https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/gateway/plugin/WebFeedGatewayPlugin/atomProceedings of the Linguistic Society of America2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Patrick Farrellpmfarrell@ucdavis.eduOpen Journal Systems<p>This is a periodical publication of the <span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: larger;"><a title="LSA home page" href="http://www.linguisticsociety.org" target="_self">linguistic society of america</a></span> containing articles developed from talks and posters from its Annual Meeting, which since 1924 has been one of the premier gatherings of researchers from America and around the world working on issues in linguistics and language sciences, representing a wide range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. More information about LSA Annual Meetings is available <a href="http://www.linguisticsociety.org/meetings-institutes" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: larger;">here</span></a>.</p>https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5639Markedness can’t explain replacement patterns in suppletive paradigms2023-12-06T02:20:44+00:00Matthew L. Juge
<p>Claims that markedness influences morphological change do not fit attested patterns of suppletive replacement in verb paradigms. Examination of all suppletion types and sources reveals that markedness considerations are weaker predictors of suppletion patterns than interparadigmatic relationships, intraparadigmatic relationships, and semantic connections.</p>
2023-12-06T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Matthew L. Jugehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5453A discourse-based approach to concessive although-stripping in English2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Seulkee ParkJong-Bok Kim
<p>This study investigates concessive stripping in English, a phenomenon where the so-called Stripping or Bare Argument Ellipsis (BAE) occurs in <em>although</em>-clauses. This elliptical construction has at least two sub-patterns: <em>although</em>-stripping and negative <em>although</em>-stripping. Merchant (2003) and Wurmbrand (2017) argue that <em>although</em>-stripping undergoes clausal ellipsis to contribute to the propositional meaning of a remnant, supported by syntactic connectivity effects. However, the corpus data we have identified indicate that connectivity effects can often be overridden. Based on this observation, we suggest a discourse-based approach in which the ellipsis construction is directly generated with no derivational processes and interpreted with reference to the contextual information in question</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Seulkee Park, Jong-Bok Kimhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5463Introducing arguments beyond the thematic domain2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Soo-Hwan Lee
Extensive research has focused on how VoiceP (Kratzer 1996), ApplP (Pylkkänen 2008), and <em>i</em>* (Wood & Marantz 2017), an overarching term for Voice and Appl, establish argument structure inside the thematic domain (below TP). A question arises as to whether argument structure can be established outside the thematic domain (above TP). This work provides empirical evidence from Korean in suggesting that an argument can be introduced by Voice/Appl (<em>i</em>*) in the left periphery. Specifically, it lends support to the claim that the discourse participant ‘addressee’ is represented in syntax (Haegeman & Hill 2013; Miyagawa 2017; 2022; Portner et al. 2019 among others). In this regard, this work draws parallels between the thematic domain and the speech act domain, which have been considered to be two separate domains.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Soo-Hwan Leehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5428Postlabial raising and paradigmatic leveling in A’ingae: A diachronic study from the field2023-11-19T21:28:00+00:00Maksymilian Dąbkowski
This paper discusses and analyzes the variation between <em>ai</em> and <em>ɨi</em> in A’ingae(or Cofán, an Amazonian isolate, ISO 639-3: con) by comparing the data reported in Borman’s (1976) dictionary with contemporary productions. In Borman (1976), <em>ai </em>does not generally appear after labial consonants; the distribution of <em>ɨi</em> is not restricted. In some modern productions, postlabial <em>ai</em> is allowed when the diphthong crosses a morpheme boundary (<em>a</em> +<em> i</em>). I propose that Borman’s (1976) distribution of <em>ai</em> and <em>ɨi</em> is a consequence of a diachronic change of <em>ai</em> to <em>ɨi</em> after labial consonants (*<em> ai</em> ><em></em><em> ɨi </em>/B _). The contemporary distribution reflects paradigm leveling and contact-induced replacement: Borman’s (1976) <em>ɨi</em> corresponds to contemporary <em>ai</em> if <em>a</em> is present in another related form. In novel productively-formed words, the availability of postlabial raising is speaker-specific. The proposed sound change of postlabial raising (*<em>ai</em> ><em> ɨi</em> /B _) is unusual and lacks obvious phonetic motivation. I speculate that postlabial raising reflects postlabial rounding (*<em>ai</em> > *<em> ui </em>/B _) opacified by subsequent unconditioned unrounding and centralizing of the back round vowel (* <em>u</em> ><em> ɨ</em>).
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Maksymilian Dąbkowskihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5421The pervasiveness of language contact: Evidence from negative existentials in Romeyka/Turkish code-switching2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Zeyneb Kaya
This paper investigates the morpho-syntactic features of language contact in the endangered Greek dialect Romeyka with Turkish. We analyze the use of the borrowed negative existential <em>jok</em> to (a) determine its role in Romeyka’s negation patterns (b) examine the effects of contact in Romeyka through cross-linguistic comparisons of <em>jok</em> with Turkish and forms of the dialect as spoken in Greece and (c) apply the identified grammatical patterns of <em>jok</em> to Myers-Scotton’s linguistic explanations for the code switching phenomena in the Matrix Language Turnover Hypothesis. The analysis demonstrates the pervasive influence of Turkish on the morpho-syntax of Romeyka through the incorporation of Turkish grammatical structures. We observe changes in the fundamental predicate grammar that are aligned with Turkish and that are inconsistent with Pontic’s existential constructions where the verb indicating existence is used. The patterns of contact confirm the Matrix Language hypothesis and provide evidence that indicate that Romeyka may be undergoing language turnover. Our findings are relevant to further understanding code switching among speakers of minority languages and assessing the vitality of Romeyka in Turkey.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Zeyneb Kayahttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5465Decision trees, entropy, and the contrastive feature hierarchy2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Jane Chandlee
<span dir="ltr">Dresher (2009) argues that language-particular hierarchies of features are </span><span dir="ltr">the best way to identify contrastive features in a phonological inventory. While not </span><span dir="ltr">universal, this ordering of features is also not fully unconstrained. But what limits </span><span dir="ltr">the space of possible feature orders remains an open question. This paper demon</span><span dir="ltr">strates how the concept of entropy establishes a partial ordering of features that both </span><span dir="ltr">allows for but also constrains language-particular variation. Specifically, a decision </span><span dir="ltr">tree machine learning algorithm is employed to dynamically impose structure on the </span><span dir="ltr">hypothesis space of possible feature orders.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Jane Chandleehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5466L2 interpretation of negative polar questions: Evidence from online experiments2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Keunhyung ParkStanley Dubinsky
This paper studies Korean L2 English learners’ responses to negative polar questions (NPQs – i.e., negative <em>yes</em>-<em>no</em> questions), focusing on the differences between EFL learners (those learning English as a foreign language in Korea) and ESL learners (those learning English as US residents). The paper first considers differences in the syntax and semantics of Korean and English NPQs, differences that may lead to misinterpretations when questions are translated from one language to the other. The paper then describes a series of experiments comparing Korean EFL and ESL learners’ responses to English polar questions, focusing on measuring participants’ response times (RTs) and unexpected responses (UERs) to distinct classes of these.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Keunhyung Park, Stanley Dubinskyhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5467On “historical unity” of Russian and Ukrainian: A linguistic perspective on language conflict and change2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Anyssa MurphyLex WhalenStanley DubinskyMichael GavinJohn F. BailynJackson Ginn
<p>This paper focuses on Putin’s (2021) misguided claim regarding “historical [linguistic] unity” of Russian and Ukrainian. Their being two distinct languages is not in question, as opposed (for example) to Serbian and Croatian. However, it is important to substantiate the objective reality of those differences, taking a strong stand against unjustified claims about linguistic [unity] where there are no grounds for them. Implementing a Python-coded algorithm, like those described in Nerbonne & Kretzschmar 2013, we calculate Levenshtein distance between frequency-based word lists, in a manner sensitive to both organic and contact-induced change, to fully reveal Ukrainian’s complex relationship with both Russian and Polish.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Anyssa Murphy, Lex Whalen, Stanley Dubinsky, Michael Gavin, John F. Bailyn, Jackson Ginnhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5468Optionality in semantic-pragmatic interface of bilingualism? Bare numeral constructions in Tibetan and Chinese bilinguals’ grammar2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Yunchuan ChenYuxuan HuaShiting Wang
<p>Bare numeral constructions (BNCs) can be anaphoric in Chinese but not Tibetan. Since the interpretation of BNCs requires a specific context, we consider it to involve a semantic-pragmatic interface, which has been argued to be vulnerable to crosslinguistic transfer for bilinguals (e.g., Sorace 2005, 2011). This study conducted a controlled sentence-picture matching truth value judgment task to examine whether Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals show crosslinguistic influence when interpreting BNCs in both languages. The data suggests that crosslinguistic effects did occur among some bilinguals. However, there were more bilinguals who successfully differentiated the two languages regarding the interpretation of BNCs. Our findings imply that early bilinguals may not necessarily show optionality in interface phenomena.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Yunchuan Chen, Yuxuan Hua, Shiting Wanghttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5472Toward processing of prosody in spontaneous Japanese2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Shinobu MizuguchiKoichi Tateishi
This paper considers how prosody in spontaneous Japanese is processed. We have conducted Rapid Prosody Transcription (RPT) perception experiments on the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ) and investigated how boundaries and prominences are perceived. We recruited three groups of participants from different Japanese dialects and found that (i) F0 is not a strong prominence cue in Japanese, contra Japanese literature on focus prominence (Pierrehumbert & Beckman (P&B) 1988; Kori 1989; Ishihara 2016) and (ii) Japanese allows multi-headed and headless intonation phrases, and P&B’s reset theory, i.e. focal prominence resets boundary phrases, faces empirical difficulties. We also found that (iii) both content words and function morphemes get highlighted in Japanese, and (iv) perception strategies vary cross-dialectally and listeners from different dialects perceive boundaries and prominences differently.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Shinobu Mizuguchi, Koichi Tateishihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5478Measure phrase modification in name adjective constructions in Mandarin2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Ling Sun
<span>Much research has shown that measure phrases elicit an asymmetry in acceptability between positive vs. negative members of gradable adjective antonym pairs (<em>3m tall </em>vs. <em>*3m short</em>) (Kennedy 1999; Schwarzschild 2005, and others). As in other languages, the measure phrase in Mandarin <em>yi mi </em>‘1 meter’ is accepted as direct modifier of <em>gao </em>‘tall’ and rejected by the negative antonym <em>ai </em>‘short’. However, when the adjective combines with <em>name </em>‘so’, this measure phrase is accepted by both positive and negative adjectives. In addition, <em>name</em> adjective expressions are ambiguous between two readings. Namely, the surprise reading and the equative reading. This paper accounts for the new data with two proposals: (1) <em>name</em> is a presupposition filter; (2) There is a silent morpheme <em>Vec</em> in <em>name</em> adjective expressions, which is in complementary distribution with overt measure phrases.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Ling Sunhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5464Ͻkere is doing something different in adnominal possession2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Okrah Oppong
<span>Cross-linguistically, some languages make a morphosyntactic distinction between alienable and inalienable adnominal possession, where alienable possession is more morphologically marked, and inalienable possession shows a tighter structural bond between the possessor and possessee. In this paper, I show that Ɔkere violates these cross-linguistic generalizations differently. I also show that two types of <em>mó</em> occur in the language, one is a possessive marker, and the other is an independent pronoun. Again, I show that the nature of the possessive marker and the independent pronoun leads to a pro-drop in inalienable possession. The data and analysis in this paper favor proposing an overt possessive marker and a covert possessive marker. This paper adds to the literature on the exceptions to the cross-linguistic generalizations on adnominal possession by showing that the exceptions to the cross-linguistic generalizations may manifest differently in some languages. </span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Okrah Opponghttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5488Comparing K-means and OPTICS clustering algorithms for identifying vowel categories2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Emily GrabowskiJennifer Kuo
The K-means algorithm is the most commonly used clustering method for phonetic vowel description but has some properties that may be sub-optimal for representing phonetic data. This study compares K-means with an alternative algorithm, OPTICS, in two speech styles (lab vs. conversational) in English to test whether OPTICS is a viable alternative to K-means for characterizing vowel spaces. We find that with noisier data, OPTICS identifies clusters that more accurately represent the underlying data. Our results highlight the importance of choosing an algorithm whose assumptions are in line with the phonetic data being considered.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Emily Grabowski, Jennifer Kuohttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5474Language variation in teacher speech in a dual immersion preschool2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Xinye Zhang
This study investigates the language input provided for English-Mandarin emergent bilingual children in a California English-Mandarin dual immersion preschool. As illustrated in previous studies, teacher speech in foreign language classrooms often serves as the native standard of the target language, thus necessarily limiting students’ exposure to stylistic variation. The current research focused on the language input for emergent bilingual preschoolers who were Chinese heritage language learners and the use of sociolinguistic variables, including Mandarin lexical tones and word-initial sibilants, by their teachers. Results show that although the teachers perceived their classroom roles differently, they tried to provide clear and rich Mandarin input with tonal and sibilant variables that were used in consistent patterns. Except for the constraints of the linguistic environment, standard variables were preferred in classroom discourse. This implies that the particular needs of the English-dominant children to acquire Mandarin have been acknowledged and addressed by teachers. This type of modification in language input may affect children’s development of phonetic categories and their sociolinguistic competence.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Xinye Zhanghttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5476Which stress is on response particles? An empirical study2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Maryam Mohammadi
<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>Polar response particles (PRPs) have been the subject of a variety of studies in semantics and pragmatics, especially in languages like English and Farsi, where the same particles, ā</span><span>re </span><span>‘Yes’ and </span><span>na </span><span>‘No’, can be used with two readings, namely the </span><span>polarity </span><span>and the </span><span>(dis)agreement </span><span>readings. While PRPs in response to the negative questions result in ambiguity, many scholars mention the important role of the prosodic saliency in the positive answers to the negative questions. This paper is an empirical effort to capture the focal stress on PRPs in Farsi. Two experiments were conducted with respect to the polarity and the bias of the question. The first experiment confirms the earlier studies for the presence of focal stress on the opposi- tion answers to the negative questions, as well as the lack of such stress in response to the positive questions. The second experiment reveals the presence of focal stress in response to both positive and negative questions, when the questions necessarily express bias. I will propose that two types of focal stress, namely Contrastive Focus and Verum Accent, perform two different functions. In the first experiment, the con- trastive focus helps to disambiguate PRPs when required, while the Verum accent in the second study is to indicate the conflict between the addressee’s response and the speaker’s (bias) expectation. </span></p></div></div></div>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Maryam Mohammadihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5481Getting serious about serial verbs: Evidence from Croatian2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Tomislav SočanacBrian D. Joseph
We put forth here the novel claim that certain Croatian multi-verb constructions are to be analyzed as instances of serial verb constructions (SVCs), based on the fact that they show characteristics, such as shared arguments, restrictions on selection of verbal elements, limitations on modification, and so on, that are associated with SVCs cross-linguistically. We contrast Croatian SVCs with coordinate structures and control/non-control subordinate constructions, and offer a formalization of the differences among these structures.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Tomislav Sočanac, Brian D. Josephhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5489Non-local matching of adjectival modifiers in Mandarin stacked relative clauses2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Jing Ji
<p class="p1">Bhatt (2002) argues for a head-raising analysis (HRA) of relative clauses based on the interpretation of certain adjectival modifiers on the head. This paper evaluates Bhatt’s argument in the configurations of stacked relative clauses (SRCs) in Mandarin and argues that the internal interpretation of adjectival modifiers on the head is not a sufficient argument for HRA. We show that adjectival modifiers on the external head of SRCs can receive an internal interpretation when reconstruction is not possible. We propose that the internal reading can instead be derived by non-local matching between the adjectival modifier and its internal representation.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Jing Jihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5508Morphological and phonological origins of Albanian nasals and its parallels with other laws2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Lindon DedvukajPatrick Gehringer
The Albanian language is traditionally divided between the Gheg dialect to the geographic north and the now Standard Tosk dialect to the geographic south. Recent literature of the historically isolated dialect of Malsia Madhe (Dedvukaj 2022) has revealed a subdialect which has not undergone the specific phonological sound changes seen in both the Standard Tosk and Modern Gheg dialects. The Tosk dialect is distinct from the dialects of Gheg and Malsia Madhe (Malsia) in that it contains homorganic nasal-stop clusters in positions where they did not occur in various Proto-Indo-European (PIE) reconstructed forms. Three historical processes and the distinct ways in which nasal-stop clusters appear in Tosk are discussed: homorganic nasal assimilation that occurred in the 16th–18th centuries, the insertion of epenthetic stops due to sonority constraints and analogical extension, and constraints on the analogy that can be attributed to the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), which restricts Tosk Albanian to one nasal-stop cluster within a single morpheme.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Lindon Dedvukaj, Patrick Gehringerhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5495The ordering of obliques and adpositional elements2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Yasutomo KuwanaHisao Tokizaki
<p class="Abstract">The order of verbs (V) and their object (O) has been of great interest among researchers. However, few studies have examined the order of obliques (X) with respect to V and O. Dryer (with Gensler) (2013) find the asymmetry between VO and OV languages in terms of the position of X: unlike VO languages, all three types of OV languages (XOV, OXV, and OVX) are widely attested. Hawkins (2008) tries to explain this asymmetry by the interaction of three patterns, (i) Verb & Object Adjacency, (ii) Object & X on Same Side of Verb, and (iii) Object before X. Although his analysis is successful in explaining the word order data in the world’s languages, there are still some problems. In this paper, we argue that we can predict the possible word orders using only Hawkins’s (2004, 2008) Minimize Domains (MiD). We also argue that compared to the prepositional counterparts, postpositions, postpositional clitics, and case suffixes are more likely to be connected to their noun (phrase) complement phonologically and morpho-syntactically. In other words, the juncture between noun and adposition/clitic/affix in head-final languages is tighter than that in head-initial languages. Assuming that adjuncts (X) consist of noun and adposition/clitic/affix, the domain of constituent recognition is different in the possible word orders of O, X and V. We assume that postpositions/postpositional clitics/suffixes need only half of a word (^ = 0.5) for domain recognition because they are closely attached to the adjacent noun (phrase). We conclude that any ordering of O, X and V is possible if the domain size is less than 4. This analysis has advantages over Hawkins’s (2008) analysis because it is simpler and does not need to assume Hawkins’s principle of Argument Precedence.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Yasutomo Kuwana, Hisao Tokizakihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5535The Recursive Set-Subset Ordering Principle orders adjectives and relative clauses in visual context2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Adina Camelia BleotuDeborah FoucaultTom Roeper
<p class="TitleofPaper">We present evidence from two picture-matching experiments that native adult speakers of American English order and interpret sequences of nouns modified by adjectives/relative clauses containing adjectives in line with the Recursive Set-Subset Ordering Principle proposed in Bleotu & Roeper (2022a, b) and Bleotu, Foucault, & Roeper (2023). This principle ensures an automatic mapping of set-subset semantics to a recursive syntax in Universal Grammar, such that set modifiers are merged closer to the noun than subset modifiers: <em>leaves </em>(N)<em> that are short </em>(SET)<em> that are long </em>(SUBSET) or <em>short </em>(SET)<em> leaves </em>(N)<em> that are long </em>(SUBSET)<em>. </em>We here expand upon the interpretation and ordering of set-subset modification to elucidate the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic interface.</p><div id="gtx-trans" style="position: absolute; left: 429px; top: -20px;"> </div>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Adina Camelia Bleotu, Deborah Foucault, Tom Roeperhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5490Musical genres exhibit distinct sociophonetic targets: An analysis of Quebec French2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Kaitlyn Owens
Genres such as indie (Beal 2009) and hip-hop (Eberhardt & Freeman 2015) feature dialectal traits in English, but whether genres form targets distinct from speech remains unclear. We examine genre effects on phonetic variation in Quebec French music by probing the role of genres (pop, country, alternative, and indie) on laxing and diphthongization, processes characteristic of Quebec French (Walker 1984). Stigma facing formal varieties of Quebec French has vanished within dialect (Kircher 2012), yet remains for processes that vary regionally or socioeconomically (Côté 2012; Côté & Lancien, 2019). Whereas laxing is categorical and non-stigmatized (Côté 2012; Paradis & Dolbec, 1998), diphthongization is variable and stigmatized (Côté 2012). We use a novel corpus of ten Québécois singers who released multiple albums from 2011-2021 (29 albums; 326 songs). We find the emergence of genre-specific linguistic norms distinct from speech and argue that genres in music parallel sociolects.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Kaitlyn Owenshttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5492Juggling arguments: VSVO and other word orders in Hul’q’umi’num’ Salish SVCs2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Lauren Schneider
This paper investigates the word order of serial-verb constructions in Hul’q’umi’num’ Salish. Hul’q’umi’num’ SVCs are monoclausal constructions consisting of two or more verbs that can function as independent lexical verbs, have matching aspect, share one or more arguments, and are not connected by any linking element. Two-verb SVCs may consist of transitive and intransitive verbs. The first question concerns subject and object NP placement. For constructions with two overt NPs, an alternating VSVO pattern is both preferred in elicitation, and the only order occurring in the corpus. Only shared arguments may intervene between the verb components. Hul’q’umi’num’ SVCs exhibit flexible word order in elicitation, but certain grammatical word orders generate ambiguity. Various pragmatic strategies work together to prevent or rescue ambiguous constructions. SVCs are an understudied feature of Central Salish languages; thus investigation of this topic broadens the scope of the current literature.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Lauren Schneiderhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5493Dependency formation interacts with case: Evidence from Korean double nominative constructions2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Juyeon ChoRebecca Tollan
<span>The subject-object asymmetry in relative clauses, where structures containing subject dependencies are typically easier to process than those with object dependencies, has been previously attributed to both grammatical function (subject > object) as well as morphological case (e.g., <span>nom</span> > <span>acc</span>). We investigate processing of Double Nominative Constructions (“DNCs”) in Korean, where the object exceptionally has nominative case like the subject (i.e., <span>nom-nom</span>). This enables isolation of grammatical function and case as possible factors driving the so-called “subject advantage.” We find that dependency formation is more costly in DNCs as compared with <span>nom-acc</span> structures, especially for object relative clauses. We tie this effect to distinctness in morphological case of the subject and object, suggesting that the less morphosyntactically distinct the subject and object are, the more difficult it is to process DNCs in dependencies.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Juyeon Cho, Rebecca Tollanhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5500Linguistic evidence for the Indo-European and Albanian origin of Aphrodite2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Lindon Dedvukaj
I consider the question of the source of the divine name Aphrodite, arguing that the etymology of the name indicates an Albanian and Illyrian origin. I first survey different etymological hypotheses and give reasons for rejecting them and then turn to motivating the Albanian sound changes necessary for taking the name to derive from Albanian sources. The historical and linguistic evidence will show that the Albanian phrase <em>afro dita</em> ‘come forth the day/dawn’ can be posited back to a Proto-Albanian *<em>apro dītā</em> a reflex of Proto-Indo-European *<em>h<sub>2</sub>epero déh<sub>2</sub>itis</em>. Modern Albanian <em>afro dita</em> refers to Aphrodite’s celestial origin. Aphrodite was first and foremost known as the planet Venus, which can only be seen during the dawn. Only Modern Albanian <em>afro dita </em>‘come forth the day/dawn’ indicates this exact time when the planet Venus is visible in the sky. The celestial concept of Aphrodite was adapted by a Pre-Proto-Albanian group (Illyrians) from the Phoenicians, who first brought knowledge of the goddess to Europe.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Lindon Dedvukajhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5491Mandarin overt wh-fronting as focus movement2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Fangning Ren
<span lang="EN-US">This study reexamines the syntactic encoding of information structure embodied by Mandarin overt wh-fronting questions. The sentence patterns that this paper is concerned with are wh-questions containing one or more fronted wh-phrases surfacing in (i) a clause-initial position (in root or non-root contexts) or (ii) a position immediately following a topicalized subject (also in root or non-root contexts). Departing from previous literature that obscures the exhaustifying effect exerted by a clause-initial <em>shi</em> ‘be’, I propose a more fine-grained classification of the focus interpretations of this type of question: a bare wh-fronting question coerces a plain (non-exhaustive) contrastive focus or a mirative focus reading (when the wh-phrase is prosodically marked) of the wh-variable, and <em>shi</em>-marked wh-fronting questions are shown to enforce an exhaustive focus in the answer. These three types of focus-associated interpretations are treated as conventional implicatures following Bianchi et al. (2015).</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Fangning Renhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5499Passive vP is not phasal in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Maša Bešlin
<p>Legate (2003) argues, contra Chomsky 2001, that passive <em>v</em>P is a phase in English. In this paper, I present novel Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) data from (i) theme vowel quality, (ii) apparent non-local allomorphy and allosemy, and (iii) agreement to support the claim that passive <em>v</em>P is not phasal in this language. Comparing these findings with Legate’s, I show that those of her diagnostics that can be applied to BCS put BCS passive participles on a par with active verbs, patterning with the English data. This result, I argue, supports the view that Legate’s diagnostics may not be phasehood detectors at all and has consequences for our general understanding of phasehood.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Maša Bešlinhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5496Generic interpretations of possessive recursion in English-speaking children2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Tyler PoissonJill de VilliersHirsto KyuchukovBea WeinandLillian YoungSofia MoralesLaisha Aniceto
<p dir="ltr"><span>Two-part </span><span>s</span><span>-possessives such as </span><em>the dad’s kid’s bike </em><span>admit at least two distinct interpretations: the dad has a kid who has a bike, or the dad has a bike that is made for kids. We propose that the former interpretation derives from recursively embedding DP-possessives, and the latter from representing </span><em>kid’s bike</em><span> as a generic NP-possessive. Accordingly, in the right context, two-part </span><span>s</span><span>-possessives are fully ambiguous for adults between ‘recursive’ </span><span>and ‘generic’ readings. These readings can be disambiguated syntactically. Consider the difference in meaning when we insert a relative clause and extract the constituent </span><em>kid’s bike </em><span>—</span><em> the kid’s bike that is the dad’s </em><span>— </span><span>versus when we extract the head noun </span><span><em>bike</em> </span><span>— </span><em>the bike that is the dad’s kid’s</em><span>. Our story-based experiment demonstrates that 4-7-year-olds (N=79) and adults (N=68) strongly favor (~80%) the generic interpretation of phrases like </span><em>the kid’s bike that is the dad’s</em><span>, as the A-over-A</span><span> constraint blocks the extraction of a DP-possessive out of a recursive DP. Similarly, adults show a strong preference (~80%) for recursive interpretations of phrases like </span><em>the bike that is the dad’s kid’s</em><span>, as the A-over-A constraint blocks the extraction of the head noun </span><em>bike </em><span>out of the generic NP-possessive </span><span><em>kid’s bike</em>. </span><span>However, 4-5-year-olds admit generic readings of these recursive phrases 54% of the time; it is not until 6 or 7 years that children show an adult-like preference for the recursive interpretation (~80%). These data support two complementary claims. First, that recursive possessives are acquired late on account of their syntax, and second that children, like adults, represent generic possessives under a different syntactic node than regular possessives.</span></p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Tyler Poisson, Jill de Villiers, Hirsto Kyuchukov, Bea Weinand, Lillian Young, Sofia Morales, Laisha Anicetohttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5497The morpho-phonology of an English diminutive2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Colin P. B. Davis
<p>I describe and analyze the morpho-phonology of the English diminutive suffix /-i/, as in <em>doggy</em>, <em>birdie</em>, <em>horsie</em>, and so on. My first goal is to argue that unlike most other diminutives in English this suffix is productive, though subject to a phonological constraint. Specifically, I show that this suffix must be adjacent to a stressed syllable—a requirement that motivates exceptional truncations. I propose that these<br />facts provide a clear instance of a morpheme-specific phonological constraint. My second goal is to examine how this diminutive interacts with nouns that normally have irregular plural forms. I show that this diminutive can block irregular plural morphology, but optionally allows the persistence of plural ablaut. I explain these facts using an analysis in which morphological rules require adjacency between the triggering node and the affected one, along with a proposal that the English diminutive /-i/ is an adjunct/modifier which can be attached late in the derivation.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Colin P. B. Davishttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5498The Mandarin classifier is changing: How and why2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Mingzhe ZhengJie Liu
This study aims to investigate the current state of Mandarin nominal classifier, uncover the change in classifiers across time, and explore the social meaning of classifier variation. A production experiment found a decline in diversity in specific classifiers over time. Perception results from the younger group demonstrate that classifier variation indexes a series of related personality characteristics. The age difference in participants’ production and perception indicates that the classifier variation is a change led by young people and suggests such change might have been motivated by the variable’s social meanings.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Mingzhe Zheng, Jie Liuhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5504Random bisexual forests: Intersections between gender, sexuality, and race in /s/ production2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Chloe WillisChadi Ben Youssef
The ideology of “the gay lisp” has inspired numerous quantitative studies examining the relationship between /s/ production and sexuality in American English (e.g. Linville 1998; Munson et al. 2006a; Zimman 2013). There are two key gaps in this literature. First, research in this area typically focuses on monosexual (i.e. lesbian, gay, and straight) speakers to the exclusion of bisexuality. Second, work in this area rarely considers the intersection of sexuality with factors outside of gender or sex, and to a lesser extent geographic location (e.g. Campbell-Kibler 2011; Podesva & Hofwegen 2014). This article addresses these disparities by (1) centralizing bisexual speakers and (2) attending to social factors such as race, place, age, and their intersections in the analysis. To that end, we build upon previous work by Willis (forthcoming) and apply a random forest (Breiman 2001) to /s/ center of gravity measurements. In doing so, we follow Tagliamonte and Baayen (2012)<span> in demonstrating the utility of random forests as an approach to quantitative sociolinguistic analysis. Ultimately, the analysis underscores the need to attend to power structures and biases within research practice: the monosexist ideologies of sexuality and gender normativity that obfuscate bisexuality, and the privileging of whiteness that permeates quantitative studies of sexuality and the voice.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Chloe Willis, Chadi Ben Youssefhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5507Preverbs: Their syntax and semantics in West Africa2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Ronald P. SchaeferFrancis O. Egbokhare
<p>Preverbs are positionally-delimited grammatical forms that remain understudied. We examine their semantic classes in West Benue Congo (WBC) and its minor language Emai, which until recently was undocumented. Preverb classes in Emai display a subset of semantic categories identified in Dixon (1991, 2006, 2010) and Nuyts (2001, 2005, 2006, 2016). There are eight semantic classes for 30 odd preverb forms. They are apportioned according to their qualitative or quantitative character. Preverbs do not include traditional auxiliary categories of aspect, tense, and modality, which exhibit distinct diachronic and synchronic character. Common to preverbs is their orientation to grammatical subject, rather than utterance speaker. Members of each class ascribe a property to clausal subject. Preliminary evidence suggests that preverbs of similar semantic character exist in other West African languages.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Ronald P. Schaefer, Francis O. Egbokharehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5503“It’s not real culture anyway”: Language ideologies of local and expatriate English teachers in rural South Korea2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Ian Schneider
<span>In South Korea (Korea), Park (2004) identifies three dominant English language ideologies: necessity (English as essential to compete in neoliberal markets), externalization (English as antithetical to Korean identity), and self-deprecation (English as unobtainable by Korean speakers). While studies have explored these ideologies among Korean English teachers in cosmopolitan settings like Seoul, few studies consider how teachers in rural areas negotiate these language ideologies. This study compares ideological stances from both expatriate guest English teachers (GETs) and local Korean English teachers (LETs). Participants working in the rural province of Jeollanamdo conducted semi-structured interviews about their perspectives and experiences regarding English education in Korea. Interviews underwent thematic analysis where initial codes identified Park’s three ideologies, and further coding produced subthemes through stance analysis. Findings indicate a diverse mix of stances between LETs and GETs that both affirm and resist dominant English language ideologies. LETs and GETs with experience working in both rural islands and coastal cities also report variation in students’ motivation and stress toward English education. By examining variation in teachers’ stancetaking toward dominant English language ideologies, this study challenges Bourdieu’s (1991) notion of a unified linguistic ideological marketplace.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Ian Schneiderhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5509‘Again’ separation in Italian2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Yuyang Liu
<span dir="ltr">In Italian, </span><span dir="ltr"><em>ri-</em> </span><span dir="ltr">‘again’ can be separated from the constituent it is semanti</span><span dir="ltr">cally attached to and challenges the structural account for the ambiguity of ‘again’-</span><span dir="ltr">type elements. To address this issue, this paper proposes a solution through aspectual </span><span dir="ltr">agreement and suggests a movement and reconstruction analysis for the separation </span><span dir="ltr">effect of </span><em><span dir="ltr">ri-</span></em><span dir="ltr">. It also provides supporting evidence for this analysis through Coordinate </span><span dir="ltr">Structure Constraint and Relativized Minimality.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Yuyang Liuhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5510Modeling Mandarin rhotacization with Recursive Schemes2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Ziling Zhu
<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>This paper pursues a novel analysis of Mandarin rhotacization using Sonority Scale and characterizes this phonological process computationally with </span><span>BOOLEAN MONADIC RECURSIVE SCHEMES </span><span>(BMRSs, Chandlee & Jardine 2021). Mandarin rhotacization shows an asymmetry between high front vowels (i.e. [i, y] and high back vowels [u] vowels. Diverging from previous phonetics-based accounts to explain this asymmetry (Chao 1968; Duanmu 2007; a. o.), I propose that adjacent segments compete in terms of sonority in order to surface and present a refined, detailed sonority ranking in Mandarin. Finally, the </span><span>if</span><span>...</span><span>then</span><span>...</span><span>else </span><span>syntax in BMRSs elegantly formalizes the sonority competition between segments.</span></p></div></div></div>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Ziling Zhuhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5515Sociolinguistic perception of lexical and syntactic variation among Persian-English bilinguals2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Tyler Méndez Kline
<p>This study examines the relationship between sociolinguistic perception and Persian language variation. Prior work has shown that preconceived notions about how speakers use language and what kind of language they produce can affect listeners’ perceptions (D’Onofrio 2016; Hansen Edwards et al. 2019; Mack & Munson 2012; Niedzielski 1999). However, many questions remain unanswered regarding how social meaning is applied in contact situations, especially among self-identified native and heritage speakers. Within Persian language studies, some work has observed linguistic practices among both native and non-native speakers, finding that both vary significantly in their production patterns of certain syntactic and lexical features (Megerdoomian 2020). I ask whether Persian-English bilinguals associate non-standard forms with certain social personae categorized by linguistic background. Sixteen bilingual Persian-English speakers participated in an online survey with the task of matching standard and non-standard written productions to a pre-defined linguistic persona. Results so far suggest that Persian-English bilinguals actively construct associations between language use and speaker personae, with specific grammatical categories appearing more likely to index a non-native speaking identity. This brings up further questions about how bilinguals navigate sociolinguistic ideologies tied to speaker identity, and how heritage speakers and learners approach these notions. This study adds to the growing literature on bilingualism and sociolinguistic perception, with implications for critical discussions surrounding the various ideologies that place communities of multilingual speakers into strict social categories.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Tyler Méndez Klinehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5512Recursive and non-recursive tone sandhi domains in Laoling trisyllabic sequences2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Yi Jen ChenYuchau E. Hsiao
In previous studies, variations of tone sandhi domains of tri-tonal sequences are either recursive or non-recursive domains, differing only in prosodic branching. In Laoling, however, both recursive, e.g., (σ(σσ)), ((σσ)σ), and non-recursive variant domains, e.g., (σ)(σσ), (σσ)(σ), are observed. In traditional Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), such variations cannot be predicted. In this study, we combine Coetzee’s (2006) Rank-Ordering model of Eval with McCarthy’s (2010) Harmonic Serialism and demonstrate how both recursive and non-recursive domains and their varying frequencies can be predicted.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Yi Jen Chen, Yuchau E. Hsiaohttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5516Interference effects on the processing of Korean double relative clauses2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Myung Hye YooSo Young Lee
<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>The current investigates the parsing process and its utilization of various linguistic information to resolve dependencies in Korean double relative clauses. While previous research has revealed evidence of interference effects of a distractor during dependency formations, a distractor involving dependency formations by itself has not been thoroughly explored. In light of this, we aimed to explore how the grammatical-role parallelism of a distractor modulates multiple filler-gap dependencies and examine the role of case marking in the resolution of these dependencies. In a self-paced reading experiment, we discovered that the parallelism effects of both head nouns were instrumental in the resolution of longer dependencies of a higher head noun and its gap. The non-parallel role of a distractor (i.e., low head noun) was reanalyzed before the integration of higher head noun and its gap. This finding suggests that parallelism effects play a critical role in the resolution of complex dependency structures. Additionally, our experiments investigated the role of case marking as a morphosyntactic cue in predicting the syntactic encoding of upcoming noun phrases. Our results demonstrated the immediate processing difficulty of conditions with double nominative markers, suggesting that parsers are selectively sensitive to case marking. Overall, our study contributes to our understanding of the parsing process and the selective use of linguistic cues in the resolution of complex dependency structures.</span></p></div></div></div>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Myung Hye Yoo, So Young Leehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5521Mandarin verbal reduplication and the one-delimitation principle2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Chaoyi Chen
It has long been observed that an eventuality may be associated with at most one delimitation. This paper argues that the incompatibility between Mandarin verbal reduplications and several post-verbal result-denoting elements is one of the cases to which the one-delimitation principle applies. The discussion of Mandarin verbal reduplication contributes to our understanding of the one-delimitation principle by showing that (i) the one-delimitation principle not only applies to resultatives but also other result-denoting elements; (ii) vP is the domain for the one-delimitation principle.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Chaoyi Chenhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5505What's the point? Examining indices in American Sign Language nominals2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Daniel Neault
In American Sign Language, nominal phrases contain various pointing signs, referred to as 'indices', which establish specific referential loci in the signing space. These indices can occur pre- and/or post-nominally or can function as an independent pronoun. Traditionally, these indices have been treated as separate lexical items, but I argue that they are instead realizations of the same functional category, namely <em>idx</em>. Here, I extend part of an analysis of Washo nominal phrases (Hanink 2021) to nominals in ASL.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Daniel Neaulthttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5523Honorific titles are D2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Hiroki Nomoto
<p>This study proposes a hypothesis that honorific titles such as English <em>Mr</em> and Japanese <em>san</em> occupy the D head position and discusses its consequences to the syntax and semantics of nominals. Seven pieces of supporting evidence are presented using data from various languages. If the proposed hypothesis is correct, (i) nominals in languages without articles are not NP but DP, (ii) proper names cannot be D but N, and (iii) a semantic parameter concerning the basic denotation of common nouns such as Chierchia's (1998) Nominal Mapping Parameter is unnecessary.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Hiroki Nomotohttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5524Varieties of wh-exclamatives: A view from the negative wh-expressives in Japanese2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Osamu Sawada
<p>Wh-exclamatives are usually considered degree constructions (e.g., Zanuttini & Portner 2003, Castroviejo 2008, Rett 2008). However, Japanese possesses what I call negative wh-expressives, which are unrelated to degree. I argue that unlike typical wh-exclamatives, negative wh-expressive sentences express a speaker’s negative attitude, and their compositional system is similar to that of an interrogative sentence except for the speech act operator. That is, a negative wh-expressive occurs with a speech act operator, which takes a set of propositions <em>Q</em> and (i) presupposes that there is a unique proposition <em>p</em> in <em>Q</em> that is salient, and (ii) conventionally implies that <em>p</em> is unexpected and that the speaker has a negative attitude toward it. In this paper, we also look at cases in which the wh expression is embedded in the complement of <em>omo-tteiru</em> ‘think’ and cases in which <em>nani</em> ‘what’ acts as an adjunct, and show that these cases can also be explained by the core component of the proposed mechanism. This paper shows that wh-related exclamatives have both scalar and non-scalar types, and considers a new typology of exclamatives.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Osamu Sawadahttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5501Linguistic variation within the Northwestern Gheg Albanian dialect2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Lindon DedvukajRexhina Ndoci
In previous literature and linguistics analysis, the Northwestern Gheg Albanian dialect is classified as one zone that encompasses the area of northwestern Albania and southwestern Montenegro (B. Demiraj 1997: 40, Gjinari 1989: 54-8, Mëniku 2008: vii., Shkurtaj 2016: 26). The area is assumed to form a single subdialect; however, evidence from various levels of linguistic analysis discussed in this paper challenges this assumption. The area of Malsia Madhe in northwestern Albania and southwestern Montenegro exhibits different phonological, syntactic, and lexical patterns than the area of Shkodër. The southernmost point of this Gheg subdialect is Lezhë, which also has its own set of distinct idiosyncratic differences. This analysis provides an overview of the main differences between the areas of Malsia Madhe, Shkodër, and Lezhë, all typically grouped in the northwestern Gheg subdialect. This includes an evaluation of phonological, grammatical, semantic, and lexical differences between the three main areas of northwestern Gheg. Finally, it also offers a diachronic view of how this subdialect contributes to and challenges the history of the Albanian language’s development from Proto-Albanian and Proto-Indo-European.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Lindon Dedvukaj, Rexhina Ndocihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5525“Does this make sense?”: The effect of matching guise in regional accent on grammatical acceptability judgments2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Nour Kayali
Syntax and sociophonetics are typically treated as wildly disjointed (possibly even incompatible) theoretical pursuits. This paper seeks to unite sociophonetic speech perception and syntax research by presenting participants with matching or mismatching social expectations during a structural grammaticality judgment task. Place is the unifying social association between guise and structure. Participants completed a between-subjects matched guise survey with place-based grammatical structures spoken in either a matching place-based, local accent or a nonlocal accent. Place-based structures are consistently rated more acceptable in the local accent than the nonlocal. These results suggest that judgment of grammaticality results from an interplay of sociocultural expectations with accent and sentence structure. Judgment of structural grammaticality is not independent of social expectation.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Nour Kayalihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5526Variation in acceptability of neologistic English pronouns2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Ell RoseMax WinigJasper NashKyra RoepkeKirby Conrod
This acceptability-judgment survey of English neopronouns, including <em>xe, fae, ey</em>, and <em>ze</em>, shows that while neopronouns are not fully ungrammatical for most English speakers, they are rated as less grammatical than canonical third-person singular pronouns like <em>she, he, </em>and <em>they</em>. We found that several social variables correlated with ratings of neopronouns in sentences, including age, gender, and sexual orientation. The neopronouns that bear orthographic resemblance to canonical pronouns were rated highest, and metalinguistic comments from participants identified that analogy was an important factor in whether they found neopronouns grammatical.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Ell Rose, Max Winig, Jasper Nash, Kyra Roepke, Kirby Conrodhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5527Against a low subject analysis of causatives of unergatives2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Eva Neu
Contrary to the long-standing assumption that the causative alternation is limited to unaccusative verbs, direct causatives of unergatives have recently been attested in a variety of languages (Massam 2009; Legate 2014; Nash 2017, 2021; Tollan 2018; Tollan & Oxford 2018; Kouneli 2021; Myler 2022; Krishnan & Sarma 2023). The question raised by these causatives is how the causee is realized syntactically and semantically. I argue that in Hindi-Urdu, Turkish and Sason Arabic, direct causatives of unergatives are regular transitives in which the causee is merged as an internal argument assigned a patient θ-role. I propose that such structures are built by coercing the normally unergative verb into an unaccusative use in causative environments, reflected in a deagentivized construal of the causee. I show that this analysis is preferable to a competing proposal according to which the subject of the intransitive unergative and the causee of the causativized variant are both merged in SpecvP. Contrary to the long-standing assumption that the causative alternation is limited to unaccusative verbs, direct causatives of unergatives have recently been attested in a variety of languages (Massam 2009; Legate 2014; Nash 2017, 2021; Tollan 2018; Tollan & Oxford 2018; Kouneli 2021; Myler 2022; Krishnan & Sarma 2023). The question raised by these causatives is how the causee is realized syntactically and semantically. I argue that in Hindi-Urdu, Turkish and Sason Arabic, direct causatives of unergatives are regular transitives in which the causee is merged as an internal argument assigned a patientθ-role. I propose that such structures are built by coercing the normally unergative verb into an unaccusative use in causative environments, reflected in a deagentivized construal of the causee. I show that this analysis is preferable to a competing proposal according to which the subject of the intransitive unergative and the causee of the causativized variant are both merged in SpecvP.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Eva Neuhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5528Small complements of Ps and genitive case assignment2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Polina Pleshak
This paper deals with possessor case assignment in Samburg Izhma-Komi subjects and oblique nominals. The problem is that the case assigned to the possessor depends on the syntactic position of the enclosing nominal; possessors are genitive in subjects and nominative in obliques. This is not predicted by the current theories of case. Looking at morphosyntactic properties of P-complements in Samburg Komi such as possessive agreement within the complement, possessive agreement with the complement, and plural marking of the complement, I show that these complements are not full DPs. The possessor case-marking follows straightforwardly. Since P-complements are not DPs, as opposed to subjects, genitive cannot be assigned. Independently, I show that nominative is the case assigned in PPs. In absence of a D, the case associated with P is assigned to possessors in obliques. This analysis has several theoretical implications. First, I show that inherent cases are better analyzed as syntactic P-heads alongside free-standing postpositions. Second, I provide an argument in favor of DP-hypothesis. Finally, I show that not all arguments within a language must be full DPs.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Polina Pleshakhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5529Gender-inclusive language as a Rational Speech Act in Spanish2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Jeremy YeatonMaría Muelas-GilGregory Scontras
Amidst social changes in gendered language use, there is pushback from institutions such as the Spanish Royal Academy, which claims that the use of the generic masculine (e.g., bomberos ‘firemen’) in describing a mixed-gender group is equally inclusive of both men and women (Bosque 2012). By contrast, speakers of Spanish have increasingly adopted gender-inclusive alternatives to the generic masculine (e.g., bomberos o bomberas; Bengoechea 2015). Across two behavioral tasks, we investigated whether gender-inclusive forms actually lead to more inclusive interpretations. We found that the use of the inclusive form (by contrast to the generic masculine) indeed yields more inclusive interpretations, increasing the inferred femaleness of stereotypically male professions, but also decreasing the inferred femaleness of stereotypically female professions. In an attempt to explain the reasoning that delivers inclusive interpretations, we developed a computational cognitive model of the reasoning process. Our model treats the phenomenon as an instance of a markedness implicature: speakers use the longer, inclusive form to guide listeners away from their prior expectations. This work highlights the need for further research into the use of gender-inclusive language cross-linguistically, as well as for pushback against prescriptive institutions perpetuating stereotypes.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Jeremy Yeaton, María Muelas-Gil, Gregory Scontrashttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5530Modeling harmony biases in learning exceptions to vowel harmony2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Sara Finley
<span>Artificial language learning experiments typically show non-categorical results after training on categorical data. This is generally due to incomplete learning, but these results can also reveal biases. One example is that participants trained on a vowel harmony language with alternating and non-alternating affixes prefer the non-alternating affix in harmonic contexts (Finley 2021). In this paper, I show that (i) the preference for harmonic items in non-alternating affixes replicates for remote (online) data collection, and (ii) that this effect can be modeled with MaxEnt Harmonic Grammar. In Harmonic Grammar, the harmony score of each candidate determines its grammaticality, and the probability of surfacing. Because non-alternating affixes that satisfy vowel harmony have higher harmony scores than non-alternating affixes that violate harmony, harmonic candidates will be more likely to surface than disharmonic candidates, even when both types of items surface at levels greater than expected by chance. The theoretical and methodological implications for these results are discussed</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Sara Finleyhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5531Community and lifespan changes in music: Sociophonetic variation in Laurentian French2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Kaitlyn OwensJeffrey Lamontagne
Previous studies on English have highlighted various instances where individual singers or small groups change which dialectal features appear in their music (e.g. Trudgill 1997; Beal 2009; Coupland 2011; Eberhardt & Freeman 2015; Lyon 2019). Whereas corpus studies on music have the option between real-time or apparent-time analyses, most previous research on music has largely been conducted via case studies on change across a singer or group’s career (see Gibson in press a). Focusing on Laurentian French (also known as Quebec French or Canadian French), multiple singers may moderate dialectal traits in music due to their albums being released internationally, where the dialect faces stigma (Szlezák 2015). We further hypothesize that pop singers are especially sensitive to international norms and stigma because they are more likely to market abroad due to pop music’s greater international appeal (Grenier 1993). We examine non-lengthened high vowel laxing in closed final syllables (e.g. /vit/ [vɪt] vite ‘fast’; Dumas 1983), a process characteristic of Laurentian French that is categorical (Côté 2012) and nonstigmatized (Lappin 1982; Paradis & Dolbec 1998; Reinke et al. 2006) within the dialect. We expand the study of dialectal traits in music beyond English by using a new corpus of 20 Québécois singers who sing in French and are of the Laurentian French dialect. Additionally, we analyze the patterning of groups of singers across their careers, rather than the patterning of a single singer, and analyze real-time change of groups as opposed to individuals
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Kaitlyn Owens, Jeffrey Lamontagnehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5537Degree estimates as a measure of inference calculation2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Eszter RonaiMing Xiang
Scalar inference (SI), e.g., utterances containing the quantifier <em>some</em> being enriched to mean <em>some but not all</em>, is a central topic in semantics-pragmatics. Of recent interest in the experimental literature is the phenomenon of scalar diversity: that different lexical scales exhibit variation is how likely they are to lead to SI. However, studies of scalar diversity have almost exclusively relied on a particular experimental task: the inference task. In this paper, we argue that the inference task suffers from a number of shortcomings: namely, that it biases by providing participants with the stronger alternative and that it obscures pragmatic inferences other than SI. Instead we offer as an alternative a degree estimate task to investigate utterances containing scalar terms. We use the degree estimate task to reassess previous inference task-based findings from the literature on how two manipulations (discourse context and <em>only</em>) affect the likelihood of inference calculation. Our results show that the two tasks produce results that differ from each other in subtle but important ways.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Eszter Ronai, Ming Xianghttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5539Exploring the effect of stress on gestural coordination2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Yunting Gu
<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>In this study, I examined stress in speech production within the framework of Articulatory Phonology. Specifically, I tested the hypothesis that stress could be analyzed as a prosodic gesture. Using articulatory data from an English corpus, I found that the CV lag–the gestural lag between a consonant and a vowel–of stressed syllables is significantly larger in terms of both duration and proportion than that </span>of unstressed syllables. I also found that stressed consonant and vowel gestures are longer than unstressed ones. These findings seem to suggest that stress could be analyzed as a prosodic gesture. Moreover, my study reveals a source of variation in CV coordination, which can inform other kinematic studies. </p></div></div></div>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Yunting Guhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5534On the ‘subject’ honorific -si- in Korean2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Yoolim KimJamie Y. Findlay
<p>Korean is one of several languages that has a system of honorification, whereby a speaker can express (their desired interpretation of) their relative social standing with respect to others via morphosyntactic marking. Alongside the question of what honorification means (what it contributes to the communicative content of an utterance), there is another, less well-studied question: how is the target of honorification identified? Often this is taken to be a syntactic question, where honorification is treated as a kind of agreement. We present several arguments as to why this is not the correct approach. Instead, we advocate for a semantic/pragmatic solution. We take as our case study one marker of honorification in Korean, the morpheme <em>-si-</em>, which is often called a ‘subject honorific’ because it supposedly targets/honors the subject of the verb it appears on. It is well known, however, that this is an inadequate characterisation, and here we present further evidence that this cannot be the correct description of its role. Instead, we argue that the target of <em>-si-</em> is the human referent which is ‘closest’ to the subject in terms of the pragmatic relation of PROXIMITY, thus accounting for both the canonical uses and other potentially puzzling uses.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Yoolim Kim, Jamie Y. Findlayhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5538“We can’t go to them, but now they are here”: Ideologies of religion and culture in evangelical ESL classrooms2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Ruthanne Hughes
<span>The history of colonialism, missionary work, and White supremacy is omnipresent in ESL. This study observed ESL instructors at two evangelical Christian ESL programs in South Carolina and investigated locally circulating ideologies of language, race, religion, and gender. The programs, Omega and Pinewood, aimed to share Christianity but used opposing strategies. Omega obfuscated evangelism by conflating Christianity with American culture and focused on assimilating students into English-centric, White evangelical culture. Pinewood accommodated students’ cultural norms, sharing both Christianity and students’ religion. Results of this study are important for understanding how institutional practices correlate with negative outcomes students may experience.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Ruthanne Hugheshttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5536The semantics of N-by-N adverbials2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Nairan Wu
This paper will argue for a new analysis of N-by-N adverbials that they require a plural event and quantize the rate (when the N is a unit noun) or the participants (when N is a number or a sortal noun) of each subevent based on contextually interpreted free variables. It differs from previous analyses in that it does not link N-by-N adverbials to scalar change (Henderson 2013) or to the mereological make-up of some participants (Beck and Stechow 2007). And as a result, this paper is able to provide a unified analysis of N-by-N adverbials containing different types of nouns and capture their interaction with numbers and subevents.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Nairan Wuhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5540Bootstrapping where? Location changes disrupt intransitive verb mapping2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Kaitlyn HarriganMonica Bagnoli
<p class="Abstract">Children utilize a range of cues in verb learning. The current studies explore children’s weighting of two different cues for verb-meaning: number of syntactic arguments and event location. Naigles (1990) demonstrated that children use <em>syntactic bootstrapping </em>in mapping transitive and intransitive verbs—they hypothesize that intransitive verbs refer to one-participant events and transitive verbs refer to two-participant events. Previous work also indicates that children are sensitive to the location that an event took place when they are learning new verbs. The current study builds on this work, exploring the role of location changes in mapping new transitive and intransitive verbs. We find that children robustly link <em>transitive </em>verbs to two-person events but are weaker overall weaker linking <em>intransitive </em>verbs to one-person events. Children are, however, less likely to link <em>intransitive </em>verbs to one-person events when the event location has changed, suggesting that they are influenced by background changes when interpreting intransitive verbs.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Kaitlyn Harrigan, Monica Bagnolihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5541The Diverse Names Generator: An app for decreasing bias and promoting inclusion2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Maura O’LearyRainey WilliamsMario Peng Lee
<p>It has been well established that example sentences in linguistics use a remarkably non-diverse set of proper names in terms of gender, culture, and ethnicity (e.g., Macaulay & Brice 1997, Cépeda et al. 2021, and Kotek et al. 2021). Here, we introduce a new resource, the Diverse Names Generator (DNG), which provides randomly selected proper names with IPA transcriptions from a user-contributed, linguist-curated database of names from a wide range of languages and cultures. Generating names randomly helps users to overcome unconscious bias that may lead them to default to using Anglophone, male-gendered names. The DNG can be accessed both through a website interface and through a downloadable Android app, both with offline capabilities. This novel resource is the first of its kind and can be used both while preparing examples ahead of time and while generating examples live in the classroom.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Maura O’Leary, Rainey Williams, Mario Peng Leehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5544What Mr. Simmons said: Stylization, pitch, and the voicing of others on the Gullah Geechee cultural heritage tour2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00John K. McCullough
<p class="Abstract">This article discusses the use of stylized voicing, specifically falsetto phonation, in Gullah Geechee during a cultural heritage tour in Charleston, South Carolina. Gullah Geechee, a minority creole language spoken by descendants of formerly enslaved persons in the American Southeastern coastal Lowcountry, is analyzed in the study using participant observation and sociophonetic data collection. The research finds that the stylized pitch-shifting is a productive component of the guide’s ethnolinguistic repertoire, used for multiple indexical functions, including constructing authenticity and performing stylized double-voicing. The data shows the complex social meaning of this feature related to speech genres, performance, perceptions of authenticity and authority, and the ethnolinguistic repertoire of a minority language commodified for outsider consumption. The study also links Gullah Geechee prosodic indexicality with its related variety, African American English.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 John K. McCulloughhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5546*ABA pronominal stem allomorphy without containment2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Tran Truong
*ABA environments are pockets of morphology that prohibit noncontiguous suppletion, and which show promise to generativists as a diagnostic for the presence of syntactic hierarchical structure. In particular, it identifies Lower Arrernte (Pama-Nyungan) nonsingular pronouns as an AAB-permissive *ABA environment. Morphological contiguity in Lower Arrernte results from the manner in which kintactic features expressing kinship generation and shared patrimoiety must always be bundled together at the same node as co-triggers of suppletion within a realizational morphology. Crucially, this study contradicts earlier accounts of the relevant paradigms in terms of how the categories are ordered by markedness: it argues that the agnatic-harmonic pronouns (i.e., pronouns that refer to groups in which all members belong to the same patrimoiety and even-numbered generations) are the most representationally complex. It emerges that morphological contiguity in Lower Arrernte nonsingulars patterns against the containment relationship observed in comparative suppletion and with the bundling relationship observed in English ablaut.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Tran Truonghttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5548“He sounds like a bureaucrat”: Variation of voice quality in stylistic performances2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Robert Xu
<p>Voice quality is a vital but understudied sociolinguistic feature in constructing style and personae. This study examines stylistic performances of character types in Beijing Mandarin, to understand how voice quality varies and comes to conventionally associated with social meanings. Acoustic analysis of recorded performances shows that voice quality is a dynamic variable that should be examined from the lens of different linguistic and discursive levels. Combined with meta-discursive analysis, the findings show that voice quality not only helps to typify a persona, but also contributes to forge relationships in frames of social interactions.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Robert Xuhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5549Sensitivity to finiteness in attitude verb interpretation2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Kaitlyn Harrigan
<span>Children are sensitive to syntactic structure when learning new verbs (Gleitman 1990). This has been shown in tracking transitivity (Naigles 1990), as well as in hypothesizing meanings for attitude verbs (Harrigan et al 2019). In English, <em>desire</em> and <em>belief</em> subcategories of attitude verbs have different finiteness properties; desire verbs occur with finite complements and belief verbs occur with non-finite complements. The current study explores adults’ sensitivity to varying distributions of finiteness in the complements of a novel attitude verb, aiming to better understand the mechanism for hypothesizing verb meaning based on syntactic distribution. We find that adults’ hypotheses for class of attitude verb are tied to the syntactic distribution—they strongly connect finiteness to belief verbs and non-finiteness to desire verbs.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Kaitlyn Harriganhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5552Vocalic segments and the phonetic basis of weight in Norwegian2023-11-12T16:29:25+00:00Anya HogoboomBennett Meale
<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>This paper revisits and expands on previous analyses of Norwegian syllable weight (Lunden 2006, 2013) and different rime shapes’ ability to draw stress. A production study was run to examine the durationally-based weight categorization of all possible Norwegian rime shapes in non-final and word-final positions. Specific attention is given to the behavior of word-final long vowels in open syllables, which may occur in the language but are relatively uncommon. Evidence regarding different rime shapes’ ability to draw stress is shown through the results of a perception study which probed listeners’ preference for penultimate versus final stress with different rime shape combinations, including those which would result in a word-final long vowel if stressed. These preferences are compared to the results of a Maximum Entropy Model (Goldwater et al. 2003) of Norwegian stress assignment based on a corpus of loan words. We conclude that final long vowels are in fact phonologically heavy, and while they are relatively rare in the lexicon of Norwegian, native speakers tolerate them surprisingly well. </span></p></div></div></div>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Anya Hogoboom, Bennett Mealehttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5551Bilingual phonological interaction: Cross-language process transfer in code-switching2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Erin Yusko
<p>Bilinguals challenge the boundaries of languages’ distinct grammars – including their phonological systems and phonological processes – but the impact of code-switching on the challenging of these boundaries is not fully understood. The current study explores the interaction between adult bilinguals’ two phonological systems by investigating the effects of code-switching on the cross-language transfer of phonological processes. I investigate two main questions: 1) Can a bilingual speaker cross-linguistically transfer phonological processes (promotion) or the lack of particular processes (inhibition) in a code-switching context?; and 2) Do code switches affect the degree and/or frequency of these cross-language influences? To answer these questions, I examine the /t/ → [ɾ] tapping process of English and /d/ → [ð] spirantization process of Spanish. Data was collected from the Miami Corpus (Bangor University). Results indicate that phonological processes and the lack of particular processes can transfer cross-linguistically in code-switching contexts, and these transfers can be realized through phonetically gradient and, occasionally, categorical effects. Results also indicate that code switches can indeed affect the nature of these cross-language phonological processes transfers. These results suggest that code-switching can motivate the interaction between a bilingual’s two phonological systems and offer insight into the nature of phonological systems’ boundaries.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Erin Yuskohttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5557Learning unaccusativity: Evidence for split intransitivity in child Spanish2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Victoria MateuLaurel PerkinsNina Hyams
<p class="Abstract"><span>We examine four features of unaccusativity in child-directed and child Spanish to determine what cues children might use to distinguish unaccusative and unergative verbs. Two are cross-linguistic lexico-semantic features: Subjects of unaccusatives are patients so we expect more inanimate subjects with unaccusatives; and unaccusatives tend to have an endpoint, hence may occur more frequently with perfective aspect. The other two are language-specific morphosyntactic features: VS order is grammatical with unaccusatives but not unergatives, and many unaccusative verbs allow/require the anticausative <em>se</em> clitic. We find all four features robustly in children's input and that even 1-2-year-olds show discriminate use of them</span>.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Victoria Mateu, Laurel Perkins, Nina Hyamshttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5560Chinese complex reflexive ta-ziji as an exempt anaphor2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Jun LyuElsi Kaiser
<span>This study examines whether the complex reflexive <em>ta-ziji</em> in Mandarin Chinese can be used as an exempt anaphor. To this end, an offline antecedent choice experiment and an online self-paced reading experiment were conducted to explore whether and how discourse-level factors influence the interpretation of <em>ta-ziji</em>. The offline and online experiments provide converging evidence that the logophoric role (source vs. perceiver) of the non-local subject impacts the interpretation of <em>ta-ziji</em>. Crucially, </span><span>the </span><span>online experiment shows that when the non-local subject is an empathized source, non-local binding is preferred; when it is an empathized perceiver, there is no clear binding preference. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to linguistic theories of anaphora and logophoricity.</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Jun Lyu, Elsi Kaiserhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5553Negotiating communicative imaginaries: Definitional debates and language ideologies in a critical race theory hearing2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Paige Pinkston
<span>Between January and March 2022, the South Carolina Education and Public Works Committee held a series of hearings to consider five bills that were introduced in the State House, all of which were seeking to restrict how race could be taught and discussed in schools. As similar “anti-CRT” bills were introduced in a majority of U.S. states, many ensuing political debates focused on disagreements over the meaning and usage of the term “critical race theory.” Proponents and opponents of the bills oriented to starkly different understandings of the definition of CRT, and they relied on different language ideologies to defend those understandings. In examining the relationship between language ideologies and political strategies in over 21 hours of public debates about anti-CRT bills, this project analyzes instances when interlocutors used the same term to invoke different meanings; both Republicans and Democrats treated CRT as a semiotic abbreviation (Slotta 2019), yet the speech chains invoked by this abbreviation were vastly different. For Republicans, CRT invoked an educational praxis aimed at accusing White students of racism; for Democrats, CRT referred to an advanced legal theory that had never been present in K-12 schools. This paper focuses on language ideologies used in instances of explicit definition, ultimately finding that these ideologies depended both on the political stance of the speaker (for or against the bills) and their political role (legislator or public testifier).</span>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Paige Pinkstonhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5556Prosodic disambiguation of wh-indeterminates in Mandarin Chinese2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Hongchen WuJiwon Yun
This study focuses on naturally occurring ambiguous utterances like “Zhōngguóduì shuí yě dǎ-bù-guò” in Mandarin to study if/how prosody is used for disambiguation of wh-indeterminates. The results of our production study suggest that wh-indeterminates are disambiguated prosodically. For the wh-region, interrogative readings are distinguished from indefinite readings by having a longer duration and higher maximum pitch. For the pre-wh region, longer duration was observed when the wh-word received interrogative readings and left-dislocated. For the post-wh region, significantly greater pitch excursion was observed for indefinite reading than for interrogative reading. In particular, the novel finding of post-wh pitch compression for wh-interrogatives in Mandarin is in line with what has been attested in other wh-in-situ languages, such as Japanese and Korean, which suggests shared prosodic mechanisms for disambiguating wh-indeterminates in wh-in-situ languages.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Hongchen Wu, Jiwon Yunhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5558On the auditory identifiability of Asian American identity in speech: The role of listener background, sociolinguistic awareness, and language ideologies2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Charles B. ChangKate Fraser
The current study examined the auditory identifiability of Asian American ethnoracial identity, including the role of listener characteristics and ideologies. Results of an identification experiment showed that the overall accuracy of ethnoracial identification on (East and Southeast) Asian talkers was low, but not the lowest among talker groups and not significantly different from accuracy on Black talkers. There were also significant effects of listeners' ethnoracial identity, gender, and linguistic chauvinism (i.e., disfavoring linguistic diversity in the US). In particular, being Asian or a woman was associated with a higher likelihood of accuracy, whereas greater linguistic chauvinism was, to an extent, associated with a lower likelihood of accuracy. Results of a discrimination experiment additionally showed an effect of listeners' awareness of ethnoracially-based language variation: having this awareness was associated with a higher likelihood of accuracy on discrimination trials with one or more Asian talkers. Taken together, these findings converge with previous results showing an effect of the listener's background on ethnoracial perception and further implicate the listener's sociolinguistic awareness and ideologies.
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Charles B. Chang, Kate Fraserhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5559A counterfactual analysis of adnominal modifiers2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Toshiyuki Ogihara
<p class="Abstract">In this article, I shall argue for a counterfactual analysis of the semantics of some ad-nominal modifiers. This analysis formalizes the intuition that adnominal modifiers are always restrictive in some sense. Technically, the proposal is formalized with an opera-tor that applies to two intensional entities of type <s,et> and returns as the value the same type of semantic entity (type: <s,et>). In terms of how the rule works, it resem-bles Predicate Modification since it requires a special rule. However, it does not inter-sect the two sets in question. Rather, the rule yields a set of entities that are not neces-sarily a subset of the entities specified by the common noun in the actual world. I call this semantic procedure Restrictive Modification (RM). Essential reasoning is given as follows: the property of being x that has the modifier property and if in all closest worlds w in which x had a crucial property that all CN entities have, then x would have the CN property in w. For example, in the case of stone lion, it denotes the prop-erty of being x made of stone such that if x were to possess a crucial property that a re-al lion has (say, the property of being alive with flesh and blood), then x would be a real lion. This reasoning applies to a variety of adjective types. Some problematic ex-amples such as house key and ice water remain, and they are a reserved for a future study.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Toshiyuki Ogiharahttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5554Introducing linguistics to high schoolers as a healing practice2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Lauren CasillasMonique MangumIara Mantenuto
<p>In this paper, we offer a curriculum and two lesson plans to teach linguistics to high school students in a TRIO program. We propose that teaching linguistics to high schoolers can be done by centering their identities and their communities. We offer some examples of the content that we used in our own teaching, and we discuss how linguistics can give the tools needed to the students to talk about their experiences, and to understand the needs of their community. Finally, we demonstrate the use of social justice as a way for the student to engage more deeply with the subject of linguistics, process lived experiences and work towards healing.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Lauren Casillas, Monique Mangum, Iara Mantenutohttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5533Examining voice choice in Tagalog: A corpus of web-based Tagalog2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Norielle Adricula
<p class="Abstract">This study is a corpus-based analysis of web-based Tagalog (Austronesian) investigating how different prominence features influence voice in basic, declarative, transitive clauses. A large sample of these structures were extracted from a web-based corpus of Tagalog. The arguments were annotated for animacy, definiteness, and other factors proposed to influence voice choice. Preliminary results suggest that despite the morphosyntactic symmetry in voice alternations in the language, the Undergoer voice appears to be the preferred structure regardless of these factors in Tagalog. Moreover, there may be highly constrained contexts in which the Actor Voice is used when describing two-participant, transitive events. This work has implications for how we understand the notion of prominence more generally and how languages might have specific requirements for the mappings between different prominence hierarchies.</p>
2023-04-27T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Norielle Adriculahttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5532Linguistic illusions and misconceptions: The role of language variation in language development across three varieties of American English2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Christiana ChristodoulouIanthi Maria Tsimpli
<span lang="EN-GB">Prior research on the linguistic abilities of </span><span>Southern English- (SE) and African-American English-speaking children (SAAE) </span><span lang="EN-GB">revealed unexpectedly high rates of risk for a language disorder (Christodoulou & Tsimpli 2021;</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB">Moland & Oetting 2021). </span><span>This study examines the performance of </span><span>139 SE-, 46 SAAE-, and 35 Mainstream American English-speaking children (MAE), aged 2-13, and analyzes their performance, <span>through </span><span>twelve sections,</span> in four key linguistic domains: <em>syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and phonology</em>, using a <span>standardized </span><span>assessment test</span>. Results revealed a parallel performance across the three groups in all linguistic domains. The highest means of accuracy were noted with phonology and the lowest with semantics.<em> </em>Analysis of the participants’ performance by age evidenced a virtually identical performance across the three groups after age 6 or 7, but considerable variations were noted with younger children. Results from the current study contradict results from previous work showing considerably high rates of risk for a language disorder for the SAAE-speaking children, as their performance is parallel to not only that of SE-speaking children but it also the performance of MAE-speaking children. Results from the current study could help guide educational policies, especially for early education programs, as well as diagnostic assessment and rehabilitation.</span>
2023-05-03T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Christiana Christodoulou, Ianthi Maria Tsimplihttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5543Swimming in the desert? The role of environment in motion verb acquisition2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Alice BenjaminKaitlyn Harrigan
<span>Any event includes countless components, giving the learner many possible options in mapping verb meanings. Previous research demonstrates that children are sensitive to the distribution of motion verbs in their language, mapping ambiguous verb-event pairings to <em>manner</em> if their language has more manner verbs, like English, and <em>path</em> if their language has more path verbs, like Spanish. Previous work also demonstrates that children have some sensitivity visual components, such an event’s location, when they are learning motion verbs. Our study explores how the learner weighs components of visual scene against the distributional factors present in their language. Like previous studies, we find that English-learning children are better at encoding <em>manner </em>than <em>path </em>information. Additionally, we build on previous work on motion verb acquisition, showing that children are differentially influenced by different kinds of background environments.</span>
2023-05-03T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Alice Benjamin, Kaitlyn Harriganhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5550Languages put restrictions on large sonority distances2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Ruihua Yin
<span>An underlying </span><span lang="EN-US">assumption in terms of sonority distances is that clusters with large sonority distances are more common than those with small distances, as captured in the unmarked status of large sonority distances and formalized in terms of sonority constraints on consonant clusters. A cross-linguistic survey of attested sonority distances in 357 languages reveals that large sonority distances are not most commonly attested. Rather, there is a point of sonority distance at which the largest number of languages is attested. When the sonority distance exceeds a particular value, the number of languages starts to decrease, regardless of the sonority scales tested. The finding puts the unmarked status of large sonority distances to the test, suggesting a potential constraint that prevents large distances from surfacing.</span>
2023-05-03T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Ruihua Yinhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5562Word-final strength and weakness2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Anya HogoboomJoseph Lorber
<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>Word-final syllables are known to show phonological strength, presumably due to final lengthening (Steriade 1994; Barnes 2002), but also phonological weakness. We propose that final weakening effects are also due to final lengthening under the assumption that duration due a phonetic source (i.e. final lengthening) is not on linguistic par with duration from a phonological source. We show further support </span>for our proposal through the results of perception studies with adults that show less sensitivity to word-final duration differences. We note that child language phonology often shows unexpected final syllable strength and include two such diary studies with English-learning children. We propose that this difference between child and adult phonology is due to children not yet having learned to differentiate the import of duration based on its source.</p></div></div></div>
2023-05-03T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Anya Hogoboom, Joseph Lorberhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5545Role of markedness in the perception of Bengali stops2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Sreeparna Sarkar
Markedness is a theory that was developed on the basis of segmental patterns observed in speech output and has primarily been addressed in regard to speech production in previous studies. According to the Markedness Theory, marked segments are more difficult to produce due to an additional property or “mark” which requires more articulatory effort. However, its effects on speech perception are not discussed in the previous literature. This study examines the role of markedness in perception with Bengali stops. Bengali stops involve two types of markedness or additional properties, voicing and aspiration. Voiced stops (represented as D) are marked with respect to voiceless stops (represented as T), and aspirated stops (TH) are marked with respect to unaspirated stops (T). Voiced aspirated stops bear both additional properties (represented as DH). While the absence of a marked property may make segments easier to produce than those with the property, the question addressed here is whether the same holds true for perception. This study investigates the possibility that the opposite is what is observed. That is, the presence of additional properties may make segments more audible and identifiable. Additionally, this study also investigates whether the combination of multiple marks in the Bengali DH stops lead to a cumulative effect on perception with the best perceptual results for the DH stops. The results from this study show that this is, in fact, the case.
2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Sreeparna Sarkarhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5542¿Va primero el verbo? OR ¿El sujeto va primero?: Subject-verb order in Latin American Spanish2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Lee-Ann Vidal Covas
This paper investigates subject-verb placement for unaccusative and unergative verbs in Spanish, focusing on syntactic, pragmatic, and sociolinguistic factors that predict placement. The study aims to answer three questions: (1) Does the unergative/unaccusative divide influence SV/VS order acceptability?, (2) What are the dialectal differences in subject placement acceptability in Spanish?, and (3) Does sentence context affect subject placement preference? The study collected data from sixty-nine Spanish speakers from the Caribbean, Chile, and Mexico, who provided 1656 acceptability ratings on sentences with different subject-verb orders. The findings indicate that both verb type and pragmatic conditions predict word preferability, with VS order preferred when the verb is unaccusative, and SV order preferred overall. The study adds to the literature by establishing the connection between argument structure and information structure and supporting the Unaccusative Hypothesis.
2023-07-01T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Lee-Ann Vidal Covashttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5571A theoretical account of whale song syntax: A new perspective for understanding human language structure2023-07-18T16:41:47+00:00Cutler Cannon
<p>It is a common belief among linguists that the use of language is a species-specific phenomenon belonging only to humans. However, there is no doubt that there are non-human communication systems within the animal kingdom that are amazingly complex and share certain properties with human language (Berwick et al. 2011). The current paper – adapted from a more comprehensive undergraduate thesis – calls to attention the intricacy of one such system used among humpback whales (<em>Megaptera novaeangliae</em>). Recent findings by biologists and acousticians have uncovered an unpredictable pattern of bidirectional egressive and ingressive sounds in whale songs, leading to questions about song function and the presence of hierarchical structure akin to human language (Mercado & Perazio, 2021). While no conclusions have been unanimously agreed upon, whale song ‘syntax’ has the potential to remedy deficiencies in modern linguistic theory and provide insight into human communication. Drawing from recent literature about animal communication at large, whale singing behavior, and bidirectional sound production, I propose a theoretical, two-channel mechanism for the acoustic and structural nature of whale song. Using the two-channel mechanism, I further present a catalog of possibilities surrounding the potential for whale song compositionality to establish parallels with human language and ultimately argue a structural context for issues surrounding the modeling of paralinguistic computation, parentheticals, and syntactic amalgams. </p>
2023-07-09T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Cutler Cannonhttps://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/view/5577Lio kinship terminology2023-07-18T16:42:49+00:00Arwen FluitGrace B. WivellFransiskus X. Mbete
This work focuses on kinship terms in Lio, an understudied Austronesian language spoken in Flores, Indonesia. We describe the Lio kinship terms and compare them to available data on other nearby Austronesian languages. Preliminary observations show examples of alternate generation terms which have not been discussed in previous literature. These alternate generation terms are also divided by gender, a quality that has not been discussed in the Central Flores languages literature.
2023-07-18T00:00:00+00:00Copyright (c) 2023 Arwen Fluit, Grace B. Wivell, Fransiskus X. Mbete