Week of March 25, 2013
GSAS Indo-European Workshop
Ronald I. Kim (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)
Thematic inflection and the thematic subjunctive in Indo-European: the Tocharian evidence
Wednesday, March 27 | 4pm | Sever Hall 106
Much recent discussion of Indo-European verbal morphology has centered on the origin of thematic inflection, and in particular of simple thematic presents with suffix *-e/o-. Whereas thematic presents formed with complex suffixes (particularly *-sk̂e/o-) are robustly attested in Anatolian and Tocharian and thus securely reconstructible for the protolanguage, simple thematic presents are vanishingly rare in both branches. I first review the inflection of inherited PIE thematic present types in Tocharian and show that all attested forms may be traced back to the present, imperfect, imperative, and optative; the last of these has given rise via successive waves of “alphaization” to the distinctive preterite subtype of TB klyauṣa, TA klyoṣ ‘heard’ and the TA productive imperfect in -ā-. It is then argued, contrary to two important recent studies, that a number of Tocharian subjunctives do in fact continue PIE subjunctives in *-e/o- to root formations, mostly aorist. The paper closes with some thoughts on the origin of the Tocharian subjunctive as a semantic and morphological category and the process by which thematic subjunctives could be reinterpreted as indicatives, a shift paralleled in Germanic and other IE branches.
Polinsky Lab Meeting
Nina Radkevich
Null arguments: Theoretical and experimental approaches
Wednesday, March 27 | 5:15-7pm | Polinsky Lab Room 420 (Conference Room)
Linguistics Circle Workshop
Elly van Gelderen (Arizona State University)
The Linguistic Cycle and Generative Grammar
Friday, March 29 | 3-4:30pm | Boylston 103
In this talk, I will first look at some of the inherent tension between historical linguistics and generative grammar, review some earlier views on cycles (and spirals), and explain the difference between micro- and macro-cycles. I will then examine a few cycles in detail using cross-linguistic detail, in particular the copula cycle, the subject cycle, the negative cycle, and demonstrative cycle. Finally, I provide a Minimalist account for these cycles in terms of features and then provide some critical remarks on this Minimalist account and point out where we need more work.
Harvard at ECO5
Three Harvard students will be presenting at this year's ECO5 (East Coast 5) syntax conference at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT:
- Caitlin Keenan: "On the structure of the Abkhaz indefinite article"
- Jenny Lee: "Null operator movement in 'Across-the-Board' questions in Korean: Implications for the Coordinate Structure Constraint"
- Pooja Paul: "Do-Support as observed in Malayalam Verb Coordination"
8th Annual Whatmough Lecture
Bruce Hayes (UCLA) will deliver this year's Joshua and Verona Whatmough Lecture next Monday, April 1st:
Bruce Hayes (UCLA)
The 8th Annual Joshua and Verona Whatmough Lecture: Saltation in Phonology
Monday, April 1 | 4pm | Sever Hall 113