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Suwon Yoon (University of Chicago) Session 12An argument/adjunct asymmetry in intervention effectsI present a new set of facts that has the potential to reorient the debate on intervention effects. I have found in a series of experimentsusing magnitude estimation tasks and phonetic analysis that only argument wh-phrases trigger intervention effects and that adjunctwh-phrases do not. This novel fact is extremely surprising given much earlier work on argument/adjunct asymmetries; in fact, it isalmost diametrically the opposite of Szabolcsi and Zwarts 1993. However, I claim that it is the adjuncts that are insensitive to theinterveners, calling into question a pure semantic account.Tae-Jin Yoon (University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign) Session 18Jennifer Cole (University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign)Mark Hasegawa-Johnson (University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign)On the edge: Acoustic cues to layered prosodic domainsProsodic structure encodes the grouping of words into hierarchically layered prosodic constituents, including the prosodic word,intermediate phrase (ip) and intonational phrase (IP). We investigated the phonetic encoding of prosodic structure in Radio Newsspeech through analysis of the acoustic correlates of prosodic boundary and their interaction with accent at three levels of prosodicstructure: Word, ip, and IP. Evidence for acoustic effects of prosodic boundary is shown in measures of duration, F0, and intensitylocal to the domain-final rhyme. These findings provide strong evidence for prosodic theory, showing acoustic correlates of a 3-waydistinction in boundary level.Nina Azumi Yoshida (University of California, Los Angeles) Session 36Nominalized predicate constructions as modals in JapanesePast studies have noted that Japanese employs the morphosyntax of nominalized predicates as a conventional way of expressingdeontic and epistemic modality. Such modal nominalized predicates (MNP) constructions characteristically take the form of apredicate nominalized by a keisiki meisi 'formal noun' and followed optionally by the copula da. This study selectively focuses on theMNP constructions no(da), koto(da), and mono(da). By analyzing the form-function relationship in Japanese between these MNPconstructions and their interpretations in varying discourse contexts, it seeks to shed light on the syntactic and semantic factorsmotivating the expression of speaker modality in this manner.Keiko Yoshimura (University of Chicago) Session 17Japanese -shika 'only' as NPI universal with the semantics of exceptive markerI examine a Japanese exclusive particle -shika 'only' and provide a compositional semantic analysis. The analysis proposes that thisitem contains a universal quantifier, which needs to take wide scope with respect to negation, rejecting an alternative narrow scopeexistential approach. The proposed analysis ties in its semantic similarity to exceptive construction and its similarity in negativepolarity sensitivity to n-words in negative concord structure. In fact, this analysis of -shika aligns this item with wh-mo 'any x'paradigm in Japanese, supporting the claim that there must be n-words that must be analyzed as universal rather than existential.Alan Yu (University of Chicago) Session 38The role of normalization in differential phonologizationDifferential phonologization (DP) obtains when one phonetic precursor gives rise to a new phonological pattern more readily thananother, even though both sets of phonetic precursors may give rise to sound changes. Moreton 2006 attributes DP to /patternselectivity/ and /phonetic precursor robustness/. While Moreton takes pattern selectivity to be key, I argue for the primacy of phoneticprecursor robustness as a principal source of DP, based on the results of an experiment looking at listeners' differential normalizationresponses to perceived duration with respect to the level, extent, and direction of /f_0 /.Hana Zabarah (Georgetown University) Session 80The 'noun' in history: A diachronic analysis in medieval Arabic grammatical theoryThe notion of ‘nouns’ developed gradually in Arabic grammatical theory in medieval times, starting with simple descriptions to moreelaborate definitions. Examination of these early definitions and exploring their development from the 2/8th century through the6/12th century should lead us to a deeper understanding of the progression of Arabic grammatical theory of the period. I attempt tofollow the development of these definitions through careful study of works by well-known grammarians of the period and brieflyexamine the influence from logicians and philosophers as it pertains to the grammarians' understanding of the concept of the noun.176