Faculty of Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics

General Linguistics Seminars

HILARY TERM 2012

WEEKS 1 - 8, 5.15 pm on Mondays, in the TAYLOR INSTITUTION ROOM 2

All interested staff, graduates and undergraduates are welcome at the seminars.

Each seminar is followed by a wine reception.

Monday, 13 February 2012
Title: Second Position Clitics: explaining their `movement`
Speaker: Mr John Lowe, Oxford
Venue: TAYLORIAN ROOM 2
Time: 5.00 pm - 6.45 pm

Abstract: A considerable volume of literature exists on second-position clitics, the positioning of which in a clause appears to depend on a combination of syntactic and prosodic factors. The situation is complicated by the wide variety of approaches to syntax, to prosody, and to the interface between the two. I explore these problems largely in the context of Lexical-Functional Grammar, and present a new approach to the positioning of second-position clitics based on a model of the interface which strictly separates syntax and prosody.

Monday, 20 February 2012
Title: The Rise and Fall of Ergativity in Aramaic
Speaker: Dr Eleanor Coghill, Konstanz
Venue: TAYLORIAN ROOM 2
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:45 pm

Abstract: The eastern Aramaic dialects, spoken in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria, are highly diverse: one thing they nevertheless share is the loss of the old Semitic verbal forms (the Prefix and Suffix Conjugations) and their replacement by forms based on participles. A secondary effect of this process was the development of ergative alignment in the perfect. In the modern dialects ergativity is only to be found in verbal agreement inflection, not in case-marking.
While some dialects preserve ergative verbal agreement, it is being eroded, both by movement towards active alignment and by the increasing use of separate markers for the patient. Other dialects have lost ergative alignment altogether.
The pathways through which alignment change take place are controversial: for Iranian, Indo-Aryan and Aramaic, various possibilities have been suggested, including the reanalysis of passives or of possessive predicates (cf., e.g. Benveniste 1952, Cardona 1970, Kutscher 1969). More recently, a connection between dative (expressing roles such as experiencer) and ergative has been noted (e.g. Butt 2006, Haig 2008). The textual evidence from Aramaic suggests that what became the ergative construction was originally restricted more or less to verbs with experiencer roles, such as ‘see’, ‘hear’ and ‘know’. Aramaic is ideal as a case-study for alignment change, due to the wealth of texts, dating from 3000 years ago to the present day. The present talk will present the evidence from both ancient texts and modern dialects, in order to understand the changes in alignment and their motivations.

References
Benveniste, Émile. 1952 ‘La construction passive du parfait transitif’, Bulletin de la Société de linguistique 48, 52-62.
Butt, Miriam. 2006. ‘The Dative-Ergative Connection.’ In Patricia Cabredo-Hofherr (ed.), Proceedings of the Colloque Syntax-Semantique Paris (CSSP) 2005.
Cardona, G. 1970. ‘The Indo-Iranian construction man? (mam?) k?tam.’ Language 46, 1-12.
Haig, Geoffrey L. J. 2008. Alignment Change in Iranian Languages: A Construction Grammar Approach. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kutscher, Y.E., 1969, ‘Two “passive” constructions in Aramaic in the light of Persian’, Proceedings of the international conference on Semitic studies, Jerusalem, 132-151.

Monday, 27 February 2012
Title: Split scope and quantification over choice functions
Speaker: Dr Luisa Marti, QMUL
Venue: TAYLORIAN ROOM 2
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:45 pm
Abstract: In this talk we explore an approach to the phenomenon of split
scope that takes it that quantification in natural language is
quantification over choice functions (and not, for example, over
individuals). We show that this approach to split scope is empirically
superior to competing approaches.

Monday, 5 March 2012
Title: In the event of a Nominal
Speaker: Professor Hagit Borer, QMUL
Venue: TAYLORIAN ROOM 2
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:45 pm

Abstract: This paper is case study of the properties of word formation, and focusing on a comparison between the properties of AS-ing nominals (Argument Structure nominals, or Complex Event Nominals, in the terminology of Grimshaw, 1990), and those of -ing Synthetic Compounds. Specifically, I show that while -ing AS-nominals are compositional and have event structure, -ing Synthetic Compounds lack both. The emergence of this specific clustering of properties, in turn, can only be accounted for if one assumes that appearance notwithstanding, the phonological string 'driving', as it occurs within the expression 'the driving of the truck' has distinct derivational history - and thus distinct structure - from that of the very identical phonological string 'driving' as it occurs in 'truck driving'. The distinction between the derivational history and the structure of these expressions, in turn, can only be successfully made within a fully syntactic approach to the derivation of complex words as well as to the emergence of argument structure and event structure.

Monday, 23 April 2012
Title: General Linguistics progamme of Seminars
Speaker: will resume
Venue: Taylor Institution
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Summary:
Abstract:

Monday, 23 April 2012
Title: The Myth of the De Se
Speaker: Dr Ofra Magidor, Oxford
Venue:
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Summary:
Abstract: 'The Myth of the De Se'
>
> Abstract: A growingly popular line of thought in both philosophy and linguistics is what I will call (unsympathetically) ‘The myth of the de se’. It is not easy to articulate precisely what the view says but I have in mind views that accept something such as the following:
>
> There is a special class of propositional attitudes (or rather ‘propositional-like’ attitudes). These are self-locating or de se attitudes, ones that are typically expressed using indexical expressions such as ‘I’ and ‘now’. Moreover, de se attitudes pose a special challenge for our account of propositional attitudes. In other words, start with what might otherwise be considered an adequate account for standard (non de se) attitudes. Once we take on board de se attitudes, this account ought to be fundamentally amended.
>
> The most prominent defender of the myth is David Lewis, when he proposed shifting from a possible worlds account to a centred worlds account, but others with very different views can also be seen as defenders of the myth. My aim in this paper is to challenge the myth of the de se. (For the most part I will focus on Lewis's view, but the discussion should have wider relevance). In sec. 1, I present Lewis's view and his arguments in support of the centred worlds account, and argue that his arguments are unconvincing. In sec. 2, I briefly highlight some additional problems that the shift to a centred worlds framework introduces. In sec. 3, I present what I take to be the strongest argument for the centred-worlds account: 'the reduciblity argument', but I explain why it isn't ultimately convincing. Finally, in sec. 4, I discuss and reject some additional claims that defenders of the myth often accept. I conclude that the myth of the de se ought to be rejected.

Monday, 30 April 2012
Title: Reference time and the English past tenses
Speaker: Dr Howard Jones, Oxford and Dr Wilfried Meyer-Viol, King’s College London
Venue: TAYLORIAN ROOM 2
Time: 5:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Summary: We offer a formal account of the English past tenses.
Abstract: We offer a formal account of the English past tenses. We see the perfect as having reference time at speech time and the preterite as having reference time at event time. We formalize four constraints on reference time, which we bundle together under the term ‘perspective’. Once these constraints are satisfied at the different reference times of the perfect and preterite, the contrasting functions of these tenses are explained. Thus we can account formally for the ‘definiteness effect’ and the ‘lifetime effect’ of the perfect, for the fact that the perfect seems to ‘explain’ something about the present, and that the perfect cannot presuppose a past time point. We explain why perfect and preterite can sometimes be interchangeable, and we offer a solution to the ‘present perfect puzzle’. We explain the unacceptability of notorious examples of the perfect such as *Gutenberg has discovered the art of printing. We give greater definition to the familiar notions of ‘current relevance’ and ‘extended now’.

Monday, 7 May 2012
Title: Polar Eskimo: some preliminary thoughts and phenomenological observations
Speaker: Dr Stephen Pax Leonard
Venue: TAYLORIAN ROOM 2
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Summary: Polar Eskimo or Inuktun is the language of 700 Inuit hunters of north-west Greenland. As a dialect without a standardised written norm, but related to Canadian Inuktitut and yet spoken in Greenland, it is a linguistic anomaly whose aberrant phonology ensures that it is not understood elsewhere in the country.
Abstract: With the absence of a written culture in its own language, Polar Eskimo has historically been the vehicle for a rich tradition of storytelling and a source of knowledge for a rapidly changing Arctic climate. Polar Eskimo is a language of glottal stops, sighs and groans where words can be 50 letters long. This lecture gives a brief introduction to the language and my phenomenological observations with regards to the 'experience of language' in a society where gesture is as important as words, where speech trumps writing and where sitting in a hunters' hut on the sea ice in a gale, the sounds of the storyteller's voice merge with the sounds of nature.

Monday, 14 May 2012
Title: Speech sounds and ultrasound: seeing what people can & can’t hear
Speaker: Professor Jim Scobbie QMUL
Venue: TAYLORIAN ROOM 3
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Summary: Ultrasound can offer quick, safe and convenient data on tongue shape and movement. Some fundamental technical issues with synchronisation, stabilisation, frame-rate and storage have solved, with progress on others such as averaging and statistical analysis.
Abstract: With a greater availability of relatively non-invasive and cheap articulatory technology, a range of linguistic phonetic questions can be addressed with relative ease. In this talk will explore some articulatory aspects of contemporary vernacular Scottish English, focusing on derhoticisation and /u/-fronting, but also touching on /l/-vocalisation, all of which show interesting articulatory aspects not evident from previous acoustic and impressionist analysis. Such work shows that functional perceptual drivers associated with lexical access have to be supplemented with rather different sociolinguistic drivers. I will also look at the next generation of high-speed ultrasound imaging, as developed by Articulate Instruments in collaboration with QMU, which has high (120Hz) to very high (400Hz) frame-rates and accurate synchronisation, and enables multi-channel data collection and video-capture of labial articulations. The system will be exemplified with fast moving flaps in Malayalam and Lombard speech in Scottish English.

Monday, 21 May 2012
Title: Comparative Syntax
Speaker: Professor Richard Kayne, NYU
Venue: TAYLORIAN ROOM 3
Time: 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Summary: Descriptive adequacy in the case of comparative syntax involves discovering generalizations over cross-linguistic differences and similarities.
Abstract: Explanatory adequacy in the case of comparative syntax involves trying to understand, in general UG terms or beyond, why a given cross-linguistic correlation should hold in the first place. The primary importance of comparative syntax lies in the fact that it provides us with new kinds of evidence bearing on questions concerning the general character of the language faculty. Figuring out what cross-linguistic generalizations hold and why exactly they hold helps to narrow down the set of hypotheses that we entertain about the language faculty. In this talk, I will bring in specific examples primarily from Romance.