The 53nd Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL) will take place virtually on April 7-9, hosted by The Department of Linguistics at the University of California San Diego, and UConn linguistics will be represented at the conference with talks by:
The article “Acquisition of English adjectival resultatives: Support for the Compounding Parameter” by Shuyan Wang, Yasuhito Kido (visiting scholar 2017-2018), and William Snyder has just appeared as an online first article ahead of its print publication in Language Acquisition. Congratulations!
Abstract: Two distinctive types of complex predicates found in English are separable verb-particle combinations (“particles”) and adjectival resultatives (“ARs”). Snyder ties both to the positive setting of the Compounding Parameter (“TCP”). This predicts that during the acquisition of a [+TCP] language, any child who has acquired ARs or particles will also permit “creative” bare-stem, endocentric compounding. Existing support comes from children acquiring Japanese and English. Yet the same evidence introduces two new puzzles: (i) why is compounding acquired roughly a year earlier in English than in Japanese?; and (ii) in English, why is compounding always acquired at the same time as (and never substantially prior to) particles? Here, we argue that both puzzles can be explained if we allow the trigger for a single parameter-setting (e.g., [+TCP]) to be completely different for children acquiring different languages. Specifically, the trigger for [+TCP] (and hence, ARs) in English is proposed to be particles, which are unavailable in Japanese. Two novel predictions are tested and supported: (i) the frequency will be higher for particles than for any (other) potential trigger in child-directed English or Japanese; and (ii) children acquiring English (unlike Japanese) will have reliably adult-like comprehension of ARs by the age of 3 years.
Adrian Stegovec gave a talk at Yale as part of their Linguistics Colloquium series on March 28th, 2022. His talk was titled “Location is everything: A typological gap in person restrictions and its support for a positional analysis”. More information on the talk can be found here.
The Oxford History of Phonology co-edited by B. Elan Dresher and Harry van der Hulst has just been published in ebook form by Oxford University Press and will be published as a physical volume on March 24th.
This 900-page book provides a history of phonology with contributions of 35 authors, covering phonology in Ancient India, Japan and Korea, the Greek and Roman traditions, the role of early writing systems as evidencing phonological structure and then focussing on the start of crucial developments in the nineteens and early twentieth centry, following by theories and school in later times up to the present time.
The volume also contains the following chapters written by UConn linguists:
The 46th annual Penn Linguistics Conference will take place virtually on March 18-20, 2022 and UConn linguistics will be well represented at the conference with presentations by:
The 44th Annual Conference of the German Linguistics Society (DGfS) was held online on February 23rd-25th, hosted by the University of Tübingen. UConn linguists gave talks at two of the DGfS thematic workshops:
Vicki Carstens gave an invited talk at the workshop on Long Distance Dependencies and the structure of embedded clauses in African Languages, titled: Addressee Agreement in Bantu and Speech Act Projections
Adrian Stegovec gave a talk at the workshop on Optionality and non-optionality of syntactic movement, titled: The third way: Optional object reordering as ambiguous labeling resolution.
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:
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.
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:
Yoshiki Fujiwara successfully defended his dissertation: Movement Approach to Ellipsis in Japanese on February 4th.
Congratulations, Yoshiki!
Audience at the defense:
Dr. Fujiwara with his committee and well earned cake:
