Lex at UTM Linguistics Brown Bag

Lex Konnelly (Ph.D.) is the next guest speaker for the Linguistics Brown Bag Lunch series at the Mississauga campus. Their talk, "Linguistic innovation and advocacy in trans and gender-diverse communities: The morphosyntax of singular they", will be taking place on Monday, February 4, from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM in room 5128 of the New North Building.

As one of the primary means of constructing gendered identities, language is a matter of central concern to transgender people (Zimman 2018). In this talk, I highlight the burgeoning relationship between transgender communities, linguistics, and social justice, drawing attention to the role language has played in wider cultural orientations to transgender issues as well as the ways in which linguistics can be at the forefront of this critical activism. By way of example, I report on joint work with Elizabeth Cowper (in prep.) on the non-binary usage of singular they; that is, they as used to refer to individuals whose gender identity is not, or is not exclusively, masculine or feminine (1). Despite they's widespread usage, not all speakers judge this most recent innovation to be grammatical, even if they do not object to singular they in quantified (2), generic (3), or otherwise gender non-specific (4) contexts and would produce such examples natively.

(1) When Arthuri arrives, please ask themi to fill out this form. (2) If anyonei comes to the door, tell themi to go away. (3) The perfect studenti always finishes theiri homework. (4) I heard they hired a new teacheri. I wonder which grade theyi’ll be assigned to.

We argue that resistance to this new use of they can, at least in part, be attributed to speakers' level of participation in a grammatical change in progress. Further, we propose that this change can be categorized into three distinct stages, with they's most recent broadening – that is, as a non-binary pronoun of reference – dovetailing with wider sociocultural changes (as well as featural changes beyond the pronominal system) that underscore the difficulty in separating grammatical and social judgments. As I aim to show, linguists from all disciplines – both theoretical and applied – are especially well-suited to leverage theoretical insights to advocate for trans-affirming language practice.

Guest speaker: Rachel Dudley (École normale supérieure)

We are delighted to welcome Rachel Dudley, who earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Maryland in 2017 and is now a postdoctoral fellow at l'Institut Jean Nicod of the École normale supérieure. Her research is focused on language acquisition and cognitive aspects of semantics/pragmatics. She will be giving a talk, "How to learn the difference between 'know' and 'think'," at 3:00 PM on Friday, February 1, in SS560A. A reception will follow in the department lounge.

What kind of input is available to the child learning language? How do they use this input? What does that imply about the nature of the grammar? Questions about how children come to acquire adult-like competence, and about the relationship between the child, the grammar, and the input, are central in language acquisition. Nevertheless, research that engages with them is rare because it is resource-intensive and requires drawing together insights from language development, from theoretical and descriptive linguistics, from philosophy and from cognitive development. In my research, I have tried to address these questions in the domain of semantic and pragmatic development. In particular, I have focused on how children master subtle distinctions in meaning, such as the difference between the propositional attitude verbs 'know' and 'think'. While both are belief verbs, there are differences in their meaning that affect the ways we can use them. 'Know' is a factive presupposition trigger and can only be used to describe true beliefs that we take for granted. In contrast, 'think' is non-factive and can be used to describe beliefs which we do not take for granted and may in fact be false. When do children master this difference? And how do they come to do so? Answers to these questions are central in language acquisition, but also have implications throughout cognitive science given the central role of propositional attitudes and mental state concepts. In this talk, I will present results from a series of studies that integrate behavioral methodologies and corpus analyses to (i) determine when children differentiate 'know' and 'think'; (ii) develop learning theories about the kinds of input cues which might help children differentiate them; and (iii) test whether these cues are actually related to children's comprehension of the difference. Results suggest that children start to master these verbs early within the preschool years, but with variability in age of acquisition. This variability is related to differences in individual children's linguistic input that are indirectly informative about the underlying semantic contrast between the verbs. This allows us to make clear predictions about the kinds of evidence that children use to learn the meanings of attitude verbs and presupposition triggers more broadly. Future work will test these predictions on a wider set of data, including input in different dialects, in different languages, with different presupposition triggers, and within the grammar more broadly.

Suzi and Alana at Upper Canada College

Faculty members Suzi Lima and Alana Johns gave a joint presentation - "Indigenous languages of the Americas: Two perspectives," - at Upper Canada College on January 17, 2019. The audience responded with many engaged and thoughtful questions. (Photo courtesy of UCC staff members Sophia Berezowsky, James Liao, and Brandon Sambrano.)

Research Groups: Week of January 28-February 1

Tuesday, January 29, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM, Innis College 313
Morphology Reading Group
Ross Godfrey (Ph.D.) leading a discussion of: Creemers, Ava, Jan Don, and Paula Fenger (2018). Some affixes are roots, others are heads. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 36, 45-84.

Friday, February 1, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Language Variation and Change Research Group
Miriam Neuhausen (visiting scholar) on her research on German/English contact in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.

Friday, February 1, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Phonology Research Group
Photini Coutsougera (University of Cyprus): "High front vowel deletion, palatalization, and fortition in Arcadian Greek."
The focus of this paper is the high front vowel /i/ and its status in Arcadian Peloponnesian (ArcGR), an entirely unstudied variety of Greek spoken in the mountainous region of Arcadia in central Peloponnese. ArcGR shares the same five-vowel system (probably with some acoustic differences?) as SMG. The two differ in that ArcGR has light diphthongs (postvocalic /i/ semivocalises and forms a light diphthong with the vowel preceding it), which are very rare in SMG. Additionally, the status of the high front vowel in ArcGR is different from that in SMG. /i/ is not as stable as the other four vowels when unstressed and is therefore more vulnerable to its phonological environment. More specifically:

In ViC, Vi# contexts it semivocalises and forms a light diphthong with the preceding vowel. In CiV contexts it either triggers full palatalization in the preceding C or undergoes fortition. In Ci# contexts it triggers either full palatalization in the preceding C or is deleted, triggering secondary palatalization in the preceding C (or strengthened palatalization according to Baltazani et al. 2016). In CiC contexts it either triggers full palatalization in the preceding C or is deleted.

Baltazani et al. (2016) propose that high vowel loss in Ci# context (where C is a labial or a non-sibilant coronal) in two northern varieties of Greek triggers strengthened palatalization and not secondary palatalization in the preceding C. This extension to the current palatalization typology (see Kotchetov 2016), is claimed to be justified on both phonetic and phonological grounds. Despite the geographical distance, the ArcGR examples that feature high vowel loss are strikingly similar to those of the aforementioned northern varieties of Greek. According to the existing literature high vowel loss is thought to be featuring exclusively in northern varieties of Greek. In fact, it constitutes a basic classification criterion used by virtually all Greek dialectologists who have attempted to classify the Greek dialects. The results of this paper may therefore have implications on the classification of Greek dialects and their representation on the dialectal map of Greek as drawn by Trudgill (2003).

Friday, February 1, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Semantics Research Group
Keir Moulton (faculty) on joint work with Paula Menéndez Benito (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen): "Reasoning and evidence: Sources and direction."
Natural languages have constructions that indicate that a claim is based on reasoning from evidence. Some of these constructions encode a particular directionality of evidence (e.g., Davis and Hara 2014, Winans 2016). The phenomenon can be illustrated with the examples in (1) and (2) (after Davis and Hara 2014). While epistemic 'must' expresses conclusions that follow from a piece of evidence (1) as well as conclusions about what might have caused the evidence (2), 'seem'-reports are only possible if the embedded claim is assumed to be cause of the available evidence (a "Reasoning Back" (RB) effect, as in (2)). Other constructions that have been shown to convey a RB effect are (i) a sub-class of evidential inferential elements (see Krawczyk 2012 and references therein), and (ii) the presentational 'this' construction (Winans 2016).

	(1) Reasoning Forward from Evidence. We see, from the 20th floor, rain pouring down but we cannot see the street. a. The sidewalks must be soaked. b. #The sidewalks seem to be soaked / It seems that the sidewalks are soaked.
	(2) Reasoning Back from Evidence. We see, on a security camera that shows only the sidewalks, that they are soaking wet. a. It must be pouring rain. b. It seems that it’s pouring rain.

In this talk, which reports on work in progress, we tentatively suggest that there are two possible sources for the RB back effect: (i) evidential and epistemic items might contribute RB lexically (as Davis and Hara 2014 argued for the Japanese evidential particle "youda"); (ii) in other constructions the RB effect might come about via a default predication relation that holds between propositions and topic situations (building on Winan's (2016) proposal for presentational 'this' constructions). In support of this second possibility, we present initial data that suggest that bare assertions and some canonical doxastic alternatives ('think' and 'believe') can encode a RB effect.

Guest speaker: David Birdsong (University of Texas at Austin)

The Department of French is hosting a talk by David Birdsong of the University of Texas at Austin, whose research is focused on second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and French. He will be giving a talk on Thursday the 31st of January at 2:00 PM at St. Michael's College, in the Charbonnel Lounge at 81 St. Mary Street: "Different learners, different outcomes: Understanding variability in second language acquisition."

Classic formulations of adult second language (L2) acquisition (e.g. Bley-Vroman 1990) seek explanations for variable attainment among individuals; that is, why different outcomes are to be expected from different learners. This presentation looks at this essential characteristic of L2 acquisition in its multiple forms, and with respect to the learner-internal and external factors that contribute to it. With examples from the learning of English and French, we examine putative sources of L2 variability such as age of acquisition, language dominance, cognitive aging, genetics, and learner types. Transcending 'different learners, different outcomes', we consider relatively understudied instances of learner-independent variability that may reflect the grammatical forms under examination, scaling effects, sample size, and choice of statistical models. The presentation concludes with observations on native-language variability, exceptional L2 learners, and (non) nativelikeness in L2 acquisition and bilingualism.

A reception will follow; all are welcome.

Research Groups: Friday, January 25

Note that Syntax Group is cancelled this week and also that SS560A is unavailable. Both of the other groups meeting this week will be in an alternative location, as follows.

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM in UC 144
Psycholinguistics Group
Ella Rabinovich (postdoc, Department of Computer Science): "Native language cognate effects on second language lexical choice."

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM in SS 568
Fieldwork Group
Group discussion led by Jean-François Juneau (Ph.D.): Burton, Strang and Matthewson, Lisa (2015). Targeted construction storyboards in semantic fieldwork. In M. Ryan Bochnak and ‎Lisa Matthewson (eds.), Methodologies in semantic fieldwork, 135-156. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Congratulations, LeAnn!

LeAnn Brown (MA 2009, Ph.D. 2015) has recently started a two-year postdoc position with the NoBiPho project, which is associated with Aix-Marseille Université/Laboratoire Parole et Langage (in Aix-en-Provence) and with the Nouvelle-Sorbonne (in Paris). She'll collaborate primarily with Maria Candea, Mariapaola D’Imperio, Julie Abbou, Aron Arnold, Luca Greco, Oriana Reid-Collins, and James German. The NoBiPho project explores voice and discourse in terms of production and perception across the gender spectrum, with a focus on non-binary speakers of English and of French. This follows up on LeAnn's 1.5 year postdoc position with James German on the GenSpecS project, which generated the corpus being used in the NoBiPho project. LeAnn's dissertation, supervised by Naomi Nagy (faculty), was on the perception of gender based on multiple vowel and fricative cues in English, and she's inspired about the next phase of research and about continuing to live in France.

Congratulations on the well-deserved new position, LeAnn, and all the best from all of us!

Research Groups: Friday, January 18

Note that there is no meeting of the Phonology Research Group this week.

10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Language Variation and Change Research Group
Elaine Gold (faculty) on public engagement in conjunction with the Canadian Language Museum; group discussion of ongoing outreach projects.

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Semantics Research Group
Marisa Brook (faculty) on possible semantic conditions on the pseudolocative where relativizer in English.

OCP 16

The 16th Old-World Conference on Phonology (OCP 16) is taking place at the University of Verona, Italy, from January 16 through 18.

Andrei Munteanu (Ph.D.) is giving a talk:
"Homophony avoidance: An experimental approach."

Heather Yawney (Ph.D.) is presenting a poster:
"Place and voicing restrictions of velar and uvular consonants in Kazakh."

Rachel Walker (MA 1993, now at the University of Southern California) and Yifan Yang (University of Southern California) are giving a talk:
"Combinative markedness in three-consonant clusters."

Sara Mackenzie (Ph.D. 2009, now at Memorial University of Newfoundland) has a poster:
"Allophony, neutralization, and structure preservation in Stratal OT."

New paper: Moulton and Shimoyama (2019)

Keir Moulton (faculty) and colleague Junko Shimoyama (McGill University) have a paper out in Glossa, 4(1): "On the Inverse Trace Conversion and maximal informativeness analysis of Japanese internally-headed relative clauses: A reply to Erlewine and Gould."

In this response to Erlewine and Gould (2016), we argue that an account of internally-headed relative clauses using Inverse Trace Conversion and the maximal informativeness semantics for definites of von Fintel et al. (2014) does not derive the observed interpretations when the internal head is quantified by certain downward entailing quantifiers and derives no interpretation at all for non-monotonic and some upward entailing quantifiers. We then argue that the cases that Erlewine & Gould (2016) claim to be a newly identified interpretation of internally-headed relatives are actually headless relatives.

Research Groups: Friday, January 11

Note that there is no meeting of the Psycholinguistics Group this week.

11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
Syntax Group
Keir Moulton (faculty): "Exceptional agreement via clausal determiners"
In this talk, reporting joint work with Nino Grillo (University of York), we suggest a mechanism for exceptional or long-distance agreement into finite clauses via a determiner heading CP. I start with a novel observation about pseudo-relative (PR) constructions in Italian (Cinque 1992): that they allow their subjects to optionally and exceptionally govern matrix agreement as in (1).

(1)	[PR Carlo e Paolo che ballano il tango] è/sono un evento da non perdere. Carlo and Paolo that dance-PRES the tango is/are an event to not miss 'Carlo and Paolo dancing the tango is/are an event not to miss.'
(2)	[DP DC [PR [DPS Carlo e Paolo ] [C' che ballano ]]]

We first argue that (1) has the parse in (2), in which the PR subject Carlo e Paolo is an argument of the finite PR clause, not the matrix clause. We then assemble arguments that the PR is embedded under a null D, which is crucial to licensing the PR subject but is nonetheless deficient in its ϕ-features, and therefore permits exceptional agreement with the embedded subject. We claim, following Deal (2014) and Halpert (2016), that this is possible because a head can continue to probe after one goal only partially satisfies it. Our results also add to a growing body of literature arguing for determiners on clauses (Roussou 1991, Davies 2010, Hartman 2012, Kastner 2015) and the beginnings of a literature on the semantics of determiners that combine with event- and proposition-sized constituents (Ferreira 2005, Iatridou 2014).

1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Fieldwork Group
Group discussion of the documentation work done by Javier Domingo (Université de Montréal) of Tehuelche (a Chonan language spoken in Patagonia) with the last speaker of the language, Dora Manchado, who passed away recently.

Guest speaker: Anari Bomfim (Museu Nacional/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese is hosting a talk by Anari Bomfim, a Ph.D. candidate at the Museu Nacional/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is a member of the Pataxó people and will be reporting on the revitalization of their language, Patxohã, which is from the Macro-Jê family of South America. The title of her talk is "Patxohã, 'língua de guerreiro': O protagonismo do Povo Pataxó na retomada de sua língua originária" or "Patxohã, 'a warrior's language': The central role of the Pataxó people in the recovery of their language." This will be taking place on Thursday, January 10, from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM, in the Regents Room (room 206) of the Goldring Student Centre. Note that the talk will be presented in Brazilian Portuguese but will have slides and a Q&A session in both that and English.

New office space

Following several years of space-division issues in Sidney Smith Hall, we are pleased to announce the imminent opening of the Linguistics Satellite on the 14th floor of Robarts Library. Campus staff are currently wiring up the offices and outfitting them with furniture. Partway through this month, Business Officer Mary Hsu, plus a number of emeritus faculty members and postdocs, will move in and finally have a sufficient amount of room. Current chair Sali A. Tagliamonte will be splitting her time between the two buildings over the course of a typical work-week. Everyone else in the department is encouraged to drop by the Satellite to say hello and explore our new space!

LSA et al. 2019

The Linguistic Society of America is holding its 93rd Annual Meeting in New York City from January 3rd through 6th. Alongside it are the annual meetings of a lively, ever-increasing bunch of special-interest 'sister societies'. Participants associated with our department are as follows.

Linguistic Society of America

Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty) and Bridget Jankowski (staff; Ph.D. 2013):
"Grammatical convergence or microvariation? Subject doubling in English in a French-dominant town."

Becky Tollan (Ph.D.) and Lauren Eby Clemens (State University of New York at Albany):
"Syntactic ergativity as absolutive movement in Polynesian."

Sali is also presenting a poster:
"Wait, it’s a discourse marker! Catching a recent innovation in linguistic change."

Derek Denis (faculty) and Alexandra Motut (Ph.D.) are presenting a poster:
"Data collection reciprocity as service-in-return: A case study in working with community partners."

Julien Carrier (Ph.D.) also has a poster:
"Inuktitut complex nominalization."

Monica-Alexandrina Irimia (Ph.D. 2012, now at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) and Anna Pineda (Universitat Pompeu Fabra):

"Generalizations and their exceptions: DOM in Romance diachrony."

Monica is also part of a talk with Patricia Schneider Zioga (California State University, Fullerton):
"Partitive case and abstract licensing in Kinande."

Clarissa Forbes (Ph.D. 2018, now at the University of Arizona) is presenting a poster:
"Ergative agreement switch and unlicensed absolutives in Tsimshianic."

Julie Goncharov (Ph.D. 2015, now at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Monica-Alexandrina Irimia (Ph.D. 2012, now at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia):
"Counterfactuality, focus, and embedded exhaustification."

Julie Anne Legate (MA 1997, now at the University of Pennsylvania) and Milena Šereikaitė (University of Pennsylvania):
"Lithuanian evidentials and passives of evidentials."

Paulina Lyskawa (MA 2015, now at the University of Maryland) is part of a talk being presented by a large team that also includes Hanna Muller (University of Maryland), Phoebe Gaston (University of Maryland), Bethany Dickerson (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), Adam Liter (University of Maryland), Karthik Durvasula (Michigan State University), Mina Hirzel (University of Maryland), Kasia Hitczenko (University of Maryland), Margaret Kandel (Harvard University), Jacqueline Nelligan (University of Maryland), Maxime Papillon (University of Maryland), and Laurel Perkins (University of Maryland):
"Gender bias in representation and publishing rates across subfields."

Yining Nie (MA 2015, now at New York University) also has a poster:
"Refrozen scope in spray-load constructions."

Giuseppe Ricciardi (MA 2016, now at Harvard University) and Edward Gibson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology):
"Experiment on epistemic must."
 
Nicholas Rolle (MA 2010, now at the University of California, Berkeley):
"A cyclic account of a trigger-target asymmetry in concatenative vs. replacive tone."

Carson T. Schütze (MA 1991, now at the University of California, Los Angeles) is co-presenting a talk with Richard Stockwell (University of California, Los Angeles):
"Objectless locative prepositions in British English."

The same pair is also presenting a second talk:
"Dialects haven't got to be the same: Modal microvariation in English."

As well as a poster:
"Transparent free relatives with who: Support for a unified analysis."

Michelle Yuan (MA 2013, now at the University of Chicago):
"On the interaction of Merger and copy spell-out: Insights from Inuktitut noun incorporation."

Heather Burnett (former postdoc, now at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique) is half of a presentation with Eric Acton (Eastern Michigan University):
"Markedness, rationality, and social meaning."

Former visiting scholar Holman Tse (University of Pittsburgh) has a poster:
"Can heritage speakers innovate allophonic splits due to contact?"

American Dialect Society

We are well-represented at the ADS. Our current chair, Sali A. Tagliamonte, is leading a double life as the organization's president, and will be giving the speech at the Annual Luncheon: "Doing dialectology in the 21st century." In what may or may not be a coincidence, the first ADS session this year is entitled 'University of Toronto linguists have some things to tell you about Canadian English'. Indeed we do:

Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty), Tim Gadanidis (Ph.D.), Jean-François Juneau (Ph.D.), Kinza Mahoon (Ph.D.), Andrei Munteanu (Ph.D.), Lisa Schlegl (Ph.D.), Fiona Wilson (Ph.D.):
"Sounding like a 'Sounder': Dialect accommodation in Ontario, Canada."

Derek Denis (faculty), Vidhya Elango (BA), Nur Sakinah Nor Kamal (BA), Srishti Prashar (BA), and Maria Velasco (BA):
"Exploring the sounds of Multicultural Toronto English."

Bridget L. Jankowski (staff; Ph.D. 2013) and Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty):
"'He come out and give me a beer, but he never seen the bear': Old preterites in Ontario dialects."

Lisa Schlegl (Ph.D.):
"Tracking change in Canadian English utterance-initial discourse markers."

Other participants include:

Alexandra D'Arcy (Ph.D. 2005, now at the University of Victoria):
"Exploring the dynamics of language change through the lens of community, caregiver, and child."

Bronwyn M. Bjorkman (former postdoc, now at Queen's University) with Anastasia Riehl (Queen's University):
"We seen 'eh' and so on: A preliminary study of three variables in the Wolfe Island English corpus."

Aaron J. Dinkin (former faculty, now at San Diego State University):
"Low back merger encroaching at a stable dialect boundary in northern New York."

Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL)

Aleksei Nazarov (faculty):

"Learning exceptionality indices for French variable schwa deletion."

Heather Burnett (former postdoc, now at Centre national de la recherche scientifique) and Olivier Bonami (Centre national de la recherche scientifique):

"A conceptual spaces model of socially motivated language change."

Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics

Frederick Gietz (Ph.D.):
"Lexical and computational tools for determining the origin of Lingala."

Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas

Michael Barrie (Ph.D. 2006, now at Sogang University):
"Prosody of Cayuga content questions."
 

Patricia A. Shaw (Ph.D. 1976, now at the University of British Columbia) with Severn Cullis-Suzuki (University of British Columbia):

"Intonation through the generations."

Congratulations, Nicholas!

Congratulations to Nicholas Rolle (MA 2010, now at the University of California, Berkeley), who has accepted a postdoctoral position in the Program in Linguistics at Princeton University! Well-deserved indeed.

New paper: Beekhuizen and Stevenson (2018)

Barend Beekhuizen (faculty) and Suzanne Stevenson (faculty, Department of Computer Science) have a paper out in Cognitive Science, 42(8): "More than the eye can see: A computational model of color term acquisition and color discrimination."

We explore the following two cognitive questions regarding crosslinguistic variation in lexical semantic systems: Why are some linguistic categories - that is, the associations between a term and a portion of the semantic space - harder to learn than others? How does learning a language-specific set of lexical categories affect processing in that semantic domain? Using a computational word-learner, and the domain of color as a testbed, we investigate these questions by modeling both child acquisition of color terms and adult behavior on a non-verbal color discrimination task. A further goal is to test an approach to lexical semantic representation based on the principle that the more languages label any two situations with the same word, the more conceptually similar those two situations are. We compare such a crosslinguistically based semantic space to one based on perceptual similarity. Our computational model suggests a mechanistic explanation for the interplay between term frequency and the semantic closeness of learned categories in developmental error patterns for color terms. Our model also indicates how linguistic relativity effects could arise from an acquisition mechanism that yields language-specific topologies for the same semantic domain. Moreover, we find that the crosslinguistically inspired semantic space supports these results at least as well as—and in some aspects better than—the purely perceptual one, thus confirming our approach as a practical and principled method for lexical semantic representation in cognitive modeling.

New paper: Denis and Tagliamonte (2018)

Derek Denis (faculty) and Sali A. Tagliamonte (faculty) have a paper out in English Language & Linguistics, 22(3): "The changing future: Competition, specialization, and reorganization in the contemporary English future temporal reference system."

The English future temporal reference system has long been recognized as a variable system undergoing change. The main variants in contemporary English (will and be going to) have both been argued to have gone through (and to potentially still be undergoing) grammaticalization. At the same time, be going to has been gradually increasing in frequency relative to will over the last 500 years. However, investigation of the ongoing development of this system has been sparse. This article makes use of a large contemporary sociolinguistic corpus of a mainstream variety of North American English and the apparent-time construct. Several factors that have been implicated in the development of this system (sentence type, clause type, proximity, verb type, animacy, and grammatical person of the subject) are considered and a multiplex series of changes are uncovered. Underlying an overall, albeit slow, change in frequency towards be going to, we find evidence for specialization of one or the other variant in different linguistic contexts, neutralization of a constraint consistent with ongoing loss of variant nuances through semantic bleaching, and the persistence of constraints consistent with morphological doublet competition.

New paper: Jurgec and Bjorkman (2018)

Peter Jurgec (faculty) and Bronwyn Bjorkman (former postdoc, now at Queen's University) have a paper now published in Phonology, 35(4): "Indexation to stems and words."

This paper presents an extension of indexed constraints, such that they can apply not only to individual morphemes, but also to potentially complex constituents such as the stem. This modification allows us to capture a class of long-distance morphologically derived environment effects (MDEEs) that have been previously unexplained. MDEEs typically involve an exceptional phonological pattern that is lost under affixation. Formally, MDEEs are predicted if complex constituents such as stems are treated as lexically exceptional only when every morpheme contained within them is independently exceptional. This approach further predicts asymmetries between bare roots and affixed words, between roots and affixes, and between inflected and derived words. All other things being equal, the first of each pair is more likely to be exceptional in more contexts.

Faculty/staff holiday lunch

Our faculty and staff enjoyed a holiday lunch at Her Father's Cider Bar and Kitchen on Friday, December 14. Thanks to the restaurant and its employees for their hospitality (and for taking the photo!).

Clockwise around the table from left: Sali A. Tagliamonte, Jack Chambers, Yoonjung Kang, Naomi Nagy, Phil Monahan, Barend Beekhuizen, Jessamyn Schertz, Cristina Cuervo, Susana Béjar, Aleksei Nazarov, Marisa Brook, Elaine Gold, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, Nathan Sanders, Jennifer McCallum, Diane Massam, and Derek Denis.

Research Groups: Week of December 10-14

Wednesday, December 12, 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM, Bissell Building 113
Morphology Reading Group
TBA

Thursday, December 13, 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM, SS 1086
Language Variation and Change Group
Practise talks for LSA/ADS/other conferences held alongside.