Schedule

Wednesday, 7 October 2020 (2 p.m. CE)

Discussed paper

Samuels, B. D., Andersson, S., Sayeed, O., & Vaux, B. (2020). Getting ready for primetime: paths to acquiring substance-free phonology.

Abstract

Substance-free phonology (SFP) is based on the hypothesis that phonological computation makes no reference to phonetic substance, and that phonological features are treated as arbitrary symbols for the purposes of computation. However, phonologists within the SFP tradition disagree about whether the content of phonological features is innate or learned (“emergent”), and if learned, whether the acquisition process is based on phonological patterning alone or refers to phonetic substance. In the present work we identify predictive differences between these accounts. We conclude that there is an innate basis to phonological features, but that featural content is not innate. We suggest that a hybrid phonetic-phonological approach to feature content acquisition may ultimately be the most successful.

Wednesday, 14 October 2020 (2 p.m. CE)

Talk by Joe Perry (University of Hong Kong) + Q&A

Wednesday, 28 October 2020 (2 p.m. CE)

Talk by Jeffrey Lamontagne (Indiana University Bloomington)

Losing your edge: Prosodic effects of morphological structure.

Discussed paper

Van Oostendorp, M. (2004). Crossing morpheme boundaries in Dutch. Lingua, 114(11), 1367-1400.

Abstract

On the basis of Dutch data, this article argues that many differences between types of affixes which are usually described by arbitrary morphological diacritics in the literature, can be made to follow from the phonological shape of affixes. Two cases are studied in some detail: differences between prefixes and suffixes, and differences between ‘cohering’ and ‘non-cohering’ suffixes.

Prefixes in many languages of the world behave as prosodically more independent than suffixes with respect to syllabification: the former usually do not integrate with the stem, whereas the latter do. Dutch is an example of a language to which this applies. It is argued that this asymmetry does not have to be stipulated, but can be made to follow from the fact that the phonotactic reason for crossing a morpheme boundary usually involves the creation of an onset, which is on the left-hand side of a vowel and not on its right-hand side, plus some general (symmetric) conditions on the interface between phonology and morphology.

The differences between ‘cohering’ and ‘non-cohering’ suffixes with respect to syllable structure and stress in Dutch is argued to similarly follow from the phonological shape of these affixes. Once we have set up an appropriately sophisticated structure for every affix, there is no need any more to stipulate arbitrary morphological markings: differences in phonological behaviour follow from differences in phonological shape alone, given a sufficiently precise theory of universal constraints and their interactions.

Friday, 6 November 2020 (4 p.m. CE)

Special Session by Omer Preminger (University of Maryland)

Lexicalism – LF and PF.

Abstract 1 is geared more in the direction of a general audience, and abstract 2 is geared more towards specialists in (morpho-)syntax.

Abstract 1

Abstract 2

Background readings

Harley, H. (2014). On the identity of roots. Theoretical Linguistics, 40(3-4), 225-276.

Abstract

This paper attempts to articulate the essential nature of the notion ‘root’ in the morphosyntax. Adopting a realizational (Late Insertion) view of the morphosyntactic model, the question of whether roots are phonologically individuated, semantically individuated, or not individuated at all in the syntactic component are addressed in turn. It is argued that roots cannot be phonologically identified, since there are suppletive roots, and they cannot be semantically identified, since there are roots with highly variable semantic content, analogous to ‘semantic suppletion’. And yet, they must be individuated in the syntax, since without such individuation, suppletive competition would be impossible. Roots must therefore be individuated purely abstractly, as independent indices on the √node in the syntactic computation that serves as the linkage between a particular set of spell-out instructions and a particular set of interpretive instructions. It is further argued that the syntactic √ node behaves in a syntactically unexceptional way, merging with complement phrases and projecting a √P. The correct formulation of locality restrictions on idiosyncratic phonological and semantic interpretations are also discussed.

Harley, H. (2014). Reply to commentaries, "On the identity of roots". Theoretical Linguistics, 40(3-4), 447-474.

Marantz, A. (1997). No Escape from Syntax: Don 't Try Morphological Analysis in the Privacy of Your Own Lexicon. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 4(2), 201-225.

Abstract

So Lexicalism claims that the syntax manipulates internally complex words, not unanalyzable atomic units. The leading idea of Lexicalism might be summarized as follows: Everyone agrees that there has to be a list of sound/meaning connections for the atomic building blocks of language (=the “morphemes”). There also has to be a list of idiosyncratic properties associated with the building blocks. Perhaps the storage house of sound/meaning connections for building blocks and the storage house of idiosyncratic information associated with building blocks is the same house. Perhaps the distinction between this unified storage house and the computational system of syntax could be used to correlate and localize various other crucial distinctions: non-syntax vs. syntax, "lexical" phonological rules vs. phrasal and everywhere phonological rules, unpredictable composition vs. predictable composition ... Syntax is for the ruly, the lexicon for the unruly (see, e.g., DiSciullo and Williams 1987). The Lexicalist view of the computational lexicon may be pictured as in (3), where both the Lexicon and the Syntax connect sound and meaning by relating the sound and meaning of complex constituents systematically to the sounds and meanings of their constitutive parts.

The underlying suspicion behind the leading idea of Lexicalism is this: we know things about words that we don't know about phrases and sentences; what we know about words is like what we would want to say we know about (atomic) morphemes. This paper brings the reader the following news: Lexicalism is dead, deceased, demised, no more, passed on... The underlying suspicion was wrong and the leading idea didn't work out. This failure is not generally known because no one listens to morphologists. Everyone who has worked on the issues of domains — what are the domains for "lexical phonological rules", what are the domains of "special meanings", what are the domains of apparently special structure/meaning correspondences — knows that these domains don't coincide in the "word" and in fact don't correlate (exactly) with each other. But the people that work on word-sized domains are morphologists, and when morphologists talk, linguists nap.

The structure of this paper is as follows: we open with a Preface, which might be called, “Distributed Morphology,” or “the alternative that allows us to dump lexicalism once and for all.” Section 1 explains, “Why special sound, special meaning, and special structure/meaning correspondences don’t coincide in the word,” i.e., why the major claim of Lexicalist approaches to grammar is wrong. Finally, Section 2 goes back to the alleged source of the “lexicalist hypothesis,” and explains why “Remarks on Nominalization” (Chomsky 1970), rather than launching Lexicalism, provides a knock-down argument against the Lexicon of lexicalism. (I find some of my points in this paper prefigured, in a different but related context, in Schmerling 1983.)

Marantz, A. (2001). Words.

Wednesday, 11 November 2020 (2 p.m. CE)

Talk by Noam Faust & Francesc Torres-Tamarit (CNRS & Université Paris 8)

Metrically-conditioned /a/-syncope in simple and compound nominals in Modern Hebrew

Wednesday, 25 November 2020 (2 p.m. CE)

Talk by Jelena Stojković (University of Leipzig)

Dissimilatory Reduplication Without the OCP and Reduplication.

Abstract document

Wednesday, 27 January 2021 (2 p.m. CE)

Talk by Florian Breit (University College London)

Synchronic and diachronic arguments for a trigger-centric approach to Welsh initial consonant mutation

Thursday, 11 February 2021 (14:00 p.m. CE)

Talk by Paolo Danesi (University of Côte D’Azur)

Friday, 19 March 2021 (17:00 p.m. CE)

Talk by Tommaso Balsemin & Francesco Pinzin (Goethe Universität Frankfurt / Università degli Studi di Padova)

Friday, 26 March 2021 (17:00 p.m. CE)

Talk by Matilde Accattoli (Université Paris 8)

Friday, 9 April 2021 (17:00 p.m. CE)

Talk by Alexander Chabot (Université Côte d’Azur)

Friday, 14 May 2021

Talk by Giuliano Bocci (University of Siena)

Friday, 21 May 2021

Talk by Jeffrey Keith Parrott (Palacký University, Olomouc)