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View the meeting handbook - Linguistic Society of America

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Scott Drellishak (University <strong>of</strong> Washington) Session 7Statistical techniques for detecting & validating phones<strong>the</strong>mesPhones<strong>the</strong>mes are "form-meaning pairings that crucially are better attested in <strong>the</strong> lexicon <strong>of</strong> a language than would be predicted, allo<strong>the</strong>r things being equal" (Bergen 2004). English gleam, glare, and glisten, for example, share a meaning related to light or vision. Ipropose a statistical, computational, language-independent method for detecting phones<strong>the</strong>mes that involves examining dictionarywords for correlations between phonetic content and meaning, using orthography as a proxy for phonetic content and definitions as aproxy for meaning. The method is based on latent semantic analysis (Deerwester et. al. 1990) and <strong>the</strong> information-<strong>the</strong>oretic concept<strong>of</strong> mutual information (Fano 1961).Stanley Dubinsky (University <strong>of</strong> South Carolina) Session 25On <strong>the</strong> syntax <strong>of</strong> exhaustive control & <strong>the</strong> calculus <strong>of</strong> events controlExhaustive control (EC) verbs (try) can be distinguished from partial control (PC) verbs (want) by a number <strong>of</strong> diagnostics. Landau's2000/2004 analysis involves T/Agr features and T-to-C movement. However, EC nominals (attempt) and PC nominals (desire)exhibit <strong>the</strong> same contrasts without <strong>the</strong> required CP-TP structure. In <strong>the</strong> proposed event-based analysis, only EC involves movement.EC involves vP complements, PC involves TP/EventP complements, and movement from event-checking to <strong>the</strong>ta-checking positionsis blocked. The restriction on movement from Ev-positions to Th-positions mirrors <strong>the</strong> classic prohibition on movement from A-barto A positions and permits raising but not control across TP/EventP.Karen A. Duchaj (Nor<strong>the</strong>astern Illinois University) Session 71Jeanine Ntihirageza (Nor<strong>the</strong>astern Illinois University)Law & Order, “Special Victims Unit”: An ethnographic analysis <strong>of</strong> address formsWe examine address forms in <strong>the</strong> <strong>America</strong>n workplace. Previous studies have <strong>of</strong>ten focused on individuals' relationships--age, rank,etc.--as determiners <strong>of</strong> address. Examination <strong>of</strong> data from <strong>the</strong> television drama Law and Order, “Special Victims Unit” reveals thatthis explanation falls short. While static roles set <strong>the</strong> parameters for which forms are available, conversational style, as determinedmoment to moment by <strong>the</strong> speaker, is <strong>the</strong> final determining factor. Our study contends that address forms are conversational toolsemployed by speakers to dynamically reflect and create <strong>the</strong> style <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> conversation and that such uses facilitate <strong>the</strong> accomplishment<strong>of</strong> tasks.Lachlan Duncan (University at Albany, State University <strong>of</strong> New York) Session 95Phrasal noun incorporation in Chuj MayanChuj Mayan manifests classic 'compounding' noun incorporation (NI) (Mithun 1984, Rosen 1989) although its incorporated nounexhibits unusual dialectical variation. A morpholexical analysis cannot account for NI in Chuj's San Sebastián dialect because itsincorporated noun can be modified by noncompounding prenominal adjectives as well as postnominal adjectives and finite relativeclauses. I contend that Asudeh's (2004) and Asudeh and Ball's (2005) non projecting Ssemantic argument (NPSA) presents <strong>the</strong>optimal approach to account for Chuj's NI and its complex modificational and phrasal alternations. Indeed <strong>the</strong> NPSA approach showspromise for <strong>the</strong> analysis <strong>of</strong> NI in o<strong>the</strong>r Mayan languages.Walter Edwards (Wayne State University) Session 93Tense in non-past-copula constructions in Guyanese Creole: Implications for grammar <strong>the</strong>oryI begin with a brief examination <strong>of</strong> copula behavior in Rural Guyanese Creole (RGC) and Urban Guyanese Creole (UGC) and proceedto consider what <strong>the</strong>se syntactic behaviors imply for <strong>the</strong> underlying grammar <strong>of</strong> nonsentential small clauses, particularly in non-pastcontexts. GC data show that <strong>the</strong> copula is absent in non-past utterances across syntactic contexts. This observation has importantconsequences--first, that RGC and UGC are similar codes; and second, that <strong>the</strong>se varieties exemplify <strong>the</strong> existence <strong>of</strong> grammars thatare fully intact yet lack <strong>the</strong> syntactic tense node. Such grammars allow for <strong>the</strong> nonexpression <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> semantically empty copula in <strong>the</strong>present tense.Patience Epps (University <strong>of</strong> Texas, Austin) Session 102Hup (Amazonia) & <strong>the</strong> typology <strong>of</strong> question formationI examine an apparent typological oddity in <strong>the</strong> Amazonian language Hup (Nadahup/Makú family). In violation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> universalproposed by Greenberg 1966, Hup uses a word order inversion strategy for polar (yes-no) questions but not for content questions.116

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