#  Week of March 25, 2013 

 





March 24, 2013

 

 

### GSAS Indo-European Workshop

[**Ronald I. Kim**](http://wa.amu.edu.pl/wa/Kim_Ronald) (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)  
[*Thematic inflection and the thematic subjunctive in Indo-European: the Tocharian evidence*  ](/event/ronald-kim-amu-poznan)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**](http://scholar.harvard.edu/radkevich/)  
[*Null arguments: Theoretical and experimental approaches*](http://pollab.fas.harvard.edu/?q=node/229)  
Wednesday, March 27 | 5:15-7pm | Polinsky Lab Room 420 (Conference Room)

### Linguistics Circle Workshop

[**Elly van Gelderen**](http://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/elly.htm) (Arizona State University)  
[*The Linguistic Cycle and Generative Grammar*](/event/elly-van-gelderen-arizona-state-university)  
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](http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/)** (UCLA)  
The 8th Annual Joshua and Verona Whatmough Lecture: *[Saltation in Phonology](/files/linguistics/files/viiiwhatmough.pdf)*  
Monday, April 1 | 4pm | Sever Hall 113



 

 

 



 

 

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