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Vita G. Markman (Pomona College) Session 20Two be's & predicate case in Russian: Matrix vs embedded clausesI address a prohibition on instrumental predicates in Russian present tense main clauses and their obligatory presence in embeddedclauses. I propose that there are two verbs be in Russian (jest' and byt') that have collapsed into one paradigm. Jest' lacks person,number, and aspect features while byt' is featurally robust. However, byt' does not exist in the present tense--jest' must be usedinstead. I argue that aspect features are crucial for licensing instrumental predicate case. Since jest' lacks them, instrumentalpredicates are impossible in present tense main clauses. In embedded clauses the matrix verb's aspect licenses instrumental predicatecase.Steve Marlett (SIL/University of North Dakota) Session 97Stress & extrametricality in SeriThe major pattern in the Seri language is for primary stress to fall on the penultimate syllable of the root (not the word). The latterdetail makes the stress system somewhat opaque; the boundaries between roots and affixes are often not clear. The facts arecomplicated in various other ways as well. First, final heavy syllables attract stress. Second, a final consonant generally counts asbeing extrametrical for the purpose of stress (although not for the minimal word condition in Seri). Third, some words areidiosyncratically marked as having an entire final extrametrical syllable.Andrew Martin (University of California, Los Angeles) Session 7Geminate avoidance in English morphologyGeminate consonants, although permitted in English across morpheme boundaries (e.g. nighttime), are statistically underrepresented.I propose that this is because learners of English internalize competing generalizations: Not only are geminates forbidden withinmorphemes, they are also rare overall since they only occur in a restricted class of words. I formalize this as a grammar consisting ofweighted constraints, coupled with a maximum entropy learning algorithm. Even when trained on data with no bias againstgeminates, this learner assigns the general constraint “*Geminate a nonzero weight, resulting in less-than-perfect well-formednessratings for compounds with geminates”.Kosuke Matsukawa (University at Albany, State University of New York) Session 38Reconstruction of Proto-Trique vowelsTrique languages (Chicahuaxtla Trique, Copala Trique, and Itunyoso Trique) are spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico, and belong to theMixtecan family of the Otomanguean stock. In Proto-Trique, seven oral vowels (/*i/, /*e/, /*ï/, /*ë/, /*a/, /*o/, /*u/) and four nasalvowels (/*in/, /*ïn/, /*an/, /*un/) are reconstructible, and these 11 vowels have four qualities (short vowel, long vowel, glottalizedvowel, and aspirated vowel). I show how the Proto-Trique vowel system was reconstructed and how the reconstructed Proto-Triquevowels have undergone historical sound changes in its three daughter languages.Stephen Matthews (University of Hong Kong) Session 91Virgina Yip (Chinese University of Hong Kong)Wh-interrogatives in Chinese Pidgin English: To move or not to moveWhile English-language sources for CPE typically show fronting of wh-phrases as in (1), newly transcribed data from a Chinesesource also show wh-in-situ as in (2):(1) How muchee you gib? [how much are you offering](2) You wantchee how muchee? [how much do you want]Intermediate cases including optional and partial wh-movement are also attested in the same source, as well as in bilingual childrenexposed to Cantonese and English from birth. Wh-in-situ is argued to reflect the influence of Cantonese as substrate language in CPE,and as dominant language in bilingual development.Roberto Mayoral Hernández (University of Southern California) Session 35Asier Alcázar (University of Southern California)A corpus analysis of weight & unaccusativity in SpanishAbundant research reports that weight affects the position of postverbal constituents (Hawkins 1994, 2004; Wasow 1997, 2002). Ourstudy analyzes whether preverbal positions are also affected by this processing constraint. In particular, we focus on the position of147