Recent uci_langsci_festschrifts items

Preface

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Preface

New evidence for the role of morphological markedness of gender agreement cues in monolingual and heritage-bilingual facilitative processing

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The presence of gender agreement markers prior to the noun speeds recognition of the noun in monolingual speakers of languages such as German, Spanish, Dutch and Polish, but this effect is still understudied for bilingual speakers. The present Visual World eye-tracking study investigated the real-time processing of gender agreement cues on adjectives and verbs to see if they facilitate recognition of the noun in both monolingual and heritage Russian speakers. Participants viewed visual displays in Ambiguous vs. Unambiguous conditions, crossed with MASC or FEM target nouns. Monolingual speakers looked more to the target in Unambiguous than Ambiguous conditions for both FEM (more salient cues) and MASC (null/less salient cues) targets. Heritage speakers (HSs) demonstrated facilitative use of the more salient FEM cues, in line with previous findings, but not MASC cues. We conclude that the morphological saliency of the agreement marker impacts HSs’ ability to access the gender feature...

Modification by depictives: In favor of a binding-based account

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I use the properties of depictives in Digor and Iron Ossetic, two closely related Iranian languages of the Caucasus, to argue in favor of binding-based accounts of the depictive-host relationship. I show that anaphor binding and the ability to host depictives in these languages pattern together – the two properties define identical, and nontrivial, classes of syntactic positions. I proceed to propose a parameterization of the analysis and show that it indeed accounts for a variety of attested depictive systems.

Hyperraising from TP in Moro

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines raising out of finite clauses, or hyperraising, in Moro, a Kordofanian language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. This paper demonstrates that finite complement clauses that permit hyperraising are TPs. Evidence for this conclusion comes from the unavailability of complementizers, as well as special morphology that is more generally linked to clausal reduction. Parallel facts are shown to obtain for raising from nonfinite clauses, which similarly disallow complementizers. The Moro pattern provides evidence for a general ban on A-movement out of CP in Moro independent of the finiteness of the clause, which is attributed to a CP horizon on φ-probes in Moro, in the framework of Keine (2019, 2020), in conjunction with the claim that Moro is a language without abstract case licensing requirements for DPs.

Bantu verb stem morphotactics revisited

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Hyman (2003a), I proposed a default pan-Bantu template to account for a recurrent sequencing of the Causative, Applicative, Reciprocal and Passive (CARP) suffixes, in this order. Divergences from CARP were said to result from language-specific overrides where a suffix earlier in the template has scope over a suffix later in the template. In this paper, I further examine CARP in light of data from additional Bantu languages, especially Ikalanga, Ndebele, Runyankore, Ekegusii, and the Tiania variant of Kimeru. I show, first, that although certain pairs of derivational voice suffixes such as Causative and Applicative overwhelmingly occur in the predicted CA order, others, such as Applicative and Reciprocal, occur as RA in some Bantu languages, systematically violating CARP. I conclude that rather than CARP being a template, the ordering properties need to be stated independently for each pair of suffixes on a language-by-language basis. By analyzing constraints on suffix sequences...

Front matter

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Front matter

Noun class in Dutch and German diasporic, multiethnolectal, and homeland contexts

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To provide a new comparison to Polinsky’s (2018) discussion of noun class or gender in heritage North Germanic languages, this paper examines changes in noun classes in two West Germanic sister languages, German and Dutch, in essentially mirror-image contexts: first, diasporic, heritage varieties of these languages undergoing shift to English in the United States. At the same time, new varieties are emerging in the relevant homelands as migrant and refugee communities acquire German and Dutch in settings where these are the dominant, standard languages. Changes to German are similar across both communities – with maintenance of the basic system but some specific minor changes – and changes to Dutch are likewise similar across the settings – albeit here with reduction and even loss of the noun-class system. We further compare these settings to patterns of variation and change in the homeland varieties of Dutch and German.

Hitting the high notes: Argument reversal in contact event descriptions in Nakh-Dagestanian and beyond

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The literature on Nakh-Dagestanian languages often highlights the argument realization pattern found in contact event descriptions. In these languages, the instrument is expressed as the verb’s object, and the surface contacted is expressed as a dative or locative DP. This pattern is the reverse of the default pattern found in English, where the surface is the direct object and the instrument is expressed in a with phrase. In order to promote further investigations into this property of Nakh-Dagestanian languages, this paper places this pattern in a larger cross-linguistic context. There are other languages that do not express the surface as an object in their contact event descriptions, with some also showing the argument realization reversal. Further, in these languages the non-object expression of the surface correlates with other typological properties, including the expression of manner outside the verb, smaller manner verb inventories, and verb-framed directed motion...

Word-learning heuristics in bilingual vocabulary acquisition: A longitudinal study of a Bulgarian-English child in the US

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The early stages of lexical development in children pose various questions about the selection and application of word-learning heuristics. In many proposals these processes are assumed to be facilitated by a specific lexical bias that differs in strength in monolingual and bilingual populations, namely, the Mutual Exclusivity (ME) bias (Markman & Wachtel 1988; Houston-Price et al. 2010). The present study analyzes the role and operation of ME bias in the bilingual vocabulary acquisition of a child who is acquiring Bulgarian and English from birth in the US. The analysis focuses on the child production of translation equivalents (TEs) at three measurement points: 18, 24 and 30 months. The findings reveal a flexible use of the ME bias modulated by the child bilingual linguistic experience and his emerging understanding of word-concept mappings in different contexts.

The argument-adjunct asymmetry revisited: The role of focus alternatives in island effects

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The unacceptability of filler-gap dependencies in island constructions has been attributed to multiple factors including syntactic constraints, processing difficulty, and discourse conditions. This study examines Chinese wh-questions in relative clause islands (RC-islands). While Chinese adjunct wh-questions have been shown to be sensitive to RC-islands, whether argument wh-questions are is still under debate. We explore the hypothesis that the unacceptability of wh-questions with RC-islands arises from the difficulty of generating a set of focus alternatives relevant for the question. In a sentence acceptability experiment, we manipulated the availability of context – specifically the availability of focus alternatives that may serve as answers to the target wh-question. The focus alternatives reduced the sensitivity of argument wh-questions to RC-islands, but not the adjunct wh-questions. We discuss the implications...

Malagasy voices

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We compare the voice system of Malagasy with those discussed in recent typologies (Zúñiga & Kittilä 2019; Legate 2021). Malagasy is a special case of a Philippine-type language (Shibatani 1988; Foley 2008; Himmelmann 2008; Kaufman 2009; Chen & McDonnell 2019) and presents their typically rich voice morphology. Some typological features of note are:

1. Malagasy has several voices, both active and non-active, built with overt affixes, not auxiliary verbs. Active verbs are not less marked than non-actives.

2. Voice is selected by some lexical items.

3. Some voices compose, yielding verbs with multiple voice affixes. Favored and forbidden compositions support several typological generalizations.

4. Voiced Predicate Phrases feed structure building operations: relative clause formation, nominalizations, imperatives, subject deletion, incorporation, coordination… In sum: Malagasy syntax rides on its voice system.

Optional labeling and its effect on structural distance

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Subjects and objects famously show robust asymmetries in their patterning, so much so that those patterns are taken to indicate fundamental geometrical differences in their positions in the derivations of syntactic structures. However, there are clear cases where subjects and objects fail to show this otherwise normative asymmetry. Following work done in Longenbaugh & Polinsky (2018), I propose an analysis of those instances of surprising symmetry that makes them predictable. I argue that terms merge for Case or EPP reasons, the resulting structure need not undergo any labeling. Instances where this lack of labeling fails to intervene between two terms renders them structurally equidistant for further operations and thus provides the venue for symmetry between subjects and objects.

Gender and ellipsis revisited

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Across several languages that encode grammatical gender, an intriguing pattern emerges under ellipsis. Whereas certain noun pairs disallow gender mismatches altogether between the antecedent and the ellipsis site, a second set of noun pairs allows them freely, and a third set allows them only when the grammatically masculine noun is in the antecedent but not vice versa (Bobaljik & Zocca 2011). We illustrate this pattern through the lens of Spanish and argue that the empirical generalizations can be captured via a universal identity condition regulating ellipsis that is split into two statements, where each statement refers to different syntactic primitives. On the one hand, the identity condition requires featural non-distinctness, which is a weaker requirement than strict featural identity. On the other hand, the identity condition requires that ROOTs, unlike features, be strictly identical. Coupled with the independently needed mechanism of repair-by-ellipsis, we argue that...

Russian plural declension and inquorate genders

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of Russian plural declension classes against the background of two conflicting views on the morphosyntax of number and gender features: as two separate nodes or as a single bundle. I argue that the realization of case endings in the Russian plural declension is sensitive to the gender of the stem and demonstrate that, contrary to frequently held assumptions, not only is gender morphologically active in the plural despite full neutralization in syntax, but plural and singular stems can in fact differ in gender.

Morphological case in child Heritage Russian: Comparing Russian in contact with Hebrew and Norwegian vs. the monolingual baseline

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The current study extends seminal work by Maria Polinsky on American Russian to other varieties of Russian acquired in contact with Norwegian and Hebrew. Two groups of child heritage language (HL) speakers of Russian participated in the study: Russian-Norwegian (n=17) and Russian-Hebrew (n=34). Their performance was compared to Russian-speaking monolingual children (n=79), evenly distributed across the four age groups: 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds. We also tested a group of monolingual Russian-speaking adult controls. All participants performed the same picture-description task targeting Structural accusative, Inherent dative, and Lexical cases assigned by the prepositions na ‘on’, v ‘in’, and pod ‘under’, differentiating locative and directional semantics. The performance of monolingual Russian-speaking children was homogeneous and target-like with respect to the specified structures from age 3. Child HL-Russian speakers in both groups displayed...

Realizing features: A case study of the syntax-morphology interface

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The conceptualization of FEATURES has remained a central theme in generative approaches to the syntax-morphology interface since the early 1990s. They have played an enhanced role in late-insertion approaches to morphosyntax, in which the establishment of feature-exponence relations is of fundamental importance. In this chapter we review, and critique, the advantages and disadvantages of direct (Nanosyntax) and indirect (Distributed Morphology) approaches to this interface. To illustrate the similarities and differences, we demonstrate how nominal suffixes are realized in varieties of Norwegian (including the heritage variant, North American Norwegian, NAmNo). We show that while both direct and indirect approaches to the syntax-morphology interface are capable of modeling the alternations observed in Norwegian nominal suffixes, they sometimes do so via different mechanisms, opening the door for future comparative work.

Raising, control and case

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The paper presents raising and control phenomena in Khwarshi (Tsezic/Northeast Caucasian). Despite the fact that all the arguments of nonfinite clauses, including subjects, can be locally case-licensed, Khwarshi possesses both (forward) raising and (forward) control configurations. Khwarshi raising and control differ with respect to standard diagnostics including argument structure of the matrix predicate, argument selection, interpretation of subject idioms and scope options. Moreover, control appears to be more restricted than raising: only subjects can be controlled but both subjects and objects can raise. The paper discusses theoretical implications of the findings and contributes to expanding the scope of raising and control by introducing data from a less-studied language.

Talking about language endangerment and Indigenous languages in the classroom: Some dos and don’ts I have learned through fieldwork in the Brazilian Amazon

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

How we discuss the phenomenon of language endangerment can have unexpected consequences. In this paper, I offer five recommendations as to how we should and should not talk about endangered languages in our classrooms. My discussion of these recommendations draws extensively upon my experience conducting field research on Tuparí, an Indigenous Amazonian language spoken in the Brazilian state of Rondônia.

Back matter

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Back matter

Reconciling ATB and parasitic gaps: A smuggling analysis of P-mismatches in Italian

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article addresses the longstanding debate on the unification of parasitic gaps (PGs) and across-the-board (ATB) constructions, discussing novel data from Italian. We show that PP PGs are indeed possible in the language (contra Cinque 1990), which undermines a previous argument against unification. We further show that apparent mismatches in the prepositional content of the main clause extractee and the “parasitic” extractee are allowed with certain reciprocal verbs like litigare ‘argue’, which feature an underlying unaccusative structure (van Craenenbroeck & Johnson 2023b) and prepositions that can “disappear” in specific alternations. We argue that PG constructions are derived through smuggling (Hicks 2009) of the parasitic extractee, which is underspecified for case, to the edge of the adjunct clause, from where it can then undergo ATB movement under identity with the main clause extractee. In using this analysis to explain the range of possible mismatches...

Remarks on case and agreement asymmetries in coordination

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recent literature has claimed that while coordination may give rise to agreement asymmetries, case is always symmetric among the conjuncts in a coordinate structure (Weisser 2020). In other words, a predicate may agree with only one conjunct, but all conjuncts are predicted to realize the same case features. This paper offers evidence against this claim, showing that both types of asymmetries can be found. I then reflect on the wider implications of this data for the relation between case and agreement. The purported lack of case asymmetries but existence of agreement asymmetries has been taken as evidence that case should be evaluated based on syntactic hierarchy, while agreement can be at least partly postsyntactic. Given this reasoning, it follows that analyses that regard case as a byproduct of agreement are incompatible without additional stipulations. Although this paper establishes the existence of both case and agreement asymmetries, I show that the data pose similar issues...

Anatomy of a complex numeral: Overcounting, with special attention to Ch’ol

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper provides a comprehensive cross-linguistic overview of overcounting, whereby a target numeral is expressed by counting toward the next-higher multiple of the base. I identify three major morphological patterns in overcounting numerals: P-connector, V-connector and no overt connector. I then zoom in on the structure of overcounting numerals in Ch’ol (Mayan). I argue that these numerals are construed with a covert, latively interpreted P, whose silence is due to P-drop.

On the inner structure of manner adverbial expressions: From a monolingual perspective to a comparative-linguistic perspective

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This chapter discusses the inner structure of superficially different manner-adverbial patterns in Dutch, with a special focus on the surface pattern A+P, as in hardop (loud-up; ‘aloud’). In the spirit of the generative linguistic quest for cross-constructional symmetry, it is proposed that these adverbial patterns are all manifestations of one and the same abstract, underlying syntactic configuration, namely the Extended Adpositional Phrase (XPP). After this in-depth, single-language study of manner adverbials, the chapter continues with a more global, cross-linguistic perspective on the inner structure of manner adverbials, starting from the hypothesis that, at a more abstract level, the adverbial patterns attested cross-linguistically all have an adpositional design. Finally, the chapter briefly discusses the relationship between inner structure and outer behavior (i.e., distribution) of manner adverbial expressions. Specifically, the question is addressed to what...

Focus and word order in Ch’ol: A production study

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Ch’ol is a Mayan language with verb-initial order and preverbal topic and focus positions (Vázquez Álvarez 2011; Clemens & Coon 2018). This paper presents the results of a systematic investigation of Ch’ol word order across various focus environments, including (i) broad focus, (ii) subject focus, (iii) object focus, (iv) contrastive subject focus, and (v) contrastive object focus. We analyze semi-spontaneous responses to questions designed to elicit these focus types from 31 Ch’ol speakers. Both verb-initial and subject-initial clauses are present across five focus conditions, revealing a more nuanced relationship between information structure and word order than previously reported. We also find that while contrastive focus is predominantly marked via fronting of the focused constituent, more variation is found with information focus, and fronting is found to be nonobligatory in every focus condition.

Verbal expressions of ability and possibility in Japanese

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Two important claims about modals have been proposed in the past few decades. The first claim is that modals have uniform lexical semantics, but are interpreted as epistemic when located structurally above temporal elements and as root when located below them. The second claim is that, across languages, items that express root ability have episodic, non-ability-attributing interpretations in addition to generic, ability-attributing interpretations. With these two claims as background, this study examines verbal expressions of modality in Japanese. The study shows that (i) there are only three verbal expressions of modality in Japanese: the ability suffix -e/rare, the possibility suffix -e/uru, and the negative possibility suffix -kane; (ii) while these three expressions’ syntactic positions with respect to tense do not contradict the first claim, they do not provide strong support for it either; and (iii) Japanese sentences with the ability suffix -e/rare...

The judgment and interpretation of Mandarin relative clauses by heritage speakers and second language learners

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines the judgment and interpretation of Mandarin relative clauses (RCs) by heritage speakers (HSs) and second language learners (L2ers) of Mandarin, using an acceptability judgment task (AJT) and a picture-based truth-value judgment task (TVJT), in order to examine whether there is dominant language transfer in this domain, and whether HSs and/or L2ers exhibit a subject-extracted RC (SRC) advantage. The HSs and L2ers were both English-dominant and matched on Mandarin proficiency. The AJT tested whether participants knew that Mandarin RCs are head-final, unlike head-initial English RCs. The TVJT tested whether participants correctly interpreted Mandarin RCs with two animate nouns. In the AJT, both HSs and L2ers rated head-final RCs significantly above head-initial RCs, overcoming English transfer of RC headedness with increased proficiency. In the TVJT, HSs performed similarly to L2ers; neither group showed a clear SRC advantage, contrary to the predictions of...

čto-clause translucence and the theory of weak islands: Beyond Subjacency, the ECP, and even the PIC

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article addresses two issues that emerge from a close look at extraction out of Russian indicative čto-clauses – the first being that these clauses show unexpected weak-island behavior, and the second the generally problematic question of how it can be possible for weak islands to allow “marginal” extraction at all (in argument cases), a grammaticality status never traditionally explained in pre-minimalist literature and theoretically impossible on core minimalist assumptions. An approach is proposed for weak islands under Minimalism that eliminates the non-minimalist principles that were claimed to account for their behavior (especially Subjacency and the Empty Category Principle [ECP]) and also allows for an understanding of why Russian indicative čto-clauses show the partial opacity observed.

Revisiting the COMP-trace effect: Syntax after all?

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The COMP-trace phenomenon has long resisted easy explanation or even consensus as to whether it is ultimately due to the syntax or something else. Two analyses are examined here, one based on a principle of syntax (Anti-locality) and the other based on a principle of sentence planning (Principle of End Weight; PEW). Three cases are presented in which the Anti-locality analysis predicts that a COMP-trace effect will arise, while the PEW analysis does not. In all three cases, involving inversion in matrix clauses, inversion in embedded clauses, and clauses headed by prepositional complementizers, the COMP-trace effect does seem to occur, suggesting that the Anti-locality analysis is correct. This result is compared to earlier evidence that suggested that the PEW analysis was empirically superior, and a new way of understanding these results is proposed that is compatible with the evidence presented here in favor of Anti-locality.

On O-Constructions in Jarawara

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The language Jarawara (Arauan, spoken in Brazil) exhibits a puzzling set of passive-like properties in its “O-Construction” (Dixon 2000, 2004). We argue that O-Constructions have a type of passive voice in some person combinations but not in others, and that they are unified in that they always have topic agreement on C with the internal argument. We relate this approach to recent research on Algonquian inverse systems (especially Oxford 2023a,b, 2024) which have also been argued to involve a passive-like voice-based alternation for specific person combinations. Our analysis captures facts about case, word order, divergences between C and T agreement, and the distribution of the passive-like prefix hi- (among other properties). Our findings provide support for the approach to person restrictions embodied in Oxford’s work and also demonstrate how topic agreement and the A system can interact. More generally, this work shows how a nuanced approach to passive constructions,...

Antipassive in a Minimalist universal grammar

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Legate (2021) deconstructs passive into three characteristic properties – agent demotion, theme promotion, and morphological marking – and shows that these properties vary independently across languages. She concludes that this range of variation supports an approach, such as Minimalism, in which universal grammar includes no information specific to voice. This brief note takes a similar approach to antipassive, a clause type whose typology has been investigated by Polinsky (2017). I first deconstruct antipassive into two characteristic properties – demotion of the internal argument, which comes in several subvarieties, and voice marking – and then suggest that these properties vary independently across languages. The data are drawn primarily from Austronesian languages.

Mandan φ-marking and the morphosyntax of first person plural

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the Mandan (Western Siouan) complex verb, the makeup of the prefixal field features two loci for φ-feature marking, separated by what the Siouanist literature calls “preverbs” (PV). The pre-PV φ-slot is for marking first person plural (1PL); the post-PV φ-slot is for markers of speech-act participants. The question central to this paper is what explains the positioning relative to the preverbs of the 1PL marker and the other φ-morphology of Mandan. The Mandan 1PL prefix, which has a morphologically transparent dual inclusive reading, is syntactically represented in the form of a comitative phrasal structure involving the asyndetic coordination of a plural pronoun and a combination of the first person singular and second person pronouns: ‘we, viz., I with you’. While 1PL is a morphosyntactic complex occupying SpecTP (preceding preverbs), the first and second person markers are agreement inflections (following preverbs), linked to pro’s in A-positions.

Shifting Russian-speaking diasporas: New directions in the study of Russian as a heritage language

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Russophone diaspora is one of the most established and well-studied diasporas across the world; however, the events of the past decade, especially since the start of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, and the intensification of political and social persecutions in the Russian Federation, began to significantly contribute to the reshaping of the Russian-speaking communities by a) prompting an intensified large-scale movement of Russian speakers across the globe and b) raising new questions about the future of Russophone communities in the world and the development of Russian as a heritage language. This paper provides a brief overview of the formation of Russophone diasporas and then focuses on the new wave of immigrants from the Russian Federation as well as refugees from Ukraine. It considers new sociolinguistic ecologies that are being shaped by this most recent movement of Russian-speaking migrants and the effect newcomers may have on more established Russian-speaking...