The present paper presents evidence that Madurese (an Austronesian language of Indonesia) does not contain overt long-distance wh-movement (of the type found in the English question Who did Hasan say that Marlena saw?). There are widespread claims that closely related languages (Malay, Indonesian) exhibit long-distance overt wh-movement, and Madurese exhibits all the same properties identified in these languages. However, careful analysis of crucial data reveals that overt wh-movement is radically local in the sense that only the subject in the clause immediately dominated by the wh-focus operator may be questioned, all apparent long-distance movement resulting from raising-to-subject and object control structures.
The goal of this paper is to present a novel analysis of aspiration, preaspiration, and the related phenomena of sonorant devoicing and spirantization in an Optimality Theoretic framework. Central to the analysis are two constraints, one which requires that the feature [spread glottis] be shared by adjacent consonants and another the prohibits moraic [spread glottis] stops. It is suggested that aspirated stops are singleton stops which are specified as [spread glottis]. Unaspirated stops are those in which the [spread glottis] feature is linked to two consonants as well as stops with no [spread glottis] feature. There is no movement of aspiration or the [spread glottis] feature from one segment to another as in earlier analyses. This analysis is fully in accord with the phonetic accounts of the difference between aspirated stops and stops with [spread glottis] in clusters. This analysis is of theoretical interest because it is consistent with the widely held assumption that geminates are moraic consonants with a single root node. This is in contrast to a rule-based account, which Selkirk (1990) has shown to be inconsistent with this assumption, suggesting instead that Icelandic shows that geminates should be analyzed as having two root nodes.
I have argued (1983) that Mam is a syntactically ergative language, on the basis that there are at least two rules that recognize the difference between ergative and absolutive arguments. One of these, the rule for agent extraction, in Mayan languages typically requires the use of the antipassive voice, thereby converting the ergative argument into an absolutive argument. However, in languages of the K'ichee' and Q'anjob'al groups the use of antipassive in this function is restricted and it is not clear that grammatical relations necessarily change. I will compare agent extraction in Mam, K'ichee', and Q'anjob'al, and will argue that these languages are less syntactically ergative than Mam. The analysis of Q'anjob'al is taken from Mateo Toledo (1998); Mateo Toledo will join me in the presentation.
England, Nora C. 1983. Ergativity in Mamean (Mayan) Languages. IJAL 49:1-19.
Mateo Toledo, Eladio (B'alam Q'uq'). 1998. El enfoque agentivo en Q'anjob'al. Paper given at the 2o Coloquio de Linguistica en la ENAH, Mexico.
Recently there have been a number of attempts to reduce Condition B of the binding theory to an elsewhere condition, such that pronouns can be coreferential with some argument in a given domain just in case an anaphor is disallowed in that domain with the same antecedent. I will show that this approach cannot explain the binding facts in certain argument PPs in Spanish. In these PPs, the prepositional object, when pronominal, can be coreferential with the subject, although an anaphor is apparently equally possible, as in Elena piensa mucho en ella/ella misma 'Elena often thinks about her/herself'. The binding possibilities in these PPs contrast both with English and with other PPs in Spanish, thus Elena alardea mucho de *ella/ella misma 'Elena brags a lot about her/herself'. In this presentation I will show that (i) the coreferential pronouns in such examples are true pronouns and not covert anaphors, and so this set of cases provides an empirical argument against a reductionist approach to Condition B, and (ii) the contrast between English and Spanish and between classes of argument PPs within Spanish can be accounted for if binding domains are computed on the basis of the domain of Case licensing of arguments, as I have argued elsewhere to account for the binding properties of pronominal subjects of certain subjunctive clauses.
The OT constraint Onset (syllables must have an onset) penalizes onsetless syllables. Such syllables are avoided in Polish by making use of two strategies: gliding (i u ---> j w) and glide insertion (0 ---> j w). These two strategies are in conflict with each other when they compete over the same set of data. This leads to a complex system of constraint interaction and requires that some nuclei be prespecified lexically.
In my talk I will provide an Optimality-Theoretic (Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1995) account of Act I of Grimm's Law (GL), a major consonantal chain shift in the transition from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) to Proto-Germanic (PG). I claim that Act I involves a parallel shift b>p; p>ph which can be adequately explained within a framework that integrates two complementary apporaches to language change: systemic and non-systemic. Within the systemic OT framework (Flemming 1996, Padgett 1997), inventory evolution can be viewed as the reranking of constraints regulating perceptual distance among the segments both with respect to the constraint stabilizing the number of available contrasting forms and with respect to the constraints prohibiting certain feature cooccurrences (markedness constraints). In the non-systemic OT framework (McCarthy and Prince 1995, Kirchner 1998), inventory dynamics can be regarded as the reranking of the featural faithfulness constraints relative to the featural markedness constraints. The systemic interaction reflects the tendency to maintain a balanced inventory (linguistically stable, symmetrical), whereas the non-systemic interaction implements the preference for the transparent (i.e., non-structure changing) inventory. I claim that the integration of the systemic and the non-systemic OT approaches to language change allows for a comprehensive and unified account of inventory dynamics.
This study focusses on verbs in the Indo-European language Hindi/Urdu. Associated with a verb is a variety of information which a speaker of the language must know: how many objects there are if any, what semantic relations the subject and objects have to the verb-meaning, and what case forms must appear on the subjects and objects. The amount of learning of specific verb properties can be reduced if some properties, such as case type, can be predicted from the form of the predicate.Transitive verbs in this language exhibit a variety of case patterns, as shown by the three related verbs below, which exemplify a much larger class of verbs involving relations between one referent and a source or goal. The class includes both psychological verbs, like the ones below, and verbs of motion or relation.:
1) baccooN-koo bijlii-see Dar hai Dar hoo-naa 'be afraid' (Stative)
children-DAT thunder-from fear-NOM is
'The children are afraid of thunder'
2) bijlii-see baccee Dar-tee thee Dar-naa
'be/become afraid'
(state/ change of state) thunder-from children -NOM fear-impf were
'The children were afraid of thunder'
3) bijlii-nee baccooN-koo Dar-aa-yaa Dar-aa-naa 'frighten' (causative)
thunder-ERG children-DAT fear-CAUS-perf
'Thunder frightened the children'
These verbs have the same number of arguments, and the same theta roles, yet different subjects and objects, and different case selection. I propose that the subject choice and the specific type of case selection is predictable to a large degree from the form of the verb, that is, how complex it is syntactically. I will propose different verbal structures for the verb-types in (1)-(3), and argue that the case and subject selection follows from these structures in a predictable way.
This study addresses the question of whether constraints on aspectual semantics play a role in lexical processing. Two universal cognitive constraints were identified in the productive process of perfective preverb and stem combination in Bulgarian. An off-line task ascertained that Bulgarian native speakers have a default semantic interpretation for the preverbs under investigation. A lexical decision task showed clear legality effects in non-words composed of existing preverbs and stems, thereby supporting decompositional approaches. I argue that after the process of morpheme search there must be a process of checking for combinatory felicity of the morphemes activated in the lexical access.
I report a detailed assessment of the linguistic as well as perceptual and cognitive representations of spatial relationships in two brain-damaged subjects. Four tests were administered that involve both the production and comprehension of English locative prepositions (e.g., in, on, above, below). In addition, four standardized neuropsychological tests that probe high-level nonlinguistic visuospatial perception and cognition were administered. Case 1 was significantly impaired on all of the preposition tests but was normal on all of the visuospatial tests. In striking contrast, Case 2 was normal on all of the preposition tests but was significantly impaired on all of the visuospatial tests. The subjects also had entirely different brain lesions: Case 1 had a left hemisphere lesion in the frontoparietal region, and Case 2 had a right hemisphere lesion in the frontoparietal and temporal regions. Together, the results constitute a "double dissociation," suggesting that the preposition tests and the visuospatial tests require cognitively and neurally distinct mechanisms that can be disrupted independently of each other. I interpret the data as supporting the view that the meanings of locative prepositions may be language-specific semantic structures that are separate from the mental representations underlying many other kinds of high-level nonlinguistic visuospatial abilities.
In this talk, I will argue that young children acquiring English natively and as a second language have knowledge of a parametric setting that makes the following structures possible in their grammar:
(1) a. Who do you think 's fish is in the cradle?
(cf. Whose fish do you think is in the cradle?)
b. Who do you think 's sunglasses Pocahontas tried on?
(cf. Whose sunglasses do you think Pocahontas tried on?)
My argument rests on the crosslinguistic work exploring the syntax of possessor questions in a variety of languages: Tzotzil (Aissen 1996), Mohawk (Baker 1996), Chamorro (Chung 1991), the Germanic and Slavic languages (Corver 1990), Hungarian (Szabolcsi 1983/4, 1994). The existing work suggests that there is a three-way division between languages with overt wh-movement, that is, whose-questions can appear in one of the three forms: (a) split (as in Chamorro), which means that a wh-possessor is obligatorily extracted; (b) optionally split (as in Hungarian, Tzotzil, or Russian), which means that either a wh-possessor is extracted or the entire whose-phrase is pied-piped; (c) only pied-piped (as in the Germanic languages), which means that the entire whose-phrase must appear in the matrix CP. I assume that this three-way split between the surveyed languages reflects the parametric values of the possessor extraction parameter. Thus, it is logically possible that children's acquisition of whose-questions will be consistent with each of these values. This is exactly what children's data reveal. Of 12 tested native English-speaking children, four kids split all possessor questions, six kids produced both split and pied-piped questions, and two pied-piped exclusively. Two Russian kids acquiring English as L2 produced only split whose-questions, despite the fact that their native language allows optional possessor extraction. Thus, both sets of data support the analysis of the patterns in (1) as reflecting a grammatical option consistent with UG.
Donno So, a Dogon language spoken in Mali, has three classes of active verbs. These classes are defined paradigmatically by the ways in which they form the past tense and the past participle, making them seem like conjugations. However, approximately three quarters of the C3 verbs are derived by the middle voice, which raises the question of whether C3 is a distinct conjugation or whether it is really simply the class of verbs in the middle voice. We will provide several arguments, semantic and morphological, that C3 verbs are not the middle voice but truly a conjugation. Additionally, discussion of the historical development of the middle in Dogon expands Kemmer's (1993) discussion of diachronic processes involved in the evolution of middle systems.
Reference:
Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The Middle Voice. Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
Clitic ordering has been considered a morphological idiosyncracy of languages with the result that language specific strategies such as templates have been employed to account for it (Bonet 1991, 1995, Perlmutter 1974, Marantz, 1997). In this work we claim that some aspects of clitic ordering are syntactically motivated and it is constrained by factors such as verb movement, binding and the structure of double object constructions. Some examples would involve cases in which the same two clitics can combine in only one way pre-verbally , but in two ways post-verbally as in Greek, and also cases in which two clitics can combine in two different ways pre-verbally , but only one way post-verbally as in Spanish.