View the meeting handbook - Linguistic Society of America

Adam Baker (University of Arizona) Session 3Quantitative models of internal & social factors in sound changeI present a quantitative computational model to test hypotheses about the interaction of internal and external factors in sound change.Simulated speakers interact with one another and modify their pronunciations based on social parameters; coarticulatory biases arealso optionally present in individual speakers. Results of simulations demonstrate that entire populations can participate in a soundchange that is phonetically-motivated for only a subset of speakers. This effect is robust even in sparsely connected social networks,indicating that sound changes can differentially affect subpopulations of a speech community only where one population activelyavoids the pronunciations of another speech community.Brett Baker (University of New England, Australia) Session 37Mark Harvey (University of Newcastle, Australia)Complex predicates & argument structureWe argue that complex predicates fall into two classes in terms of argument structure. In coverb constructions, the contributingpredicates 'merge' to form single predicates at 'lexical conceptual structure' (LCS; Jackendoff 1990) that have the semantic range ofmonomorphemic verbs in English. In many serial verb constructions, by contrast, the contributing predicates do not merge. Thisallows for a much wider range of LCSs. However, none of the current analyses of complex predicates predict these two classes. Weargue that these differences fall out from the method of composition of the LCSs of each type.Wendy Baker (Brigham Young University) Session 27Laura Catharine Smith (Brigham Young University)The impact of cross-language perception on learning French & German vowelsThis study examines whether native English speakers judge English /i/ and /u/ as being more perceptually similar to either German orFrench /i/, /u/, /y/ and whether differences in these judgments cause differences in how accurately learners of German or Frenchperceive and produce vowels in their second language (L2). Results suggest that not only the language but also the L2 dialectadvanced learners were exposed to affect both their similarity judgments between English and German/French vowels and their abilityto produce (but not perceive) the vowels of their L2. Acoustic analyses are also used to account for the findings.Douglas Ball (Stanford University) Session 33Aki the predicator: A unified analysis of Niuean instrumentalsIn reassessing the behavior of preposition/particle aki in the Polynesian language Niuean, I argue that aki is a predicator, a kind ofdeficient verb with verbal lexical semantics but without verbal syntax. The dyadic, eventive denotation of aki can explain both theexceptional absolutive case-marking, both when aki is a ‘preposition’ and a ‘particle’, as well as the thematic restrictions put on theexternal argument when aki is a particle. Finally, this account feeds a view of aki-object extraction where the object of aki extracts asan ordinary absolutive, eliminating the need for the second aki proposed by Massam (1998).Marlyse Baptista (University of Georgia) Session 90Bare nouns in Cape Verdean Creole, European & Brazilian Portuguese: A comparative analysisI demonstrate how the determiner systems of Cape Verdean Creole (CVC), European Portuguese (EP), and Brazilian Portuguese (BP)diverge and converge. The use of bare nouns in CVC is significantly more widespread than in EP and BP where bare nouns are usedfor abstract, mass, or mass-type nouns and where bare plurals (overt plural marking) convey a generic, or an indefinitenonspecific/nonreferential plural reading. BP departs from EP and behaves like CVC in that it uses bare nouns (no plural marking)with a generic or indefinite nonspecific/nonreferential plural interpretation and proper names are not modified by definite determiners.Michael Barrie (University of British Columbia) Session 29The CED & cyclic linearizationThis proposal offers a novel account of lack of extraction from subjects with expanded empirical coverage. We propose thatextraction from a moved XP is possible only if the XP has not moved across a phase boundary. Following Fox and Pesetsky 2005, weassume that linearization takes place near spell-out. If an XP moves out of a phase, its internal constituents are linearized before thatphase is closed off. Once it has been linearized, no further operations may alter that linear order, effectively freezing the XP, givingrise to CED effects.102