studies in French Linguistics. Munich.
Ladd, R. 1996. Intonational phonology. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
Martin, Philippe. 2005. Quelques Changements prosodiques du français parlé de 1900 à 2000.
UFR Linguistique. Paris: Université de Paris VII.
A hierarchical view of the ergative and antipassive in Inuktitut
Kumiko Murasugi, Carleton University
Much research on the syntax of Inuit languages has focused on the differences
between the ergative and antipassive (AP) constructions in a two-argument sentence such as
‘Jaani saw a caribou’ (see (1)).
(1)
Erg
Jaani-up tuktu- Ø
taku-lauq-tanga.
Jaani-Erg caribou-Abs see-Past-Partic.3s.3s
AP
Jaani- Ø tuktu-mik
taku-lauq-tuq.
Jaani-Abs caribou-Mod see-Past-Partic.3s
One view is that the differences are primarily semantic or discourse-related. It has
been claimed, for example, that the AP object is indefinite (Swadesh 1946, Sadock 1980,
Fortescue 1984), nonspecific (Manga 1996), takes narrow scope (Bittner 1987, Wharram
2003), introduces new information (Kalmár 1979), or is a non-topic (Berge 2011), while the
object in an ergative structure has opposite properties. The other view focuses on the syntactic
properties of the AP structure: the AP suffix is an incorporated noun (Bittner & Hale 1996),
an aspect marker (Bittner 1987), or accusative case assigner (Spreng 2006, Johns 2006).
Surprisingly, there is little consensus on what underlies the ergative/AP contrast in Inuit.
This paper presents a study that investigates which structure speakers of one Inuit
dialect, Inuktitut, prefer in a context-neutral experimental setting. The study focuses on verbal
agreement (double with ergative, single with AP) rather than Case, as pronouns in Inuktitut
are normally deleted and thus cannot be used to distinguish between the two structures. In the
Verb Preference Task Inuktitut speakers were given 28 subject-object pairs consisting of all
person and number combinations, and were required to create a simple sentence using the
verb takulauq ‘see.Past’ (e.g. ‘the man saw the woman’, ‘I saw the boys’, ‘you saw me’).
They were free to produce either the ergative or antipassive form. The results revealed the
following hierarchy of preference for the antipassive form (where, for example, 1>2
represents a 1st person subject and 2nd person object): 3>3, 3>2, 3>1, 2>1, 1>2, 2>3, 1>3.
This hierarchy strongly suggests the existence of a directional system in Inuktitut
based on a 1>2>3 person hierarchy. The antipassive form is preferred when a subject lower on
the hierarchy is acting on an equal or higher object (shown in bold), while the ergative form is
preferred when a higher object is acting on a lower one. I present a sketch of an inverse
agreement system in Inuktitut consisting of direct, inverse and equal status marking in
domains other than 3>3, and obviation with 3>3 (see Hewson 1991). Obviation systems “rank
third person nominal according to a complex function which includes grammatical function,
inherent semantic properties, and discourse salience” (Aissen 1997:205). Given that most of
the studies cited above focus on examples with 3 rd person subjects and objects, it is perhaps
not surprising that there is so much variation in their explanations of the ergative/AP
structures. The current study, which takes into account all subject-object domains, can provide
a more global perspective on the two structures.
References
Aissen, Judith. 1997. On the syntax of obviation. Language 73:705-750.
Berge, Anna. 2011. Topic and Discourse in West Greenlandic Agreement Constructions.
Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Bittner, Maria. 1987. On the semantics of the Greenlandic antipassive and related
constructions. International Journal of American Linguistics 53:194-231.
Bittner, Maria and Ken Hale. 1996. Ergativity: Toward a theory of a heterogeneous class.
Linguistic Inquiry 27:531-604.
Fortescue, Michael. 1984. West Greenlandic. London: Croom Helm.
Hewson, John. 1991. Person hierarchies in Algonkian and Inuktitut. Linguistics 29:861-875.
Johns, Alana. 2006. An inclination towards accusative. Linguistica Atlantica 23:127-144.
Kalmár, Ivan. 1979. The antipassive and grammatical relations in Eskimo. Ergativtiy:
Towards a Theory of Grammatical Relations, ed. Frans Plank, pp. 117-43. London:
Academic Press.
Sadock, Jerrold M. 1980. Noun incorporation in Greenlandic: A case of syntactic word
formation. Language 56:300-319.
Spreng, Bettina. 2006. Little v in Inuktitut: Antipassive revisited. Linguistica Atlantica
23:155-190.
Manga, Louise. 1996. Specificity in Inuktitut and syntactic representation.
Études/Inuit/Studies 20:61-85.
Swadesh, Morris. 1946. South Greenlandic (Eskimo). Linguistic Structures of Native America,
ed. Harry Hoijer, pp. 30-54. New York: Viking Fund.
Wharram, Douglas. 2003. On the Interpretation of (Un)certain Indefinites in Inuktitut and
Related Languages. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut.
A PROSODIC ACCOUNT OF CANADIAN RAISING
D. SKY ONOSSON — UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA
!
Canadian Raising (CR) is a fairly well-known phenomenon in the phonological literature,
which has been described primarily in featural or qualitative terms such as: “the diphthongs [ʌj]
and [aj] are in complementary distribution: [ʌj] occurs before the class of voiceless consonants
([s, t, p], etc.) and [aj] occurs elsewhere. A parallel relationship holds between the vowels [aw]
and [ʌw]” (Czaykowska-Higgins et al 2012, cf. Joos 1942, Chambers 1973). Phonetic research I
have carried out on Manitoba speakers indicates that vowel shortening is a more significant
descriptor for CR than raising: pre-voiceless diphthongs are nearly 50% shorter than elsewhere,
while vowel height differs only slightly across all allophones. However, feature-based accounts
do not account for vowel duration as an intrinsic part of CR.
In this paper I propose a phonological analysis which interprets this durational difference
as a reflection of prosodic structure, specifically as an effect of mora sharing, as determined by
the sonority distinction between voiced and voiceless codas. There are three main theoretical
components to my analysis: 1) the availability of [voice] as a sonority distinction; 2) the
connection between sonority and prosodic structure; 3) the relationship between prosodic
structure and phonetic duration. A cross-linguistic comparison of sonority research (Parker 2008)
indicates that voicing quality is an available sonority distinction within several languages,
justifying my proposal that it is also an available distinction within Canadian English. Research
on the relationship between sonority and prosodic structure (Zec 1995) indicates that mora
licencing/affiliation is related to sonority distinctions; I propose that sonority distinctions related
to [voice] thus determine mora licencing/affiliation in Canadian English. Finally, a crosslinguistic study of the relationship between phonetic duration and prosodic structure (Broselow
et al 1999) has found that different prosodic (moraic) structures are possible not only between
languages, but also within them, and that these difference structures are associated with
consistent differences in phonetic duration.
My analysis relies on an existing optimality-based account of the prosodic structure of
the English syllable (Hammond 1999) and proposes one additional constraint restricting
independent morae to codas which meet a minimum level of sonority; specifically, moralicencing codas must not be lower in sonority than a voiced obstruent. The only category below
this level are voiceless obstruents which, in adhering to this constraint, must instead adjoin to the
final mora of the preceding vowel. E.g. in ride the /d/ projects its own mora, while in right the /t/
does not meet the minimum sonority to project a mora and must adjoin to the preceding mora
belonging to the vowel. The effect of vowel-coda mora-sharing in the case of right is to
abbreviate the duration of the vowel in comparison with the vowel of ride, which does not share
a mora with its coda. My analysis thus relates the observed difference in phonetic vowel duration
to the phonological (prosodic) level as an effect of mora-sharing, in a similar manner to the
findings in Broselow et al (1999), and incorporates the most significantly related features of CR
found in my phonetic research, coda voicing and vowel duration, into a unified account.
D. S. Onosson
"1
CLA 2014 Abstract
LIST OF REFERENCES
!
Broselow, E., Chen, S.-I., & Huffman, M. (1997). Syllable Weight: Convergence of Phonology
and Phonetics. Phonology, 14(1), 47–82.
Chambers, J. K. (1973). Canadian raising. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de
linguistique, 18(2), 113-134.
Chambers, J. K. (1989). Canadian Raising: Blocking, fronting, etc. American Speech, 64(1), 75–
88.
Czaykowska-Higgins, E., Dobrovolsky, M., Dyck, C., O’Grady, W., & Rose, Y. (2012).
Phonology: contrasts and patterns. In O’Grady, W. & Archibald, J. Contemporary
Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction. Toronto: Pearson Canada.
Gordon, M. (2002). A Phonetically Driven Account of Syllable Weight. Language, 78(1), 51–80.
Hammond, M. (1999). The Phonology of English: A Prosodic Optimality-Theoretic Approach.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
House, A. S. (1961). On Vowel Duration in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America, 33(9), 1174–1178.
Joos, M. (1942). A Phonological Dilemma in Canadian English. Language, 18(2), 141–144.
Lunden, A. (2013). Reanalyzing final consonant extrametricality. The Journal of Comparative
Germanic Linguistics, 16(1), 1–31.
Onosson, D. S. (2010). Canadian Raising In Manitoba: Acoustic Effects Of Articulatory Phasing
And Lexical Frequency. MA thesis. University of Manitoba.
Parker, S. (2008). Sound level protrusions as physical correlates of sonority. Journal of
Phonetics, 36(1), 55–90.
Parker, Steve (2011). Sonority. In van Oostendorp, Marc, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth Hume and
Keren Rice (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Blackwell Publishing, 2011.
Blackwell Reference Online.
Thomas, E. R. (2000). Spectral differences in /ai/ offsets conditioned by voicing of the following
consonant. Journal of Phonetics, 28, 1–25.
Umeda, N. (1975). Vowel duration in American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America, 58(2), 434–445.
Zec, D. (1995). Sonority constraints on syllable structure. Phonology, 12(1), 85–129.
Zec, D. (2003). Prosodic Weight. In C. Féry & R. van de Vijver (Eds.), The Syllable in
Optimality Theory (pp. 123–143). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
D. S. Onosson
"2
CLA 2014 Abstract
The rise and fall of split-ergative agreement in Algonquian
Will Oxford, University of Manitoba
The inflectional paradigm known as the “independent order” displays a split-ergative agreement
pattern in some of the Algonquian languages (such as Ojibwe and Passamaquoddy) but not in
others (such as Cree and Meskwaki). This presentation will describe and analyze the diachronic
development of the split-ergative agreement pattern, which arose in pre-Proto Algonquian when
the independent order was innovated and was retained in Ojibwe-type languages but lost in Creetype languages. I will argue that the split-ergative pattern is a relatively shallow morphosyntactic
phenomenon: the difference between Cree-type languages and Ojibwe-type languages results
from a minor change in the featural content of two competing agreement probes.
The difference between the Ojibwe-type pattern and the Cree-type pattern is illustrated in (1)
and (2), which show a subset of the independent-order agreement morphology for forms
involving 1s, 2s, and 3p arguments.1 Subject-indexing agreement is indicated by boxes.
(1) Ojibwe subject agreement (Valentine 2001)
(2) Cree subject agreement (Wolfart 1973)
a. TRANSITIVE (DIRECT) b. INTRANSITIVE
a. TRANSITIVE (DIRECT) b. INTRANSITIVE
1s—3p ni- V -ag
1s ni- V
1s—3p ni- V -ak
1s ni- V
1
3p
1
2s—3p gi- V -ag
2s
o- V -an
3p
2
3p—3′
3
3p
3′
1
gi- V
2
V -ag
3p
3p
1
2s—3p
ki- V -ak
2s
3p—3′
V -ak
3p
2
3p
3p
ki- V
2
V -ak
3p
In the Ojibwe transitive forms in (1a), the subject is consistently indexed by the prefix (ni-, gi-, o-),
but this is not the case in the Ojibwe transitive forms in (1b): while the 1s and 2s subjects
continue to be indexed by the prefix (ni-, gi-), the 3p subject is instead indexed by the same -ag
suffix that indexes the 3p object of a transitive form. This is a clear split-ergative pattern: a 3rdperson intransitive subject is indexed like a 3rd-person transitive object (by the suffix -ag) rather
than like a 3rd-person transitive subject (by the prefix o-). The ergative nature of this pattern has
been observed for Passamaquoddy by Bruening (2007) but is not otherwise widely discussed.
The Cree forms in (2) match the Ojibwe forms in that 1s and 2s subjects are always indexed
by the prefix (ni-, ki-). The 3rd-person forms differ from Ojibwe, however: a 3p subject is marked
by the -ak suffix regardless of whether the verb is transitive. In Cree, then, it is not just intransitive
3rd-person subjects that are marked like objects—instead, all 3rd-person subjects are marked like
canonical objects. This is not an ergative pattern, although it is interesting in its own right.
I will show that the difference between the Ojibwe and Cree patterns can be explained if we
posit a minor change in the features that agreement is sensitive to. I assume that the two agreement
slots (prefix and suffix) reflect two distinct agreement probes. In the Ojibwe transitive 3p—3′ form
(o-V-an), the two probes agree with separate arguments (3p and 3′). In the Ojibwe intransitive 3p
form, where there is only a single 3rd-person argument, only the suffix appears (3p -ag). I
conclude from this that when the prefix and suffix compete to agree with a single 3rd-person
argument, it is the suffix probe that wins. This is the source of the split-ergative pattern. The
pattern is disrupted in Cree, I propose, because the Cree suffix probe is more selective than its
Ojibwe counterpart: it cannot agree with obviative DPs and thus overrides the prefix to agree with
the 3p subject in a transitive 3p—3′ form, just as it does in an intransitive 3p form.
This analysis enables an elegant diachronic account of both systems. In Proto-Algonquian,
suffix agreement was sensitive to definiteness, a pattern retained in Delaware (Goddard 2007).
Ojibwe simply lost this sensitivity while Cree shifted to being sensitive to obviation.
1
3p forms are shown for clarity (the 3s suffix is sometimes null). The notation 3′ indicates an obviative 3rd person.
References
Bruening, Benjamin. 2007. Passamaquoddy as a split ergative language and its consequences for
Marantz’s ergative case generalization. Manuscript, University of Delaware.
Goddard, Ives. 2007. Reconstruction and history of the independent indicative. In Papers of the
38th Algonquian Conference, ed. by H. C. Wolfart, 207–271. Winnipeg: University of
Manitoba.
Valentine, J. Randolph. 2001. Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Wolfart, H. C. 1973. Plains Cree: A Grammatical Study. Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, new series, volume 63, part 5. Philadelphia.
Statistical co-occurrence restrictions in Oromo consonants
Avery Ozburn, University of Toronto
In this work, I examine a novel case of laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions in Oromo, a
Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia. This study reveals that Oromo has both ejective harmony
and voicing harmony on a statistical level. This case of laryngeal harmony has never before been
described in Oromo, nor in other Cushitic languages. Since laryngeal harmony is so rare crosslinguistically, this research adds an important new case to the literature. Moreover, due to the
statistical nature of the harmony, and in particular the statistical directionality patterns, Oromo
raises crucial questions about the place of non-categorical patterns in phonology.
Oromo has laryngeal contrasts in stops/affricates that vary from a two-way contrast for
bilabials (/p’, b/), to a three-way contrast for post-alveolars (/tʃ, tʃ’, dʒ/) and velars (/k, k’, g/), to
a four-way contrast for dentals (/t, t’, d, ɗ/) (Gamta 1989). The purpose of this research was to
determine whether there are harmonic restrictions on the distribution of these consonants.
Laryngeal harmony systems are rare, but common in other languages of Ethiopia, such as Chaha
(Gallagher 2010). Since laryngeal harmony tends to involve only morpheme-internal restrictions
(Hansson 2001, 2010; Rose and Walker 2004), it is easy for it to be missed, particularly when it
is statistical. In this work, I look for these restrictions in Oromo words of shape CV(C)CV.
Specifically, my research tested whether Oromo voiceless stops (plain and ejective) are
required to agree in [constricted glottis], as well as whether all Oromo stops are required to agree
in voicing. Results show that these different categories of Oromo stops are not randomly
distributed; chi-square statistics on laryngeal categories of first and second consonants show a
very high level of significance (p<0.00001 in both cases). Observed over expected (O/E) values
given below show that agreement is highly over-represented, while disagreement is underrepresented. Thus, Oromo has statistical laryngeal harmony. However, it is not categorical, since
the disagreeing cases do not have O/E values of 0, and there are many examples of disagreement.
Ejective harmony
Voicing harmony
C2 Ejective C2 Plain
C2 Voiced
C2 Voiceless
C1 Ejective
1.53
0.35
C1 Voiced
1.46
0.57
C1 Plain
0.22
2.00
C1 Voiceless 0.38
1.58
This statistical harmony in Oromo has several major implications. In addition to a
statistical tendency towards agreement, there are further statistical asymmetries in Oromo that
mirror patterns that are categorical in other languages. In particular, the O/E values above show
that within the disagreeing cases, there is greater under-representation when C2 is ejective for
ejective harmony and when C2 is voiced for voicing harmony. For the voicing case, there is a
notable trend towards significance (p<0.08). This result mirrors a categorical regressive effect in
languages such as Ngizim, where sequences of voiceless stops followed by voiced stops are
forbidden but the opposite order is allowed (Hansson 2001, 2010). Thus, in addition to the
overall trend towards harmony, there is a statistical directionality effect that requires explanation.
With such results, I consider the larger question of what implications these effects have
for phonology, which is often considered categorical in nature. If we want to understand how
cross-linguistic regressive directionality arises, it is crucial to look at statistical cases like Oromo,
since they suggest that such biases may go much deeper than accounts of categorical harmony
would suggest. While implications of statistical consonant harmony to phonological theory have
been considered previously (e.g. Brown 2008), the present research is novel in that it looks at
asymmetries like directionality within a statistical pattern. Thus, by examining this novel case of
laryngeal harmony, I conclude that Oromo suggests a need to understand statistical consonant
co-occurrences in order to fully understand the categorical patterns usually treated by phonology.
References:
Brown, Jason Camy. 2008. Theoretical aspects of Gitksan phonology. PhD dissertation,
University of British Columbia.
Gallagher, Gillian. 2010. Perceptual distinctness and long-distance laryngeal restrictions.
Phonology, 27(03): 435-480.
Gamta, Tilahun. 1989. Oromo-English Dictionary. AAU Printing Press.
Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur. 2001. Theoretical and typological issues in consonant harmony. PhD
dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur. 2010. Consonant harmony: long-distance interaction in phonology.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Rose, Sharon, and Rachel Walker. 2004. A typology of consonant agreement as correspondence.
Language 80: 475-531.
The L3 acquisition of Spanish rhotics by native Mandarin speakers
Matthew Patience
University of Toronto
The L2 acquisition of the two Spanish rhotics (the tap /ɾ/ and the trill /r/) by native English
speakers has received considerable attention in recent years (e.g., Face 2006; Olsen 2012). These
studies have found that the tap is easier to acquire than the trill, which is partly due to positive
transfer of the English flap, a highly similar sound (Colantoni & Steele 2008; Olsen 2012), as
well as the more demanding aerodynamic constraints involved in producing the trill (Face 2006;
Johnson 2008). Very few studies have investigated the acquisition of the Spanish rhotics by
speakers of other languages (but see Rafat 2008 for the acquisition of Spanish /r/ by native Farsi
speakers). In the present study, I examine the acquisition of the Spanish rhotics by native
Mandarin speakers who speak English as an L2. Mandarin has one rhotic consonant (a voiced
rhotic approximant/fricative; Duanmu 2007) which differs greatly from the Spanish rhotics (in
place and manner). Mandarin also has a voiced alveolar stop and a voiced dental lateral, two
segments that bear some similarity to the tap both perceptually and articulatorily (in terms of
place and voicing). Such similarities could impede acquisition (Flege 1995). In contrast, native
Mandarin speakers who have acquired the English flap may have an advantage producing the
nearly identical Spanish tap. Based on these facts, I investigate the following two questions: (1)
What are the developmental stages in the acquisition of the tap and the trill by native Mandarin
speakers? (2) How does transfer from the learners’ L1 Mandarin or L2 English affect acquisition
of the Spanish rhotics?
9 L1 Mandarin-L2 English-L3 Spanish speakers of beginner, intermediate and advanced
Spanish proficiency were recorded performing a word repetition task in Spanish and English.
English target stimuli consisted of words containing the English flap (e.g., [ˈwɑ.ɾə.ɹ] water) to
determine whether or not the Mandarin speakers have acquired the flap. The Spanish target
stimuli consisted of both rhotics in intervocalic position (e.g., ['ka.ɾo] caro ‘car’; ['pe.ro] perro
‘dog’). Duration, voicing, and manner of the Spanish rhotics and the English flap were measured
and compared to the values of the control speakers. Preliminary results for the learners’
realization of the tap indicate their difficulty articulating the target manner, as 2 of 3 participants
tended to produce a brief approximant (80% occurrence) in place of the tap (17% occurrence).
Interestingly, the duration of such approximants matches that of a native-like tap and the
segment is perceptually very similar to a tap. The one Mandarin speaker who produced the tap
with some regularity (50% accuracy) also consistently produced an accurate English flap, while
the other learners demonstrated difficulty articulating the flap. Preliminary results for the trill
indicate that Mandarin speakers experience relatively more difficulty acquiring the trill. Only
one participant was able to produce trills that were native-like along all three parameters. The
other two participants produced a variety of non-target segments – approximants (70%), stops
(7.5%), fricatives (7.5%), and taps (15%).
The fact that Mandarin speakers produce a non-target yet perceptually similar segment in
place of the tap suggests that learners may aim for native-like percepts as opposed to native-like
articulations. It also appears that the Mandarin rhotic is more perceptually distinct than the
English rhotic: English L2 Spanish learners tend to substitute their L1 rhotic for the tap and the
trill until they acquire the target manner (Face 2006; Johnson 2008), yet no Mandarin-like rhotics
were observed. L2 English-based transfer was also observed. Only the learner who was able to
produce a native-like English flap was able produce a native-like Spanish tap and this only
occurred in post-tonic syllables, the same context in which the English flap occurs. This suggests
that the presence of L2 allophones facilitate the acquisition of L3 phonemes, provided the
phonetic contexts are the same.
References
Colantoni, L., & Steele, J. (2008). Integrating articulatory constraints into models of second
language phonological acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29(3), 489–534.
Duanmu, S. (2007). The phonology of standard Chinese. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Face, T. L. (2006). Intervocalic rhotic pronunciation by adult learners of Spanish as a second
language. In C. A. Klee & T. L. Face (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 7th Conference on the
Acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese as First and Second Languages (pp. 47-58). Somerville,
MA: Cascadilla Press.
Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W.
Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research
(pp. 233-277). Baltimore, MD: York Press.
Johnson, K. E. (2008). Second language acquisition of the Spanish multiple vibrant consonant.
(Doctoral Dissertation). The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Olsen, M. K. (2012). The L2 acquisition of Spanish rhotics by L1 English speakers: The effect of
L1 articulatory routines and phonetic context for allophonic variation. Hispania, 95(1), 65-82.
Rafat, Y. (2008). The acquisition of allophonic variation in Spanish as a second language. In S.
Jones (Ed.), Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association (pp.
1-15). Vancouver, BC.
Variation in Ejective Stops in Harar Oromo
Maida Percival, University of Toronto
Acoustic studies on ejectives have yielded inconsistent results, so that it is still unclear
how systematically their acoustic characteristics define them cross-linguistically. Kingston (1985)
proposed a two-way typological classification system of stiff and slack ejectives based on
differences in measurements of voice onset time (VOT), burst amplitude, and F0 perturbation,
jitter perturbation, and rise time in intensity of the following vowel.
However, more recent studies have found this dichotomy to be problematic. Warner
(1996) compared six acoustic measurements of ejectives in Ingush with 4 other languages, to
find that no two languages patterned the same. Further studies have shown that even within a
single language, ejectives differ in whether they would be traditionally classified as stiff or slack.
Wright et al. (2002) found inter-speaker variation in the acoustic characteristics of the
Witsuwit’en ejectives, suggesting that different speakers employ different strategies to
differentiate ejectives from plosives. Vicenik (2010) also found variation in the acoustic
characteristics of Georgian ejectives: intra-speaker, positional variation due to syntagmatic
strengthening of consonants in higher prosodic positions. This brings yet another aspect into the
complexities of describing ejective consonants.
Based on these findings, this paper investigates the acoustic characteristics of ejectives
and their pulmonic counterparts in Harar Oromo, a Cushitic language. It hypothesizes that
Oromo ejectives are distinguished from plosives by a combination of the acoustic characteristics
that differentiate the two laryngeal types in other languages. It also hypothesizes that, following
Wright et al. (2002) and Vicenik (2010), the characteristics will show variation across speakers
and word-positions.
To test this hypothesis, acoustic analysis of word-initial and word-medial bilabial, dental,
and velar ejective, aspirated, and voiced stops of eight speakers of Eastern Oromo is being done.
Measurements of the consonants’ VOT, closure duration, and burst amplitude are being made as
well as measurements of F0 perturbation, rise time, and jitter perturbation of the consonants’
following vowels.
Preliminary results indicated that, overall, VOT significantly differentiates ejective,
aspirated, and voiced stops. Ejectives had the longest VOT, followed by aspirated stops, then
voiced stops, which have negative VOT. Consistent with Vicenik (2010), positional variation
was also apparent in VOT, with word-initial stops having greater VOT. Rise time results did not
significantly differentiate the stops’ laryngeal type, but did show significant positional variation.
The intensity of the vowels following the stops rose more slowly word-initially than wordmedially. F0 perturbation was also measured and results indicated that pitch was significantly
higher following ejectives than following voiced and aspirated stops, despite Oromo using tone
for grammatical purposes. Results for burst amplitude and jitter perturbation are forthcoming, as
are more detailed statistical analyses for each measurement for individual speakers.
The results of this study provide detailed phonetic descriptions of consonants in Harar
Oromo, which did not previously exist for the language. These data also contribute to the
typology of ejectives by helping us understand what sort of cross-linguistic and intra-language
variation exists in the acoustic characteristics that differentiate ejective from pulmonic stops so
that a more refined account of ejectives can be devised.
References
Kingston, John. 1985. The phonetics and phonology of the timing of oral and glottal events.
Berkeley, CA: UC Berkeley dissertation.
Maddieson, Ian. 2011. “Glottalized Consonants”. In Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin
(eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital
Library, chapter 7.
Nelson, Catherine. 2010. “Ejectives in Nez Perce.” Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics: 21.
Vicenik, Chad. 2010. “An Acoustic Study of Georgian Stop Consonants”. Journal of the
International Phonetic Association: 40(1), 59-92.
Warner, Natasha. 1996. “Acoustic Characteristics of Ejectives in Ingush”. Proceedings of
the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, 1525-1528. Philadelphia:
Pennsylvania.
Wright, Richard, Hargus, Sharon & Davis, Katharine. 2002. “On the categorization of ejectives:
data from Witsuwit'en”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association: 32(1), 43-77.
Adaptation à l’accent français européen par une comédienne québécoise : changements
acoustiques des voyelles et perception des accents québécois et hexagonal
François Poiré, Jeff Tennant & Antony Cloutier, The University of Western Ontario
Depuis au moins deux décennies, un certain nombre d’acteurs québécois poursuivent
aussi une carrière en France, en particulier au cinéma. Dans la vaste majorité des cas, et
ce contrairement à ce qui se passait antérieurement, ils ne jouent pas le Québécois de
passage en sol européen mais bien un personnage français parmi d’autres. Dans cette
étude de nature sociophonétique et perceptuelle, nous comparons les deux ‘accents’ de
l’actrice québécoise Marie-Josée Croze selon la variété de français utilisée d’un côté ou
de l’autre de l’Atlantique pour les besoins d’une production cinématographique donnée.
Nous avons choisi quatre films (deux productions canadiennes et deux européennes) et
avons extrait et retranscrit les trames sonores de ses personnages. Le travail d’analyse se
fait ensuite en deux étapes. Dans un premier temps, nous comparons la réalisation des
voyelles (structure formantique, durée et désonorisation) dans les deux variétés à l’aide
du logiciel Praat. Cette étude acoustique permet d’établir la dispersion formantique des
voyelles orales dans les deux variétés utilisées et de porter une attention particulière à
certains phénomènes phonétiques tels le relâchement des voyelles fermées en syllabes
fermées ([vIt] au lieu de [vit], vite, la réduction et la syncope totale de la même classe de
voyelles (dans les mêmes contextes qui favorisent la syncope du schwa) et le maintien de
certaines oppositions comme [a] et [ɑ] et [ɛ] et [ɛ:] (mettre et maître), typiques de
l’accent québécois et pratiquement disparues en France (Tranel, 1987, Walker 2001).
Dans un second temps, une tâche de perception construite à partir d’extraits de ces
mêmes bandes sonores est menée auprès de sujets tant québécois que français. Ces courts
extraits, variant du mot simple à la courte phrase, couvrent la totalité des systèmes
vocaliques des deux variétés et contiennent aussi les contextes demandant le plus
d’attention lorsqu’il s’agit de masquer un accent québécois (ou si l’on préfère, de
produire un accent français). L’analyse acoustique montre des valeurs de F1 réalisées
dans une bande de fréquence plus étroite dans les rôles européens, corrélat d’une aperture
moins variable tandis que F2 présente un système vocalique fortement antériorisé dans
les mêmes films, à l’exception de certaines voyelles postérieures encore plus
postériorisées. La durée de ses voyelles européennes montre aussi beaucoup moins de
variation. Les résultats du test de perception indiquent que les sujets tant européens que
québécois identifient clairement les deux accents de cette actrice. Nous discutons ces
résultats en tentant de répondre à la question suivante : Passe-t-on d’un ‘accent’ à l’autre
en éliminant des traits dialectaux, en réalisant des cibles articulatoires étrangères à notre
accent initial ou encore par un mélange des deux stratégies?
TRANEL, B., The sounds of French, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
WALKER, D. C., French sound structure, Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 2001.
Malay/Indonesian agent pseudo-incorporation and ditransitive clauses
Paul Poirier – University of Toronto
This paper will explore the idiosyncratic voice system found in both standard Malay and
Indonesian and explain it in a novel way using pseudo-incorporation (Massam 2001) and
cliticization; it will also test analyses against ditransitive data, which has not been considered in
previous accounts. The language exhibits an active clause (1), as well as two passive-like
constructions, which I will call “passive” (2) and “object voice” (3), following Cole et al. (2008):
(1) Active:
(2) Passive:
(3) Object voice:
kami tidak akan mem-baca buku ini
1PL
not
will meN-read
book this
‘We will not read this book.’
buku ini tidak
akan di-baca (oleh Siti)
book this not
will Pass-read by Siti
‘This book will not be read by Siti.
buku ini
tidak akan kami baca
book this not
will 1PL read.
‘This book will not be read by us.’ (adapted from Cole et al. 2008)
The active is problematic as the marker on the verb, ‘meN-,’ is optional. While the passive
can be derived in the usual way, the object voice is unique in that the preverbal agent is restricted to
pronominal forms, a property that has been largely ignored in previous accounts, which all solely use
properties of v to explain the voice alternations.
Both Cole et al. (2008) and Aldridge’s (2008) primary research goals are to account for A’extraction in the language, which is limited to the surface subject, i.e. the agent in the active and the
patient in other two constructions (see Chung 1976 for extensive evidence); while other arguments
cannot extract, extraction of adjuncts is possible. Cole et al. (2008) adopt an agreement approach,
arguing that v agrees with either the agent (‘meN-’) or the patient (a null affix) in their lexically
marked Case features. Other arguments, whose Case clashes with v, cannot raise, while Caseless
adjuncts (adverbs and PPs), can freely do so. Functional heads usually agree not in Case but other
phi-features such as person, number, and gender; an account without a language-specific form of
agreement would be preferable.
For Aldridge (2008), Indonesian exhibits an unstable mixed voice system, in transition
between the ergative system found in other Austronesian languages (object voice) a nominativeaccusative alignment (the active and passive); extraction asymmetries are accounted for by claiming
that the active is derived from an old antipassive and that it retains some of its idiosyncratic
properties, though the analysis offers no diachronic evidence for this. Additionally, neither analysis
has a satisfying account for the optionality of ‘meN-’.
All analyses limited to a functional voice projection also have no explanation as to why the
agent must be pronominal in the object voice. Here it will be argued that the object voice is generated
by pseudo-incorporation of the agent (Massam 2001, Levin 2014); that it cannot be extracted in the
object voice follows trivially from this new analysis. Following Fortin (2006), I will treat the active
“prefix” ‘meN-’ as an object clitic, with the lexical patient dislocated: it is for this reason that it
cannot extract. While this analysis makes some interesting predictions that interact nicely with
Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) transitivity diagnostics, I will present novel ditransitive data that still
challenge for all analyses of meN-’, and discuss possible adaptations to Fortin (2006). The present
analysis is superior in that these additional facts are explained without attributing ad hoc properties to
the functional heads responsible for voice.
Sources
Aldridge, Edith. 2008. Phase-based account of extraction in Indonesian. Lingua 118: 1440-1469.
Cole, Peter; Hermon, Gabriella; Yanti. 2008. Voice in Malay/Indonesian. Lingua 118: 1500-1553.
Chung, Sandra. 1979. On the subject of two passives in Indonesian. In Li, C. (ed.), Subject and
Topic. Academic Press, New York: 57-98.
Fortin, Catherine. 2006. Reconciling MENG- and NP movement in Indonesian. Paper presented at
the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California
Berkeley.
Hopper, Paul & Thompson, Sandra. 1980. Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse. Language 56(2):
251-299.
Levin, Theodore. 2014. Pseudo-Noun Incorporation is M-Merger: Evidence from Balinese. Paper
presented at the LSA Annual Meeting, Minneapolis.
Massam, Diane. 2001. Pseudo Noun Incorporation in Niuean. Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory 19(1): 153-197.
Redundant Adjective is Redundant: An analysis of Adj1 N is Adj1
James Porteous
In popular English, and particularly English used online, there is a copular construction
involving seemingly redundant adjectives, following the pattern of Adj1 N is Adj1, as seen in
(1). These sentences include a noun phrase containing an adnominal adjective, a copula, and the
same adjective in the predicate position. The goal of this paper is to discuss the semantics and
uses of this construction which, to my knowledge, has received no attention in the literature.
1. Happy cat is happy.
My presentation makes two central claims about these sentences: The adnominal adjective serves
to identify the NP subject; and the presence of the copular adjective allows at least three possible
interpretations, which arise from the pragmatic context. (Thus, contra my title, the copular
adjective is not redundant after all.) The three possible interpretations for sentence (1) are:
2. a. Simple Predication: The cat is happy.
b. Intensification: The cat is very happy.
c. Intrinsic-Temporal: The cat, which is normally happy, is currently happy.
It is important to note that, regardless of interpretation, these sentences occur in contexts where
both the speaker and the listener are aware of the referent in question and treat it as ‘given’
knowledge, fresh in their minds. The subject NP is therefore definite in all of these
interpretations, despite not having an overtly realized definite determiner. This definiteness
appears to relate to the presence the adnominal adjective, and we can see its effect through its
absence: ‘Cat is happy’ becomes ungrammatical and begs the question of ‘which cat?’.
Similarly, a sentence with a plural noun such as (3) has a definite meaning for that noun (‘The
successful rebels are successful’), whereas without the adnominal adjective the subject NP would
be indefinite (‘Rebels are successful’). From this I conclude that the adnominal adjective allows
us to clearly identify the NP subject.
3. Successful rebels are successful.
These sentences can take on what I call an intrinsic-temporal reading in contexts where both the
speaker and the listener are fairly well-aware of the noun’s referent and its qualities. (The
intrinsic quality corresponds approximately to Carlson’s (1977) individual-level predication in
this reading; the temporary quality to stage-level predication.) An intensification reading comes
from contexts where the referent is present or was recently present during the discourse; this
interpretation is very difficult without the referent present. Such an intensification reading is
similar to the reduplication intensification described by Jackendoff (2004), but with a distinct
syntax. When the referent is not immediately present during the discourse, or when the adjective
is binary and cannot be readily intensified (e.g. dead, unconscious), the most natural
interpretation is a simple predicative interpretation.
In my presentation I will present attested examples used in context to show how the readings can
be teased out of the different parameters that make up that context. To discuss the pragmatics
where these sentences are used I will make reference to Grice’s (1975) four maxims and on
implicature in general. In so doing I hope to shed light on the importance of pragmatics to the
interpretation of copular sentences.
References
Carlson, Greg. 1977. Reference to Kinds in English. University of Massachusetts/Amherst
doctoral dissertation.
Grice, Paul (1975). "Logic and conversation". In Cole, P.; Morgan, J. Syntax and semantics. 3:
Speech acts. New York: Academic Press. pp. 41–58.
Jackendoff, Ray, Jila Ghomeshi, Nicole Rosen, and Kevin Russell. 2004. “Contrastive Focus in
English (The Salad-Salad Paper).” Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22: 307–357.
The perception of intonational contours: a cross-linguistic study
Malina Radu, Gabrielle Klassen, Laura Colantoni,
Matthew Patience, Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux and Olga Tararova
University of Toronto
Cross-linguistically, intonation is used to convey a wide-range of linguistic information, such as
the type of sentence (interrogative vs. declarative) (Liu & Rodríguez 2012). Tonal and durational
variations can be used to mark statements (falling contour), questions (rising contour) or that the
speaker will continue speaking (mid-rising contour). To some extent, Spanish is similar to English
in the use of intonation to differentiate between interrogatives and declaratives. In both languages,
falling and rising contours at the end of constituents are mapped to similar meanings (e.g. Hualde
2002; 2005). In spite of the typological similarities between English and Spanish, however, some
aspects of sentence prosody are not mastered even by advanced L2 speakers. Grabe et al (2003)
found that linguistic meaning diminishes the discrimination capacity of L2 listeners, since speakers
from different L1s discriminated intonation contours in non-speech stimuli equally well, while
their discrimination of intonation contours of English sentences worsened; this suggests that while
keeping their auditory resolution to intonation cues in non-speech tasks, adult speakers failed to
relate these contours to appropriate L2 meanings.
Based on previous studies (e.g. Grabe et al. 2003), we expect native and non-native English
speakers to behave similarly in their discrimination of intonational contours in non-meaningrelated tasks, but to diverge in their capacity to perceive language-specific (English) form-meaning
mappings. To test this hypothesis, we compared the perception of statements, and inverted and
non-inverted interrogatives across two groups of speakers: L2 English-L1 Spanish vs. L1 English
(N=15 per group). Participants completed three tasks (administered with Super Lab Pro) as well
as a language background questionnaire. In Task 1 (forced-choice identification) participants had
to indicate whether the low-pass filtered stimulus (N=30 plus distractors) was a statement, question
or exclamation. This task was designed to test participants’ ability to use acoustic cues. Task 2 was
identical to Task 1 but stimuli consisted of unaltered sentences. In Task 3, participants heard a
scenario and three options, and subsequently had to choose one answer that best completed the
scenario. Measurements included the mean accuracy rates per language group (L1 English and L1
Spanish) for each of the three tasks, as well as the reaction time (RT).
Preliminary results showed that overall, the L1 English speakers made fewer perception errors
than the L1 Spanish speakers across all three tasks. As for the individual tasks, both groups of
speakers had the highest accuracy for Task 2 (L1 English: .97; L1 Spanish: .67), followed by Task
1 (L1 English: .90; L1 Spanish: .58). As for Task 3 (i.e. the most contextualized task), both groups
had the lowest accuracy rate (L1 English: .89 vs. L1 Spanish: .54), and the longest reaction times
(participants took four times longer to answer than in the other two tasks). Confusion matrices also
revealed interesting patterns: while L1 English speakers tend to confuse questions with statements,
L1 Spanish speakers are equally likely to misinterpret questions as either exclamations or
statements. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that perception difficulties in L2
prosody are not primarily related to any loss of sensory capabilities but to the modulation of the
listeners’ sensitivity to acoustic cues by selective attention to meaningful units, and confirm
previous findings that L2 speakers are more successful in perception tasks where there is no
context versus those in which a context is provided (e.g. Ortega Llebaria & Colantoni 2013).
Results are also consistent with findings that L1 affects the perception of linguistic and auditory
processing alike (Kuhl et al. 2008).
References
Grabe, E., Rosner, B., García-Albea, J., & Zhou, X. (2003). Perception of English intonation by
English, Spanish and Chinese Listeners. Language and Speech, 46, 375-401.
Hualde, J. I. (2002). Intonation in Romance: Introduction to the special issue. Probus, 14, 1-7.
Hualde, J. I. (2005). The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., & Nelson, T.
(2008). Phonetic learning as a pathway to language: new data and native language
magnet theory expanded (NLM-e). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 363,
979-1000.
Liu, C., & Rodriguez, A. (2012). Categorical Perception of Intonation Contrasts: Effects of
Listeners’ Language Background. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
131(6), 427-433.
Ortega-Llebaria, M., & Colantoni, L. (2013). The L2 acquisition of English intonation: Relations
between form-meaning associations, access to meaning and L1 transfer. Studies in Second
Language Acquisition, 36(2).
An evidential modal in Bulgarian: the inferential future.
María Luisa Rivero and Vesela Simeonova (University of Ottawa).
In Bulgarian, invariable shte (FUT), also used in ordinary futures like English will, may
have an evidential meaning. It may then signal a present inference about a present event
when followed by a verb with present morphology, (1), or a present inference about a
past event when followed by a present perfect: (2-3).
(1) Context: Your friend asks which one among 3 singers in a photo won a TV context.
You listen to a tape where each singer sings. Pointing to one singer in the photo you state:
Tazi
shte
e
pobeditelkata.
This.Fem
FUT
be.Present.3Sg
winner.Sg.Fem.the
‘This one must be the winner.‘
(2) Context: You wonder why Ivan never went to Paris. Since his mom lives there, you
suppose that she often told him to visit. You state:
Tja
shte (da) mu
e
kazvala
mnogo
she
FUT (da) him.DAT
be.Present.3SG
told.PP.Impf. many
pati
da
ja
poseti.
times da
her.ACC
visit.Present.3SG
'She must have told him to visit her many times.'
(3)
Maria smjatashe
che
Petar shte (da)
Maria consider.Ind.Imperfect.3Sg that
Petar FUT (da)
e
iztarpjal
mnogo
prez
vojnata.
be.Pres.3Sg endure.PP.Perf
a.lot
during
war.the
‘Maria thought that Peter must have endured a lot during the war.’
Inferential shte in (1-3), noted in descriptive grammars ([10], [11], [14], a.o.), is not
discussed in the literature on Bulgarian evidentials ([5], [7], [13], [15], [16] a.o.). In this
paper, we will examine its morphosyntax and semantics, arguing that they are of interest
for current theories of modality and evidentiality, and for comparative purposes, since the
properties of shte resemble at the same time those of must ([3]), the Greek future marker
tha, and Romance future affixes ([4] a.o.).
We argue for three points. First, shte is an evidential with the properties of a
modal, not an illocutionary marker: (a) it can be embedded under propositional attitude
verbs: (3); (b) it can be embedded under question operators (not illustrated). Illocutionary
evidentials lack these characteristics ([2], [8], [9] a.o.). Second, shte lacks a rigid
quantificational force. It may express a high level of confidence close to certainty, and
thus resemble a necessity modal: (1). In some contexts including questions, however, it
associates with a level of certainty closer to possibility. Given that (evidential) modals
need not be restricted to universal or existential force ([6], [12], [17] a.o.), we explore the
idea that shte may be a degree modal. Third, shte takes a propositional complement with
tense (including past), and aspect, which makes it resemble both Greek tha and fully
inflected epistemic modals in Romance ([4)] and at the same time differ from English
epistemic modals within analyses for English of the type in [1].
In sum, a well-known evidential system is a hallmark of Bulgarian ([5], [7], [10],
[11], [13], [14], [15], [16], a. o.), but does not exhaust the grammar of evidentiality in this
language. An interesting evidential is less known shte, a modal specialized for
inferences, which {interacts with/scopes over} the complex morphological and semantic
tense and aspect system of Bulgarian.
2 An evidential modal in Bulgarian: the inferential future.
Cited references:
[1] Condoravdi, C. 2002. Temporal interpretation of modals. The Construction of
Meaning.
[2] Davis, C. & al. 2007. The pragmatic values of evidential sentences. SALT 17.
[3] von Fintel, K. & A. Gillies. 2010. Must … stay…. Strong! Natural Language
Semantics 18.
[4] Giannakidou, A. & A. Mari, 2013. The future of Greek and Italian: an epistemic
analysis. Sinn und Bedeutung 17.
[5] Izvorski, R. 1997. The Present Perfect as an Epistemic Modal. SALT 7.
[6] Kratzer, A. 2012. Modals and Conditionals.
[7] Koev, T. 2011. Evidentiality and temporal distance learning. SALT 21.
[8] Matthewson, L. & al. 2007. Evidentials as epistemic modals. Linguistic Variation
Yearbook 7.
[9] Matthewson, L . 2010. On apparently non-modal evidentials. Empirical Issues in
Syntax and Semantics 8.
[10] Nitsolova, R. 2008. Bălgarska Gramatika. Sofia.
[11] Pashov, P. 1989. Prakticeska balgarska gramatika, Sofia.
[12] Rullmann, H. & al. 2008. Modals as Distributive Indefinites. Natural Language
Semantics 16.
[13] Sauerland, U. & M. Schenner. 2007. Shifting evidentials in Bulgarian. Sinn und
Bedeutung 11.
[14] Scatton, E. 1983. A reference Grammar of Modern Bulgarian.
[15] Smirnova, A. 2012. Evidentiality in Bulgarian. Journal of Semantics.
[16] Smirnova, A. 2013. The meaning of the Bulgarian and Turkish evidentials.
Contrastive Linguistics 2/3.
[17] Yalcin, S. 2007. Epistemic Modals. Mind 116.
Interfaces entre domaines phonétique et phonologique
dans l’acquisition de la phonologie
Yvan Rose
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Dans la littérature récente sur l’acquisition de la phonologie par les enfants, on observe des positions
parfois très opposées au sujet de la nature des représentations phonologiques et de leur origines. D’une
part, Hale & Reiss (1998, 2008) arguent en faveur de l’innéisme des traits, et d’une acquisition de la
phonologie par attrition de traits universellement disponible. Par exemple, l’absence de contraste de
tension [ATR] d’un système adulte amène à l’attrition de ce trait dans le système de l’apprenant. D’autre
part, Vihman et ses collègues rejettent la notion même de trait phonologique, et privilégient une
description holistique du développement phonologique, encodé sous forme de gabarits phonologiques
(p.ex. Vihman & Croft 2007; Menn & Vihman 2011).
Au cours de cette présentation, je resitue ce débat en prenant comme point de départ le point de vue
de l’apprenant : tout enfant devant acquérir sa langue maternelle doit analyser cette langue d’un point de
vue perceptuel, et ensuite découvrir les articulations nécessaires à la reproduction des catégories
acoustiques identifiées au niveau perceptuel. J’adopte une approche émergentiste de l’acquisition du
système phonologique (p.ex. Pierrehumbert 2003; Mielke 2008), sans toutefois rejeter les modèles de
représentation formels formulés dans le cadre générativiste (Selkirk 1980; McCarthy & Prince 1986; voir
aussi Fikkert 1994 et Goad & Rose 2004 dans le domaine de l’acquisition). Par exemple, au niveau
segmental, les représentations phonologiques relient formellement les catégories perceptuelles et leurs
catégories articulatoires correspondantes. Ces domaines analogiques (perceptuel et articulatoire) sont
donc reliés via leur interface avec le domaine phonologique, lui-même composé de représentations
discrètes.
J’illustre cette approche à partir de données d’acquisition disponibles sur la base PhonBank
(http://childes.talkbank.org/phon/). Je discute l’acquisition de traits segmentaux, qui émergent à mesure
que l’enfant arrive à maîtriser les articulations nécessaires à la reproduction de dimensions acoustiques
repérées dans le signal. Par exemple, on note la présence de consonnes fricatives dans le signal acoustique
à partir de leurs fréquences apériodiques de haute amplitude (p.ex. Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996).
L’enfant doit donc identifier cette dimension acoustique, et ensuite maîtriser le mode articulatoire
nécessaire à sa reproduction. Comme on peut voir en (1), Inês, une apprenante du portugais européen, a
acquis ce trait de manière catégorique, pour tous les lieux d’articulation. Avant l’âge de 2;07.16, Inês
produisait virtuellement toutes ses fricative cibles comme des occlusives. Au cours du mois suivant, elle a
revu la production de toutes ces consonnes de manière catégorique, encore ici pour tous ses lieux
d’articulation cible.
(1)
a. Occlusivation (jusqu’à 2;07.16)
fiz
[ˈfiʃ]
→ [ˈpiʃ]
sim
[ˈsĩ]
→ [ˈtĩ]
Julieta [ʒuliˈetɐ] → [dujˈletɐ]
a rua
[a ˈʁuɐ] → [a ˈɡuɐ]
b. Productions cibles (après 2;07.16)
ficas
[ˈfikɐʃ] → [ˈfikɐʃ]
sim
[ˈsĩ]
→ [ˈsĩ]
Joaquim
[ʒuɐˈkĩ] → [ʒwɐˈkĩ]
a rua
[a ˈʁuɐ] → [aˈʁwɐ]
Passant ensuite aux patrons de production plus variables, je montre que la majorité d’entre eux
proviennent d’interactions avec d’autres patrons de production, tout aussi systématiques. Par exemple,
toujours dans les productions d’Inês en (1a), on observe que le patron d’occlusivation n’affecte que les
positions d’attaque syllabique (et non les codas).
Je conclus par une discussion de certaines implications formelles. Par exemple, les consonnes
approximantes présentent une résonance périodique; elles font donc partie d’une classe naturelle
différente de celle des fricatives. Ceci est reflété dans les productions de l’enfant : le patron en (1a)
n’affecte ni les liquides, ni les glides (p.ex. [ɾ, l, j, w]). Un trait formel tel que [continu] représente donc
un niveau d’abstraction additionnel au sein des représentations.
Références
Fikkert, Paula. 1994. On the Acquisition of Prosodic Structure. (HIL Dissertations in Linguistics 6). The
Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.
Goad, Heather & Yvan Rose. 2004. Input Elaboration, Head Faithfulness and Evidence for Representation in
the Acquisition of Left-edge Clusters in West Germanic. In René Kager, Joe Pater & Wim Zonneveld
(eds.), Constraints in Phonological Acquisition, 109–157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hale, Mark & Charles Reiss. 1998. Formal and Empirical Arguments Concerning Phonological Acquisition.
Linguistic Inquiry 29(4). 656–683.
Hale, Mark & Charles Reiss. 2008. The Phonological Enterprise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ladefoged, Peter & Ian Maddieson. 1996. The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
McCarthy, John J. & Alan S. Prince. 1986. Prosodic Morphology. In John A. Goldsmith (ed.), The Handbook
of Phonological Theory, 318–366. Oxford: Blackwell.
Menn, Lise & Marilyn M. Vihman. 2011. Features in Child Phonology. In G. Nick Clements & Rachid
Ridouane (eds.), Where do Phonological Features Come From?, 261–301. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Mielke, Jeff. 2008. The Emergence of Distinctive Features. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. 2003. Phonetic Diversity, Statistical Learning, and Acquisition of Phonology.
Language and Speech 46(2-3). 115–154.
Selkirk, Elisabeth O. 1980. Prosodic Domains in Phonology: Sanskrit Revisited. In Mark Aronoff & MaryLouise Kean (eds.), Juncture: A Collection of Original Papers, 107–129. Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri.
Vihman, Marilyn M. & William Croft. 2007. Phonological Development: Toward a “Radical” Templatic
Phonology. Linguistics 45(4). 683–725.
Bilingual Lexical Organization: Is there a sensitive period?
Laura Sabourin, Jean-Christophe Leclerc, Michele Burkholder & Christie Brien
University of Ottawa
A long-standing question in psycholinguistic investigations of bilingual language processing is
whether bilinguals have a separate lexicon for each language, or whether they store lexical items
from both languages in a single integrated memory system. While there is an emerging
consensus for the latter, at least for bilinguals with an early age of L2 acquisition (AoA), there is
also some evidence that bilinguals with a late AoA do not have an integrated lexicon (ex.
Silverberg & Samuel, 2004). Such results are suggestive that there is a critical or sensitive period
for lexical organization. Before such a conclusion can be drawn, however, it is necessary to
ensure that other correlated factors, such as L2 proficiency and manner of L2 acquisition (MoA;
i.e. naturalistic vs. instructional), are not instead responsible for this difference. In previous
studies, these variables are often confounded, as it is difficult to tease them apart. In fact, no
study to our knowledge has yet attempted to isolate the effect of MoA.
The goal of the current study is to investigate the question of whether or not AoA can
account for differences in lexical organization for groups of bilinguals differing with respect to
L2 proficiency and, in particular, MoA. We hypothesize that an early AoA is sufficient but not
necessary for an integrated lexicon; a naturalistic MoA may also lead to an integrated bilingual
lexicon, as it would enable L2 lexical items to form direct links to the semantic network.
In order to investigate this, we are using a lexical decision task with masked priming (Forster &
Davis, 1984). In this task, target words are preceded by subliminally presented prime words; in
critical trials, these primes are the translation equivalent of the target. Translation priming effects
(TPEs) are taken as evidence that words from both languages access an integrated lexicon
(Altarriba & Basnight-Brown, 2007). Crucially, when participants are tested with L2 primes and
first language (L1) targets, this TPE is sensitive to factors such as AoA and L2 proficiency
(Duñabeitia et al., 2010; Dimitropoulou et al., 2010; Sabourin et al., in press).
A study conducted in our lab testing English-French bilinguals in this L2-to-L1 priming
direction found that both simultaneous bilinguals (AoA = birth) and early L2 learners (AoA 3-6
years old) showed significant TPEs, while late L2 learners (AoA > 7 years old) showed none.
Importantly, the early and late L2 learners were matched for L2 proficiency, suggesting that only
early acquirers have an integrated lexicon, irrespective of their proficiency. The effect of MoA
was not investigated here, as the majority of L2 French learners French in this region learn their
L2 in instructional settings. In this same region, however, L2 English learners (with French L1)
tend to learn their L2 in a more naturalistic way. This fundamental difference between these two
groups of bilinguals creates an ideal situation in which to examine the role of MoA.
We will test our hypothesis by comparing the TPEs of 20 late French-English L2 learners
to those of the group of late English-French L2 learners already tested. Crucially, these two
groups will be matched in terms of AoA and L2 proficiency. We will use the same task with the
same critical stimuli, though the languages of the primes and targets will be reversed in order to
maintain the L2-to-L1 priming direction. If an early AoA is necessary and sufficient in order to
have an integrated lexicon, then we expect these late French-English bilinguals to mirror the null
TPEs of the late English-French bilinguals. If, however, we find priming effects for the late
French-English bilinguals, then this would suggest that an early AoA is sufficient but not
necessary for an integrated lexicon; that is, if the L2 is acquired with a naturalistic MoA, even
late learners can have an integrated lexicon. These results will make an important contribution to
the critical/sensitive period debate and will have implications for models of the bilingual lexicon.
REFERENCES
Altarriba, J., & Basnight-Brown, D. M. (2007). Methodological considerations in performing
semantic and translation priming experiments across languages. Behavior Research Methods,
Instruments, & Computers, 39, 1–18.
Dimitropoulou, M., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Carreiras, M. (2011). Masked translation priming
effects with low proficient bilinguals. Memory & Cognition, 39, 260-275.
Duñabeitia, J. A., Perea, M. & Carreiras, M. (2010). Masked translation priming effects with highly
proficient simultaneous bilinguals. Experimental Psychology, 57, p. 98-107.
Forster, K. I., & Davis, C. (1984). Repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical
access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 10, 680-698.
Sabourin, L., Brien, C., & Burkholder, M. (in press). The effect of age of L2 acquisition on the
organization of the bilingual lexicon: Evidence from masked priming. Bilingualism: Language
and Cognition.
Silverberg, S., & Samuel, A. G. (2004). The effect of age of second language acquisition on the
representation and processing of second language words. Journal of Memory and Language,
51, 381–398.
Daniel Schmidtke and Victor Kuperman
Mass counts in the World Wide Web:
A corpus linguistic study of noun countability across varieties of English
This research uses a corpus of global Internet English to explore the variation in the
pluralisation of mass nouns (e.g. luggages, violences, and advices) across varieties of
English. The countable use of mass nouns is a lexico-grammatical phenomenon that is hailed
as a discernible proxy of the dividing line between native and non-native varieties of English
(McArthur, 2002; Mesthrie and Bhatt, 2008). A recent study (Hall, Schmidtke & Vickers,
2013) confirmed this, using Google searches of the World Wide Web as a corpus linguistic
tool. They revealed a significantly higher concentration of countable usage of 25 mass nouns
among non-native L2 English users, compared to native L1 users of British English. In the
current study we employed a less restricted data-driven methodology, with which we were
able to probe the extent of ‘mass noun’ countability across an expansive list of nouns, and
among a greater variety of Englishes.
We queried Davies’ (2013) 1.9 billion-word corpus of Global web-based English
(GloWbE), for the raw frequencies of 17,757 singular noun lemmas and their plural
counterparts. GloWbE represents 20 samples of English from 7 native-English speaking,
‘Inner Circle’ countries (e.g. Canada, Britain and Australia) and 13 ‘Outer Circle’ countries
(e.g. India, Hong Kong and Tanzania). We identified nouns that occurred significantly more
frequently in plural form in the Outer Circle compared to the Inner Circle, irrespective of the
atomic (countable/mass) quality of each noun’s referent. Once these nouns were isolated, we
explored the underlying semantic and morpho-syntactic causes of the dissimilarity in
countability preferences across Inner and Outer Circle Englishes.
Firstly, we found a significant convergence of the nouns used more countably in the
Outer Circle with nouns that are routinely cited in the literature as grammatically ‘mass’. This
list represents a widespread countable usage of mass nouns, such as equipments, softwares
and slangs, in Outer Circle Englishes. These nouns were also part of Hall et al.’s (2013) predefined mass noun word-list. Secondly, we observed a large number of previously unattested
cases of pluralisation of mass nouns, more commonly in the Outer than in the Inner Circle.
Using Latent Semantic Analysis (Landauer and Dumais, 1997), a computational method of
calculating semantic distances between words, we found that the categories of nouns that
exhibit countability preferences in Outer Circle English are semantically predictable. For
example, plural forms of nouns that denote non-individuated concepts reliably cluster into the
semantic category of ‘occupational terminology’, such as: assistances, trainings, welfares,
recruitments, and taxations. In addition, the following nouns represent the semantic category
of ‘written language paraphernalia’: alphabets, graphites, handwritings, mails and
punctuations. Furthermore, we note an overrepresentation of abstract nouns with Latinate
morphology used countably in the Outer Circle, such as acclaims, ascendants, destructions
and servitudes.
Taken together, our results provide further confirmation of the heterogeneity of noun
countability behaviour across the Inner Circle and Outer Circle varieties of English. We
adopt the notion that the observed variance in noun countability supports the conception of
English as dynamic and plurilithic entity (cf. Pennycook, 2009). Moreover, we report an
original finding that suggests that the semantic properties of the nouns inform the
unconscious cognitive processes involved in marking nominalizable concepts with plural
morphology. Our method was blind to the theoretically grounded grammatical count/mass
distinction, and, given the pattern of our results, we propose that the fixed binary distinction
of count/mass is not an essential component in a theory of English language structure.
Instead, it is a phenomenon best viewed as a gradient that is semantically and regionally
dependent.
References
Davies, M. (2013). Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 billion words from speakers in
20 countries. Available online at http://corpus2.byu.edu/glowbe/.
Hall, C. J., Schmidtke, D., & Vickers, J. (2013). Countability in world Englishes. World
Englishes, 32(1), 1-22.
Landauer, T. K., & Dumais, S. T. (1997). A solution to Plato's problem: The latent semantic
analysis theory of acquisition, induction, and representation of knowledge. Psychological
review, 104(2), 211.
McArthur, T. (2002). The Oxford guide to world English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mesthrie, R., & Bhatt, R. M. (2008). World Englishes: The study of new linguistic varieties.
Cambridge University Press.
Pennycook, A. (2009). Plurilithic Englishes: towards a 3D model. Global Englishes in Asian
contexts: Current and future debates, 194-207.
Monolingual and bilingual children's production of Russian embedded yes-no questions
Marina Sherkina-Lieber
Carleton University
The goal of this paper is to investigate typical development and the role of bilingualism in
acquisition of Russian embedded yes-no questions by comparing monolingual and
Russian-English bilingual children. In English, embedded yes-no questions are produced at 3;3
(Pozzan 2011), but their acquisition in Russian has not been studied. This construction involves
focus-driven movement in Russian, but not in English; another such construction, multiple
wh-fronting in Russian, is not fully acquired even at age 6 (Grebenyova 2012). Therefore, late
acquisition of embedded yes-no questions can be expected as well.
In English, embedded yes-no questions are formed with if or whether. In Russian, the
complementizer li 'whether' cliticizes on the focused element moved to Focus Phrase in the left
periphery (Schwabe 2004), as in (1a). There is also a colloquial form without a complementizer,
where the focused constituent may move (1b) or stay in its canonical position (1c), and where
interrogative intonation is preserved (i.e. it is not truly embedded).
(1)
a.
b.
c.
Ja sprosi-l
I ask-PAST
Ja sprosi-l
Ja sprosi-l
Glash-u,
Glasha-ACC
Glash-u,
Glash-u,
bystro li
fast LI
bystro ona
ona
bystro
ona
begaj-et.
she
run-3SG
begajet?
begaet?
‘I asked Glasha if/whether she runs fast.'
Russian monolingual children aged 5-8 (n=24), same age Russian-English bilingual
children in Canada (n=24), and Russian adults (n=8) participated in an elicited production task,
in which they had to ask the computer to ask an imaginary creature named Glasha yes-no
questions. In the first part, the questions had to be embedded under imperative Sprosi Glashu
'Ask Glasha', in the second part, under declarative Ja sprosil Glashu 'I asked Glasha'.
Adults produced significantly more li forms than monolingual children; bilingual children
produced almost none. Both child groups favoured the no-complementizer form, but only
monolingual children used it with focus movement. In addition to it, bilinguals – but not
monolinguals – also used an English-like option, ungrammatical in Russian: overextending the
conditional-only complementizer jesli 'if' and the conditional clause structure (without focus
movement) to embedded questions, as in (2). I argue that its use is caused by cross-linguistic
syntactic priming (cf. Vasilyeva, Waterfall, Gamez, Gomez, Bowers & Shimpi 2010).
(2)
* Ja sprosi-l
Glash-u,
jesli ona bystro begajet.
I ask-PAST Glasha-ACC if she fast run-3SG
I suggest that, while the li form is acquired late in general, its pre-requisite – focus
movement – is at a bigger disadvantage in bilingual children who spend most of their day
speaking English. This is in line with adult heritage speakers' strong preference for basic
(non-scrambled) word order in scrambling languages (Russian – Polinsky 2006; Inuktitut Sherkina-Lieber, Perez-Leroux & Johns 2011), suggesting that focus movement acquisition is
sensitive to the quantity of input and use.
References
Grebenyova, Lydia. 2012. Syntax, semantics and acquisition of multiple interrogatives: Who
wants what? Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Polinsky, Maria. 2006. Incomplete acquisition: American Russian. Journal of Slavic Linguistics
14(2): 191-262.
Pozzan, Lucia. 2011. Asking Questions in Learner English: First and Second Language
Acquisition of Main and Embedded Interrogative Structures. Doctoral dissertation, City
University of New York
Schwabe, Kerstin. 2004. The particle li and the left periphery of Slavic yes-no interrogatives. In
The syntax and the semantics of the left periphery, eds. Horst Lohnstein and Susanne
Trissler, 385-429. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Sherkina-Lieber, Marina, Ana Perez-Leroux, and Alana Johns. 2011. Grammar without speech
production: The case of Labrador Inuttitut heritage receptive bilinguals. Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 14(3), 301-317.
Vasilyeva, Marina, Heidi Waterfall, Perla B. Gámez, Ligia E. Gómez, Edmond Bowers, and
Priya Shimpi. 2010. Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in bilingual children. Journal of
Child Language 37: 1047-1064.
Differences between predicates of personal taste and epistemic modals across languages
E. Allyn Smith, Laia Mayol, and Elena Castroviejo-Miró
This study experimentally tests whether disagreement using a direct non-acceptance particle
(NAP) such as No or That’s not true is felicitous with predicates of personal taste (PPTs) and
epistemic modals (EMs) across languages in which these constructions are thought to be similar
(English, Catalan and Spanish). Our results provide further evidence against theories such as
Stephenson 2007 that try to unify PPTs and EMs in support of theories such as Bouchard 2012 in
which they are not assumed to have a common link.
Background: So-called ‘faultless disagreement’ is exemplified in (1), where the intuition is that
Sam is expressing his opinion about the cake and Bob is not denying that Sam considers the cake
tasty but rather is either expressing the the cake does not taste good to him (following Kölbel
2003, inter alia) or expressing that the cake should not be considered tasty more generally
(Stojanovic 2007, inter alia).
(1) Mary: How’s the cake?
Sam: It’s tasty.
Bob: No it isn’t, it tastes terrible!
(2) Mary: How's the cake?
Sam: It tastes good to me.
Bob: #No it isn't/doesn't, it tastes terrible!
Stephenson 2007, arguing for a modification of Lasersohn 2005, points out that when PPTs are
explicitly relativised to the speaker, as in (2), it is no longer possible to directly disagree, drawing a
parallel with epistemic modals such as might. The idea is that you can say that someone might be
in their office, to which someone else could say No, I just saw him at the gym, but if you make
your degree of knowledge explicit, for example by saying I don’t know, people can no longer
respond using No because they would be denying that you are unsure rather than the content of
what you are unsure of. Given the importance of this data to subsequent work in the field, we set
out to test whether this pattern could be replicated cross-linguistically.
Experiments: 203 native-speaker participants across 4 conditions and 3 languages listened to 88
two-turn dialogues (majority fillers) via an internet survey. In the first turn, a statement is made that
crucially contains one of the meaning types in question (those in (3) as well as regular assertions,
etc.), and in the second turn, for the critical stimuli, participants heard one of four NAPs such as
No or That’s not true. We also present the norming task that provided baseline judgments used as
a fixed effect in the linear mixed effects models used to analyze the results.
(3) Meaning Type
PPT
PPT-relativised
Epist. Modal
EM-relativised
Example: Turn1 (statement)
This soup tastes delicious
This soup tastes delicious to me
Matt may join us later
I don't know whether Matt will join us later
Example: Turn2 (response)
No, it is not delicious
No, it is not delicious
No, he will not join us
No, he will not join us
Results and Discussion: Results of a Likert judgment task asking how good a response Turn2
was to Turn1 show that the distinction between relativised and non-relativised PPT and EM
sentences meanings are significant (p < 0.001) for English. However, Spanish and Catalan show
a different pattern for PPTs as compared to EMs:
English
Catalan
Spanish
Taste Predicates
✔
✔
✔
Relativised PPTs
✖
✔
✔
Epistemic Modals
✔
✔
✔
Relativised EMs
✖
✖
✖
These results are problematic for theories arguing for a parallel between EMs and PPTs with
respect to a judge parameter or implicit argument. We consider a variety of possible explanations
for our results, from differences in what No targets cross-linguistically to a modification of Umbach
in which Relativised PPTs have more in common with EMs than they do Relativised EMs.
References:
Bouchard, David-Etienne. 2012. Long-distance degree quantification and the grammar of
subjectivity. Doctoral Dissertation, McGill.
von Fintel, K. (2004). Would you believe it? The king of France is back! Presuppositions and
truth-value intuitions. In Marga Reimer and Anne Bezuidenhout (Eds.), Descriptions and
Beyond, Oxford University Press.
Lasersohn, Peter. 2005. Context dependence, disagreement, and predicates of personal taste.
Linguistics and Philosophy 28:643–686.
Kölbel, M. 2003. Faultless disagreement. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104 (1):53–73.
Stephenson, T. 2007. Towards a Theory of Subjective Meaning. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Stojanovic, I. 2007. Talking about taste: disagreement, implicit arguments, and relative truth.
Linguistics and Philosophy 30:691–706.
Umbach, C. Evaluative propositions and subjective judgments, ms.
Christopher Spahr
University of Toronto
Restricting non-segmental contrasts
Non-segmental features can serve a contrastive role in the phonology, and various models have
been developed to account for different phenomena such as length (CV, X-slot, and moraic theory), tone (autosegmental theory), and stress (metrical theory). I argue for a unified model of
non-segmental phonology in which word-level contrasts are captured by interactions between two
tiers: a CV-tier, representing segmental root nodes, and a prosodic tier, representing features such
as lexical tone and lexical stress. Pure quantity contrasts are generally represented by double root
node linking on the CV-tier, while tone or non-derivable (lexical) stress contrasts are generally represented on the prosodic tier. I suggest that such a model together with parametrisable restrictions
on associations between the two tiers can derive a range of prosodic systems, from stress, to pitch
accent, to pure tone contrasts, without predicting co-occurrences that are not attested.
This predicts that a single language may not use more than two non-segmental contrasts. That
is, lexical tone, lexical stress, and contrastive quantity may not co-occur within the same system,
contra existing conceptions in which tones, moras/CV-slots, and metrically strong positions are
represented by distinct primitives in the grammar, all of which might be expected to be exploited
within the same language. Instead, I propose that Universal Grammar provides the mechanism of
defining contrasts and the organization thereof (autosegmental association lines across two tiers),
in the vein of Dresher (2013); the phonetic correlates of a given contrastive feature are language
specific and based on phonological and phonetic behaviour. I illustrate my proposal with case
studies of several languages that show multiple interacting non-segmental contrasts.
Serbo-Croatian has a pitch accent system characterized by interactions between contrastive
quantity and tone. The language is also described as having stress, but this is predictable based
on the placement of tone (Inkelas and Zec 1988). Stress may thus be a perceptual or phonetic
phenomenon, but it has no contrastive status. The word-level phonology can thus be captured with
only two tiers: tone on the prosodic tier, and quantity on the CV tier.
Papiamentu is described as having both contrastive tone and contrastive stress. However, it
is not said to have a length contrast. I propose that tone is represented on the prosodic tier, while
stress is represented as quantity on the CV-tier; this is in line with measurements by Rivera-Castillo
and Pickering (2004), which show that duration is the main correlate of Papiamentu stress.
Finally, Estonian is said to have a three-way quantity contrast, but overlong quantity is accompanied falling pitch, which can serve as the sole perceptual correlate distinguishing it from
the long degree, such that the language is moving towards a kind of pitch accent system (Lehiste
2003). I show how long/overlong alternations can be captured by a two-tiered analysis in which
the elements on the prosodic tier have a prime phonetic realization of pitch, which is enhanced
with additional duration only in certain contexts.
References
Dresher, B. Elan. 2013. The arch not the stones: Universal feature theory without universal features. Paper
presented at the Conference on Features in Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and Semantics: What are
they?, CASTL, University of Tromsø.
Inkelas, Sharon, and Draga Zec. 1988. Serbo-Croatian pitch accent: The interaction of tone, stress, and
intonation. Language 64:227–248.
Lehiste, Ilse. 2003. Prosodic changes in progress: From quantity language to accent language. In Development in prosodic systems, ed. Paula Fikkert and Haike Jacobs, 47–65. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Rivera-Castillo, Yolanda, and Lucy Pickering. 2004. Phonetic correlates of stress and tone in a mixed
system. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 19:261–284.
1
Which Questions Do You Like the Movements In? A Semantic Constraint on Extraction
Dennis Ryan Storoshenko - University of Calgary and Robert Frank - Yale University
The Issue At the periphery of discussions on wh-movement are extractions from a certain class
of structures which have been called Quasi-NPs (Cattell, 1979, 1980):
(1)
Which cari do you like [the gears/*girls [in ti ]]?
Crucially, the reported ungrammaticality of (1) is under a parallel interpretation of gears and girls,
i.e. both should be answerable with “I like the ones in the Ford, not the Chevy.” In this paper, we
follow up on Cattell’s suggestion that the constraint involved is semantic, rather than syntactic. We
provide further support for this by unifying this case with one discussed by Truswell (2007), and
by showing that both exhibit parallel constraints on scope inversion.
Covert Argumenthood Because the two cases in (1) are syntactically parallel, Cattell argues
that they are distinguished by a semantic property: the lower NP denotes an entity of which the
higher noun is a distinguished part. We take the relevant distinction to be tied to the semantics
of the higher noun: extraction is possible when that noun establishes a (possibly contextually
licensed) semantic relation with the extracted NP, such as identifying location: a set of gears can
be identified by the car in which it is installed. As shown by the contrast with have sentences in
(2a), gears can function as a relational noun taking the car as an argument, while girls cannot.
(2) a. The car has gears/*girls.
b. The class has girls/*a girl.
Based on (2b), it appears that girls (unlike girl) is able to function as a relational noun with the
class. The corresponding extraction contrast is found in the following, first noted by Cattell:
(3) a.
I like the girls in that class. → Which class do you like the girls in?
b.
I like the girl in that class. → *Which class do you like the girl in?
Extraction is thus possible when the higher noun takes the location as a covert argument.
Event Identification Truswell (2007) points out another contrast in extractability which appears
to depend on the semantic structure of the embedding predicate.
(4)
Whati did John arrive/*work whistling ti ?
Truswell proposes that extraction is possible when the event denoted by an adjunct predicate is
identified with an event argument determined by the matrix predicate. In (4), telic arrive introduces an event argument, with which the whistling event is identified, associated with the process
leading up to a resulting state. Being atelic, work introduces no such event argument, with no event
identification possible. We propose that this requirement of identification is identical in both cases,
the quasi-NPs requiring an identification of entities, and the cases in (4) one of events.
A further reason to take the Truswell and quasi-NP cases as parallel stems from their behaviour with respect to scope. In both cases, the possibility of inverse scope exactly parallels the
possibility of extraction, while surface scopes in (5a) are subject to pragmatic constraints differentiating telic and atelic predicates:
(5) a. Some linguist arrived/worked whistling each song.
arrived: #∃ > ∀, ∀ > ∃; worked: ∃ > ∀, *∀ > ∃
b. Some mechanic likes the gears/girls in every car.
gears: ∃ > ∀, ∀ > ∃; girls: ∃ > ∀, *∀ > ∃
Implications So far as we know, existing syntactic accounts of scope and extraction are not sensitive to the types of argument identification that we have argued are relevant. We must then either
extend Truswell’s proposal, making both extraction and scope sensitive to semantic structure, or
augment syntactic structure to represent processes of argument identification, in such a way that
constrains both phenomena. Though we do not have space to justify this here, we believe the answer lies in Synchronous Tree Adjoining Grammar (Schabes and Shieber, 1994), where syntactic
and semantic representations are composed in parallel, using recursive structure building operations. This system allows us to provide a parallel treatment for scope and extraction, while also
explaining why similarities between them break down in cases of extraction from finite clauses.
References
Cattell, Ray. 1979. On extractability from quasi-NPs. Linguistic Inquiry 10:168–172.
Cattell, Ray. 1980. More on quasi-NPs. Linguistic Inquiry 11:419–420.
Schabes, Yves, and Stuart M. Shieber. 1994. An alternative conception of tree-adjoining derivation.
Computational Linguistics 20:91–124.
Truswell, Robert. 2007. Extraction from adjuncts and the structure of events. Lingua 117:1355–
1377.
NON-SELECTED ARGUMENTS AND THE ETHICAL STRATEGY
Tomokazu Takehisa, NUPALS
INTRODUCTION: This paper investigates non-selected arguments in Japanese, as in (1)–(3) below,
and makes the following claims: [1] non-selected arguments such as non-volitional
agents/causers and possessors are syntactically indistinguishable, introduced by Appl (Pylkkänen
2008), while (volitional) agents are introduced by Voice (Kratzer 1996); [2] due to the defective
licensing property of Appl in Japanese, non-selected arguments can only appear as nominative
subjects of lexical causative verbs or those of possessor passives; moreover, [3] interpretational
differences between these arguments are derived post-syntactically, by means of a modified
version of the Ethical Strategy (Rivero 2004), which draws inferences from the thematic
information read off the syntax and the set of proto-role properties (Dowty 1991).
[1]: I argue for the distinction between (volitional) agents, on the one hand, and non-volitional
agents/causers and other non-agentive VP-external arguments, on the other. Support for this view
comes from data involving (direct) passivization, soo suru (“do so”) replacement, and formation
of potential constructions (Inoue 1976).
[2]: While non-selected arguments can appear freely in languages like German where Appl
assigns inherent dative case, the defective licensing property of Appl in Japanese severely
restricts their distribution to the contexts where an agent argument is suppressed (in passive) or
not required (in lexical causatives) so that they can be marked nominative by T.
[3]: Despite the difference in the licensing property of Appl, non-selected arguments receive
similar treatments with respect to thematic interpretation across languages: given that Appl
merely relates an argument to the event denoted by its complement (cf. Cuervo 2003, Schäfer
2012), the argument introduced is underspecified with respect to the way it participates in the
event. I propose that the post-syntactic inferential procedure derives the interpretation of such
thematically underspecified arguments in consideration of the syntactic input and the set of
proto-role properties, which serve to circumscribe the bounds of interpretation. Specifically, an
argument introduced by Appl can participate in the event, roughly in one of the two ways:
causing the event or being causally affected by it. More specifically, if Voice, which introduces
an agent argument, is not present in the input, as in (1) and (2), then the argument introduced can
be construed in either way: as a non-volitional agent/causer, as in (1), or as being causally
affected, presumably by having a (possessive) relation to another entity affected by the event, as
in (2). Moreover, if the presence of an agent is formally represented in the input, as in (3), then
the thematically underspecified argument can only be construed as being causally affected.
SUMMARY: The present analysis offers a unified syntactic treatment of non-selected arguments
such as non-volitional agents/causers and possessors, while at the same time deriving their
variable interpretations by the post-syntactic Ethical Strategy. To the extent that this analysis is
successful, the interpretations of non-selected arguments are syntactically uninformative.
(1) Taroo-ga ukkari
koppu-o war-Ø-ta (>wat-ta)
T.-NOM inadvertently cup-ACC √break-CAUS-PST
Non-volitional agent/causer
‘Taro inadvertently broke the cup.’
(2) Taroo-ga ziko-de
ude-o
or-Ø-ta (>ot-ta)
T.-NOM accident-in arm-ACC √break-CAUS-PST
Possessor (Causative)
‘Taro broke his arm in the accident.’
(3) Taroo-ga Hanako-ni/niyotte okasi-o
tabe-rare-ta
T.-NOM H.-DAT/by
sweets-ACC √eat-PASS-PST Possessor (Passive)
‘Taro had his sweets eaten by Hanako.’
REFERENCES
Cuervo, Cristina (2003) Datives at Large. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Dowty, David (1991) “Thematic proto-roles and argument selection,” Language 67:547-619.
Inoue, Kazuko (1976) Henkei-Bumpoo to Nihongo [Transformational Grammar and Japanese],
volume 2. Taishuukan, Tokyo.)
Kratzer, Angelika (1996) “Severing the External Argument from its Verb,” In J. Orrick and L.
Zaring, eds., Phrase Structure and the Lexicon, 109-137. Kluwer Academic Publishers,
Dordrecht.
Pylkkänen, Liina (2008) Introducing Arguments. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Rivero, Maria Luisa (2004) “Datives and the non-active voice/reflexive clitics in Balkan
languages,” In O. Miseska-Tomic, ed., Balkan Syntax and Semantics, 237-267, John Benjamin,
Amsterdam.
Schäfer, Florian (2012) “Two types of external argument licensing–the case of causers,” Studia
Linguistica 66:128-180.
Spanish Nominal Word Order in Early and Late Bilingualism
Danielle Thomas & Kristen Don Paul, York University
In observing how difficult it is for late second-language (L2) learners to fully acquire
some domains of L2 grammar against a monolingual standard, some investigators have proposed
a so-called ‘sensitive period’ in which the ability to acquire a second language significantly
decreases due to age-related cognitive change (Meisel, 2011). Formally, the domains of grammar
proposed to be most problematic imply the use of so-called ‘interface’ areas of language where
subtle interpretational properties are encoded structurally (Sorace, 2005). The nominal syntax of
Spanish presents many such interface challenges for learners in the areas of gender agreement
and nominal word order, especially for speakers of languages like English, a non-gender and
rigid word order language. While gender has been studied extensively for English speakers of
L2 Spanish (White et al, 2004; Montrul et al., 2008), few studies have examined nominal word
order (Judy et al, 2008). Here, we examine the interface proposal in relation to age-related
models of language acquisition by examining the knowledge that Spanish monolinguals and
early and late Spanish-English bilinguals have of nominal syntax.
Grammatically, English is a rigid word order language (adj-N), while Spanish permits
both word orders (adj-N, N-adj). While qualitative adjectives in Spanish appear predominantly in
the post-N position with a contrastive interpretation, as in (1), these same adjectives may occur
in the pre-N position with a non-contrastive, “individualizing” interpretation, as in (2): (1) el
director famoso, y no el desconocido (the famous director, not the unknown one); (2) el famoso
director del cine italiano (the “famous-director” of Italian cinema, only one reference possible—
Federico Fellini). Some have proposed that the pre-N structure of qualitative adjectives, such as
“famoso”, occurs by overtly raising the adjective, which is generated in SpecNP, to the Spec of
DegP in the “external shell” of the DP (Demonte, 1999). Previous work on nominal word order
in bilingualism have exhibited two main results: 1) advanced speakers of L2 Spanish pattern with
native speakers on their knowledge of pre-N adjectives, unlike intermediate speakers (Judy et al.
2008); and 2) early child bilinguals exhibit bi-directional effects for nominal word order in
Germanic and Romance languages (Nicoladis, 2006; Rizzi et al, 2013).
The main question of the current study, therefore, was to examine if early and late
bilinguals use overt movement of qualitative adjectives to the “external shell” of the Spanish DP
to encode semantic distinctions that they encode covertly in English. If the “interface” problem is
a “sensitive period” issue, then we expected late bilinguals to not exhibit target knowledge of
pre-N adjectives in the same way as native speakers (early bilinguals and monolinguals). On the
other hand, if the “interface” problem is not strictly related to maturation, then we expected early
and late bilinguals to exhibit similar knowledge of this domain, in contrast to monolinguals.
We tested 50 speakers of Spanish (6 monolinguals, 9 intermediate level heritage
speakers, 11 advanced level heritage speakers, 12 intermediate late L2, 12 advanced late L2) on
their knowledge of nominal word order in an aural Acceptability Judgment Task that employed
felicitous and non-felicitous pre-N and post-N adjectives. Proficiency was measured both nonlinguistically (questionnaire) and linguistically (lexical & syntactic assessments). Results here
support a non-maturational proficiency-based model of bilingualism. Intermediate heritage
speakers rejected felicitous pre-N adjectives significantly more than monolinguals and advanced
early and late bilinguals (p=.012, p=.008, p=.039, respectively), with the latter groups
performing alike; intermediate L2 speakers appeared to not have acquired the overt raising of
qualitative adjectives, given that they exhibit more random judgments of these pre-N contexts
(individual results ~50%). We discuss these results in terms of explicit learning, age as
“macrovariable” in contexts of bilingualism, and in terms of current models of bilingual
development and processing.
References
Demonte, V. (1999). A Minimal account of Spanish adjective position and interpretation. In
Franco, J., Landa, A. & Martín, J. Grammatical Analyses in Basque and Romance
Linguistics, (45-75)
Judy, T., Guijarro-Fuentes, P., Rothman, J. (2008). Adult Accessibility to L2 Representational
Features: Evidence from Spanish DP. Proceedings of the 2007 Second Language Research
Forum, ed. Melissa Bowles et al., (1-21). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Meisel, J. (2011). First and Second Language Acquisition. New York: Cambridge UP.
Montrul, S., Foote, R., Perpiñán, S. Gender Agreement in Adult Second Language Learners and
Spanish Heritage Speakers: The Effects of Age and Context of Acquisition. Language
Learning, 58(3), 503-553.
Nicoladis, E. (2006). Cross-linguistics transfer in adjective-nouns strings by preschool bilingual
children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9(1), 15-32.
Rizzi, S., Arnaus Gil, L., Repetto, V., Geveler, J., Muller, N. (2013). Adjective placement in
bilingual Romance-German and Romance-Romance children. Studia Linguistica, 67(1), 123147.
Sorace, A. (2005). Syntactic optionality at interfaces. In L. Cornips & K. Corrigan (Eds.), Syntax
and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social (pp. 46-111). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
White, L., Valenzuela, E., Kozlowska-Macgregor, M. & Leung, Y.-K.I. (2004). Gender
agreement in non-native Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 105-133.
Language-internal context and VOT in bilingualism: A view from Spanish and English
Danielle Thomas & Katie Tetzloff, York University
One of the most challenging aspects of learning a second language (L2) is acquiring a
“native-like” accent. Flege’s (1995) Speech Learning Model proposes that in order for a new
phonetic category to be established, L2 speakers must be able to discern some phonetic
difference between the L1 and L2 sound; if the L2 sound is heard as an allophone of the L1
phoneme, a new phonetic category will not be formed, causing the L1 and L2 categories to
assimilate. This may result in a compromised L1-L2 feature. In addition to language internal
factors, language external factors, such as age of first exposure to bilingualism, may affect how
successful a learner can be in acquiring L2 sounds in a native-like way (Oyama, 1976).
One area that has been studied quite extensively in the area of sound acquisition in a
bilingual context is the perception and production of voiced and voiceless stops ([b,d,g] and
[p,t,k] respectively) in languages like Spanish with relatively short voice-onset times (VOT) and
languages like English with relatively longer VOTs (see Zampini, 2014). Two aspects of this
research stand out: 1) early bilinguals (simultaneous/early child L2) have an advantage over late
bilinguals (adult L2) in acquiring VOT values in the “monolingual-like” range (Thornburgh &
Ryalls, 1998); and 2) bilinguals may exhibit variability in VOT values for a stop not only in their
later-acquired language, but also in their L1 (Bullock et al, 2006). Following evidence that the
VOT value of a given stop is different not only according to place of articulation of the stop, but
also in terms of the following vocalic segment (e.g. vowel height, Yavas, 2007), we sought to
examine if variability in VOT values for voiceless stops were uniform across all phonetic
contexts (e.g. pa, pe, pi), or if bilinguals exhibit differential variation on VOT values according
to the phonetic context (i.e. vowel height). Following the SLM, we predicted that both Spanish
speakers of L2 English and English speakers of L2 Spanish would exhibit more variability (i.e.
compromise VOT values) on low vowels than on high (front) vowels, given that low vowels are
less congruent cross-linguistically, but not distant enough to establish new phonetic categories.
To date we have tested 16 bilingual speakers of Spanish and English, 9 high intermediate
speakers of late L2 Spanish and 7 advanced speakers of L2 English. Further, we have tested 5
heritage speakers of high intermediate Spanish to determine if SLM is a model that can cover a
full range of bilingual effects, not simply those related to late contexts of exposure. In addition to
completing both linguistic and non-linguistic measures (lexical/syntactic measures and selfrating) of their relative proficiency in Spanish and English, participants read (non-cognate)
words in a carrier phrase (Say ___ again; Diga ___ otra vez) with labial and velar stops in three
different phonetic contexts in language-specific tasks: pa/pæ, pe/pɛ, pi, ka/kæ, ke/kɛ, ki. Results
partially support the prediction made above. Overall, late L2 speakers of both Spanish and
English are able to acquire the phonetic distinction of English and Spanish /p/ and /k/, and use
place of articulation to constrain the VOT for this domain. Further, all groups appear to be
sensitive to the use of vowel height as a means by which to constrain VOT. However, these
preliminary results point to the following: i) English speakers of L2 Spanish produce noticeable
and consistent compromise values on their Spanish VOT values, and in neither case (/p/ or /k/)
are more accurate when the voiceless stop is followed by a high vowels (congruent crosslinguistically) as compared to mid- and low front vowels; and ii) Spanish speakers of L2 English
exhibit native-like VOTs for /k/, but not for /p/. In the latter case, these speakers do exhibit more
accuracy in VOT when the high (congruent cross-linguistically) vowel /i/ follows the stop than
when followed by the lower vowels /e/ and /a/. Interestingly, when speaking English, heritage
speakers of Spanish have noticeably longer VOT values for all variants as compared to native
English speakers. We will discuss these results in terms of the methodology employed (bilingual
vs. monolingual mode of communication), models of phonological development and bilingual
models (age- vs. proficiency-based) of sound processing.
References
Bullock, B., Toribio, J., González, V., Dalola, A. (2006). Language dominance and performance
outcomes in bilingual pronunciation. In Grantham, M, Shea, C., & Archibald, J. (eds)
Proceedings of the 8th Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition Conference. (9-16).
Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.
Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W.
Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language
research (pp. 233-277). Timonium, MD: York Press.
Lisker, L. & Abramson, A. (1964). A Cross-Language study of voicing in initial stops: acoustical
measurements. Word, 3, 384-422.
Oyama, S. (1976). A sensitive period for the acquisition of a non-native phonological system.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 5, 261-283.
Thornburgh, D. F., & Ryalls, J. H. (1998). Voice onset time in Spanish-English bilinguals: Early
versus late learners of English. Journal of Communication Disorders, 31(3), 215-228.
Yavas, M. (2007). Factors Influencing the VOT of English Long Lag Stops and Interlanguage
Phonology. New Sounds 2007: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on the
Acquisition of Second Language Speech. 492-498.
Zampini, M. (2014). Voice Onset Time in second language Spanish. In Geeslin, K. The
Handbook of Second Language Spanish Acquisition. (113-129). Malden, MA: Wiley &
Sons.
Les pronoms en français : pluralité et individuation
Mireille Tremblay
Université de Montréal
Les études sur la distinction masse/comptable se sont limitées au domaine empirique des noms
communs et une classe lexicale importante a été négligée : celle des pronoms du pluriel. Comme
le paradigme s’inscrit dans la logique des noms comptables et que les pronoms étant marqués
pour le nombre (singulier ou pluriel), on présuppose souvent que les pronoms du pluriel sont
marqués pour l’individuation. Les pronoms du pluriel de l’anglais semblent confirmer cette
analyse puisqu’ils se comportent comme des noms comptables et peuvent être individués.
(1) a. two of us
b. many of us
c. how many of us
d. none of us
En revanche, les pronoms forts du pluriel du français semblent s’inscrire dans une logique
différente, puisqu’ils permettent très difficilement les constructions en (2) ((Franckel & Paillard
2007). Les mêmes exemples deviennent toutefois parfaitement grammaticaux lorsque la
préposition entre est insérée devant le pronom (3).
(2) a. #deux de nous
(3)
a. deux d’entre nous
b. #plusieurs de nous
b. plusieurs d’entre nous
c. #combien de nous
c. combien d’entre nous
d. #personne de noou
d. personne d’entre nous
L’étude du français québécois nous montre que l’utilisation de la préposition entre n’est pas la
seule stratégie disponible en français permettant la partition de l’ensemble dénoté par le pronom.
Dans cette variété, les pronoms forts non clitiques du paradigme du pluriel apparaissent très
souvent avec le morphème post-pronominal autres (Morin 1982, Auger 1994, Blondeau 2011) et
la présence de ce morphème permet d’obtenir un ensemble partitionné.
(3) a. deux de nous-autres
b. plusieurs de nous-autres
c. combien de nous-autres
d. personne de nous-autres
Afin de rendre compte de différences distributionnelles entre l’anglais, le français de référence et
le français québécois, nous proposons l’analyse suivante. Les pronoms pluriels de l’anglais et du
français ont la même dénotation : les deux types de pronoms renvoient à des ensembles d’objets
dénombrables. En revanche, les deux types de pronoms différent au niveau de la discrétion :
alors que les pronoms de l’anglais se comportent comme des noms communs pluriels et réfèrent à
des objets comptables individués, les pronoms du français se comportent comme des noms
communs collectifs et renvoient à des ensembles d’objets comptables non individués.
L’individuation des pronoms pluriels du français peut s’obtenir de deux façons : soit avec
l’insertion de la préposition entre (en français de référence), soit avec l’ajout du suffixe –autres
(en français québécois) Cette analyse appuie l’hypothèse selon laquelle la distinction
comptable/masse serait grammaticale plutôt qu’ontologique.
Références bibliographiques Auger, J. (1994). Pronominal clitics in Québec colloquial French : A
morphological analysis. PH.D. Thesis, UPenn. Blondeau, H. (2011). Cet « autres » qui nous distingue. Tendances
communautaires et parcours individuels dans le système des pronoms en français québécois. Québec, PUL.
Franckel, J.-J. et D. Paillard. (2007). Grammaire des prépositions, Tome 1. Paris, Ophrys. Morin, Y.-C. (1982). De
quelques [l] non étymologiques dans le français du Québec: notes sur les clitiques et la liaison. Revue québécoise de
linguistique 2(2) 9-47.
No weak necessity
Igor Yanovich (Universit¨
at T¨
ubingen)
In English, a number of tests distinguish “strong” and “weak” deontic necessity modals
(namely “strong” must and have to vs. “weak” should and ought). Two of such tests
are shown in 1 and 2. In English, the distinction seems so real that there is considerable
formal literature on what the underlying semantic property might be (e.g., [Copley, 2006],
[Rubinstein, 2012]). In the typological literature, the distinction between strong and weak
necessity is also assumed to be universal (cf. [Bybee et al., 1994], a.o.)
(1) Strenthening test:
a. You should wash your hands. In fact, you have to.
b. ??You have to wash your hands. In fact, you should.
(2) Ashfield test:
Context: there are many routes to Ashfield, with their pros and contras
To go to Ashfield, you OK ought to/??have to take Route 2.
Against the accepted view, I argue that necessity deontics do not form categories of
weak vs. strong. The argument is two-fold. First, on data from East Slavic I show that
necessity deontics need not divide neatly into two classes. If they did, we would have seen
a complementary distribution of modals in “weak necessity tests”, as in English. Table 3,
summarizing the results of weak necessity tests for six Russian deontics, shows nothing close.
(3)
nado
nuˇzno
dolˇzna
objazana
sleduet
stoit
Neg weak Neg str Stren weak Stren str Ashfield Bridge Insur-str Insur-weak Coffee
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
?
+
+
+
−
+
+
+
+
−
−
+
−
−
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
−
+
+
+
Second, when we look more closely into English data, their complexities become apparent.
In the non-formal-semantic literature, the notion of strength is rarely assumed to produce
two neat categories. Instead, different authors speak of relative strength, and sometimes of
loose groupings. For example, [Kangasniemi, 1992] reports an experiment where 150 native
speakers ranked 6 Finnish necessity deontics for strength, with the mean values varying from
8.2 to 4.5 (out of 10) gradually, not bimodally.
From the formal-semantic perspective, things are not as simple either. Formally, we can
prove that two modals differ in strength rather than in modal flavor iff they have different
interpretations when their flavor is fixed. But [von Fintel and Iatridou, 2008] argue precisely
that the flavor is not exactly the same for weak and strong necessity modals: according to
them, weak necessity ones use an additional ordering source bringing in a special flavor,
namely that of non-coercive, non-strict rules. But if the flavors cannot be fixed, we have
no reliable formal test. Moreover, when we do manage to fix the flavor strictly, “weak”
should and ought may actually appear in contexts where no weakness of any sort is implied:
e.g., when you read that “all documents should be received by June 1 for full consideration”,
this is just as strict as statements with must.
So how do we explain the observed facts if the “weak necessity theory” doesn’t help? I
show that we actually do not need such a theory, as the behavior of different modals in “weak
necessity tests” may be correctly predicted from their basic properties, most importantly
the types of modal bases and ordering sources they may have. For example, 1a is fine when
the first modal may express the modal flavor of advice, and the second, that of deontic
necessity. In English, must and have to are not particularly common in performative advice
statements, so they are banned from the first, “weak” position in the test. In similar ways,
other contexts are shown to test for basic modal properties that the theory of modality needs
to employ anyway. No additional distinction between weak and strong necessity deontics is
needed.
References
[Bybee et al., 1994] Bybee, J. L., Perkins, R., and Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: tense,
aspect and modality in the languages of the world. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
[Copley, 2006] Copley, B. (2006). What should should mean? CNRS, Universit´e Paris 8. http://copley.
free.fr/copley.should.pdf.
[von Fintel and Iatridou, 2008] von Fintel, K. and Iatridou, S. (2008). How to say ought in foreign: The
composition of weak necessity modals. In Gu´eron, J. and Lecarne, J., editors, Time and modality, volume 75
of Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, pages 115–141. Springer.
[Kangasniemi, 1992] Kangasniemi, H. (1992). Modal expressions in Finnish. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden
Seura, Helsinki.
[Rubinstein, 2012] Rubinstein, A. (2012). Roots of modality. PhD thesis, UMass Amherst.

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