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Forthcoming Articles
Listed here are articles that are to appear in upcoming issues.
Click on any title to jump to the abstract, if available.
To appear in December 2009 (85.4)
A coarticulatory path to sound change
Patrice Speeter Beddor (University of Michigan)
Learning how to license null noun class prefixes in Sesotho
Katherine Demuth (Brown University), 'Malillo Machobane (The National University of Lesotho), and Francina Moloi (The National University of Lesotho)
Natural and unnatural constraints in Hungarian vowel harmony
Bruce Hayes (University of California, Los Angeles), Kie Zuraw (University of California, Los Angeles), Péter Siptár (Eötvös Loránd University Budapest and Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences), and Zsuzsa Londe (University of California, Los Angeles)
Malagasy backward object control
Eric Potsdam (University of Florida)
Short Report: Color naming and the shape of color space
Terry Regier (University of Chicago), Paul Kay (International Computer Science Institute), & Naveen Khetarpal (University of Chicago)
Review Article: van Gelderen: A history of the English language; Hogg & Denison (eds.): A history of the English language; Mugglestone (ed.): The Oxford history of English
Donka Minkova
In the Works
Phonological Movement in Classical Greek
Brian Agbayani and Chris Golston (California State University, Fresno)
Predicting Syntax: Processing Dative Constructions in American and Australian Varieties of English
Joan Bresnan (Stanford University) & Marilyn Ford (Griffith University)
Language-Particular Syntactic Rules and Constraints: English Locative Inversion and Do-Support
Benjamin Bruening (University of Delaware)
The Centrality of Metrical Structure in Signaling Information Structure: a Probabilistic Perspective
Sasha Calhoun (University of Edinburgh)
Convergent evidence for categorial change in French: from subject clitic to agreement marker
Jennifer Culbertson (Johns Hopkins University)
Dvandvas, blocking, and the associative: the bumpy ride from phrase to word
Paul Kiparsky (Stanford University)
A coarticulatory path to sound change
Patrice Speeter Beddor (University of Michigan)
Although coarticulatory variation is largely systematic, and serves as useful information for listeners, such variation is nonetheless linked to sound change. This article explores the articulatory and perceptual interactions between a coarticulatory source and its effects, and how these interactions likely contribute to change. The focus is on the historical change VN (phonetically, ̃VN) > ̃V, but with more general attention to how a gesture associated with a source segment comes to be reinterpreted as distinctively, rather than coarticulatorily, associated with a nearby vowel or consonant. Two synchronic factors are hypothesized to contribute to reinterpretation: (i) articulatory covariation between the duration of the coarticulatory source (here, N) and the temporal extent of its effects (̃V), and (ii) perceived equivalence between source and effect. Experimental support for both hypotheses is provided. Additionally, the experimental data are linked to the historical situation by showing that the contextual conditions that trigger (i) and (ii) parallel the conditions that historically influence phonologization of vowel nasalization.
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Learning how to license null noun class prefixes in Sesotho
Katherine Demuth (Brown University), 'Malillo Machobane (The National University of Lesotho), and Francina Moloi (The National University of Lesotho)
Noun class prefixes are obligatory in most Bantu languages. However, the Sotho languages (Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi) permit a subset of prefixes to be realized as null at the intersection of 'unmarked' phonological, syntactic, and discourse conditions. This raises the question of how and when the licensing of null prefixes is learned. Using longitudinal data from three Sesotho-speaking children, this article shows that the conditions needed to license null prefixes have been learned before the age of three, suggesting early abilities for grammatical generalization even at the intersection of different levels of linguistic structure. The implications for learnability theory and Bantu linguistic structure more generally are discussed.
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Natural and unnatural constraints in Hungarian vowel harmony
Bruce Hayes (University of California, Los Angeles), Kie Zuraw (University of California, Los Angeles), Péter Siptár (Eötvös Loránd University Budapest and Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences), and Zsuzsa Londe (University of California, Los Angeles)
Phonological constraints can, in principle, be classified according to whether they are natural (founded in principles of universal grammar (UG)) or unnatural (arbitrary, learned inductively from the language data). Recent work has used this distinction as the basis for arguments about the role of UG in learning. Some languages have phonological patterns that arguably reflect unnatural constraints. With experimental testing, one can assess whether such patterns are actually learned by native speakers. Becker, Ketrez, and Nevins (2007), testing speakers of Turkish, suggest that they do indeed go unlearned. They interpret this result with a strong UG position: humans are unable to learn data patterns not backed by UG principles.
This article pursues the same research line, locating similarly unnatural data patterns in the vowel harmony system of Hungarian, such as the tendency (among certain stem types) for a final bilabial stop to favor front harmony. Our own test leads to the opposite conclusion to Becker and colleagues': Hungarians evidently do learn the unnatural patterns.
To conclude we consider a bias account-that speakers are able to learn unnatural environments, but devalue them relative to natural ones. We outline a method for testing the strength of constraints as learned by speakers against the strength of the corresponding patterns in the lexicon, and show that it offers tentative support for the hypothesis that unnatural constraints are disfavored by language learners.
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Malagasy backward object control
Eric Potsdam (University of Florida)
Backward control is an obligatory interpretational dependency between an overt controller and a nonovert controllee in which the controllee is structurally superior to the controller: Meg persuaded ∆i [Roni to give up]. It contrasts with ordinary forward control, in which the controller is structurally higher: Meg persuaded Roni [∆i to give up]. Although backward control has been previously documented (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002a), clear cases are rare. This article presents an alternation between forward and backward object control in the Austronesian language Malagasy and argues for the backward control structure. Backward control is thus a reality and needs to be incorporated into any comprehensive theory of control. The article argues against an analysis of backward control that identifies the controllee as the null pronominal pro.
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Short Report: Color naming and the shape of color space
Terry Regier (University of Chicago), Paul Kay (International Computer Science Institute), & Naveen Khetarpal (University of Chicago)
Color naming in the world's languages has traditionally been viewed as reflecting either a universal set of focal colors, or linguistic relativity. Recently, a different view has gained support: color naming may be accounted for in terms of the overall shape of perceptual color space. Here, we show that the new shape-based perspective can clarify which languages have color-naming systems that deviate from what universal forces would predict. Specifically, we find that the color-naming systems of two languages that have been held to counterexemplify universals of color naming-Pirahã and Warlpiri-are in fact consistent with the structure of color space. In contrast, two other languages that have not yet been the focus of much attention-Karajá and Waorani-are apparently inconsistent with that structure in a substantial way. We propose that the notion of 'fit to the shape of color space' provides a useful and objective means of determining which languages have genuinely unusual color-naming systems.
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Review Article: van Gelderen: A history of the English language; Hogg & Denison (eds.): A history of the English language; Mugglestone (ed.): The Oxford history of English
Donka Minkova
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In the Works
Phonological Movement in Classical Greek
Brian Agbayani and Chris Golston (California State University, Fresno)
We show that Classical Greek hyperbaton involves pervasive phonological movement. Hyperbaton moves prosodic constituents to prosodic positions, subject to prosodic boundaries and to prosodic conditions on well-formedness. Syntactic analyses of hyperbaton fail insofar as they require the movement of heads, phrases, and non-constituents to positions that are difficult to define syntactically. Furthermore, hyperbaton disobeys anti-locality constraints and a host of well-studied syntactic island conditions. We propose that phonological movement arises as the result of constraint interaction in the phonological component, subsequent to the interface between syntax and phonology.
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Predicting Syntax: Processing Dative Constructions in American and Australian Varieties of English
Joan Bresnan (Stanford University) & Marilyn Ford (Griffith University)
The present study uses probabilistic models of corpus data in a novel way, to measure and compare the syntactic predictive capacities of speakers of different varieties of the same language. The study finds that speakers' knowledge of probabilistic grammatical choices can vary across different varieties of the same language and can be detected psycholinguistically in the individual. In three pairs of experiments Australians and Americans responded reliably to corpus model probabilities in rating the naturalness of alternative dative constructions, their lexical decision latencies during reading varied inversely with the syntactic probabilities of the construction, and they showed subtle covariation in these tasks, which is in line with quantitative differences in the choices of datives produced in the same contexts.
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Language-Particular Syntactic Rules and Constraints: English Locative Inversion and Do-Support
Benjamin Bruening (University of Delaware)
Locative inversion in English (under the bridge lived a troll) is ungrammatical in all of the contexts where do-support applies: subject-auxiliary inversion, sentential negation, emphasis or verum focus, VP ellipsis, and VP displacement. Importantly, it is ungrammatical in these contexts whether do-support applies or not: it is ungrammatical with other auxiliaries, and it is also ungrammatical in non-finite clauses of these types, where do-support never actually applies. This indicates that all of these contexts have something in common, and that cannot be disruption of adjacency between tense/agreement and the verb, because there is no such disruption with other auxiliaries or in non-finite contexts. These facts therefore argue against the standard last resort theory of do-support, which holds that it is inserted to save a stranded tense/agreement affix, and for a theory like that of Baker 1991 ('The Syntax of English Not: The Limits of Core Grammar', Linguistic Inquiry 22: 387-429). In this theory, VPs have corresponding Special Purpose ([SP]) VPs, and do heads a [SP] VP. All of the contexts for do-support have in common the featural specification [SP]. Locative inversion involves a null expletive subject, the licensing of which is blocked by a non-[SP] context. All of this argues for a view of syntax with language-particular licensing constraints, features, and rules, within a range of variation proscribed by universal grammar.
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The Centrality of Metrical Structure in Signaling Information Structure: a Probabilistic Perspective
Sasha Calhoun (University of Edinburgh)
This paper introduces a new way to explain how information structure is signaled prosodically in English. We claim that metrical structure is central in signaling information structure (Ladd 2008; Truckenbrodt 1995). Information structure (defined re Steedman 1991 and Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998) places strong constraints on the probabilistic mapping of words onto metrical prosodic structure, i.e. foci usually align with nuclear accents, theme/rheme units with prosodic phrases, and themes are less metrically prominent than rhemes. We show that focus position, scope, and pragmatic interpretation are then derived by manipulating expected prominence within metrical structure. Broadly, the more prominent a word than expected, the more likely a contrastive reading; the less prominent, the more likely a givenness reading. We use both constructed and naturally occurring examples from the Switchboard corpus.
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Convergent evidence for categorial change in French: from subject clitic to agreement marker
Jennifer Culbertson (Johns Hopkins University)
The status of subject clitics in French has been heavily debated (Kayne 1975, Rizzi 1986, Roberge 1990, Auger 1994b, Miller and Sag 1997, De Cat 2007b, and many others). Distributional properties of French subject clitics have led Kayne (1975), Rizzi (1986), and others to analyze them as argument-bearing elements occupying canonical subject position, cliticizing to the verb only at the level of the phonology. While this hypothesis enjoys a wide following, a growing body of evidence suggests that it fails to capture patterns of subject clitic use in colloquial French dialects/registers (Roberge 1990, Auger 1994b, Zribi-Hertz 1994, Miller and Sag 1997). Using new evidence from prosodic and corpus analyses, speaker judgments, and cross-linguistic typology this paper argues that (i) European Colloquial French exhibits differences from Standard French which impact how subject clitics are best analyzed, and more specifically (ii) subject clitics in European Colloquial French are affixal agreement markers not phonological clitic arguments.
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Dvandvas, blocking, and the associative: the bumpy ride from phrase to word
Paul Kiparsky (Stanford University)
The oldest form of Sanskrit has a class of expressions which are in some respects like asyndetically co-ordinated syntactic phrases, in other respects like single compound words. I propose to resolve the conflicting evidence by drawing on Prosodic Phonology, Stratal Optimality Theory, and the lexicalist approach to morphological blocking. I then present an account of their semantic properties and of their historical development. The analysis points to a solution to the theoretical problem of non-monotonic trajectories in diachrony, a challenge for causal theories of change which claim that analogical processes are simplifying or regularizing. The idea is that optimization of such a highly structured object as a language does not proceed monotonically, but via a sequence of local optima.
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