Research Groups: Friday, November 20

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Language Variation and Change Research Group
Presentations by Kaleigh Woolford (Ph.D.) and Lauren Bigelow (Ph.D.).

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM: Phonetics/Phonology Research Group
Koorosh Ariyaee (Ph.D.): "Uvular obstruent lenition in Persian."

Former proposals (Pisowicz 1985; Lazard 1992; Reza Asa, 2016, among others) attempt to describe the lenition of the uvular obstruent in Persian. These accounts show that factors such as the place of articulation of the preceding segments as well as the position in the word affect the lenition of the target sound, resulting in the allophonic variation of the uvular obstruent. Via acoustic measurements, this study aims to investigate the influence of the manner of articulation of the preceding segments on the lenition of the uvular obstruent. The broader question is to investigate whether this lenition is gradient or categorical.

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Syntax Group
Alec Kienzle (Ph.D.): "Substitutives and the syntax-semantics interface in Cuzco Quechua."

Since Pylkkänen (2002), applicatives have been divided between a 'low' and a 'high' variety. Low applicatives are taken to relate the applied argument to a theme (generally via a relationship of transfer-of-possession), while high applicatives are analyzed as relating the applied argument to the entire event. The latter variety tend to generate a more diverse range of interpretations, but 'affected' readings, such as benefactives, are typologically the most common (Polinsky 2013). In Cuzco Quechua, -pu is a fairly canonical example of a high applicative verbal suffix, as its most common usage is to add a benefactive participant to an event. However, there is evidence that the particular interpretation of an applicative actually depends upon the case-marking on the applied argument itself in Quechua, rather than merely the presence of -pu on the verb (Myler 2016). In this talk, I analyze one of these case-markers as a substitutive – that is, the agent is interpreted as carrying out an action instead of the applied argument – and argue that substitutives are fundamentally unlike other high applicatives. In particular, they cannot be analyzed as simply relating an argument to the event, but denote most basically a relationship between two arguments, similar to low applicatives. From here, I sketch a possible analysis of how the derivation of a substitutive might proceed.