Department of Linguistics

In the first part of the talk I introduce a class of adjectives that, for some unexplained reason, exclude a collective reading of a plural subject. These I call "stubbornly distributive predicates". These predicates are then used to probe the question of whether mass noun phrases are semantically plural or singular (the question has been answered both ways in the literature). I conclude that neither answer is completely correct. I’ll claim there is a distinction between singularities and nonsingularities which is not a mere type distinction subject to the vicissitudes of a type shifter. Pluralities are a special case of non-singularities – the ones that have singularities as components and only some mass noun phrases refer to pluralities. I will show that the account is agnostic about 'minimal water parts' and that furthermore, discourse about water molecules is possible and is not expected to affect the way we talk about ‘water’. The model for understanding the connection lies in the difference between plurals and group terms (/the roses/ v. /the bunch/; /the stars/v. /the cluster/).

Romanian phonology is subject to inflection dependence, a systematic restriction on phonological alternations. Inflection dependence means that segmental alternations are permitted in the derivatives of a lexeme only if certain inflected forms of that lexeme, its inflectional bases (Albright 2002), independently display the alternation. The study documents this pervasive constraint on alternations and proposes an analysis for it, based on a modified variant of Lexical Conservatism (Steriade 1999b). The broader significance of inflection dependence is the need to allow access in phonological computations to a broader class of lexically related, derived lexical items relative to what the phonological cycle (Chomsky et al. 1956) and its descendants permit. I discuss the difference between inflection dependence and the phonological cycle and propose a mechanism that reduces the formal differences between them to rankings of correspondence and phonotactics. Albright, Adam 2002 The identification of bases in morphological paradigms, UCLA PhD thesis, available at http://web.mit.edu/albright/www/. Chomsky, Noam, Morris Halle and Fred Lukoff. 1956. “On accent and juncture in English”. In: For Roman Jakobson, 65-80. The Hague: Mouton. Steriade, Donca 1999b "Lexical conservatism in French adjectival liaison", in B. Bullock, M. Authier, and L, Reed, eds., Proceedings of LSRL 25, Benjamins, pp 243-271.

Prince and Smolensky (1993/2004: 236) briefly consider, but reject, a version of Optimality Theory in which constraint ranking is replaced by numerical weighting, as in OT’s predecessor Harmonic Grammar (HG: Legendre et al. 1990; Smolensky and Legendre 2006). Weighted constraints have a number of attractive properties. One is that they offer an account of cumulative constraint interaction that does not share the problems of Smolensky’s (2006) extension of OT, Local Constraint Conjunction (Pater et al. 2007a). A second is that weighted constraints are compatible with learning algorithms that can learn gradually and correctly converge on a final state grammar (Jäger 2006; Boersma and Pater 2007; Jesney and Tessier 2007; Pater 2007). A third attractive property of weighted constraint grammars is that they can be straightforwardly adapted to yield variation, with the learning algorithms remaining robust (Goldwater and Johnson 2003; Boersma and Pater 2007). In this talk, I begin by illustrating these properties of HG with a case of cumulative constraint interaction from the phonology of Japanese loanwords (Kawahara 2006). I then turn to problems with weighted constraints that may have discouraged earlier research. Constructing an analysis of a language can be much more difficult with weighted constraints than with ranked ones. It is even more difficult to determine what languages a given set of weighted constraints predicts to be possible. To address these problems, Pater, Potts and Bhatt (2007b) developed a method of solving OT/HG learning problems with the simplex algorithm, implemented as HaLP (Potts et al. 2007). OT-Help (Becker et al. 2007) uses this implementation to calculate typological predictions. Using OT-Help, we find that constraint sets that are used for stress typology in standard OT do in fact vastly overgenerate in HG (Pater et al. 2007b). Prince and Smolensky (1993/2004: ch. 2) also consider an alternative model of interaction between Gen’s operations and Eval’s constraints, which they term Harmonic Serialism. McCarthy (2006 et seq.) demonstrates that Harmonic Serialism resolves a number of problems for standard OT. In the final part of the talk, I briefly show that Harmonic Serialism also yields benefits for HG, making it far from obvious that ranking is required to restrict the theory (see Pater et al. 2007a for related discussion).

Why do we say "redness" but not "redth"? (We do say "wide-width".) Why do we "donate money to charity" but not "donate charity money"? (We do "give charity money" as well as "give money to charity".) Why did three classes of weak verbs in Old English collapse into only one, the regular class, by the time of Modern English? Underneath these three classic puzzles (Aranoff 1976, Baker 1979,Kiparsky 1976) is the problem of linguistic productivity. Cast in terms of language acquisition, we ask, How does the child make just the right level of linguistic generalizations, which are almost always laden with exceptions? We approach the problem by developing a calculus of cost-benefit analysis, under which the cost of a potentially productive process and the exceptions to it can be measured and optimized. What emerges is the pattern of the Tipping Point, a place where the increasing cost of storing and processing more and more exceptions outweighs the benefits from the automatic application of a productive processes. Empirical case studies include the structure of the German lexicon, the U-shape learning in morphology, the acquisition of dative constructions, and the demise of the weak verb classes in Old English.

Tom Roeper, Professor, Department of Linguistics, will read selections from "The Prism of Grammar: How Child Language Illuminates Humanism" [MIT Press 2007] Lisa Green, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics: will speak on "Reflections on Systemic Features of African American English" Peter Elbow, Professor Emeritus, Department of English: will speak on "Writing in Spoken Vernacular" Co-sponsored by the Center for Study of African American Language, the Department of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the General Book Department at the University Store

Over the last century, "philology" has gone from the name of a central historical method in the humanities to an antiquated name for historical linguistics. Now, the advent of extensive online corpora promises to breathe new life into the philological enterprise. We can track the origin and development of words more accurately, rapidly, and in greater detail than was ever possible before and capture nuances of meaning that we could previously talk about only impressionistically.

The Linguistics Department honors graduating senior Linguistics majors with a lunch and celebration. Current majors and the rest of the department are also invited.