CUNY 34

The 34th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (CUNY 34) is taking place online from March 4 through 6, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. We have many faculty members and alumni involved:

• Nayoun Kim (recent postdoc, now at Sungkyunkwan University), Keir Moulton (faculty), and Daphna Heller (faculty): "Processing embedded clauses in Korean: Silent element or a dependency formation?"
• Keir Moulton (faculty), Cassandra Chapman (postdoc), and Nayoun Kim (recent postdoc, now at Sungkyunkwan University): "Predicting binding domains: Evidence from fronted auxiliaries and wh-predicates."
• Breanna Pratley (MA 2020) and Phil Monahan (faculty): "Can English idioms undergo the dative alternation? A priming investigation."
• Breanna Pratley (MA 2020) and Daphna Heller (faculty) are part of a talk with Si On Yoon (University of Iowa): "Invisible, unmentioned entities affect referential forms."
• Tiana V. Simovic (Ph.D., Department of Psychology) and Craig Chambers (faculty): "The role of prior discourse in the context of action: Insights from pronoun resolution."
• Dave Kush (faculty) is presenting with Anna Giskes (Norwegian University of Science and Technology): "What to expect when you are expecting an antecedent: Processing cataphora in Dutch."
• Becky Tollan (Ph.D. 2019, now at the University of Delaware) is part of a talk with Bilge Palaz (University of Delaware): "The dual nature of subjecthood: Unifying subject islands and that-trace effects."
• Becky Tollan (Ph.D. 2019, now at the University of Delaware) is part of a talk with Myung Hye Yoo (University of Delaware): "Semantic interference in dependency formation: NP types in cleft sentences."
• Giuseppe Ricciardi (MA 2016, now at Harvard University) is part of a presentation with Yuhan Zhang (Harvard University) and Kathryn Davidson (Harvard University): "How many response options in a TVJT? It depends."

Congratulations, Ailís and Ana!

Every year, the Society for Language Development selects an article in its journal, Language Learning and Development, as the recipient of the Peter Jusczyk Best Paper Award. The winners of the award for 2020 are Ailís Cournane (Ph.D. 2015, now at New York University) and Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux (faculty) for "Leaving obligations behind: Epistemic incrementation in preschool English." Congratulations to both on this well-deserved honour!

PsychoShorts 2021

This year's PsychoShorts conference is being held online on Friday, February 26, hosted by the ERPLing Lab at the University of Ottawa. U of T presenters are:

• Zhanao Fu (Ph.D.) and Phil Monahan (faculty): "Extracting phonetic features from natural classes: A mismatch negativity study of Mandarin retroflex consonants."
• Breanna Pratley (MA 2020) and Phil Monahan (faculty): "Can English idioms undergo the dative alternation? A priming investigation."
• Irys-Amélie Champagne (BA, Department of Psychology) and Nabeela Syeda (BA, Department of Psychology) have a poster: "The impact of context variability on new word learning."

Workshop on bilingual language development in Canada

The Bilingual and Multilingual Development (BAM!TO) Lab of the Department of Speech-Language Pathology is holding an online workshop on Friday, February 26. The event will be anchored by three guest speakers: Johanne Paradis (University of Alberta) on the bilingual development of Syrian refugee children in Canada; Stefka Marinova-Todd (University of British Columbia) on bilingualism and autism; and AJ Orena (University of British Columbia) on caregiver speech in French-English homes. Registration and more details are available here. Everyone is welcome.

German Linguistic Society 43

The 43rd Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (43 Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft) is taking place online from February 24 through 26, hosted by Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Multiple faculty members and recent alumni of ours are on the program as part of two of the associated workshops:

• Breanna Pratley (MA 2020) and Phil Monahan (faculty) "Can English idioms undergo the dative alternation? A priming investigation."
• Keir Moulton (faculty) with Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten (University of Gothenburg) and Junko Shimoyama (McGill University): "Nouny propositions and their individual correlates: The view from Japanese."
• Paul Poirier (MA 2020): "Japanese nominalizations and the copula."

Research Groups: Friday, February 26

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Cognitive Science of Language Group
Mireille Babineau (faculty, Department of Psychology): "Synergies in lexical and syntactic acquisition."

From a very young age, children can infer the probable meaning of a new word from its syntactic context (syntactic bootstrapping; e.g., she’s blicking > blick is an action/verb). What is the learning mechanism that enables this link from specific syntactic contexts to different semantic categories? In this talk, I’ll present results from recent experiments investigating the influence exerted by a small lexicon along with children’s distributional learning skills.

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM: Phonetics/Phonology Research Group
Group discussion of a paper: Remijsen, Bert, Otto Gwado Ayoker, and Signe Jørgensen (2019). Ternary vowel length in Shilluk. Phonology, 36(1), 91-125.

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Semantics Research Group
Bruno Andreotti (Ph.D.): "Generics and figurative language."

In natural discourse we frequently observe words being used figuratively to convey information that deviates from their literal meaning. While we typically have no difficulty interpreting the intended message of sentences that use words in this manner, the content of these messages remains elusive from a model-theoretic perspective at both the level of semantics (w.r.t. models of truth conditions and reference) and the level of pragmatics (w.r.t. models of assertion within a discourse structure). In this paper I explore a link between predicative NPs containing a noun which receives a figurative interpretation and the generic predicates which are literally true of that same noun – e.g. the sentence 'some jobs are nightmares' conveys that some jobs are not enjoyable, scary, and/or cause anxiety, which as generic predicates are literally true of nightmares. However, not all generic truths about nightmares are conveyed by the figurative sentence – for instance, it does not convey that 'some jobs happen at night' despite it being true that some jobs happen at night and that nightmares generally happen at night. I present an analysis of this observation which combines approaches to generic predication using weak necessity in modal logic and Neo-Gricean pragmatic principles.

Guest talk for Spanish and Portuguese: Tanja Kupisch (University of Konstanz/Arctic University of Norway)

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Heritage Vowels and Agreement Project are hosting a virtual talk by Tanja Kupisch, who is a Professor of Romance Linguistics at the University of Konstanz and also appointed at the Arctic University of Norway. Her talk, "The missing link: Perceived accents in German/Russian schoolchildren", will be taking place on Friday, February 26, from 2 PM to 3:30 PM. Registration can be found here. Abstract and more details here.

TU+6

Our department is hosting the Sixth Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic (TU+6), which is taking place virtually on February 19 and 20. Two of those presenting are from our department as well:

• Qandeel Hussain (postdoc): "Stop laryngeal contrasts of Indo-Iranian and Transeurasian languages."
• Heather Yawney (Ph.D.): "Acoustic properties for the Kazakh velar and uvular distribution."

The organizing committee consists of Andrew Peters (Ph.D.), Songül Gündoğdu (postdoc), and Sahar Taghipour (Ph.D.), with faculty liaison Arsalan Kahnemuyipour (faculty). The full program for the workshop is available here. Please note that registration ahead of time is required for access to the Zoom and Gather sessions.

NWAV AP 6

The sixth New Ways of Analyzing Variation, Asia-Pacific conference (NWAV-AP 6) is taking place online from February 17 through 20, hosted by the National University of Singapore.

• Yoonjung Kang (faculty) and Suyeon Yun (former postdoc, now at Ehwa Womans University) are part of a talk with Sungwoo Han (Inha University): "Vowel length contrasts in Northern dialects of Korean."
• Naomi Nagy (faculty) is presenting "Pro-drop in Heritage Cantonese and Korean is not influenced by English contact."
• Kevin Heffernan (Ph.D. 2007, now at Kwansei Gakuin University) and Keiko Nishino (Kwansei Gakuin University) are presenting "Rethinking the stereotype that men explain: Evidence from Japanese public speaking."

Research Groups: Friday, February 12

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Language Variation and Change Group
Guest speaker: Mary Edward (University of Brighton): "Lexical variation in sign language: A cross-linguistic comparison of two Ghanaian sign languages."

The existence of linguistic variation has been identified as an intrinsic part of all languages irrespective of the modality (spoken or signed). Lexical variation in different signed languages have been documented by researchers working on signed languages (Schermer, 2004; Stamp, et al., 2014; Bickford, 1991; Lucas, et al., 2001). Research has demonstrated that different factors may contribute to variation in sign languages and these factors include gender, ethnicity, social class, and region. These social variables are distinctive to different signing communities and their manifestations vary. In this talk, I explore lexical variation in Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) and Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL). These two sign languages are used in Ghana by different Deaf communities. I explore variation in two semantic categories; Handheld tools and Appliances and considers the differences and similarities between GSL and AdaSL. Specifically, I consider if iconicity (form-meaning resemblance mappings) contributes to lexical variation in each sign language.

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM: Fieldwork Group
Christopher Legerme (MA): "Contact, identity, and change in the Haitian Diaspora: A sociolinguistic study of a creole language."

This presentation reports on my progress investigating the role of language contact and social identity in the development of variable linguistic phenomena in Haitian Creole (HC). I also discuss methods in sociolinguistic fieldwork and the pros and cons of remote language work. The Haitian disapora is the community in focus for my research and I reflect on aspects of HC sociophonology and if that factors into the transmission of the language from Haiti born homeland speakers of the diaspora to heritage speakers raised outside of Haiti. The linguistic feature I explore is the nasalization of HC postnominal determiners following syllables with non nasal nuclei (Valdman, 1991; Tezil, 2019). I discuss the extent that this process continues to be a variable rule in the grammar of heritage speakers of HC and what factors might be conditioning this variable given new linguistic landscapes away from the homeland, and why? The broader goal of my work is to contribute to our understanding of how Creole communities and their languages might inform our knowledge of contact-induced language change and to provide some rich vernacular data of HC for future research.

Guest speaker: Dorothy Ahn (Rutgers University)

We are very pleased to welcome Dorothy Ahn, an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, for a guest talk. A semanticist/pragmaticist, she received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2019, bridging formal and experimental approaches to the investigation of reference. Her talk, "Marked definite expressions in spoken and signed languages," will be taking place at 3 PM on Friday, February 12. The Zoom details can be found in the email. 

Expressions such as pronouns, definite descriptions, and demonstratives can all refer to a familiar entity in a discourse, though they differ in relative distributions and possible interpretations. While the interaction among these expressions are evident from natural language data, they are often assumed to be separate semantic elements, making it difficult to derive such an interaction from their underlying denotations. I propose a unified semantic account of these definite expressions, where they share the same underlying semantic structure and only differ in the amount of restrictions that they carry. I discuss the main theoretical and empirical motivations for such an account, focusing on a phenomenon in bare argument languages where the presence of pronouns block the use of bare nouns in anaphoric contexts. I also discuss the implications the account has on the semantic analysis of pointing that is used to refer to entities in both spoken and signed languages.

New paper: DeCaen and Dresher (2020)

Vincent DeCaen (former postdoc, now at DeCaen and Associates) and Elan Dresher (faculty) have a paper, "Pausal forms and prosodic structure in Tiberian Hebrew," in an edited volume, Studies in Semitic vocalisation and reading traditions, edited by Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan.

Elaine at York University this week

In conjunction with the newest exhibit of the Canadian Language Museum, Elaine Gold (faculty) is giving a talk this week for the Centre for Research on Language and Culture Contact at Glendon College, York University: "Sign languages in Canada's Anglophone, Francophone, and Indigenous communities." This is taking place on Wednesday, February 10, from 12 PM to 1 PM, with Zoom details available here.

The Canadian Language Museum's most recent exhibit, 'Sign Languages of Canada', includes six languages: American Sign Language, Langue des signes québécoise, Maritime Sign Language, Inuit Sign Language, Oneida Sign Language and Prairie Indian Sign Language. Dr. Gold will describe the process of creating the exhibit and what the team learned about the history of sign languages in Canada, the relationships between them, and the work being done to maintain those that are endangered.  The presentation will include contemporary and archival videos of the different languages.

New book: Bjorkman and Hall (eds.) (2020)

Following up from 2015's Workshop on Contrast in Syntax in honour of Elizabeth Cowper (faculty), editors Bronwyn Bjorkman (former postdoc, now at Queen's University) and Daniel Currie Hall (Ph.D. 2007, now at St. Mary's University) have helmed a volume of papers, Contrast and Representations in Syntax, that was released in December 2020 by Oxford University Press. The contents are as follows:

• Gabriela Albiou (postdoc 2002-03, now at York University) and Michael Barrie (Ph.D. 2006, now at Sogang University): "A feature-geometric approach to verbal inflection in Onondaga."
• Andrew Carnie (BA 1991, now at the University of Arizona) and Sylvia L. R. Schreiner (George Mason University): "Restricted and reversed aspectual contrasts."
• Elizabeth Ritter (former postdoc, now at the University of Calgary): "Sentience-based event structure: Evidence from Blackfoot."
• Maria Kyriakaki (Ph.D. 2011, now at the American College of Greece): "Definite expression and degrees of definiteness."
• Martha McGinnis (MA 1993, now at the University of Victoria): "Cross-linguistic contrasts in the structure of causatives in clausal nominalizations."
• Leslie Saxon (MA 1979, now at the University of Victoria): "The Tłı̨chǫ syntactic causative and non-nominal CPs."
• Carson T. Schütze (MA 1991, now at the University of California, Los Angeles): "Against some approaches to long-distance agreement without AGREE."
• Daniel Currie Hall (Ph.D. 2007, now at St. Mary's University): "Contrast in syntax and contrast in phonology: Same difference?"

Lex in Arts and Science News

Lex Konnelly (Ph.D.) is in the Arts and Science News this week talking about their 2020 paper in Language and Communication on the discourse of craft beer.

Guest speaker: Martina Wiltschko (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

We are delighted to welcome Martina Wiltschko, a renowned syntactician and pragmaticist currently based at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona as a Research Professor with the ICREA group (the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies). She is also an Honorary Affiliate Professor at the University of British Columbia. Her talk, "The grammar of interactional language: The view from vocativeness," will be taking place from 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM on Friday, February 5, with a digital reception for after that. The Zoom link for the talk can be found in the email. (Note the updated title and abstract.)

In this paper we introduce and motivate the nominal interactional structure, i.e., a dedicated layer of structure dominating the classic functional architecture associated with nominals (DP). We show that this structure allows for a novel analysis of vocatives in a non-construction-specific way. That is, existing analyses postulate a dedicated Voc(ative)P to account for the special properties of vocatives whereas nominal interactional structure not only hosts vocatives, but also formal pronouns, and other nominals that bear socio-linguistic content (R&W). We further show that the nominal interactional structure we assume allows for an elegant analysis of two types of vocatives which have long been established in the literature, namely calls and addresses (Zwicky 1974, Slocum 2016). Our analysis is the first to give a structural account that distinguishes between these two types of vocatives. Our independently motivated model of the interactional structure provides the structural and functional distinction to characterize the two types of vocatives. We also show how vocatives are integrated into the larger clause-structure, which like nominals is also dominated by an interactional layer. We show that it is in this layer that interactional arguments like vocatives are licensed. Inasmuch as our analysis is on the right track, it provides novel evidence that syntactic structure interfaces with pragmatic knowledge just as it does with conceptual/intentional knowledge.

Research Groups: Friday, February 5

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM: Cognitive Science of Language Group
Guest speaker: Ercenur Ünal (Özyeğin University): "Evidentiality in language and cognition."

It has long been recognized that language interacts with other aspects of cognition. However, the nature and extent of these interactions is widely debated. In this talk, I will focus on the linguistic encoding of sources of information (evidentiality) and how it relates to non-linguistic reasoning about information sources. In part one, I will examine how the acquisition of evidentiality is related to the development of source concepts in learners of Turkish - a language that grammatically encodes evidentiality. In part two, I will ask whether the way languages encode information sources affects source monitoring mechanisms in mature cognizers by comparing adult speakers of English and Turkish.

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM: Phonetics/Phonology Research Group
Group discussion led by Andrei Munteanu (Ph.D.) of a paper: Trecca et al. (2020). When too many vowels impede language processing: An eye-tracking study of Danish-learning children. Language and Speech, 63(4), 898-918.

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Syntax Group
Justin Leung (MA): "Selected issues concerning directional motion event expression in Cantonese."

The expression of directional motion events in the Chinese languages has been hotly debated in the literature surrounding Talmy’s (2000) framing typology of motion events. Different characterizations within the Talmyan typology hinge upon the syntactic analysis assumed by the linguist. In this paper, I evaluate previous syntactic accounts on directional motion events in Mandarin and English and propose modifications to account for the empirical data observed in Cantonese that could not be accounted for by previous accounts. I suggest that directional elements in Cantonese have two merge domains, each corresponding to different interpretations: the 'inner aspect' domain between v and V (Travis 2010; Sybesma, 2017) for a telic reading and the VP domain for an atelic reading (cf. Paul 2020). I also suggest a hierarchy of projections to account for strict ordering patterns.

Congratulations, Nayoun!

This month we bid a fond farewell, for the best possible reason, to Nayoun Kim (postdoc), who has accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Literature and Language at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. She will be leaving Toronto shortly and beginning her new job at the end of February. Congratulations, Nayoun! We'll miss you around here, but we're so thrilled about your news. All the best!