Title:  Free choice and other reasons for disjunctions

Abstract

Title: Pama-Nyungan Phylogenetics and Beyond

Abstract

Title: Advances in Proto-Basque Reconstruction and The Proto-Indo-European-Euskara Hypothesis

Abstract

Title:  A Parameter Hierarchy for Passives (Joint work with Michelle Sheehan)

(Non)-Exhaustivity of "Only"

Experimental Comparisons of Presuppositions and Implicatures

Abstract:
A core tenet in the theoretical study of linguistic meaning is that the overall meaning conveyed by an utterance is a conglomerate of different types of inferences, such as entailments, presuppositions, and implicatures. These are commonly assumed to differ, among other things, in their source (e.g., conventional vs. general reasoning) and status (e.g., defeasible or not). While the distinctions in this realm have...

The representation of degree in American Sign Language

At the right edge: coda segmentism and coda weight

Abstract: It is widely assumed that the sonority of segments plays an important role in the overall profiling of the syllable, as well  as in the organization of its subparts. In this talk, I will address the effects of sonority at the right edge of the syllable, standardly referred to as the coda. There are at least two perspectives on the effects of sonority at the right margin, both relying  on the sonority scale. First, as proposed in Clements (1990), the inventory of segments in the coda universally...

Family of Questions:  Nuclear or Extended?

Parameters of Structural Case

Abstract: Although there is decent evidence that some structural cases are assigned by agreement with a designated functional head (Chomsky 2000, 2001), there is good reason to think that not all are. In this talk, I explore the idea that other structural cases are dependent cases in (roughly) the sense of Marantz 1991: they are assigned to one NP if and only if there is another NP in the same local domain. The most general form of a dependent case condition, I claim, is “If XP is in c-command relationship R with ZP in domain WP, then...

Steps to the Physics of Language

Abstract: The study of complex systems seems to affirm the Thompson-Turing claim that “some physical processes are of very general occurrence.” Notably, those involving Fibonacci-based “golden” forms, ubiquitous in nature, and a number of mathematical models standard in modern physics (matrix representation of operators, with associated eigenvalues and eigenvectors expressing directional stability). This lends immediate interest to the observation that the repeated  structural motif in the human syntactic system, the X-bar...

Competition and Prediction in Word Processing: MEG Studies of Visual and Auditory Word Recognition

Abstract: Recent experimental evidence supports the view that entropy (uncertainty) over the representations consistent with the linguistic input and surprisal of processed input relative to this entropy drives brain responses in language processing – not the competition between representations consistent with the input. Thus, for example, high cohort entropy (and thus high competition among members of a cohort, i.e., the words consistent with auditory input up to...

ABC+Q: segmental subdivisions in correspondence

Abstract: Phonological theory has long been challenged by the behavior of contour segments and contour tones in harmony patterns. Sometimes these entities participate in phonology as whole units; at other times, their subsegmental parts act independently. This talk, based on joint work with Stephanie Shih (Stanford/Berkeley), builds on insights from Aperture Theory (Steriade 1993), Articulatory Phonology (Browman and Goldstein 1989; Gafos 2002) and Autosegmental Theory (Goldsmith 1976) to propose a novel phonological...

What is Diachronic Syntax a Theory of? Transcending ‘the physical body of the sentence’