View the meeting handbook - Linguistic Society of America

Spanish subjects with unaccusative verbs, because they may precede or follow the verb (Torrego 1989). We show that weight alsoaffects preverbal positions. In addition, we investigate the most effective way of measuring weight: by words (Lohse, Hawkins, &Wasow 2004), syllables (Gries 2003), or phonemes. All of these strategies prove weight to be statistically significant, although wordswere the optimal measure.Daniel McClory (Yale University) Session 11Eric Raimy (University of Wisconsin, Madison)Enhanced edges: Morphological influence on linearizationLinearization is a core operation in approaches to phonology that assume precedence-based representations. We propose alinearization algorithm that adds and utilizes morphological information to the content of precedence links. This revision to thecontent of precedence links allows a language universal, completely local and deterministic linearization algorithm to be implemented.The empirical adequacy of the algorithm is demonstrated by providing analyses of Hab-Rep reduplication in Javanese, doublereduplication in Lushootseed and interposed reduplication in Indonesian.Thomas McFadden (University of Stuttgart) Session 1Locality & cyclicity in structural case assignmentI present a strictly local and cyclic analysis of case assignment. The central insight is that apparent long-distance assignment alwaysinvolves the nominative. Locality can thus be maintained if nominative is assigned by default rather than via Agree, for whichindependent support is presented. Accusative assignment, on the other hand, appears at first counter-cyclic, dependent on the case of ahigher DP. Data from certain kinds of ECM show, however, that it is the structural status of the higher argument, not its case, thatmatters. Thus a cyclic account is possible if case is assigned in a DM-style postsyntactic morphology.Teresa McFarland (University of California, Berkeley) Session 16Free affix order in TotonacI report a robust case of free variation in the order of verbal affixes in an endangered Mexican language: Filomeno Mata Totonac(FMT). This phenomenon has been reported only sparsely, most recently in Kiranti languages of Nepal (Bickel et al, to appear),where several inflectional prefixes may occur in random order. In FMT, variable order unconstrained by semantic scope ormorphological/syntactic constituency is found among a large number of derivational prefixes and suffixes, including reciprocal,applicative, and causative morphemes. These findings pose a challenge for generally accepted principles of affix ordering such asRice's scope Hhypothesis (Rice 2000).Laura McGarrity (University of Washington) Session 31Coda weight variability & context-dependency in Kuuku-Ya?uIn Kuuku-Ya?u (Pama-Nyungan), the weight of CVC syllables is contextually dependent. Closed syllables are generally light, as theyfail to attract quantity-sensitive primary stress, which falls on the rightmost long vowel in the word (else on the initial syllable).However, CVC syllables are contextually heavy in initial position, as evidenced by a process of gemination that closes a light, opensyllable bearing default primary stress due to a constraint requiring stressed syllables to be heavy. This variability of coda weight isaccounted for within optimality theory through parallel comparison of monomoraic and bimoraic parses of closed syllables forconstraint evaluation.Kathryn McGee (University of California, San Diego) Session 20Features of aspect in Chinese, Spanish, & EnglishBy defining the Mandarin Chinese verbal suffixes ñle, ñguo, and ñzhe with Cowper’s 2005 semantic features of INFL, I explain whythe interpretation of these suffixes is not the same as their equivalents in Spanish and English. I show how the same semantic featurecan be associated with different interpretations in Chinese and Spanish and how Chinese and English achieve the same interpretationwith different features. I argue that describing morphemes with hierarchically organized semantic features provides a systematic wayto account for cross-linguistic variation in the semantic interpretations associated with inflectional morphemes.Grant McGuire (Ohio State University) Session 55Phonetic category learning & perceptual cuesI describe a training experiment exploring the acquisition of phonetic categories and perceptual cues by adults. Subjects were trained148