December 3, 2019

Research Groups: Friday, December 6

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Language Variation and Change Research Group
Thesis proposal of Fiona Wilson (Ph.D.): "Variation in Cree negation."

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM: Syntax Group

1. Dan Milway (Ph.D. 2019): "A workspace-based analysis of adjuncts."

I present a novel analysis of adjunction, according to which host-adjunct structures are not generated by any form of Merge, but rather host and adjuncts are derived in parallel workspaces and collapsed into a single string upon externalization. I present three arguments in favor of this analysis. First, I argue that it follows directly from the basic properties of adjunction. Second I argue that it gives a natural account of adjunct island effects. And finally, I argue that it assumes a simpler grammar than other leading analyses of adjunction.

2. Will Oxford (Ph.D. 2014, now at the University of Manitoba): "Deriving variation in inverse marking."

Algonquian languages are known for the special 'inverse' agreement pattern that appears in some transitive verb forms. It is less well known that the precise distribution of the inverse pattern varies extensively: across the Algonquian family, transitive forms in which a non-SAP acts on an SAP show eleven different distributions of inverse marking. I show that these eleven contexts fall along a striking 'staircase' cline. I argue that each step along the cline - that is, each different distribution of inverse marking - can be derived simply by varying the features sought by the probe on Infl. This analysis is consistent with proposals that inverse marking is simply a special form of agreement morphology (Béjar and Rezac 2009) rather than an entirely distinct inflectional category (as proposed in, e.g., Bliss, Ritter, and Wiltschko 2014).

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM: Semantics Research Group
Thesis proposal of Frederick Gietz (Ph.D.): "A computational approach to complement coercion."

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