ABSTRACT. Background. Object omission is acceptable in English in specific contexts, as in (1), where the object of washing is omitted: (1) John is washing the pavement. He’s been washing all morning. The phenomenon of object omission in English has long received considerable attention (e.g. Fillmore 1986; Martí 2015; Yankes 2021; Glass 2022), and recent accounts of object omission focus on different aspects of these contexts. For example, Rappaport Hovav & Levin (2024) and Folli & Harley (forthcoming) zoom in on a specific property of object omission: only animate entities can perform the action denoted by the verb in the absence of the object, as observed in (1) with the animate subject John. This predicts the marginal acceptability of (2), with an inanimate subject: (2) The rain is washing the pavement. ??It’s been washing all morning. Accounts of the contrast — between contexts with (1) and without (2) an animate subject — place more focus on semantic or syntactic features of the context. Rappaport Hovav & Levin (2024) propose a polysemy-style account based on their analysis of the verb sweep: a conventionalised version of ‘basic sweep’ is formed in the lexicon and carries the requirement that only Agents can perform it, with the consequent reduction of the verb full complement of argument. In contrast, Folli & Harley (forthcoming) consider verbs of contact more generally and suggest that such contrasts may relate to a more pervasive distinction between animate and inanimate subjects, which may be reflected in multiple areas of syntax; more specifically, they propose that the cognitive primitive responsible for the observed distributions is that of goal-oriented action, a criterion which aligns with animacy to a considerable (if not complete) extent. Despite the extent of this phenomenon, little quantitative research has been performed to establish the extent to which such factors play a role in object omission, or the extent of variation among verbs in their association with object omission. Moreover, the two accounts make different predictions: the approach of RH&L predicts a greater degree of lexical idiosyncrasy, while the syntactic account of F&H predicts greater transparency and uniformity. This project tests these predictions to investigate the role played by animacy in object omission for English-speaking adults and children. Method. The first phase of this study was an online experiment conducted with adults (N=80), who were native English speakers recruited on Prolific. Participants heard recordings of sentences such as (1) and (2) and rated their acceptability rating in a 7-point Likert format; sentences were presented individually, in randomized order, and had animate or inanimate subjects (within-subjects), with overt or omitted objects (between-subjects). Results. We conducted a linear regression analysis with fixed effects of animate/inanimate and overt/omitted object and random effects for participant and verb, and z-scored ratings as the dependent measure. Both main effects were significant (ps < .001); importantly, so was the interaction (p<.001): with an inanimate subject, there were higher ratings with an overt object than with the object omitted; there was no difference with an animate subject. Thus, animacy and object presence are significant factors in predicting the acceptability of test sentences. However, variation was also identified among different verbs. For some verbs, object omission was significantly less acceptable with inanimate subjects (e.g. wash); for other verbs, object omission was acceptable with both animate and inanimate subjects (e.g. cook). Surprisingly, for some verbs (e.g. sweep), sentences with inanimate subjects were rated significantly lower than sentences with animate subjects, even with overt objects. An assessment of the extent to which these correlations reflect broader patterns is being conducted in subsequent phases of this research. Next Steps. The discussion will also include a summary of the next phases of this research. In the second phase, differences will be examined between animate subjects acting intentionally and animate subjects whose actions are not under their control and hence not goal-oriented (cf. Martin et al. forthcoming). In the third phase, the interaction of animacy and object drop in young children (24–28 mos) is investigated. This phase assesses how animacy affects children’s response to sentences with and without overt objects; children will watch videos of actions performed by novel animate or inanimate entities (Figure 1), while their responses are measured using the Central Fixation Paradigm (Shi et al 2006). These phases are still ongoing, but data collection will shortly be complete, and the data will form a part of this presentation. Selected References Fillmore, C. J. 1986. Pragmatically controlled zero anaphora in English. Berkeley Linguistics Society 12: 95–107. Folli, R. & Harley, H. Forthcoming. Teleological capability in English object “drop” constructions. Glass, L. 2022. English verbs can omit their objects when they describe routines. English Language and Linguistics 26(1): 49–73. Martí, L. 2015. Grammar versus pragmatics: Carving nature at the joints. Mind & Language 30(4): 437–473. Martin, F., Schäfer, F. & Pinon, C. Forthcoming. Transitives with inchoative semantics. Rappaport Hovav, M. & Levin, B. 2024. Variable agentivity: Polysemy or underspecification? Glossa 9(1): 1–39. Shi, R., Werker, J. F., & Cutler, A. (2006). Recognition and representation of function words in English-learning infants. Infancy, 10(2), 187–198. Yankes, A. (2021). Object drop in English: A statistical and Optimality Theoretical analysis. Doctoral dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University.

ABSTRACT. Cf. attachment

ABSTRACT. Although prepositions typically take nominal complements, reference grammar of English has described a range of irregular complements, as in from behind the curtain (prepositional complement), until recently (adverbial complement), agree on whether we should call in the police (interrogative clause), and for dead (adjectival complement) (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 599). These complements are considered less typical, since they show highly selectional (or collocational) restrictions compared to nominal complements (ibid.: 599). However, non-nominal complements are not necessarily untypical in some cases. This study investigates the complements of far from. The phrase far from is pervasive in Present-day English and takes various irregular complements, as shown below:

(1) (a) But, in my opinion, oil painting is far from perfect. (b) His eyes suddenly flash. “You are far from boring, Barnaby,” he says, … (c) historians are still far from agreed on the precise answers to these questions, … (d) But she far from destroyed the material, … (e) … he hadn't been the only one. Far from it.

The complements of far from are adjectival in (1a), present participial in (1b), past participial in (1c), and verbal in (1d), serving a negating function similar to not. In (1e), far from it makes up an independent phrase meaning ‘certainly not.’ Previous scholarship, such as Brinton and Inoue (2020) and De Smet, Norde, Van Goethem, and Vanderbauwhede (2015), have partially captured the diachronic and typological functions of far from. They mainly focused on its functions as a downtoner and pragmatic marker. However, the distribution and frequency of its irregular complements—particularly verbal complements—have received little attention. To address this gap, the present study conducts two corpus-based investigations. The first examines the types of complements taken by far from in Present-day British English analyzing 1) complement types of far from, and 2) phrasal types of far from across four corpora; Lancaster1931, LOB, FLOB, and BE21, each being composed of one million British English from 1931, 1961, 1991 and 2021, respectively. These corpora were compiled with consistent register and time-span criteria. Key findings include 1) 215 occurrences of far from across the four corpora, 2) the continued prevalence of irregular complements, including 70 present participial forms, 43 adjectival complements, 10 past participial forms and others (See the table in the pdf file), 3) 10 occurrences of the independent use of Far from it, 4) the frequent use of far from as the head of dependent phrases, and 5) 41 hits of far from following another negative element such as not or never. The second study analyzes a new use of far from that appears to take a verbal complement, using the NOW corpus, which contains 21.6 billion words (as of 19/04/2025). It investigates instances of far from followed by a present-tense verb, since past forms and past participial forms are often identical. The findings include: (1) the types and tokens of far from + present-tense verb is very limited compared to other irregular complements, and 2) perception and thinking verbs, such as confirm, solve, prove and reflect, tend to occur in this construction. This study makes two contributions: first, it investigates the distribution of irregular complements of far from across four British English corpora with consistent register and time-span criteria; and, second, it explores the token and type frequency of verbal complements, an area that has received little attention in previous scholarship.

References Brinton, Laurel J. and Tohru Inoue (2020) “A far from simple matter revisited: The ongoing grammaticalization of far from,” 271-294. In Merja Kytö and Erik Smitterberg (eds). Late Modern English Novel encounters. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum (2002) The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Smet, Hendrik, Muriel Norde, Kristel Van Goethem, and Gudrun Vanderbauwhede (2015) “Degrees of adverbialization: A cross-linguistic corpus-study of ‘far from X’ constructions.” (available at https://www.scribd.com/document/738918339/De-Smet-et-al-2015-Degrees-of-adverbialization)

Corpora The BE21 Corpus / The FLOB Corpus / The NOW Corpus / The Lancaster 1931 Corpus / The LOB Corpus

ABSTRACT. Bare Singular Count Nouns (BSCNs) are non-standard in English outside some very specific contexts (Chierchia 1998, Heycock & Zamparelli 2002, De Swart 2021), but they are common in subject position in informal registers: (1) Dog’s chewed up the sofa again. BSCN objects are less common, but they are found in at least some varieties, as in (2)–(4). (2) She’s not very good but she can push hoover around. (3) You’ve got to put coat on if you want to go outside. (4) I’m going to get job.

BSCN subjects in English are limited to definites. While the same does not hold of objects, definites are nevertheless frequent, and this is what we focus on here. I have shown in previous work that these constructions do permit reference across clauses, unlike the weak referentiality that is normally characteristic of BSCNs in more standard constructions like at school. In other words, they are actually definites, rather than simply being unmarked for definiteness, as is the case for many bare nominal arguments cross-linguistically.

Most work on bare nouns in English has been focussed on how we can explain the non-existence of BSCNs in English; i.e, why there are only bare plurals and not singulars, when other languages do have number-neutral singulars (Chierchia 1998, Dayal 2011, De Swart 2021). The construction exemplified in (2)–(4) is non-standard so judgements from language users are less clear-cut; it is not even clear if this construction varies by region or only register. But users do nevertheless have judgements, and in this presentation we report on an acceptability judgement rating study with speakers of this non-standard variety of English and compare the findings with existing cross-linguistic work.

Driemel et al. (2025) give a ‘markedness bias for definites’, attested across language families, as follows: ‘If a language marks anaphoric definites differently from uniqueness based definites, anaphoric definites will always show more morpho-syntactic marking than uniqueness based definites.’ This is illustrated for German in (5)–(6) below, where the preposition and article can coalesce in uniqueness contexts (5) but not anaphoric (6):

(5) Armstrong flog als erster zum Mond / #zu dem Mond. Armstrong flew as first.one to.the moon / to the moon ‘Armstrong was the first one to fly to the moon.’ (Schwarz 2009: 29)

(6) Hans hat einen Schriftsteller und einen Politiker interviewt. Hans has a writer and a politician interviewed

Er hat #vom Politiker / von dem Politiker he has from.the politican from the politician

keine interessanten Antworten bekommen. no interesting answers gotten ‘Hans interviewed a writer and a politician. He didn’t get any interesting answers from the politician.’ (Schwarz 2009: 23)

Schwarz (2009) terms the forms the ‘weak article’ and the ‘strong article’, and notes that the strong form is required for anaphoric uses whereas the weak form can be used when there is a suitable unique referent present. A language may have two different definite articles for these purposes, or weak forms may be contracted as in German, or they may be bare nominals while the strong form is overt, as is the case in Akan (Schwarz 2019).

To determine whether this distinction between definiteness types holds in English, we constructed an acceptability judgement survey with 24 target sentences of the following types of definite BSCN object, based on Schwarz (2009):

(7) Anaphoric: (A: I bought a book and a newspaper B: Oh yeah?) A: I finished book (8) Uniqueness Larger situation: I’ve got a telescope so I can watch moon Immediate situation: I brought bin in earlier (9) Bridging: (A: I went to the cinema last week B: Oh yeah?) A: I liked film

‘Bridging’ contexts are not necessarily expected to pattern with either anaphoric or unique definites; Schwarz (2009: 21) shows that they behave like ‘weak’ forms when they have a part-whole relation and a unique referent becomes available but ‘strong’ in other contexts.

The survey was distributed online via Qualtrics in Spring 2025, and remains open at the time of submission with 68 responses. We will present our findings and demonstrate whether English patterns like other languages in this respect, in that uniqueness definites are predicted to be more acceptable in this construction than anaphoric definites. Early results do not appear to be categorical (i.e., some respondents find some anaphoric definites acceptable with a bare noun), indicating that it is not necessarily the case that all anaphoric definites require an overt determiner. However, prior to any statistical analysis, the predicted effect appears to hold between anaphoric and immediate situation definites (often analysed as having the qualities of proper nouns). The results will provide for further discussion on the structure of nominals: whether a definite with no overt determiner has the full structure of a DP or is better analysed as an NP which undergoes a type-shifting operation.

Chierchia, Gennaro. 1998. Reference to Kinds across Language. Natural Language Semantics 6(4), 339–405. doi:10.1023/A:1008324218506. Dayal, Veneeta. 2011. Hindi pseudo-incorporation. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29(1), 123–167. doi:10.1007/s11049-011-9118-4. De Swart, Henriëtte. 2021. Bare nouns and number. In Patricia Cabredo Hofherr & Jenny Doetjes (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammatical number (Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics), 197–219. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Driemel, Imke, Abigail Bimpeh & Reginald Duah. 2025. What’s in a bare noun? On the silence of determiners. Paper presented at OASIS 4, University of York, 17 January 2025. Heycock, Caroline & Roberto Zamparelli. 2002. Coordinated Bare Definites. Linguistic Inquiry 34(3), 443–469. doi:10.1162/002438903322247551. Schwarz, Florian. 2009. Two types of definites in natural language. UMass Amherst PhD dissertation. https://florianschwarz.net/FSDiss/FS-Diss_singlespace.pdf. Schwarz, Florian. 2019. Weak vs. strong definite articles: Meaning and form across languages. In Ana Aguilar-Guevara, Julia Pozas Loyo & Violeta Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado (eds.), Definiteness across languages. Studies in Diversity Linguistics 25. Berlin: Language Science Press. doi:10.5281/ZENODO.3252012.

ABSTRACT. See the attached file.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the syntactic structure of the Mandarin sentence-final particle ma, traditionally viewed as a clause-typing yes-no question marker, and its relation to the attitude particle a. Challenging the standard view that ma independently occupies a peripheral projection, the authors propose a decompositional analysis, in which ma is not a functional head but a complex structure derived through head movement. Specifically, ma originates as a Polarity (Pol) head above TP, undergoes successive head movement through an interrogative Force head, and ultimately lands an Attitude projection (AttP), explaining its sentence-final surface position and its incompatibility with the independent particle a. The proposed structure accounts for ma’s inability to co-occur with a, while allowing a to combine with other polar markers like mei or a null ∅ marker. Empirical data from scope ambiguity, embedded questions, and speaker expectation contexts support this syntactic decomposition. The paper’s analysis sheds light on the nature of polarity encoding, clause-typing, and the interaction between syntactic structure and speaker attitudes in Mandarin interrogatives.

ABSTRACT. There have been two main syntactic approaches to the sentence-final particle "ma" in Mandarin: some argued that it is a Disjunction Phrase (DisjP) equivalent to English or not (e.g. Tang 2015), while others argued that it is a head in the left periphery such as C0 or (illocutionary) Force0 (e.g. Pan 2022). This paper supports the latter approach by contrasting "ma" with two SFPs "fe" and "me" in Yixing Chinese, a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in China’s Jiangsu province. We argue that in contrast to "ma", Yixing "fe" and "me" are largely equivalent to English "or not".

Then we compare Mandarin and Yixing with English. Following Hamblin (1973), Biezma (2015) and others, there are two strategies to formulate a polar question: one using a polar DisjP (e.g. "I wonder whether or not John drinks coffee in English"), and the other without any DisjP (e.g. "I wonder whether John drinks coffee in English"). We argue that English has both strategies, while Mandarin "ma"-questions have no DisjP, and Yixing "fe"/“me”-questions always involve a DisjP.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates a form-meaning mismatch in Mandarin Chinese involving 'ta', traditionally known as the third-person singular pronoun. We examine cases where 'ta' appears non-referentially where it signals excessive quantity rather than referring to any entity.

Through careful examination of distributional patterns and interaction with other focus particles, we demonstrate that 'ta' functions as a scalar focus-sensitive particle, requiring its associate to occupy a high position on a contextually determined scale. This analysis overcomes limitations of previous accounts that treated 'ta' as either a second object or an expletive pronoun, which respectively predicted unattested tritransitive verbs or violated Mandarin's pro-drop nature.

Based on constituency tests and scope relationships, we argue that the verb moves across 'ta', allowing proper c-command relations - a pattern also observed with focus particles in Italian. Diachronic evidence reveals that this usage evolved from the common swearing phrase 'ta-ma-de' ('fucking' or 'damn'), explaining the shared form with the pronoun while maintaining distinct syntactic and semantic properties.

ABSTRACT. This talk addresses a central issue in the musical textsetting of Italian metrical texts: the treatment of vowel clusters which should be metrically rendered as tautosyllabic (Avalle, 1982; Menichetti, 1993; Lannutti, 1994). Focussing on the 16th-century Italian madrigal repertoire, I will first demonstrate how ensuring that these vocalic clusters are perceived as tautosyllabic in a musical setting places severe constraints on the available melodic and contrapuntal options. I then examine how composers address this issue, and the trade-offs involved in their choices. Finally, the polygenetic nature of this problem will be demonstrated by drawing comparisons with examples from other musical traditions, including 18th-century Italian opera and 20th-century popular music.

ABSTRACT. Traditionally, Italian is analysed with bimoraic trochees (Bafile, 1999). Conversely, the stable presence of iambs in the language constitutes strong counter evidence. This paper demonstrates a systematic interaction between hierarchical musical structure and prosodic organisation in the text-tune composite (following Dell & Halle, 2009). In particular, rightheaded time-spans, identified through reductional analysis (GTTM; Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983), consistently align with iambic metrical patterns in the linguistic domain. Data indicate that, alongside the expected trochees, marked iambs can be recognised and recruited under conditions of enhanced salience, such as when guided by musical prominence. This points to a more flexible and dynamic model of Italian prosody where both trochaic and iambic feet coexist (as already seen in Marotta 1999, 2012).

ABSTRACT. Musical triplets are left-headed ternary rhythmic elements. They create phenomenal accents (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983) with the onset of the triplet being metrically stronger than the following two notes. When ternary linguistic strings are sung in triplets, data from my corpus of Italian songs show a preference for text-to-tune alignment (Proto & Dell, 2013), both word-internally and across word boundaries. Moreover, headless triplets (i.e. triplets whose onset aligns with a rest) show preference of alignment with headless ternary feet. The head of these feet is visible to the algorithm – governing only weak syllables – but segmentally empty, a particular case of catalexis on the left. This aligns with the notion of ‘loud’ silence found in music literature (e.g., London, 1993).

ABSTRACT. Literature, including dramas and playscripts, provides good material for examining the actual language in use. This paper suggests a methodology for using playscripts for linguistic studies, by introducing my research data on morphosyntax of Irish English in literature and in natural speech. The paper focuses on playscripts by John B. Keane (1928-2002), a playwright and publican known for writing in the local language of County Kerry, southwest Ireland. His plays actually exhibit various and attractive lexical and grammatical features.

The following passages are cited from "Sive" (1959). The three morphosyntactic features, among others, are scrutinised in the paper: "do be" habitual, "be after" perfect, and the "’tis…" construction.

(1) I know! I know! The money is a great temptation but there is wrong in it from head to heel. Sive is young, with a brain by her. She will be dreaming about love with a young man. ’Tis the way young girls do be!

(2) We’re only just after rising from the table. ’Twould be a waste.

(3) Will you listen to him cnabshealing again? He’s never happy unless ’tis grumbling he is. Wouldn’t you have the good word, anyway? […] ’Tisn’t going around stealing the dead out of their graves we are.

The paper accesses how these morohosyntactic features in playscripts reflect actual language in use in past and present and suggests ways in which literary works can be used to elucidate grammar. This is undertaken with reference to corpora and my fieldwork data, including elicitation sessions with native speakers of Southwest Irish English.

While speech in plays and dramas are often criticised as “stage fake” in terms of language ideologies (for this, one could think of John M. Synge (1871-1909)), my study insists that the use of language in playscripts is underpinned by linguistic intuition of the local writer and thus reveals the reality of language. For example, the do be form reveals certain distributions in grammar, outlining rules in the system of Irish English. The paper, to conclude, notes the importance of inclusion in description not only of speakers’ knowledge of language but also of sociolinguistic awareness. The productive use of literature for linguistic research is emphasised.

ABSTRACT. Thesis This paper presents a corpus-informed dialectal examination of Rudyard Kipling’s series of short stories featuring three soldiers stationed in India during the British Raj, known as the “Three Musketeers”. Each speaker’s contribution is written with orthographic alterations indicating differing dialects - Ortheris, a Cockney; Learoyd, a Yorkshireman; Mulvaney, an Irishman. Raine (1992, p12) argued that “dialect is Kipling’s greatest contribution to modern literature … and he is the most accomplished practitioner since Burns.” To our knowledge, however, there has been no systematic attempt to describe the Irish dialect found in Kipling’s Three Musketeers stories.

Methodology Using a corpus of the stories to investigate Kipling’s dialect writing, we focus on the direct speech of Mulvaney. Well-known techniques and difficulties in expressing any dialect in writing will be initially discussed, particularly in the absence of a prescribed standard for Irish/ Hiberno English (Connell 2014 p39) and the need to maintain “the precarious balance of mimetic commitment and communicative exigency” (Sternberg 1982, p114 in Toolan 1992, p31). This exploration of literary dialect techniques will also highlight the value of the mixed method approach adopted for this investigation which incorporated micro-close readings of the stories in order to ascertain patterns of feature use both within and across stories, as well as macro, computational driven techniques for feature searching.

Following this, relevant and more notable phonological features of Irish/Hiberno English will be reviewed (Kallen 1994; Hickey 2004), including DRESS to KIT (e.g. ‘whin’ for when), and orthographic ‘th’ to ‘d’ (e.g. ‘wid’ for with), and we will discuss how these are represented across the stories in the corpus.

Emerging Results Initial results suggest varying degrees of consistency. The adoption of ‘wid’ for with is fairly consistently applied and uniform. However, the situation regarding DRESS to KIT appears more complex. Indeed, some forms are invariable across the corpus with respect to the use of ‘i’ (e.g. ‘rig’mint’ for regiment), while others consistently use ‘e’ (e.g. ‘end’ and its derived forms ‘ended’ and ‘ending’), despite there being no potential ambiguity or lexical mergers between ‘end’ and ‘ind’. Thus, we explore the effects of ambiguity on orthographical changes in relation to syntactic processing as a means of exploring possible motivations for Kipling not altering the representative vowel in, for example, ’red’ (to ‘rid’), but consistently altering the form of ‘then’ to ‘thin’.

ABSTRACT. To be considered for Poster Presentation-Subject: Literary Linguistics

This paper examines mainstream media's role in shaping public discourse through strategic agenda-setting and framing practices, focusing on the high-profile December 2024 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione. Utilizing Chomsky and Herman’s Propaganda Model (Herman & Chomsky, 1989) alongside McCombs and Shaw’s theories of first- and second-level agenda-setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), as well as Entman’s conceptualization of framing (Entman, 1993), this study investigates how media narratives around the event selectively highlighted certain aspects while marginalizing critical systemic perspectives.

Drawing on qualitative analysis of diverse media sources—including newspapers, online platforms, and social media content—the research illustrates how initial portrayals emphasizing Mangione's alleged ideological motivations and symbolic protest quickly shifted towards personalized narratives of pathology, criminality, and sensationalism. By systematically examining linguistic framing choices and narrative structures adopted by mainstream outlets, the analysis demonstrates that the analyzed media in question deliberate diverts reader’s attentions away from deeper structural issues in the United States of America, with the prime example of this being in the healthcare system

A comparative analysis further contrasts the media portrayal of Mangione’s case with coverage of the 2023 killing of Jordan Neely, highlighting stark differences based on victim and perpetrator social identities. This contrast reveals broader patterns of selective narrative visibility, issue salience, and ideological bias inherent in mainstream media representations.

Ultimately, the paper argues that contemporary media power operates not primarily through outright suppression, but rather through sophisticated diversion and reframing strategies that subtly reinforce dominant ideological structures and deflect meaningful discussions on structural inequities.

References: Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1989). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Pantheon Books. McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176–187. https://doi.org/10.1086/267990

ABSTRACT. attached file

ABSTRACT. To be considered for the general session (either talk or poster)

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ABSTRACT. Ditransitive Constructions in Baritle Neo-Aramaic (General Session) This study investigates the structure of ditransitive constructions in Baritle, a North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic language of Iraq, drawing on newly collected data obtained through fieldwork and native-speaker intuition. It addresses the following research questions: (1) What are the different constructions of ditransitive verbs in Baritle? and (2) What factors determine these constructions? Baritle uses the dative marker da, ‘to, for’, with ditransitive verbs to mark nominal indirect objects. (Nominal indirect object is in bold) (1) Ditransitive verb with nominal indirect object ʔaxni k-mdaṛb-ax ʔa:ða kθa:wa da ˈMatte. IPL IND-send.IPFV-1PL.SU this.M book.M DAT Matte(M.name) ‘We send this book to Matte.’ However, Baritle uses the dative marker ɣdal-, ‘to/for’, with independent pronominal indirect objects. (Independent pronominal indirect object is in bold) (2) Ditransitive verb with independent pronominal indirect object ʔaxni k-mdaṛb-ax-le ˈɣdal-eh. . IPL IND-send.IPFV-1PL.SU-3SG.M.OBJ DA-3SG.M ‘We send it to him.’ Similar to other Semitic languages, Baritle’s verbal morphology encompasses both non-concatenative (root-and-pattern) and concatenative (affixal) elements, with the former being referred to as verb bases. For instance, the triliteral root q-ṭ-l, ‘to kill’, is used as qa:ṭəl- in the imperfective aspect and qṭəl- in the perfective aspect. All subjects and objects that appear in the presupposition—a linguistic concept associated with information already assumed to be known by the hearer (Lambrecht 1994: 52)—obligatorily trigger agreement in the verbal complex (Al-Saka 2021). For example, the imperfective verb base can carry up to two agreement morphemes. Thus, in a simple intransitive or transitive imperfective, both arguments may be cross-referenced as suffixes directly on the verb. The first agreement morpheme marks subject agreement, while the second marks object agreement (Agreement is in bold below). (3) a. Intransitive verb ʔaxni k-qa:ɻ-ax ˈħe:le. IPL IND-read.IPFV-1PL.SU a lot ‘We read a lot.’ b. Transitive verb, object in narrow focus (definite/indefinite) ʔaxni k-ṣoʔ-ax ɣða ˈbəlla / ˈbəllətt-an. IPL IND-paint.IPFV-1PL.SU one.F door(F.) door(F.)-1PL.POSS ‘We paint A DOOR/OUR DOOR.’ c. Transitive verb, verb focus, presupposed object ʔaxni ˈk-ṣoʔ-ax-la bəlla. IPL IND-paint.IPFV-1PL.SU-3SG.F.OBJ door(F.) ‘We PAINT the door.’ In Baritle, the progressive aspect may be formed by adding the enclitic auxiliary -ʔi-, ‘be’, onto an imperfective base, introducing an additional agreement slot on the auxiliary itself. The auxiliary has two phonologically conditioned allomorphs: yy and ii. In (4), there is an agreeing object and the agreement morpheme that appears on the auxiliary represents a second instance of agreement with the subject. (Subject agreement is in bold, object agreement is in bold italics) (4) Progressive Transitive, verb focus, presupposed object ʔaxni ˈk-ṣoʔ-ax-la=yy-ax bəlla. IPL IND-paint.IPFV-1PL.SU-3SG.F.OBJ=be-1PL.SU door(F.) ‘We are PAINTING the door.’ The double subject agreement is limited to the first and second persons, so the third person double subject agreement is blocked in Baritle. Ditransitive verbs with two agreeing objects (i.e., two presupposed or pronominal objects) exhibit a surprising pattern. First, these ditransitive verbs employ the enclitic auxiliary, making the ditransitive verbal complex look like the progressive verbal complex. Second, the auxiliary agrees with the direct object. (Object agreement is in bold) (5) Ditransitive, verb focus, presupposed objects ʔaxni ˈk-mdaṛb-ax-lux=i-le. IPL IND-send.IPFV-1PL.SU-2SG.M.INDOBJ=AUX-3SG.M.OBJ ‘We SEND you(m.) it(m.).’ However, the first- and second-person direct object suffixes cannot be combined with an indirect object suffix on a verb complex. When a verb has a first- or second-person direct object suffix, the indirect pronominal object must be expressed as a suffix on the preposition ɣdal- ‘to’, which is placed as an independent phrase. This restriction reflects a fixed hierarchy in the ordering of suffixes on a verb (Corbett 2006). (Object agreement and the prepositional phrase are in bold) (6) a. First person pronominal direct object ʔa:yən ˈk-mdaṛb-a:-li ɣdal-en. 3SG.F IND-send.IPFV-3SG.F.SU-1SG.OBJ DAT-3PL ‘She SENDS me to them (to help them).’ b. Second person pronominal direct object ʔa:yən ˈk-mdaṛb-a:-lux ɣdal-en. 3SG.F IND-send.IPFV-3SG.F.SU-2SG.M.OBJ DAT-3PL ‘She SENDS you to them’ In summary, ditransitive constructions in Baritle have different structures based on the type of the indirect object (nominal or pronominal) and the person of the object.

References Al-Saka, Vean. 2021. ‘Verbal Syntax and Differential Object Marking in Baritle Neo- Aramaic’. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Newcastle University Corbett, Greville. 2006. Agreement. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Lambrecht, K. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topics, Focus, and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ABSTRACT. Bani Malik Asir (BMA) exhibits complex wh-phrases in the left periphery of wh-interrogatives known as pied piping (Ross, 1967). In BMA, the possessive structure is one of the constructions targeted by this phenomenon. Following Cable (2007), I argue that the existence of complex wh-phrases in the left edge of interrogative clauses is not a real pied-piping as it takes place as a secondary consequence of an overt movement of a QP headed by a null Q-particle and has a possessive wh-phrase as a complement as in (1.a,b) below. (1) a. gara xalid ∅ ktab man . read Khalid Q book whose . ‘Whose book did Khalid read?’ b. ∅ ktab man gara xalid ti . Q book whose read Khalid . . ‘Whose book did Khalid read?’ The complexity of wh-phrases in BMA can be more complicated as illustrated in (2). (2) ∅ manj ktab-ahj gara xalid . Q who book-his read Khalid . ‘Who his book did Khalid read?’ This type of construction is known as resumptive possessor-extraction. Cable (2007) argues that the resumptive pronoun is the true possessive specifier of the clause-internal DP and the QP is adjoined to the resumptive pronoun. However, I propose a different analysis that works for BMA data. I argue that the QP is base-generated in spec-CP. Given this, I follow the spilt-CP hypothesis by Rizzi (1997, 2001b, 2004), I assume that the CP in (2) is complex and has two distinct probes: (i) Force that has a [uQ] feature; and has a QP merged directly in its specifier to satisfy this feature, and (ii) Foc that has a [+Foc] feature and triggers ktab-ah to move to the spec-FocP.

ABSTRACT. Based on a pitch analysis of 500 Zulu phrases, this study measured that nearly all major pitch shifts within Zulu tonal domains occur in approximate harmonic intervals of 4, 7, and 12 semitones. Additionally, the boundary pitch of a tonal segment may harmonise with multiple domain positions, and a domain may contain layers of harmonic relations (e.g., [[waː] [ɬaka[n[iː]]]pha], where brackets indicate harmonic intervals).

These findings challenge the view in Ladd (2008) that speech pitch lacks the consistency of musical intervals and also raise questions on Patel’s (2008) description that each tone “is used where it is linguistically appropriate” and lacks the organisation feature of musical intervals. Finally, the aim of this paper is to utilise the interval analysis to examine the interaction patterns among Zulu depressor phonetics, lexical tonal phonology and intonational morphology.

ABSTRACT. This talk examines commonalities between reversing operations found in language games and pitch patterns found across musical genres. Linguistic studies of language games (e.g., Bagemihl, 1995) provide evidence for hierarchical constituency in phonological representations. Equivalent hierarchical representations are also used in studies of similarities between grouping structures in music and language (e.g. Fabb & Halle, 2011). Argentino & Mackenzie (2019) analyse serial music using formalisms developed in phonological studies of language games, arguing that these offer a simpler account of serial transformations compared to traditional serial operations. This talk extends this proposal by applying language game formalisms to the study of jazz and post-tonal repertoire.

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