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here - Linguistic Society of America

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sentences (garden-path and object relatives). Comprehension accuracy was lower for syntactically complex sentences thancontrols. Of the working memory measures, only operation span score predicted accuracy for syntactically complex sentences.This finding indicates that the domain general ability to perform under divided attention underpins the successful comprehension<strong>of</strong> complex syntax.Rafael Orozco (Louisiana State University) Session 51Spanish in New York City: what can we learn from the future?This variationist study explores Spanish in New York City through the prism <strong>of</strong> the expression <strong>of</strong> futurity among speakers <strong>of</strong>Puerto Rican and Colombian origin, respectively. Interesting similarities shared by both speaker groups in the effects <strong>of</strong> externalconstraints reflect Colombians’ assimilation to their new sociolinguistic landscape. They now show tendencies similar to those <strong>of</strong>New York Puerto Ricans but different from those prevalent in Colombia. The results provide robust evidence <strong>of</strong> the virtualcompletion <strong>of</strong> a change in progress aided by the favorable setting provided by NYC that would result in the demise <strong>of</strong> themorphological future.Carmel O’Shannessy (University <strong>of</strong> Michigan) Session 84The role <strong>of</strong> multiple sources in the creation <strong>of</strong> novel formal catgeories: Light Warlpiri as a case studyLight Warlpiri is a new mixed language in northern Australia, which combines nominal morphology from Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan), and verbal structure from English and/or Kriol (an English-lexified creole). It was formed when young childrenanalyzed codeswitched speech as a single system, adding innovations. The innovations are in the verbal auxiliary system, inwhich t<strong>here</strong> is a formal modal distinction, future-nonfuture, which is not the distinction made in the source languages. Creation <strong>of</strong>a new formal category also occurs in pidgins, creoles and a linguistic area. It may be that multiple sources can lead to the creation<strong>of</strong> a new formal category.Dennis Ott (University <strong>of</strong> Groningen) Session 17Connectivity in dislocation and the structure <strong>of</strong> the left peripheryLeft-dislocation constructions in which the dislocated XP shows connectivity into the main clause have not received a satisfyingsyntactic analysis as yet. The reason is an apparent paradox, thwarting movement and base-generation approaches alike:dislocated XPs have both clause-internal and clause-external properties. To resolve this paradox, this paper proposes an analysis<strong>of</strong> dislocated XPs as elliptical clauses surfacing in juxtaposition to their host clause. In addition to resolving the (anti-)connectivity paradox, the analysis provides a novel alternative to ‘cartographic’ approaches that assume dislocation to target adedicated specifier position, t<strong>here</strong>by weakening the case for a left-peripheral functional sequence.Dennis Ott (University <strong>of</strong> Groningen) Session 25Mark de Vries (University <strong>of</strong> Groningen)Right-dislocation as deletionThis talk argues that dislocated XPs in right-dislocation (RD) constructions are biclausal structures in which two parallel clausesare juxtaposed. The linearly second clause is reduced by PF-deletion, leaving a single XP (the ‘dislocated’ XP) as a remnant. Weshow that this deletion analysis is empirically superior to movement or base-generation analyses, as it can account for bothconnectivity and anti-connectivity effects in RD. The approach assimilates RD to the family <strong>of</strong> clausal-ellipsis constructions, suchas sluicing and fragment answers, relying exclusively on independently motivated grammatical computations (A-bar movementand PF-deletion), effectively eliminating RD as a construction.Livia Oushiro (Universidade de São Paulo) Session 21Ronald Beline Mendes (Universidade de São Paulo)Cross-over effects <strong>of</strong> variable nasal /e/ in Brazilian PortugueseFrom 102 sociolinguistic interviews, we present correlational analyses <strong>of</strong> the variable realization <strong>of</strong> nasal /e/ in BrazilianPortuguese (e.g. fazenda 'farm') as a monophthong or a diphthong. We show that, while general results point to a change inprogress led by women and upper-class speakers towards the diphthongized variant -as expected in change from below-, t<strong>here</strong> area number <strong>of</strong> contexts in which this pattern is reversed and the innovative variant is more favored by certain subgroups <strong>of</strong> men andworking-class speakers. In showing these cross-over effects, we discuss their implications for our understanding <strong>of</strong> socialmeaning and language change.190

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