Other News

UConn Linguists at TaLK

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The Theoretical Linguistics at Keio (TaLK) Semantics Conference is taking place March 2nd-4th at Keio University and virtually. UConn linguistics will be represented at the conference with talks by:

  • Yuta Tatsumi (PhD 2021, now at Meikai University). Negative polarity and the silent MUCH in degree constructions (in person+online)
  • Muyi Yang. Referentiality and plurality in conditionals (online)
  • Xuetong Yuan and Yusuke Yagi. Stronger additivity: Toward a unification of additivity and concessivity (online)

Coppola et al. | Article in Phonology

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The article “Community interactions and phonemic inventories in emerging sign languages” by Marie Coppola, Diane Brentari, Rabia Ergin, Ann Senghas, Pyeong Whan Cho, and Eli Owens has been published online as an advance article in Phonology.

Abstract: In this work, we address structural, iconic and social dimensions of the emergence of phonological systems in two emerging sign languages. A comparative analysis is conducted of data from a village sign language (Central Taurus Sign Language; CTSL) and a community sign language (Nicaraguan Sign Language; NSL). Both languages are approximately 50 years old, but the sizes and social structures of their respective communities are quite different. We find important differences between the two languages’ handshape inventories. CTSL’s handshape inventory has changed more slowly than NSL’s across the same time period. In addition, while the inventories of the two languages are of similar size, handshape complexity is higher in NSL than in CTSL. This work provides an example of the unique and important perspective that emerging sign languages offer regarding longstanding questions about how phonological systems emerge.

UConn Linguists at Jabberwocky Words In Linguistics

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The Jabberwocky Words In Linguistics workshop took place online on February 11th-12th hosted by UMass, Amherst. UConn was represented by the following invited talks:

  • Emma Nguyen (PhD 2021, now at University of California, Irvine). Getting Passive by Extending Classes: A Novel Verb-Learning Study with Adults and Children
  • Lyn Tieu (PhD 2013, Western Sydney University). Using nonce words to investigate the morphology of comparison
  • Letitia Naigles (UConn Department of Psychological Sciences). What Nonsense? Not at all! Nonsense Word Studies Reveal both Strengths and Challenges in the Linguistic Representations of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

    Tu+7 at UConn

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    We are pleased to announce that UConn Linguistics will be hosting the Seventh Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic, otherwise known as TU+7, on February 18th-19th!

    The program, abstracts, and information on registration can be found at: https://sites.google.com/uconn.edu/tu7

    Please join us this year by registering by February 16th in order to receive updates and Zoom links for some fantastic talks!

    UConn Linguists at the LSA Annual Meeting

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    The 96th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America is taking place January 6th-9th in Washington, DC and virtually. UConn linguistics will be well represented at the conference with talks by:

    • Si Kai Lee. Movement is Exhausting: Optional wh-fronting in Singlish is not free (in-person)
    • Muyi Yang. The closeness constraint on focus association and the syntax of Q-particles (hybrid)

     

    … and poster presentations by:

    • Yusuke Yagi. Strawson Semantic Value: An explanation for the definite reading in ellipsis (in-person)
    • Pasha Koval and Jon Sprouse. Relative Clause Extraposition in Russian is created by syntactic movement (in-person)
    • Ari Goertzel. The Properties of the -o clitic in Mandinka (online)
    • Shengyun Gu. Combined methods are informative: weak hand spread in Shanghai Sign Language (online)
    • Ivana Jovović. On Discourse Licensing of Coindexed Pronouns in Slavic (online)
    • Hiroaki Saito. Losing a subject, keeping an indirect object
    • Nick Huang (postdoc 2019-2021, now at the National University of Singapore) and Yu’an Yang. How do learners know attitude verbs select what in wh-in situ languages? (online)
    • Zheng Shen (PhD 2018, now at National University of Singapore) and Meghan Lim. Extraction from definite, indefinite, and superlative NPs: An experimental approach

      Magda & Stefan Kaufmann | Article in Journal of Semantics

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      Magda and Stefan Kaufmann’s paper “Iffy Endorsements” has been published online as an advance article in the Journal of Semantics.

      Abstract: Theories of imperatives differ in how they aim to derive the distributional and functional properties of this clause type. One point of divergence is how to capture the fact that imperative utterances convey the speaker’s endorsement for the course of events described. Condoravdi & Lauer (2017) observe that conditionals with imperative consequents (conditionalized imperatives, CIs) are infelicitous as motivations of advice against doing something and take this as evidence for an analysis of imperatives as encoding speaker endorsement. We investigate CIs in further contexts and argue that their account in terms of preferential conflicts fails to capture the more general infelicity of CIs as motivations for or against doing something. We develop an alternative in which imperatives do not directly encode speaker preferences, but express modalized propositions and impose restrictions on the discourse structure (along the lines of Kaufmann, 2012). We show how this carries over to conditionalized imperatives to derive the behavior of CIs, and conclude with a discussion of more general problems regarding an implementation of conditional preferential commitments, an issue that can be avoided on our account of imperatives.