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esults, based on the notion of Tonal Center-of-Gravity, both accurately predicts attested tonal timing patterns in English, andallows us to maintain SA in its strongest, simplest form.Sonia Barnes (The Ohio State University) Session 17Variation in urban Asturian Spanish: -es/-as alternation in feminine plural formsSpeakers of Asturian Spanish alternate in their use of the Asturian and the Spanish morphemes to mark feminine plural. In thisstudy I perform a quantitative analysis of the distribution of these variants in the speech of one of the largest urban areas in theregion, Gijón. The data for the study was collected using sociolinguistic interviews and two dependent variables were analyzed:F1 and F2 frequencies, treated both as categorical and as continuous variables. A mixed effects model using speaker and lexicalitem as random variables was developed to analyze the effect of linguistic and social factors.Cristiano Barreto (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro) Session 78Chinese historical phonological studies: indigenous and foreign influencesThe discipline of Chinese phonology has had a long and rich history. Chinese phonological studies developed highly particularanalyses adapted to their local interests, but on the other hand experienced important influences from abroad. The interplay ofnative and foreign contributions to the history of Chinese phonology is still a matter of debate today. I intend to briefly summarizethe major factors that shaped its history until the more recent reconstructions of Middle and Old Chinese of the 20th and 21stcenturies and set it against the backdrop of a broader assessment of Chinese vis-à-vis Western linguistics.Michael Barrie (Sogang University) Session 17Unaccusativity and VPs in Northern IroquoianWe show here, using repetitive marking and the notion of unaccusative predicates that Northern Iroquoian languages have adistinct VP node despite failing to show many of the traditional subject-object asymmetries. This putative lack of suchasymmetries suggests a flat structure for the sentence in Northern Iroquoian languages. All Northern Iroquoian languages have arepetitive marker /s-/ that appears inside the verbal complex. We show that the repetitive marker takes scope over the object butnot the subject. However, we show that it can take scope of the subject of a prototypical unaccusative.Michael Barrie (Sogang University) Session 102On repetitive markers in CayugaWe report on some properties of the repetitive markers in Cayuga, both synthetic and analytical. We show that the synthetic forminteracts with the sentence-level syntax casting doubts on a strict separation between syntactic and morphological modules. Likeall Northern Iroquoian languages, Cayuga has a repetitive prefix /s-/ and a free standing adverb roughly equivalent to ‘again’. Theaffixal repetitive marker can take scope outside the verb, in contrast to English. Another fact about the repetitive marker is that itcombines relatively freely with verbs of various aktionsart types. That is, it is not restricted to accomplishments as in English.Herbert Barry III (University of Pittsburgh) Session 62Aylene S. Harper (Community College of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania)Diversification of personal names continued from 2005 to 2010 for Whites but not BlacksHigh diversity of personal names was measured by a large number of the most frequent names that were given to 50% ofthe individuals born in Pennsylvania in five-year intervals, 1990 to 2010. The diversity score in 2010 was 771 for Blackfemales, 404 for Black males, 148 for White females, and 69 for White males. Diversity increased greatly after 1990.From 2005 to 2010, diversity continued to increase for Whites but not for Blacks. The racial difference in diversitytherefore converged, becoming smaller in 2010 than in 2005.Marc-Alexandre Beaulieu (University of Leiden) Session 71A diachronic outlook of Cobo’s early Spanish toponymy in South AmericaBernabé Cobo’s (1580-1657) became one of the New World’s most outstanding historians. In his book History of the IncaEmpire, the author is giving an exhaustive list of Spanish place names that can be found in South America. Places were givenSpanish names from Spain’s cities or provinces. Some others were named from angels or saints or from holy mysteries, whileothers were named based on their founder’s name. In this study, I will first try to localize all the toponyms listed in this book and Iwill look at the fate of those names up to present time129