UConn Linguistics at GLOW in Asia

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The 14th Generative Linguistics in the Old World in Asia (GLOW in Asia XIV) took place March 6-8th, hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. UConn linguistics was very well represented at the conference with a keynote talk by:

  • Željko Bošković. More than one way to spell out a phase

… main session talks by:

  • Tarcisio Dias. Superraise only if you hyperraise
  • Mia Gong and Miloje Despić (PhD 2011, now at Cornell University). On the Nature of Reflexive Binding in Mongolian: from Nominals to Clauses
  • Masako Maeda & Yoichi Miyamoto (PhD 1994, now at Osaka University). Relativized Minimality and Form Copy in Japanese.
  • Kensuke Takita (Doshisha University, visiting scholar 2008-09). Modal Mismatches under Clausal Argument Ellipsis.

… and posters by:

  • Yuya Noguchi. Syntactic aspects of co-occurrence of a wh- and a concealed question in Japanese
  • Nick Huang (post-doc 2019-2021, now at National University of Singapore) and Zheng Shen (PhD 2018, now at National University of Singapore). The role of main verbs in subextraction of wh-phrases from NPs
  • Miloje Despić. Uncovering Hidden Structures in BCMS: The Case of Negative Imperatives
  • Masao Ochi (PhD 1999, now at Osaka University) and Yuta Tatsumi (PhD 2021, now at Meikai University). Numeral Classifiers in Japanese and (Anti-)Labeling
  • Heesun Yang and Bum-Sik Park (PhD 2005, now at Dongguk University). The Syntax and Semantics of the High Negation Question in Korean
  • Jarry Chuang. Right Dislocation in Chinese: Consequence of Topicalization & Comp-to-Spec movement
  • Austin Jaejun Kim and Myung-Kwan Park (PhD 1994, now at Dongguk University). Reanalysis and intervention in English ‘tough’ constructions
  • Yuta Sakamoto (PhD 2017, now at Meiji University) and Rikuto Yokoyama. Silent Presupposition in Japanese Clefts: Ellipsis vs. Proform
  • Pravaal Yadav. Discourse’s effect on the Structure: An evidence from agreement patterns in Hindi-Urdu

 

Pictured, several generations of UConn linguists at GLOW in Asia XIV:

    UConn at ECO5

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    ECO-5 is an annual gathering of linguistics graduate students from five East Coast universities (UMass, MIT, Harvard, UConn, and UMD), and this year it was hosted by the UMass Linguistics department, taking place on March 2nd. UConn Linguistics was represented at ECO-5 with talks by:

    • Aarón Sánchez. (Un)agreement in Spanish and Greek Fake Indexicals
    • Shangyan Pan. Gei as functional elements: How many are there?
    • Tyler Poisson. Arithmetic in English and ditransitive constructions
    • Qi Wu. Introducing Target/Stimulus argument of Mandarin Experiencer-Subject psych-predicates

    Gao Defense

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    Kangzheng Gao successfully defended his doctoral dissertation titled A constraint-based approach to syntactic parameter-setting on February 22nd.

    Congratulations, Kangzheng!

     

    Kangzheng during the defense:

     

    Dr. Gao with his committee after the successful defense:

     

    Dr. Gao’s well earned cake:

     

    Noguchi Defense

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    Yuya Noguchi successfully defended his doctoral dissertation titled Asymmetries, Covert Wh-Movement, and Nominality in Japanese Wh-Questions on February 5th.

    Congratulations, Yuya!

    Yuya during the defense:

     

    Dr. Noguchi with his committee after the successful defense:

     

    Dr. Noguchi cutting his well earned cake:

     

    UConn Linguists at NELS

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    The 54th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society is taking place 26-27th of January, at MIT (https://nels54.mit.edu/), and UConn Linguistics will be represented with an invited talk by:
    • Lyn Tieu (PhD 2013, now at University of Toronto). Theories of linguistic inferences: What experiments can tell us

    … and poster presentations by…

      • Pravaal Yadav. Patterns and conditions on cross-clausal agreement in Hindi-Urdu
      • Ka-Fai Yip & Xuetong Yuan. Agreement in imperative clauses: evidence from object resumptive pronouns in Mandarin Chinese

      UConn Linguists at the LSA Annual Meeting

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      The 2024 edition of the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America took place January 4th-7th in New York City. The event also commemorated the centennial of the LSA. UConn linguistics was well represented at the conference with talks by:

      • Shengyun Gu. Interaction between iconicity and weak drop in Shanghai Sign Language
      • Diane Brentari, Kathryn Montemurro, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Ann Senghas, Marie Coppola. The effects of animacy on the creation of verb agreement: Clues from Lengua de Señas Nicaragüense
      • Shengyun Gu, Diane Lillo-Martin, Deborah Chen Pichler (PhD 2001, now at Gallaudet University), Elaine Gale. Early Development in ASL Phonology: A Longitudinal Study of Deaf Children with Hearing Parents

      … a poster presentations by:

      • Aida Talić (PhD 2017, now at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). You don’t need a definite article to have a DP: A view from Telugu domain of N and A

      … and a talk in the workshop on “Advances in the study of signed language phonological change”:

      • Harry Van der Hulst . Why do sign languages lack allomorphy rules? 

      Magdalena Kaufmann | Book chapter on Imperative clauses

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      Magdalena Kaufmann‘s chapter “Imperative clauses” has been published as part of the book Wh-exclamatives, Imperatives and Wh-questions: Issues on Brazilian Portuguese (De Gruyter Mouton 2024, edited by Simone Guesser, Ani Marchesan and Paulo Medeiros Junior).

      Abstract: This chapter introduces imperatives as the class of sentential form types in natural languages that are prototypically associated with the speech act of ordering. I show that imperatives serve for a crosslinguistically stable, but in itself diverse range of speech acts, which makes it challenging to find a common conventional core meaning that would explain the pattern. I discuss specific issues relating to the absence of intuitively accessible truth-values and restrictions on embedding. I then turn to a brief overview of syntactic assumptions about imperatives in general, before considering the status of grammatical categories like subject marking, tense and aspect, and negation in imperative clauses in more detail. Finally, I consider instances of imperative marking as occurring in embedded positions, as well as form types appearing in similar and typically smaller ranges of related functions.

       

      Magdalena Kaufmann | Croatian Journal of Philosophy

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      Magdalena Kaufmann‘s paper “From Coherence Relations to the Grammar of Pronouns and Tense” has just appeared in Vol. 23, No. 69 of the Croatian Journal of Philosophy.

      Abstract: Stojnić (2021) argues that the content of linguistic utterances is determined by the rules of natural language grammar more stringently than what is generally assumed. She proposes specifically that coherence relations are encoded by the linguistic structures and determine what individuals count as most prominent, thereby serving as the referents of free (“demonstrative”) pronouns. In this paper, I take a close look at the empirical evidence from English and Serbian that she offers in support of this position. Considering these data points in connection with additional linguistic data (also from German and Japanese), I argue that there is no compelling evidence for the assumption that coherence relations directly determine the resolution of pronouns. Instead, grammatical restrictions imposed by different types of pronouns and tenses have a larger impact on the meaning conventionally expressed by complex utterances than what is generally assumed in the literature on coherence relations.