Department of Linguistics

Philology is to be understood here as the analysis of texts with a view to answering questions about language. After introducing the major known participants, viz., John Eliot (1604-1690) and the language contemporaneously called “Massachuset(t)” or simply “Indian”, I sketch the approach that I have taken in producing an e-text version of, principally, the translation of the (protestant) bible that is attributed to him. The main focus is then on the nature of the material and what its study demands, as far as possible on the basis of copies of original documents. A brief look at the pages on his writing system, as described in his grammar (1666), introduces typical problems of interpretation, and is followed by a slightly more detailed discussion of material that perhaps leads one to certain inferences about the quality of the translation, a matter of considerable controversy at the time. (The printing of the bible was very expensive and the sponsors had to be convinced.) If time permits, some very tentative inferences will follow or be interspersed about the ways in which the translation may have been carried out. An ulterior motive of the talk may be taken, according to taste, as a way of discouraging members of the audience from considering the undertaking of similar work, or perhaps even, according to temperament, as encouragement, particularly in the digitalization of extant texts and other material.

There has long been a debate in phonological theory about the roles of substance and markedness, with phonologists taking diametrically opposed positions on the importance of these to phonology. Perhaps the most frequent phonological diagnostics used to determine whether a feature is marked or unmarked are emergence-of-the-unmarked diagnostics, including neutralization and epenthesis. In this talk I present a cross-linguistic study of neutralization of place of articulation, concluding that this survey does not provide evidence for a universal place of articulation markedness hierarchy. It is often claimed that coronal and glottal places of articulation are what one finds in positions of neutralization as a result of neutralization (e.g., de Lacy 2006 for recent work on this). In fact in languages in which no contrast exists between places of articulation in a word-final position, that place of articulation can be restricted to (using stops as an example) coronal (e.g., Finnish) or laryngeal (e.g., Yagaria), but it can also be labial (e.g., Nimburan) or velar (e.g., some Fuzhou, some Quichua dialects). In languages which contrast two places of articulation in this position, the following contrasts are possible (taking into account only languages with labial, coronal, velar distinction): coronal-labial (e.g., Kiowa), coronal-velar (e.g., some Chinese dialects), labial-velar (e.g., some Vietnamese dialects). All possible combinations of two places of articulation thus are found cross-linguistically. Neutralization in the cases above is passive in the sense that it is based on distribution rather than synchronic alternations. Neutralization to the different major places of articulation is found actively as well, with synchronic alternations. While active neutralization to coronal and glottal places of articulation is well reported, in addition active neutralization can result in a labial place of articulation (e.g., Manam, some Spanish dialects) as well as in a velar place of articulation (e.g., some Spanish dialects). This study of neutralization of place of articulation suggests that neutralization is not very useful as a diagnostic in assessing cross-linguistic universal phonological markedness as crosslinguistically the full range of place features can appear in neutralization positions as a result of active neutralization. Two questions arise. First, why does neutralization not yield information about universal substantive phonological markedness? I argue that a basic principle is at work: in the absence of contrast, the phonetic realization is phonologically indeterminate. Second, why is it commonly believed that certain places of articulation can be identified as universally unmarked? This follows from the important role of articulatory and perceptual factors in realizing the output of neutralization; however, other reasons, including social factors, can override these. Thus emergence-of-the-unmarked phenomena reveal that a number of different factors can play a role in determining the output for a particular language, calling into question substantive theories of featural markedness.

For the past 25 years, the field has labored under the assumption that a quantificational binder must c-command any pronoun that it binds. This is despite well-known systematic counterexamples, including binding out of DP ("Everyone's father loves her") and donkey anaphora ("If John sees a donkey, he beats it"). I consider how the c-command requirement became the standard wisdom, survey a wide variety of counterexamples, both well-known and new, and conclude that we should abandon the c-command requirement, at least for quantificational binding. But how could a grammar work in which binding ignores c-command? I will describe a formal system developed in joint work with Chung-Chieh Shan (Rutgers) based on continuations. I show how the system provides analyses of binding out of DP while still accounting for a range of crossover facts. Finally, I show how this approach allows for a new account of donkey anaphora on which the indefinite antecedent ("a donkey") takes scope over and binds the donkey pronoun in the same manner as any quantificational binding relationship.

A recurring theme in work on lexically gradient phonological processes is that gradient and categorical processes often mirror one another: structures that are categorically banned in one language may be present but underrepresented in another. A common interpretation is that when possible, speakers use the same constraints to encode both kinds of effects. A more radical position is that when speakers encounter gradient processes with no categorical counterpart, they do not encode it grammatically (Becker et al. 2007). In this talk, I discuss a type of pattern that appears to be common as a statistical trend, but is rare or unattested as a categorical restriction in adult languages: “ganging up” effects in which unrelated marked structures co-occur less often than expected by chance. I argue that although such restrictions do not mirror categorical effects, they are nonetheless best modeled grammatically as the interaction of standard markedness constraints. I suggest that the discrepancy between the typology of gradient an categorical effects is due to a learning bias that makes categorical restrictions of this type unstable. A simple example comes from English. English phonology readily allows stop+liquid onset clusters (brown, green, blue) and s+stop coda clusters (tusk, best, lisp). However, combinations of these structures (grasp, grist, brisk) are far less numerous than expected given their independent frequencies, and many combinations are unattested (*trVsp/*drVsp, *plVsk/*blVsk, etc.). The counts in (1), based on the 6292 monosyllabic lemmas in CELEX, show that in the aggregate, coda sC# clusters are at least as common as their singleton s# counterparts. By contrast, (2) shows that in the presence of an onset cluster, coda clusters are rare. Preliminary experimental results indicate that speakers’ intuitions reflect this difference: doubly marked words like ?glisp are assigned lower acceptability than words with #gl or sp# alone. Gradient ganging up effects are intuitive, but as Pater (2008) notes, they cannot be derived with standard implementations of OT or Harmonic Grammar. I show that they can easily be captured with a modified procedure that segregates markedness and faithfulness violations (Albright, Magri and Michaels 2007). However, given that we do not find categorical bans on doubly marked forms, we must ask whether these gradient effects truly reflect a grammatical preference, or whether they are due to some other (perhaps task-dependent) type of evaluation. I argue that a unified grammatical analysis is desirable on several grounds. First, acceptability of doubly marked forms can be predicted from acceptability of individual clusters, which in turn follows straightforwardly from well-understood markedness constraints. A separate component would largely duplicate the grammar to achieve very similar predictions. More important, doubly marked forms may in fact be banned in stages of L1 acquisition. This, too, is most economically modeled with the very same mechanism. I suggest that the lack of categorical ganging effects in adult languages is not due to the fact that they are impossible grammars, but rather that they emerge only under very special weighting conditions which are at odds with mastery of singly marked structures. Thus, they are unstable states that the model is unlikely to remain in.

Abstract: "Word-final devoicing is a recurring phonological pattern in the world's languages. In this talk I present the results of an on- going study investigating the relation between this phonological pattern and the breakdown of vocal fold vibration frequently found in utterance-final position. Experimental evidence is provided in support of the claim that listeners have a bias toward identifying utterance-final obstruents as voiceless." Scott Myers has done extensive work on the morphology, phonology and phonetics of Bantu languages, especially in the area of tone. His well known paper on the OCP draws on his original research in Bantu. He has authored an influential suite of papers probing the role for phonology vs. phonetics in explaining a variety of tonal phenomena. While a graduate student at UMass he did field work on Shona in Zimbabwe; he later worked on Chichewa in Malawi; the rest of his field research was carried out in London, where he taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and in the States. His current research addresses issues at the phonetics-phonology interface both in Bantu and cross-linguistically.

In this presentation, I will closely examine Japanese possessor-raising constructions which have dative-possessor and genitive-possessor variants. It is shown that in the dative-possessor variant, the dative possessor is overtly extracted from the host possessive nominal, so that it takes a somewhat peculiar 'dative-nominative-dative' case pattern. On the other hand, in the genitive-possessor variant, which takes a 'nominative-dative' case pattern, the possessor remains within the possessive nominal on the surface. Nevertheless, the possessor in this variant is argued to undergo covert possessor raising. I will also show that some possessor constructions do not allow possessor raising at all. The discussion shows that in the possessor-raising constructions, the subject position may be vacant throughout the derivation but that when it needs to be filled by a possessor, its raising may be either overt or covert.

The surface order of morphemes in the verb word of Athapaskan languages has traditionally been considered to be idiosyncratic, stipulated by a template. In Rice 2000 I argued that what I called semantic scope plays an important role in the ordering of morphemes. Here I extend the account of affix ordering in the verb word, focusing on a series of problems that arise if scope alone is involved. I argue that if phonological factors are also taken into account, a systematicity to the complexities of morpheme ordering in the verb emerges, with affixes being segregated by their phonological shapes, and, within these phonologically determined groups, scope plays a major role in the ordering of affixes. I examine the principles that control the ordering in light of recent claims that functional principles such as parsability are key to affix ordering.

Larry Solan, Don Forchelli Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Brooklyn Law School, directs the Brooklyn Law School’s Center for the Study of Law, Language and Cognition. Prof. Solan is the author of Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice (with Peter Tiersma) (2005) and The Language of Judges (1993). Prof. Solan received his PhD in Linguistics from UMass Amherst in 1978.

Come and have lunch with us and meet your fellow linguistics majors. Prof. Larry Solan will be present at the lunch and would be happy to talk with people about his talk or about connections between linguistics and the law.