Journal Issue: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference
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03/28/2014
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Publication (Anti-)locality and A-scrambling in Japanese(2014-01-01) Goto, SayakaIn this paper, I investigate binding effects triggered by long-distance scrambling in Japanese. The first purpose of the study is to describe an environment where long-distance scrambling can feed A-binding and make a generalization about it. The generalization made in this paper is that Long-distance scrambling can feed A-binding only if i) the embedded subject is null, and ii) a bindee is contained in the matrix object (or in the matrix subject if there is no matrix indirect object). The second purpose is to give an analysis to derive the generalization without recourse to A/A'-distinction. As discussed in the paper, there are some problems in an approach to capture binding phenomena resorting to A/A'-distinction. Therefore, I propose an analysis to derive the generalization without using the notion of A/A'-distinction.Publication Interaction of Phonology and Morphology in Maltese and Makassarese Clitics(2014-01-01) Shwayder, KobeyThis paper presents two case studies in which surface phonological form is determined by an interaction of phonological and morphological information and processes. In both Makassarese (South Sulawesi, Austronesian) and Maltese (Semitic) the attachment of certain clitics to a host results in an asymmetry in phonological behavior. The phonological form of these host-clitic structures is sensitive to both the morphology of the clitic (that is, not all clitics show this behavior) and to the phonological shape of the host. To analyze this data, I propose a framework, following Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993, et. seq.), in which the triggers for the application of phonological processes are specific morphosyntactic structures and processes. One such morphosyntactic process, Local Dislocation, is known to be conditioned by phonological information about the objects to which it applies. The interleaving of Vocabulary Insertion, which results in available phonological material, Linearization and Local Dislocation result in a framework which has a complicated but restricted interaction of phonological and morphological information. With this framework, the data in the case studies can be explained with one simple morphological process and a few simple phonological rules.Publication Getting your Gutturals out of the Mind: An Assessment of the Role of Phonology in the Patterns of Historical Gutturals in Modern Hebrew(2014-01-01) Montoya, Ignacio L.In traditional accounts of Hebrew morphology, the primary basis of word formation is an underlying consonantal root and vocalic/prosodic template. However, many words in Modern Hebrew containing reflexes of historical gutturals deviate from the canonical form with regard to syllable structure, the number of surface root consonants, and the number and quality of vowels in the template. These deviations can be characterized as deletion, vowel epenthesis, and vowel lowering, suggesting that the exceptional words can be explained via phonological approaches. Indeed, phonological explanations have been by proposed by previous generative and Optimality Theory (OT) accounts (Bar-Lev 1977, Bolozky 1978, Faust 2005), though these studies have been limited with regard to their explanatory scope. The present paper begins both by expanding on these treatments using a wider array of ordered rules and ranked constraints than was previously proposed and by exploring their limitations. To address their shortcomings, this paper then adopts an Evolutionary Phonology (EP) framework. Under an EP analysis, we can assess the extent to which the tools of phonology are appropriate for explaining patterns involving the modern reflexes of the gutturals by exploring multiple sources of explanation for these patterns: phonetic and historical factors, external factors such as language contact and prescriptive norms, and analogical change (Blevins 2004). The source of vowel lowering and epenthesis is posited to be the effects of the relatively high F1 associated with gutturals, which became phonological processes in Biblical Hebrew (McCarthy 1994). Incorporated into Hebrew orthography, these effects remained evident in Modern Hebrew, despite the fact that the guttural triggers themselves were not recovered in the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language in the late 1800s (Sáenz-Badillos 1993) and therefore did not form part of the synchronic phonology. After considering non-phonological sources of explanation for vowel lowering and epenthesis, deletion alone is left as a strictly phonological process. This paper proposes that the synchronic effects associated with vowel lowering and epenthesis should be explored using the tools of morphology rather than those of phonology.Publication Learning Local Phonological Processes(2014-01-01) Chandlee, Jane; Koirala, CesarWe present a learning algorithm for local phonological processes that relies on a restriction on the expressive power needed to compute phonological patterns that apply locally. Representing phonological processes as a functional mapping from an input to output form (an assumption compatible with either the SPE or OT formalism), the learner assumes the target process can be described with the functional counterpart to the Strictly Local (McNaughton and Papert 1971, Rogers and Pullum 2011) formal languages. Given a data set of input-output string pairs, the learner applies the two-stage grammatical induction procedure of 1) constructing a prefix tree representation of the input and 2) generalizing the pattern to words not found in the data set by merging states (Garcia and Vidal 1990, Oncina et al. 1993, Heinz 2007, 2009, de la Higuera 2010). The learner’s criterion for state merging enforces a locality requirement on the kind of function it can converge to and thereby directly reflects its own hypothesis space. We demonstrate with the example of German final devoicing, using a corpus of string pairs derived from the CELEX2 lemma corpus. The implications of our results include a proposal for how humans generalize to learn phonological patterns and a consequent explanation for why local phonological patterns have this property.Publication Variable Subject Doubling in Spoken Parisian French(2014-01-01) Zahler, SaraSubject doubling (SD) has long been a topic of interest for researchers. Numerous quantitative studies demonstrate highly variable rates of SD across dialects (e.g. Campion 1984, Auger & Villeneuve 2010, Nadasdi 2000, Sankoff 1982, Conveney 2003, 2005). However, few of the previous studies are variationist in nature, and those that are only examine one or two factors. Consequently, the goal of this study is to undertake a comprehensive variationist analysis of SD in Parisian colloquial French (PCF), a relatively understudied dialect of French in variationist linguistics in general, and particularly with regard to SD. All tokens of preverbal 3rd person subjects that could be doubled (full noun phrases, strong pronouns and other types of pronouns, such as lui, eux, personne, etc.) were extracted from the from the Corpus de Français Parlé Parisien des Années 2000 (CFPP2000), a French corpus consisting of sociolinguistic interviews from various Parisian suburbs. 17 interviews spanning 14 Parisian suburbs and 25 speakers were used, resulting in 1097 occurrences. These tokens were subsequently coded for the following factors claimed to affect SD: specificity and definiteness of the subject; grammatical person; type and complexity of subject; presence and type of intervening elements; sentence type; verb type; polarity and use of ne; information status; age; sex; and suburb. The data were subsequently analyzed using GoldvarbX. Several factors were significant and supported claims made in previous qualitative studies regarding subject doubling, particularly subject complexity, use of ne, intervening elements, sentence type, and specificity and definiteness of the subject. These results are similar to results found for other dialects, suggesting that many of the same constraints condition the use of SD in the different varieties of French. Nevertheless, grammatical person, information status, sex and age differed, indicating that although there are cross-dialectal similarities, there are certain dialect-specific uses of SD, specifically pertaining to social factors. Lastly, the importance of studying the role of frequency in SD is discussed.Publication A Necessity Priority Modal and its Interaction with Tense in Korean(2014-01-01) Mun, BokyungThe interaction of a modal auxiliary with tense or aspect components often gives rise to some unexpected inferences. In Korean, when a necessity priority modal –eya ha– ‘should’ is combined with past tense morphology, the sentence yields the ‘non-actualization’ inference. Condoravdi (2002) examines that the similar phenomenon in English. Focusing on the epistemic modal-perfect combination, she proposes a scope-based analysis, and argues that counterfactuality arises as a conversational implicature. I show that, even though Condoravdi’s scope-reversal analysis well explains the counterfactual reading from might have sentences, this account cannot be extended to the Korean data. In my analysis, the non-actualization inference found in priority modal sentences in Korean is a not-at-issue assertion, and this inference arises from the temporal relations between SIT-T, MOD-T and UT-T.Publication A Prosodic Analysis of Romanian Pronominal Clitics(2014-01-01) Chereches, AncaRomanian pronominals have an extensive array of surface forms. Most previous literature calls this variation idiosyncratic and focuses on the morphosyntactic status of pronominals. I show that the phonology of pronominals is not only quite regular, but entirely predictable from the general phonology of Romanian. What is special about pronominals is not the constraints that apply to them, but how they are included into the prosodic hierarchy. The prosody of pronominals is partly due to general prosodic constraints, as outlined in Selkirk 1996, and partly due to lexical prespecifications, as in Zec's (2005) analysis of Serbian function words.Publication Against a Split Phonology of Michif(2014-01-01) Prichard, Hilary; Shwayder, KobeyThis paper investigates the claim that Michif has a phonology split by etymological origin, Cree and French. We present two case studies, one which examines a phonological process and one which concerns the vowel inventory. The first case examines whether a French phonological rule, liaison, is truly restricted to the French portion of Michif, or whether it can apply across etymological classes. We find instances where liaison does occur between French and non-French words, suggesting that liaison cannot be restricted to a French subpart. The second case tests whether the Michif vowel inventory can reliably be divided into French and Cree categories on the basis of phonetic contrasts. The statistical models indicate that there is no basis for dividing the inventory into two subparts based on etymology. Taken together, these case studies suggest that the phonology of Michif should be treated as a single system rather than a split system.Publication UnElided Basic Remnants in Germanic Ellipsis or: ÜBRIGE Arguments(2014-01-01) Larson, BradleyThere are differing theories concerning the construction dubbed swiping by Merchant 2002. Some theories predict that the inverted preposition/wh-word order characteristic of swiping is idiosyncratic to prepositions and wh-words in particular and does not generalize to other elements. Other theories predict that swiping is merely a particular instantiation of a generalizable possibility for inverted word orders under ellipsis. In this paper I provide evidence for this latter type of theory by showing that the characteristics of swiping extend beyond prepositionals and wh-words. The generalization is that whatever can extrapose and be extracted from can enter into a swiping like construction.Publication Projective Meanings of Thai Passive-type Constructions, and Implications for East Asian (Chinese bei) Passive Constructions(2014-01-01) Kim, LanFollowing the idea advanced and developed by a growing number of researchers in which a sentence may involve two tiers of meaning (e.g., Karttunen 1973, Karttunen and Peters 1979, Potts 2005, Roberts et al. 2009, Bosse et al. 2012, Bruening and Tran Ms., Kim, to appear), this paper suggests that (i) in Thai thuuk and doon are syntactic heads which are associated with two dimensions of meaning in multidimensional semantics, an at-issue meaning (i.e., the main assertion of a sentence) and a not-at-issue meaning, and that (ii) the adversative meaning that is implicated in thuuk and doon constructions is projected as a not-at-issue meaning, similar to the case in the Vietnamese bị constructions (Bruening and Tran, Ms.). Further, I shall show that only the short form is a passive construction and the long form is not (Bhatt and Pancheva 2006, Bruening and Tran, Ms.). Despite this distinction, I will show that the two forms involve a null operator A’-movement. Therefore, the long form and the short form receive the same semantic analysis; thuuk and doon contribute the adversative meaning, yet, they can be distinguished by the complement that thuuk and doon select.