here - Linguistic Society of America

Paul Olejarczuk (University of Oregon) Session 17Vsevolod Kapatsinski (University of Oregon)The syllabification of medial clusters: evidence from stress assignmentPrevious psycholinguistic work has yielded somewhat varying results with respect to how English speakers syllabify intervocalicconsonant clusters. This variability could at least partly be explained by the metalinguistic nature of the experimental tasksemployed. In this study, we employ a new paradigm that implicitly tests syllabification by exploiting a known relationshipbetween stress assignment and syllable weight. We apply the task to trisyllabic non-words containing medial clusters that vary in(1) legality in onset position and (2) sonority profile. Results show that whereas (1) makes a significant contribution tosyllabification, (2) shows a numerical (but non-significant) tendency.Ann Marie Olivo (Rice University) Session 54Christian Koops (University of New Mexico)Lowering of upgliding vowels in New York City EnglishWe examine the phonologically parallel lowering of the non-low upgliding vowels /i, e, u, o/ in the variety of New York CityEnglish (NYCE) spoken by three generations of native Long Islanders. For each for the four vowels, lowering is restricted toword-final, open syllables. The mid vowels, especially /e/, show a larger split between lowering and non-lowering contexts thanthe high vowels. We go on to explore the social distribution and historical trajectory of this feature, as well as how lowering covarieswith the presence of other, better documented traditional NYCE features such as vocalization of coda-/ɹ/ and backing of/aɪ/.Carolyn O'Meara (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) Session 99Octavio Alonso González Guadarrama (Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia)Accessibility to results and primary data of research on indigenous languages of MexicoIn this paper we address the way in which the linguist can comply with her obligation to share the data of her study with thecommunity of speakers, while at the same time doing so in a way that takes into consideration the fact that the primary datalocated in international digital archives is not as accessible to speakers as might be thought at first glance. All of this will beaddressed taking into consideration the specific situations that linguists encounter while working with members of indigenouscommunities of Mexico.Natalie Operstein (California State University, Fullerton) Session 101Zaniza Zapotec phonology in the light of contact with SpanishThis paper is a case study in linguistic stratigraphy focusing on an under-documented Mesoamerican language from Oaxaca,Mexico. Since sixteenth century, Zaniza Zapotec (ZZ) has been in contact with Spanish, acquiring a large number of loanwords.Owing to changes in Spanish phonology, many of the loanwords can be separated into up to three layers, yielding informationabout the relative chronology of language-internal phonological developments in ZZ, pre-contact consonantal and vocalicinventories, and changes in ZZ phonology under the influence from Spanish.Priscilla Ord (McDaniel College) Session 68On the Origin of [the Name of the] Species: “Going Once, Going Twice, Sold to the Highest Bidder”For centuries scientists have employed a method of binomial nomenclature in naming genera and species by means of two Latinnames. Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus first introduced this system in the 18 th century. In the last decade, however, namingrights to various species have been auctioned off. As an example, Lebbus clarehanna, a species of shrimp discovered off thesouthwest coast of Australia by a University of Melbourne graduate student in 2005 was named by Luc Longley, a formerChicago Bulls basketball player, who secured the winning bid with $2,900 and named the delicate crustacean after his fifteenyear-olddaughter.Polly O’Rourke (University of Maryland) Session 34Working memory capacity and the cognitive underpinnings of syntactic processingThis study sought to elucidate the interaction between the subcomponents of working memory and the processing of complexsyntax by examining the relationship between four measures, each reflecting different aspects of working memory (reading span,operation span, N-back and anti-saccade) and accuracy on a sentence comprehension task involving syntactically complex189