Naomi and Maya guest talk for U of T Student Life

Naomi Nagy (faculty) and collaborator Maya Abtahian (University of Rochester) are presenting a talk and question-and-answer session online on Wednesday, August 26, from 1-2 PM Eastern time, for the Stories Through Research series being held by the U of T Student Life's Innovation Hub: "Our Languages, Our Lives, and the Global Pandemic."

We all have experienced some disruption in our daily lives as a result of the pandemic, and although we can make predictions, only time will tell which disruptions will lead to long-term change. Linguists who study language change already pay attention to the relationship between short-term variation and long-term change. We already know that relatively minor disruptions in communication patterns and networks can lead to major shifts in language ecologies (the languages we speak and the people with whom and places where we speak them). As COVID-19 spread around the world, the question that occurred to us was this: How do disruptions related to the COVID lockdown affect multilingual students' language ecologies? Does it change how often we use the languages we know? And/or the contexts in which we use certain languages? 

Note that registration is required; those interested can either follow the 'Register Here' link at the bottom of this page or go directly to Eventbrite.

Research Groups: Week of August 24-28

Friday, August 28, 11:00 AM-12:30 PM: Semantics Research Group
Angelika Kiss (Ph.D.) reporting on joint work with Roger Yu-Hsiang Lo (University of British Columbia): "Rhetorical wh-questions differing in inquisitiveness: Support from Mandarin prosody."

Rhetorical questions are in many respects both question-like and assertion-like. In this talk, we propose a unified account of rhetorical and information-seeking wh-questions in inquisitive semantics, by which we claim to account for both traits. Rhetorical questions that suggest that the answer is the empty set ('nobody' to a question with who) are compared to ones that suggest a non-empty answer. We assign the same basic conventional discourse effects to the two types of rhetorical questions as for information-seeking questions, but posit different special discourse effects (following Farkas and Roelofsen 2017), which signal differences in speaker commitment. Rhetorical questions with an empty set answer signal that the speaker commits to a single piece of information, which is an informative update. On the other hand, rhetorical questions with a non-empty answer do not signal a specific answer as straightforwardly, let alone the givenness of the answer. Their interpretation therefore depends on the context, unlike the interpretation of empty set rhetorical questions. While rhetorical questions are normally considered a homogeneous group, given the differences between the two subtypes posited above, it is expected to find differences in their prosodic realization as well. We briefly show the results of a production experiment on Mandarin rhetorical wh-questions, which shows a three-way prosodic distinction between information-seeking questions and the two types of rhetorical questions: we observe a gradience in a number of prosodic cues that we think matches the inquisitive state of the speaker.

AFLA 27

The 27th meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association (AFLA 27) is being hosted online by the National University of Singapore from August 20 through 22. Note that the conference is free of charge.

• Becky Tollan (Ph.D. 2019, now at the University of Delaware) and Diane Massam (faculty) are giving a presentation: "Cognate object case in Samoan and Niuean."
• Diane Massam (faculty) is also giving a presentation with Ileana Paul (University of Western Ontario): "A recipe for null arguments."

SALT 30

The 30th Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT 30) conference is being held online from August 17 through 20, hosted by Cornell University and featuring a welcome address from university president Martha Pollack, a computational linguist by training.

• Daphna Heller (faculty) is part of a poster presentation with Sadhwi Srinivas (Johns Hopkins University) and Kyle Rawlins (Johns Hopkins University): "Asymmetries between uniqueness and familiarity in the semantics of definite descriptions."
• Julie Goncharov (Ph.D. 2015, now at the University of Tromsø) is giving a talk: "Dynamic presupposition of want and polarity sensitivity."
• Recent faculty member Meg Grant (Simon Fraser University) is part of a talk with Fabienne Martin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Florian Schäfer (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), and Christopher Piñón (Université Lille 3): "A new case of low modality: Goal PPs."
• Spanish and Portuguese MA graduate Filipe Hisao Kobayashi (now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is part of a talk with Vincent Rouillard (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): "High and low exhaustification in singular which-questions."
• Filipe Hisao Kobayashi is also presenting a poster: "Composing reciprocity: An analysis of scattered reciprocals."

Goodbyes and hellos for 2020-21

The 2020-21 year approaches! We bid farewell to our students completing their MAs in our department; to Erin Hall (Ph.D. 2020), taking up a tenure-track position in linguistics and speech pathology at California State University, San Bernardino; and to Naomi Francis (MA 2014; recent faculty), beginning a postdoc in semantics at the University of Oslo. Also, best of luck to Susana Béjar as she begins a semester of research leave.

Welcome and/or welcome back to:

• Curt Anderson (faculty), a semanticist beginning a contract faculty position at UTSC.
• Tahohtharátye William Joseph Brant (faculty), who will be beginning a joint teaching-stream position in the Department of Linguistics and the Centre for Indigenous Studies starting next summer.
• Emily Clare (postdoc; Ph.D. 2019), beginning a postdoctoral fellowship with Jessamyn Schertz (faculty) at UTM.
• Ewan Dunbar (faculty; MA 2008, BA 2007), beginning a tenure-track position in the Department of French as an Assistant Professor with a focus on computational linguistics.
• Myrto Grigoroglou (faculty), completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Language and Learning Lab at OISE and joining the Department of Linguistics as a tenure-track faculty member in language acquisition and psycholinguistics.
• Qandeel Hussain (postdoc), joining us as an Arts and Science Postdoctoral Fellow associated with the Phonetics Lab, working on sociophonetic variation in the speech of South Asian communities in the Toronto area.
• Samantha Jackson (postdoc), beginning a U of T Provost's Postdoctoral Fellowship and working with Derek Denis at UTM.
• Dave Kush (faculty), beginning a tenure-track position at UTSC in psycholinguistics starting in 2021.
• Avery Ozburn (faculty; MA 2014), completing a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University and joining UTM as a tenure-track faculty member in phonology.
• Pedro Mateo Pedro (faculty), beginning a teaching-stream position in Indigenous languages and revitalization.
• Ai Taniguchi (faculty), beginning a teaching-stream position in semantics at UTM.
• Deem Waham (staff), returning from leave.

We also have 16 new graduate students: 11 in the MA program and 5 in the Ph.D. Welcome, all!

New paper: Gardner and Tagliamonte (2020)

Matt Hunt Gardner (Ph.D. 2017, now at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) and Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty) have a new paper out in English World-Wide, 41(2), "The bike, the back, and the boyfriend: Confronting the 'definite article conspiracy' in Canadian and British English."

Using comparative sociolinguistic methods, we probe the underlying mechanisms governing the variation between possessive determiners, 'my bike', and the definite article, 'the bike', in possessive contexts in two mainstream English varieties (Canadian and British English, N = 6,217). Results indicate the is stable and pervasive, occurring approximately 30 percent of the time with personal domain possessed nouns. For some nouns, e.g. dog and cat, the occurs over 75 percent of the time. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary records possessive the as chiefly British, while Quirk et al. (1985: 271–272) observe that only low-status men use it; however, we find no difference between the UK and Canada, nor a significant gender or education effect in either dataset. When we model the variation between forms according to conceptions of ownership, we find an underlying system for encoding communal possession that transcends social categories and dialect: the more that possession is communal, the more the is used.

SULA 11

The 11th conference on Semantics of Under-Represented Languages in the Americas (SULA 11) is being held online, hosted by El Colegio de México and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, from August 4 through 7.

• Guillaume Thomas (faculty) is one of the invited speakers: "Switch reference: Syntax and/or (discourse) semantics?"
• Suzi Lima (faculty) is a discussant on a session on classifiers.
• Gregory Antono (MA) is giving a talk: "Reduplication and the pîtî morpheme in Macuxi."
• Michael Schwan (MA 2014, now at the University of British Columbia) is part of a talk with UBC colleagues Neda Todorović and Lisa Matthewson: "Compositionally deriving the future in Gitksan."

Samantha and Derek in the UTM News

We are thrilled to have former visiting student Samantha Jackson rejoining us as a U of T Provost's Postdoctoral Fellowship following her completion of her Ph.D. research in 2019 at the University of the West Indies! From 2020 through 2022, she will be a postdoc at our Mississauga campus working with Derek Denis (faculty) on language, racialization, and unequal access to employment among immigrants to Canada. A writeup in the UTM newsletter describes her research in more detail. Welcome (back), Samantha!

Research Groups: Week of July 27-31

Wednesday, July 29, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Syntax Group

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

In this paper (available here), I propose a novel theory adjuncts according to which adjuncts, like arguments, are derived in their own workspaces which, unlike arguments, are not incorporated into the main workspace. I formalize this proposal and, in the process modify several components of the syntax including semantic composition, Merge, workspaces and linearization. I close by demonstrating that my proposal naturally handles the phenomena of adjunct islands and parasitic gaps and providesa novel explanation of adjunct ordering constraints.

Congratulations, Peter!

Congratulations to faculty member Peter Jurgec on receiving tenure! We're delighted!

Congratulations, Erin!

Erin Hall defended her doctoral dissertation, "Child participation in linguistic changes in progress in Ontario English", on Friday, July 24. The committee consisted of Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux (supervisor), J. K. Chambers, Alexei Kochetov, Derek Denis, Yves Roberge, and external examiner Jennifer Smith (University of Glasgow). Congratulations, Dr. Hall!

Erin will be leaving us shortly for the eastern outskirts of Los Angeles in order to take up a well-deserved new role as a tenure-track faculty member in linguistics and speech pathology at California State University, San Bernardino. Best of luck, Erin, and keep in touch!

Three alumni recognized by the CJL

The work of three of our graduate alumni can be found among the ten most-downloaded articles of 2020 (so far) from the Canadian Journal of Linguistics.

In particular, Dan Milway (Ph.D. 2019) is listed twice; his paper "The contrastive topic requirement on specificational subjects" and squib "Modifying Spatial P: A remark on Svenonius (2010)" both appear on the list. Michael Barrie (Ph.D. 2006, now at Sogang University) and Isaac Gould (MA 2010, now at Ewha Women's University) are also represented.

Congratulations, Naomi!

Congratulations to Naomi Francis (MA 2014 and recent faculty), who has accepted a two-year postdoctoral research position in semantics in the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo in Norway! We'll miss you around here, Naomi, but are absolutely delighted to hear your news. All the best and keep in touch!

Research Groups: Week of July 20-24

Wednesday, July 22, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Syntax Group

Guest speaker: Dan Siddiqi (Carleton University), presenting work with Paul Melchin (University of Ottawa) and Ash Asudeh (Carleton University): "Ojibwe agreement in lexical-realizational functional grammar."

In this talk, we offer an analysis of Ojibwe agreement in a theory we call Lexical-Realizational Functional Grammar (LRFG), the offspring of an unlikely marriage between Distributed Morphology as a theory of morphological realization and Lexical-Functional Grammar as a theory of syntax and grammatical architecture. Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle and Marantz 1993) has heretofore been associated with theory of syntax derived from the Minimalist Program (MP; Chomsky 1995). But the primary insights of DM are not inherently bound to Minimalism - the two frameworks remain associated mostly just as an accident of their common origins. At its core, DM is a realizational, morpheme-based theory of morphology in which word-formation takes place through ordinary syntactic rules and processes. Syntactic terminal nodes contain only abstract morphosyntactic features, which are realized by vocabulary items. While for historical reasons DM has always been associated with a Minimalist framework, we claim the insights of DM can be integrated into a completely different theoretical framework, namely Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG; Bresnan et al. 2016). The resulting theory, LRFG, combines the strengths of the two frameworks. Like LFG, it is a representational and constraint-based theory (without the bottom-up, phase-based derivations of MP) that is ideally suited to modelling nonconfigurationality. Like DM, it provides a realizational, morpheme-based view of word-formation and is good at modelling complex morphological structures including those found in polysynthetic languages, such as Ojibwe. We demonstrate LRFG by analyzing Ojibwe agreement morphology as a case study. We take insights from syntactic analyses of Ojibwe verbal morphology (including Déchaine 1999; Oxford 2014, 2019; Barrie and Mathieu 2016) regarding the categories and featural content of the relevant morphemes and adapt them to our LFG-style formalism. We show that it is possible to provide a syntactic analysis of Ojibwe agreement and the direct-inverse system without relying on the derivational tools used by the above authors, namely without (head or phrasal) movement, articulated agreement probes, feature valuation and impoverishment, and so on. Instead, we put to use the tools available to LFG, including its correspondences between distinct modular structures and LFG’s templates (Dalrymple et al. 2004), along with the featural specifications of DM’s Vocabulary Items and the rules of exponence we have formulated for LRFG (building on the theory of Spanning, as in Ramchand 2008; Merchant 2013; Haugen and Siddiqi 2016; Svenonius 2016). We also demonstrate that the morphology of a polysynthetic language can be analyzed as a complex phrasal structure, mirroring the clausal structures of more familiar languages, without relying on derivational processes.

Research Groups: Week of July 13-17

Wednesday, July 15, 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM: Syntax Group

Sahar Taghipour (Ph.D.): "Persian psych predicates: A dual nature of applicatives."

MOTH 2020

We are hosting this year's Montréal-Ottawa-Toronto-Hamilton (MOTH) Syntax Workshop, being held online on July 17 and 18. There is no fee, but please note that anyone interested in participating will need to register to be given access to the Zoom meetings. Interspersed with the colleagues we are (virtually) welcoming from Ontario, Québec, and the world, our own presenters are:

• Sahar Taghipour (Ph.D.): "Oblique subject agreement in Persian: Evidence from psych predicates."
• Gregory Antono (MA): "You think what we saying ah?: The ah particle in Colloquial Singapore English."
• Crystal Chow (MA): "How the hell do you say it: An analysis of wh-the-hell constructions in English versus Mandarin Chinese."
• Nadia Takhtaganova (MA): "Les titres de civilité en français: Pour une analyse minimaliste du syntagme de déterminant."
• Connie Ting (MA 2018, now at McGill University): "Capturing 'exempt' anaphors with local binding."
• Samuel Jambrović (Ph.D., Department of Spanish and Portuguese): "A cross-linguistic analysis of DOM with animate indefinite quantifiers."

LabPhon 17

The 17th biennial conference of the Association for Laboratory Phonology was held online from July 6 through 8, hosted by the University of British Columbia.

Two of our faculty members gave invited talks:

• Keren Rice (faculty): "Languages on the margins: Sounds and the impact of sound-based research for language (re)vitalization."
• Elizabeth Johnson (faculty): "Building a lexicon (on the margins)."

One Ph.D. student was part of a presentation:

• Angelika Kiss (Ph.D.) was part of a talk with colleagues Maxime Tulling (New York University) and Roger Yu-Hsiang Lo (University of British Columbia):"Individual variation in the prosody of Cantonese rhetorical questions."

And there were a whole lot of current departmental members and alumni to be found in the poster sessions!

• Laura Colantoni (faculty), Alexei Kochetov (faculty), and Jeffrey Steele (faculty, Department of French): "EPG insights into first-language influence on second language gestural timing."
• Phil Monahan (faculty), Rachel Soo (MA 2018, now at the University of British Columbia), Monica Shah (BSc 2017) and Abdulwahab Sidiqi (BSc 2017): "Lexical bias in second language sibilant perception: The role of language proficiency and phonotactic context."
• Madeleine Yu (BA) and Elizabeth Johnson (faculty): "Re-evaluating the Other Accent Effect in talker recognition."
• Jessamyn Schertz (faculty): "Imitation and perception of individual accented features."
• Avery Ozburn (faculty) with Gunnar Hansson (University of British Columbia) and Kevin McMullin (University of Ottawa): "Learning vowel harmony with transparency in an artificial language."
• Zoe McKenzie (Ph.D.): "The perceptual basis of length co-occurrence restrictions."
• Andrei Munteanu (Ph.D.): "Using chess metrics to measure the effect of emotion on formants."
• Phil Howson (Ph.D. 2018, now at the University of Oregon) and Melissa Redford (University of Oregon): "Context effects on schwa production in 'gotta' distinguish 'got to' from 'got a'.
• Phil Howson (Ph.D. 2018, now at the University of Oregon) and Madathodiyil Irfana (All India Institute of Speech and Hearing): "What does cross-linguistic perception tell us about phonological categories?"
• Richard Compton (Ph.D. 2012, now at l'Université du Québec à Montréal) with Emily Elfner (York University) and Anja Arnhold (University of Alberta): "Stressless languages on the margins? An acoustic study of Inuktitut."
• Rachel Soo (MA 2018, now at the University of British Columbia) and Molly Babel (University of British Columbia): "Lexical competition affects Cantonese tone mergers in word recognition."
• Gloria Mellesmoen (MA 2016, now at the University of British Columbia): "Modularity and the allophone in the Comox-Sliammon (Salish) vowel system."

Research Groups: Week of July 6-10

Wednesday, July 8, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Syntax Group

Songül Gündoğdu (postdoc), Arsalan Kahnemuyipour (faculty), and Andrew Peters (Ph.D.): "Doubled ezafe in Zazak."

New paper: Milway (2020)

Dan Milway (Ph.D. 2019) has a new paper in the Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 65(2): "The contrastive topic requirement on specificational subjects."

This paper offers a discourse-pragmatic account of the constraint on indefinite DPs as subjects of specificational copular clauses (a doctor is Mary). Building on Mikkelsen's (2004) proposal that specificational subjects are topics, I argue that they must be contrastive topics which properly contain F-marked constituents. I show that this can account for the absolute ban on simple indefinite subjects, and allow for more complex indefinites to be subjects. Finally, I discuss the syntactic analysis that would be predicted given my pragmatic analysis, and the puzzles that arise from it.

Sali at ABRALIN this week

Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty) is giving a talk as part of the lecture series Abralin ao Vivo – Linguists Online, which is hosted by Abralin (the Brazilian Linguistics Association) and supported by a number of other linguistics organizations. Her talk, "What's sociolinguistics good for?", will be taking place at 1:00 PM Eastern time (i.e. 2:00 PM in eastern Brazil) on Friday, July 3 and can be viewed here. There is no need to register and no cost.