here - Linguistic Society of America

Jaime Pena (University of Oregon) Session 98Classifiers and areal diffusion in the Upper AmazonThis paper presents a comparative analysis of classifier systems found in languages spoken in the Upper Amazon area—roughlyin northeast Peru, east Ecuador and southeast Colombia: Peba, Yameo, Yagua (Peba-Yaguan), Waorani (isolate), Shiwilu(Kawapanan), Resígaro (Arawak), Arabela (Zaparoan), Orejon and Secoya (West Tukanoan). It is proposed that the observedsimilarities of classifiers systems in the area are due to areal diffusion. This diffusion most likely occurred before the 17th centuryand is linked to indigenous pre-Columbian trade and cultural exchange routes which traversed the area.Karen Pennesi (University of Western Ontario) Session 61Reading and righting the names at a graduation ceremonyThis paper reports on a pilot study identifying difficulties encountered by people at a Canadian university who either have non-Anglo names or who deal with the diversity of names in their work-related tasks. The focus is the uttering of names as a speechevent at a graduation ceremony. Orators follow a verification protocol to get the names right as a demonstration of respect, butmarking some names as difficult can contribute to students' feelings of alienation. Prior personal experiences of both orators andstudents, as well as interactions between them, influence how names are pronounced during the ceremony.Marilola Pérez (University of California, Berkeley) Session 85Aspects of a Caviteño Philippine Creole Spanish (PCS) argument markerPhilippine Creole Spanish (PCS) is the only Spanish-lexified contact language found in the Asia-Pacific region. Despite PCS’importance for a contact language typology, little is known about what the roles of the adstrate languages within the grammaticalstructure of PCS are. In my work, I examine a prenominal particle ‘con’, that directly bears on this question. I present fieldworkdata from the Cavite variety of PCS and argue that the observed distribution of ‘con’ is motivated by verb semantics anddiscursive features. I end by discussing implications of work on grammatical roles for our understanding of the development ofPCS.Charles Pfuwka (Midlands State University) Session 72Jabulani kuphela*: J.R. Goddard and the power of the brand nameThe brand name is a powerful tool, should be familiar, attractive to the consumer. Companies choose brand names as part of theirmarketing strategies. In Zimbabwe there is a big company, JR Goddard, that has managed to effectively combine names fromlocal languages with names from Hollywood celebrities. This paper discuss the onomastic properties these brand names and theystrongly reflect Zimbabwe’s multi cultural and multi lingual environment.Mike Pham (University of Chicago) Session 48Class(ifier) mobility: emergence of classifiers from compoundsIn languages with classifiers for nouns, words used as classifiers are often, if not always, also nouns, implying that classifiersdevelop from nouns; compounding is a (morpho)syntactic process facilitating this noun-to-classifier development. Vietnamesedata show that while nouns generally require classifiers in direct counting, headed compounds, which otherwise behave like barenouns, often have properties of classifier phrases, suggesting partial reanalysis of the compound head as a classifier -- Thai alsotargets compound heads in deriving repeater classifiers. Idiosyncratic meanings of similarly-headed compounds can semanticallybleach the head's meaning, facilitating full emergence of a classifier from the noun.Page Piccinini (University of California, San Diego) Session 30The predictive power of gradient phonetic cues in Spanish-English code-switchingThe present study investigates whether Spanish-English bilinguals use phonetic cues to anticipate code-switches. Listeners heardhalf of utterances up to and including the word like and said whether the utterance continued in the same language (monolingual)or switched languages (code-switch). For English stimuli listeners were more likely to call code-switch stimuli a code-switch thanmonolingual stimuli. When responding to code-switch stimuli listeners responded faster if they thought it was a code-switch. Thedifference in reaction times between monolingual stimuli and code-switch stimuli was greater for Spanish than English stimuli.These results show that listeners use gradient productions to anticipate code-switches.193