Initial Vowel Length in Lulamogi: Cyclity or Globality?

Over the past several decades there has been recurrent skepticism concerning cyclic derivations in phonology, one of the most central tenets of traditional generative and lexical phonology and morphology. Some of the proposed cyclic analyses have been argued not to require cyclicity, or to represent lexical relations that are not totally productive (as in certain cases in English). For those surviving cases, a major strategy within optimality...

Epistemic adjectives: Lexical semantics meets the psychology of reasoning

Epistemic adjectives – those expressing (un)certainty, such as 'possible', 'likely', 'certain' – are vague and admit of degree modification, like many non-modal adjectives. Recently a number of authors have observed that their modification behavior and the inferences that they license problematize received theories of epistemic modality in a number of ways (e.g., Yalcin 2010; Lassiter 2010, 2014). These authors have conclude that (at least some) epistemic adjectives should be treated as degree expressions...

The lab meeting next Wednesday (4/30/14, 5:15 pm) will be a joint meeting of the Language Universals Reading Group and the Polinsky Lab:

Syntactically decomposing denominal adjectives in Bulgarian
Consequences for the syntax-morphophonology interface

Abstract:

What are the atoms of syntax and how do they correspond to words? In this talk I address this question by documenting a certain kind of mismatch between the set of objects that syntax manipulates and morphophonological words. In particular, I provide novel empirical evidence from Bulgarian denominal adjectives that certain parts of words can behave syntactically as phrases....

Small but Intense

Abstract: "Ideation reigns supreme in language, […] volition and emotion come in as distinctly secondary factors." With these words, Edward Sapir (1921:217) claimed that language is primarily a tool for the expression of thought (ideas). The expression of affect is only secondary. This secondary role is reflected in the form of language: "[T]he emotional aspect of our psychic life is but meagerly expressed in the build of language;" (Sapir ibidem). Roman Jakobson (1960) acknowledges the supremacy of the expression of thought but emphasizes...

The linguistic transmission of cognitive practices: reference frames in Mesoamerica

Abstract: Ongoing research since the 1970s has shown that speech communities vary in the types of reference frames their members prefer for reference to small-scale space in discourse. Furthermore, the frame types used in cognitive tasks such as recall memory show similar variability, and a given population's linguistic preferences significantly predict that population's preferences in cognitive tasks (Pederson et al 1998; Levinson 2003; Majid et al 2004). Two interpretations...

What counts as evidence for universals?

Abstract: My talk is about Generative theories of the phonological module (PhM). I will identify some core requirements that such theories impose on evidence for the PhM, then discuss several cases where these evidential requirements are not met. I will then argue that these cases are fairly representative of work in phonological theory, with the consequence that an unknown (but presumably large) number of claims about PhM universals have an uncertain status.

Some optional background reading:

de Lacy, Paul (...