Other News

Stegovec mini-course at UNG

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Adrian Stegovec taught a mini-course at the University of Nova Gorica – Center for Cognitive Science of Language, between 17th June and 1st July, titled “Restrictions on the order and (co-)occurrence of clitic pronouns: From Slovenian to the world and back again”. The course consisted of five lectures:

  • Setting the stage: Restrictions on the order and (co-)occurrence of clitic pronouns
  • Person-based restrictions on Slovenian clitics: PCC or not PCC?
  • A typological investigation of person restrictions
  • A typological gap and why it’s there
  • Finding the source of person restrictions

 

Bošković | Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award

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Željko Bošković is this year’s Edward C. Marth Mentorship Award Recipient! This award is given to recognize extraordinary mentoring of graduate students. The selection committee noted that Željko’s “dedication to graduate students is legendary.”

As part of receiving this award, Željko was invited to give a presentation at the Ph.D. Commencement exercises held on May 12. He urged the graduates to use their intellectual responsibilities to “be bold” and speak up for justice.

More about Željko’s award can be found on p. 38 of the Commencement Program which can be found here.

Mizuno | NLLT

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The paper “Argument ellipsis as topic deletion” by our alumnus Teruyuki Mizuno (PhD 2023, now at Ochanomizu University, Tokyo) has just been published online in Natural Language & Linguistic Theory ahead of the print version. Congratulations Teru! The paper can be accessed here.

Abstract: In recent syntactic literature, argument ellipsis has become a productive perspective of investigation for null arguments in natural language. Focusing on Japanese as the primary object of study, this paper aims to deepen our understanding of the underlying syntactic mechanism behind the derivation of argument ellipsis. The main empirical observation is that argument ellipsis and topicalization exhibit a striking parallelism with respect to the way they interact with wh-dependencies. Building on this observation, I argue that argument ellipsis is an instance of topic deletion, which involves movement of arguments to Spec,TopicP, and phonological deletion of the arguments under the identity of the topic in discourse. I show that the topic-deletion account of argument ellipsis offers a principled explanation for a variety of restrictions concerning what types of argument can or cannot undergo ellipsis. I also suggest that the proposed account enables a unified perspective on argument ellipsis and discourse pro-drop by analyzing them uniformly as instances of topic deletion, thereby shedding new light on the deep typological correlation that has been observed between them.

UConn Linguists at the LSA Annual Meeting

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The 2025 edition of the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America took place January 9-12 in Philadelphia. UConn linguistics was represented at the conference with talks by:

  • Shane Blau (post-doc 2023-24), Diane Lillo-Martin, Deborah Chen Pichler (PhD 2001, now at Gallaudet University), Elaine Gale. Sign Language Acquisition by Deaf Children with Hearing, Signing Families: Visual Communication and Vocabulary
  • Penelope Daniel. Parameters of differential argument marking
  • Yoshiki Fujiwara (PhD 2022, now at Yamaguchi University). Wh-scope-marking in Tamil

… a poster presentation by:

  • Jon Gajewski. On the pragmatics of propositional anaphora

    Daniel | Glossa

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    Penelope Daniel’s article “Evidence for a VP-internal analysis of postverbal arguments in an SOVX language” has just appeared in Volume 9 of Glossa. The paper can be accessed online here. Congratulations Penelope!

    Abstract: Mande languages are known for their typologically unusual SOVX word order, in which the subject and direct object precede the verb, while adjuncts and other complements must follow it. Koopman (1992) argues for Bambara that this unique word order arises when the direct object obligatorily raises to a preverbal position for Case, while any other postverbal elements surface in their base-generated position within the VP. However, Nikitina (2019) proposes for Wan that postverbal elements are located in a high, clause-adjoined position. This paper presents syntactic evidence from Mandinka in support of the former analysis of postverbal indirect objects. In particular, I provide word order, pronominalization, and binding facts that show that postverbal indirect objects must be located in a low, VP-internal position, which is incompatible with a clausal-adjunction analysis.