View the meeting handbook - Linguistic Society of America

Stephen R. Anderson (Yale University)Clitics, the morphology-syntax interface, & the evidential value of endangered languagesI summarize three instances in which evidence from endangered languages provides crucial evidence for the theory of clitics: (1)Kwakw'ala shows that the affiliation of clitics can be driven by phonological considerations rather than by their syntax. (2) NiasSelatan and Kuuk Thaayorre show that phrasal properties can in some instances be realized by the word-level inflectional morphologyof a peripheral element. (3) Subject clitics in the Surmiran form of Rumantsch leads to the conclusion that quite separate aspects ofgrammatical organization can lead independently to surface ‘verb-second’ patterns. Endangered languages supply indispensableevidence that enriches our conception of the nature of grammatical structure.Mark C. Baker (Rutgers University)What if there were no noun-incorporating languages?Linguists are tempted to hope that the endangered languages are a random sample of the existing languages, so their extinction maynot warp our work too much. I show the dubiousness of this hope by first reviewing the considerable impact that the study of nounincorporation has had on the development of theoretical morphosyntax. Next I show that, of eight languages that have contributedsignificantly to the debate, all but two are endangered--and those two have the same subtype of incorporation. Such a limited samplewould not permit rich theoretical conclusions to be drawn in this domain.Juliette Blevins (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig)Endangered sound patterns: Some mutually feeding relationshipsPhonological theory, from early distinctive features, to recent emergentist proposals, maintains a solid grounding in endangeredlanguages. The typological and genetic diversity informing the study of sound patterns is amply represented in research articles andintroductory textbooks. With this grounding, phonological theory has been able to offer descriptive linguists new questions,paradigms, and techniques inspired by current models and hypotheses. I highlight cases where work on endangered languages hasinformed and transformed phonological theory and others where phonological theory has been the catalyst for insightful descriptionsof endangered languages and the source of theoretically challenging discoveries.Heidi Harley (University of Arizona)What does affixation mean? Some theoretical questions raised by complex verbs in Hiaki (Yaqui)Hiaki (Yaqui) exhibits a great deal of verbal compounding behavior, including obligatorily bound 'light verb' affixes of both familiarand less familiar types and, also, interestingly optionally bound complement-taking verb/affix 'hybrids', which may stand alone orsuffix to the verb of their complement clause. I examine the implications of these hybrids for both morphological and syntactictheory. It seems cross-linguistically that structures that require affixation in language X may be realized by isolating, 'syntactic'constructions in language Y. What about the converse? Are there structures that may not be realized by affixation? What doesaffixation mean, if anything, for the syntax?Maria Polinsky (University of California, San Diego/Harvard University)Is sluicing universal? Evidence from the fieldI examine the interaction between linguistic theory and endangered languages through the prism of sluicing. I present novel fieldworkdata from Aghem (wh-movement language) and Circassian (wh-in-situ language), neither of which has sluicing, thus appearing ascounterexamples to the claim that sluicing is universal (Merchant 2001). I show that the absence of sluicing is related to a moregeneral restriction against embedded CPs, independently motivated in both languages. Sluicing is allowed as long as the CP appearsas the matrix clause, in fragments. These findings bear on the theoretical issues of external merge (Pesetsky&Torrego 2004) and thetypology of sluicing.82