University of Toronto Department of Linguistics Blog
Rebecca Tollan (University of Delaware) and faculty member Daphna Heller have published "Pronoun Resolution and Ergativity: Effects of Subjecthood and Case in Niuean." in Language.
Their investigations study if the Polynesian language Niuean shows the same subject preference found for nominative-accusative language or if an absolutive argument is preferred as a referent.
This is a can't-miss article for all our semantic/syntax lovers!
Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies
Iranian Languages and Linguistics Lecture Series
Corpus-based Approaches to the Typology of Iranian Languages
an online lecture by
Professor Geoffrey Haig
Universität Bamberg
Friday, 22 April 2022, 11:00 a.m. Toronto Time
Advance Zoom Registration
https://utoronto.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYodeyvrj8qGNYpw15iGq1Lz1Ki-ElKgQTi
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email
containing information about joining the series.
Geoffrey Haig is professor of linguistics in the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Bamberg. His research is empirically oriented, with a focus on corpus-based approaches to language typology, and language contact in the Western Asian Transition Zone; for both fields he has co-developed online digital resources (see https://multicast.aspra.uni-bamberg.de/ and https://multicast.aspra.uni-bamberg.de/resources/wowa/). He has also published widely on the diachronic syntax of Iranian languages, and been actively involved in language documentation in West Iran.
Abstract
Traditional language typology has focused on comparing languages on the basis of categorical values assigned to various features, for example ‘Object-Verbʼ versus ‘Verb-Objectʼ word order. The input to this kind of typology is generally a pre-formulated grammatical analysis (e.g. a published grammar, or similar) for each language. Corpus-Based Typology (CBT), on the other hand, is an alternative approach to typology which draws on primary linguistic data as the basis for cross-linguistic comparison. While CBT shares similar research goals to conventional typology, CBT employs quantitative methods and visualization techniques to model the omnipresent gradience of cross-linguistic variation. In this talk I will outline the rationale behind corpus-based approaches to typology, exemplified with case studies from recent research. We then consider how CBT can be applied to the Iranian languages, drawing on the WOWA data set (Word Order in Western Asia, Haig et al 2021, https://multicast.aspra.uni-bamberg.de/resources/wowa/), containing samples of spoken language from approximately 30 languages. The presentation will focus on word order across Western Iranian languages, and neighbouring languages. Time permitting, we may also consider recent CBT-based findings on the marking of definiteness across a range of Iranian languages (Nourzaei 2021).
Faculty members Jessamyn Schertz and Yoojung Kang have published an article that will intrigue all our phoneticians and phonologists!
"Phonetic cue competition within multiple phonological contrasts: Perception of Seoul Korean Sibilants" investigates whether their hypothesis that place/manner cues play a stronger role over laryngeal cues in listeners' perceptions of /s/-/c/ contrast holds true. They also explores how the increasing importance of f0 in the stop contrast might extend its influence to perception of the sibilant system more generally.
This paper is publish in Korean Linguistics!
Schertz, J., & Kang, Y. (2022). Phonetic cue competition within multiple phonological contrasts: Perception of Seoul Korean sibilants. Korean Linguistics, 18(1), 1-17
On Friday April 22nd 2022 at 2:00pm EST there will be another Colloquium. Guest Speaker Ahmad Alqassas from Georgetown University will be presenting "Demystifying Puzzles in Polarity Sensitive and Coordinate Complexes: Covert Syntactic Licensing as Last Resort".
Zoom links have been shared via email from the Colloquium Committee.
Hope you can all attend!
Demystifying Puzzles in Polarity Sensitivity and Coordinate Complexes:
Covert Syntactic Licensing as Last Resort
Coordinate complexes display a variety of empirical puzzles that challenge our standard assumptions about the nature of syntactic categories, operations and structural configurations available in syntax. The theoretical debates diverge on whether coordinate complexes have a special syntactic status necessitating the addition of syntactic categories, operations or configurations. Another debatable issue is whether the clause structure of coordinated DPs involves phrasal or clausal coordination at LF (the Logical Form). This talk focuses on empirical puzzles in Arabic involving the structure of coordinate complexes and their interaction with negation, agreement, and ellipsis. A close look at the syntax of Arabic coordinate complexes reveals that, unlike their English counterparts, coordinators such as wala ‘nor’ are the lexicalization of a syntactic head that takes the internal conjunct as a complement and the external one as a specifier. We shall see that in negatively disjoined DPs [laa DP…wala DP], the coordinators are Negative Concord Items (NCIs) licensed through syntactic agreement with either overt operators or a last resort covert operator. These coordinators are conspicuous analogues of the person-NCI wala-NP ‘no body’ in their ability to co-occur with negative adverbs in the CP layers without triggering a double negation reading. I then show that Closest Conjunct Agreement (CCA) in negatively disjoined DPs involves clausal coordination and ellipsis.
Naomi Nagy (faculty) couldn't get enough teaching this year. So just as soon as she finished teaching at UofT, she rushed off to Paris, where she is teaching a short course, Language contact, Language Variation and Large Corpora, for France's LabEx Program.
There was a STRONG UofT presence at the Human Sentence Processing Conference!
Talks included:
Sali Tagliamonte (Faculty), Alison Chasteen (UofT Psychology) & Katharina Pabst (PhD Candidate) presented their work entitled "A great story: Aging and the adjectives of positive evaluation" at CLARe5!
As the abstract is not available online, your next best option is to hassle them with questions when you see them on campus 😜
We want to say a MAJOR congrats to all students, faculty and staff for completing the 2021-2022 academic year!
It has definitely not been an easy year, but you all pushed through and the department could not be more proud! If you can handle university during COVID-19 you can handle ANYTHING!
Best of luck during exam season! Please remember to be kind to yourself and others. Once you are finished make sure to treat yourself to a fancy dinner, drinks with friends, or a chill movie night!
Let us know what you will be doing to celebrate the end of this academic year!
This Tuesday (April 5), some of the students from Field Methods will present the results of their final projects during a poster session open to the public (on Zoom). You are all welcome to join us!
The poster session starts at 6:10 pm and ends at 8 pm.
If you would like to join, please register by filling out this form:
The list of presenters is available below.
Please contact Suzi Lima with any questions.
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Yixin Wang
Describing spatial relations in Tshiluba: A discussion around cardinal directions and spatial frames of reference
Christy Moser
The morphosyntax of causatives and applicatives in Tshiluba
Jillian Warman
Nasalization in Tshiluba
Martin Renard
Serial Verb Constructions in Tshiluba
Aiman Khan
Introducing Tshikus to Tshiluba: Noun Classes for Borrowed Words
Haili Su
Disentangling the past: Tshiluba verbal morphosyntax of past temporal reference
Runze Qian
An Optimal Approach Towards Loanwords in Tshiluba
Lee Yang
Noun class and classification in Tshiluba
Maya Blumenthal
Colour perception in Tshiluba
Diana Gil Hamel
ntundu and ndundu: Solving the puzzle of plosive voicing in Tshiluba
Frederick Gietz (PhD Candidate), Peter Jurgec (Faculty) and Maida Percival (PhD Candidate) have published a paper in the Journal of Linguistics!
"Shift in Harmonic Serialism" examines whether shift, in which a feature moves/flops from one segment to another, should be considered an operation. They show that only the one-step shift analysis can capture the tonal patterns in Kibondei and the segmental patterns in Halkomelem; grammars that rely on spreading or floating features cannot.
Great read for all the phonetics/phonology lovers!
GIETZ, F., JURGEC, P., & PERCIVAL, M. (2022). Shift in Harmonic Serialism. Journal of Linguistics, 1-37. doi:10.1017/S0022226722000032
[Just reposting this as definitely not an April Fool's Day joke]
Rachel Soo (Undergrad and MA alum) and Philip Monahan (Faculty) have published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
"Language dominance and order of acquisition affect auditory translation priming in heritage speakers" tests Cantonese heritage speakers and native speakers in an auditory translation priming paradigm. Their results suggest that both language dominance and order of language acquisition can help to explain translation priming findings and bilingual lexical processing. Soo and Monahan invite a rethinking of the role of both variables in bilingual lexical access for speakers with different language dominance profiles.
Great job Soo and Monahan!!
Soo, R., & Monahan, P. J. (2022). Language dominance and order of acquisition affect auditory translation priming in heritage speakers. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 17470218221091753.
