Research Groups: Friday, September 25

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Psycholinguistics Group
Presentation by Nayoun Kim (postdoc).

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM: Phonetics/Phonology Research Group
Elan Dresher (faculty): "Foundations of contrastive hierarchy theory."

I will present a brief introduction to a theory of contrastive feature hierarchies in phonology. This theory builds on ideas that go back to the early days of modern phonology, to the work of Henry Sweet and Edward Sapir. Most directly, the theory adapts proposals by Roman Jakobson and N. S. Trubetzkoy to the generative framework of Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle. The first part of this talk will be a historical review of these sources. In the second part I will set out the main tenets of Contrastive Hierarchy Theory (CHT) and consider what implications they have for our understanding of phonological features. I will show how contrastive feature hierarchies contribute to illuminating analyses of synchronic and diachronic phonology.

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Syntax Group
Andrew Peters (Ph.D.): "Is the Mongolian complementizer gejü really a complementizer?"

The Mongolian complementizer gejü is formed from a verb of saying and the imperfective converbial marker -jü. It is not uncommon for verbs of saying used in quotative constructions to become grammaticalized as general complementizers (cf. e.g. Japanese toiu). However, Mongolian gejü maintains some features of its adjunct-y origins: the clauses it subordinates can only appear in what superficially (putatively?) look like verbal complements, and not in subject or PP complement positions; it is entirely un-utilised in relative clauses; it appears in some aspectual constructions e.g. producing prospective aspect. Also, while the verbal root ge- is rarely used as a matrix verb of speech in the modern language, it can be used in other non-finite forms such as the habitual masdar.  Is gejü actually a fully grammaticalized complementizer with some quirky restrictions, and the other uses are separate productive instances of a homophonous verb root that just happens to share historical origins with gejü? Or is gejü still a fully verbal form, and the complementizer analysis has simply been taken for granted since it was asserted by some Eurocentric German philologists (Ramstedt and Poppe) in the first half of the 20th century? I don't know! However, I would like to show you some data and compare these complement clauses with nominalized ones in the language, and maybe get some advice on what to look into.