Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.1353/lan.2024.a929736
Luke James Adamson
Abstract:The grammatical gender of a noun can be sensitive to a number of different factors, including the noun’s lexical semantics, nominalizing morphology, or arbitrary requirements imposed by particular roots (e.g. Corbett 1991, Kramer 2020), though the limits on possible factors are not currently understood, with some work proposing that a noun’s gender can even be valued ‘at a distance’ via agreement with other nominals. The current study explores the understudied phenomenon of gender-possession interactions (Evans 1994), investigating whether being possessed, or being possessable, can have an impact on which gender a noun is assigned. Evidence is provided from four unrelated languages supporting the existence of such interactions. Strikingly, however, these interactions are restricted to inalienable possession; no such interactions have been identified for alienable possession. I propose that this falls out from a general gender locality hypothesis (GLH), which restricts the domain of gender assignment within a phrase nP. The GLH captures the gender asymmetry between ‘local’, inalienable possessors introduced within nP and ‘nonlocal’, alienable possessors introduced outside of nP, for example, in a phrase PossP (Alexiadou 2003, Myler 2016). The GLH also makes further predictions for other features with respect to what may or may not factor into gender assignment, severely restricting or outright prohibiting gender-assignment effects from number, definiteness, and case. Broadly, the work expands our understanding of which types of elements can be relevant to gender assignment and sheds light on underexplored gender-, possession-, and agreement-related phenomena.
{"title":"Gender assignment is local: On the relation between grammatical gender and inalienable possession","authors":"Luke James Adamson","doi":"10.1353/lan.2024.a929736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2024.a929736","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The grammatical gender of a noun can be sensitive to a number of different factors, including the noun’s lexical semantics, nominalizing morphology, or arbitrary requirements imposed by particular roots (e.g. Corbett 1991, Kramer 2020), though the limits on possible factors are not currently understood, with some work proposing that a noun’s gender can even be valued ‘at a distance’ via agreement with other nominals. The current study explores the understudied phenomenon of gender-possession interactions (Evans 1994), investigating whether being possessed, or being possessable, can have an impact on which gender a noun is assigned. Evidence is provided from four unrelated languages supporting the existence of such interactions. Strikingly, however, these interactions are restricted to inalienable possession; no such interactions have been identified for alienable possession. I propose that this falls out from a general gender locality hypothesis (GLH), which restricts the domain of gender assignment within a phrase nP. The GLH captures the gender asymmetry between ‘local’, inalienable possessors introduced within nP and ‘nonlocal’, alienable possessors introduced outside of nP, for example, in a phrase PossP (Alexiadou 2003, Myler 2016). The GLH also makes further predictions for other features with respect to what may or may not factor into gender assignment, severely restricting or outright prohibiting gender-assignment effects from number, definiteness, and case. Broadly, the work expands our understanding of which types of elements can be relevant to gender assignment and sheds light on underexplored gender-, possession-, and agreement-related phenomena.","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141395346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.1353/lan.2024.a930313
Allison Taylor-Adams, Kaylynn Gunter
{"title":"Developing linguistics educators: A qualitative study of graduate linguist professional development: Supplemental Material","authors":"Allison Taylor-Adams, Kaylynn Gunter","doi":"10.1353/lan.2024.a930313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2024.a930313","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141412616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.1353/lan.2024.a929735
Kadir Gökgöz, Luke James Adamson, Amalia Arvaniti, A. Katsika, Na Hu, Canaan Breiss, Morris Swadesh, Stephen R. Anderson, E. Traugott, Lauren Gawne, John Beavers, Shelome Gooden, Samantha Jackson, Derek Denis, Allison Taylor-Adams, Kaylynn Gunter, Thomas Grano, Grayson Ziegler, Amanda Bohnert, Emily Hanink, Kelly H. Berkson, S. Chelliah, S. Par, Kilu von Prince
Abstract:Whether spoken language verbal classifiers and sign language classifier handshapes are comparable enough to be treated similarly is a subject of debate in the literature. In this article, I first show that both spoken language verbal classifiers and sign language classifier handshapes cross-reference the internal argument in intransitive and transitive clauses. Despite differences in the modality of expression (visual-gestural vs. auditory-oral), verbal classifiers end up accomplishing this same kind of work in the grammar, which falls under absolutive alignment. From a morphosyntactic point of view, however, there is more to the story, as data from body-part classifiers reveal. I show that Turkish Sign Language (TİD) is similar to Manam, Diegueño, and Cherokee with regard to classifiers cross-referencing the external or internal argument’s body part. While some of this falls outside of absolutive alignment because cross-reference is to the external argument, I show that the syntactic distributions of clauses with body-part classifiers in both modalities can be accounted for with a few modifications to recent morphosyntactic proposals originally offered for sign languages. This supports the conclusion that verbal classifiers are comparable across modalities. Along the way, I refine Benedicto and Brentari’s (2004) account and propose that there are building blocks (selected fingers and hand-parts) in the morphophonology of TİD that combine to yield the range of classifiers that researchers hitherto have tended to describe with holistic labels. Namely, all classifier types in sign languages (whole entity, handling, and body part) employ selected fingers that cross-reference the internal argument in some way, similarly to how many spoken language verbal classifiers cross-reference internal arguments. Furthermore, handling and body-part classifiers make use of hand-parts that can cross-reference the body part of the external argument. Similarities between the spoken languages Manam, Diegueño, and Cherokee and the sign language TİD in cross-referencing the body part of an argument in syntax become clear, and the morphophonological patterns of hand-parts also reveal handling and body-part classifiers in sign languages to be more similar than previously thought.
摘要:口语言语分类器和手语分类器的手形是否具有足够的可比性,是否可以进行类似处理,是文献中争论的一个话题。在本文中,笔者首先证明了口语言语分类器和手语分类器的手形都能交叉引用不及物动词和及物动词从句中的内部论点。尽管表达方式不同(视觉-手势与听觉-口语),但言语分类器最终在语法中完成了同样的工作,属于绝对对齐。然而,从形态句法的角度来看,正如来自身体部位分类器的数据所揭示的那样,这其中还有更多的故事。我的研究表明,土耳其手语(TİD)与马纳姆语(Manam)、迪格诺语(Diegueño)和切罗基语(Cherokee)在分类器交叉引用外部或内部论据的身体部位方面相似。虽然由于交叉参照的是外部论据,其中一些不属于绝对对齐的范畴,但我证明,只要对最近最初为手势语提出的形态句法建议稍加修改,就可以解释这两种模态中带有身体部位分类词的分句的句法分布。这支持了言语分类词在不同模态中具有可比性的结论。在此过程中,我完善了贝内迪克托和布伦塔瑞(Benedicto and Brentari,2004 年)的论述,并提出在 TİD的形态音素学中存在一些构件(选定的手指和手部),这些构件组合在一起,产生了迄今为止研究人员倾向于用整体标签来描述的分类器的范围。也就是说,手语中的所有分类器类型(整体、处理和身体部分)都使用了选定的手指,这些手指以某种方式交叉引用内部论据,这与许多口语动词分类器交叉引用内部论据的情况类似。此外,处理和身体部位分类器使用的手部可以交叉引用外部参数的身体部位。口语马纳姆语(Manam)、迪格诺语(Diegueño)和切罗基语(Cherokee)与手语 TİD 在句法中交叉引用论据的身体部分方面的相似性变得很明显,手部的形态学模式也揭示了手语中的处理和身体部分分类器比以前认为的更加相似。
{"title":"Verbal classifiers from a crosslinguistic and cross-modal point of view","authors":"Kadir Gökgöz, Luke James Adamson, Amalia Arvaniti, A. Katsika, Na Hu, Canaan Breiss, Morris Swadesh, Stephen R. Anderson, E. Traugott, Lauren Gawne, John Beavers, Shelome Gooden, Samantha Jackson, Derek Denis, Allison Taylor-Adams, Kaylynn Gunter, Thomas Grano, Grayson Ziegler, Amanda Bohnert, Emily Hanink, Kelly H. Berkson, S. Chelliah, S. Par, Kilu von Prince","doi":"10.1353/lan.2024.a929735","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2024.a929735","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Whether spoken language verbal classifiers and sign language classifier handshapes are comparable enough to be treated similarly is a subject of debate in the literature. In this article, I first show that both spoken language verbal classifiers and sign language classifier handshapes cross-reference the internal argument in intransitive and transitive clauses. Despite differences in the modality of expression (visual-gestural vs. auditory-oral), verbal classifiers end up accomplishing this same kind of work in the grammar, which falls under absolutive alignment. From a morphosyntactic point of view, however, there is more to the story, as data from body-part classifiers reveal. I show that Turkish Sign Language (TİD) is similar to Manam, Diegueño, and Cherokee with regard to classifiers cross-referencing the external or internal argument’s body part. While some of this falls outside of absolutive alignment because cross-reference is to the external argument, I show that the syntactic distributions of clauses with body-part classifiers in both modalities can be accounted for with a few modifications to recent morphosyntactic proposals originally offered for sign languages. This supports the conclusion that verbal classifiers are comparable across modalities. Along the way, I refine Benedicto and Brentari’s (2004) account and propose that there are building blocks (selected fingers and hand-parts) in the morphophonology of TİD that combine to yield the range of classifiers that researchers hitherto have tended to describe with holistic labels. Namely, all classifier types in sign languages (whole entity, handling, and body part) employ selected fingers that cross-reference the internal argument in some way, similarly to how many spoken language verbal classifiers cross-reference internal arguments. Furthermore, handling and body-part classifiers make use of hand-parts that can cross-reference the body part of the external argument. Similarities between the spoken languages Manam, Diegueño, and Cherokee and the sign language TİD in cross-referencing the body part of an argument in syntax become clear, and the morphophonological patterns of hand-parts also reveal handling and body-part classifiers in sign languages to be more similar than previously thought.","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141410086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-01DOI: 10.1353/lan.2024.a930311
Kadir Gökgöz
{"title":"Verbal classifiers from a crosslinguistic and cross-modal point of view: Supplemental Material","authors":"Kadir Gökgöz","doi":"10.1353/lan.2024.a930311","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2024.a930311","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141400510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study investigated accent bias against job applicants with extralocal (non-Canadian) English accents in the Greater Toronto Area. Verbal guises recorded by British, Chinese, German, Indian, Jamaican, and Nigerian women and by Canadian women with at least one parent from these countries were evaluated by forty-eight human resources students, who rated the content of job interview responses and the candidates’ ‘expression’ and ‘employability’, determined what job they should be interviewed for, and provided commentary. Canadian voices were especially privileged in comments on speech. Quantitative analysis of responses reflected bias against extralocal voices. Consequently, we provide recommendations for relevant stakeholders.
{"title":"What I say, or how I say it? Ethnic accents and hiring evaluations in the Greater Toronto Area","authors":"Samantha Jackson, Derek Denis","doi":"10.1353/lan.0.a928181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.a928181","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigated accent bias against job applicants with extralocal (non-Canadian)\u0000English accents in the Greater Toronto Area. Verbal guises recorded by British, Chinese, German,\u0000Indian, Jamaican, and Nigerian women and by Canadian women with at least one parent from\u0000these countries were evaluated by forty-eight human resources students, who rated the content of\u0000job interview responses and the candidates’ ‘expression’ and ‘employability’, determined what job\u0000they should be interviewed for, and provided commentary. Canadian voices were especially privileged\u0000in comments on speech. Quantitative analysis of responses reflected bias against extralocal\u0000voices. Consequently, we provide recommendations for relevant stakeholders.","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141051241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The challenge of supporting literacy among deaf children is as much linguistic as educational, since a major stumbling block can be the lack of a firm first language foundation. It is critical to meet this challenge, given the range of serious negative correlates to illiteracy. Students on the campuses of Gallaudet University and Swarthmore College collaborate to address this issue in an inter-institutional course in which we make bimodal-bilingual videobooks designed for enjoyable shared reading activities between deaf children and their caretakers. These videobooks bring a good signing model into the home and help develop a range of essential preliteracy skills.
{"title":"Before their very eyes: Enhancing the (pre)literacy skills of deaf children","authors":"Melissa Curran, G. Mirus, D. Napoli","doi":"10.1353/lan.0.a922017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.a922017","url":null,"abstract":"The challenge of supporting literacy among deaf children is as much linguistic as educational, \u0000since a major stumbling block can be the lack of a firm first language foundation. It is critical to \u0000meet this challenge, given the range of serious negative correlates to illiteracy. Students on the \u0000campuses of Gallaudet University and Swarthmore College collaborate to address this issue in an \u0000inter-institutional course in which we make bimodal-bilingual videobooks designed for enjoyable \u0000shared reading activities between deaf children and their caretakers. These videobooks bring a \u0000good signing model into the home and help develop a range of essential preliteracy skills.","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140090379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-12DOI: 10.1353/lan.2023.a914191
Georgia Zellou, Michelle Cohn, Anne Pycha
Abstract:Listeners have a remarkable ability to adapt to novel speech patterns, such as a new accent or an idiosyncratic pronunciation. In almost all of the previous studies examining this phenomenon, the participating listeners had reason to believe that the speech signal was produced by a human being. However, people are increasingly interacting with voice-activated artificially intelligent (voice-AI) devices that produce speech using text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. Will listeners also adapt to novel speech input when they believe it is produced by a device? Across three experiments, we investigate this question by exposing American English listeners to shifted pronunciations accompanied by either a ‘human’ or a ‘device’ guise and testing how this exposure affects their subsequent categorization of vowels. Our results show that listeners exhibit perceptual learning even when they believe the speaker is a device. Furthermore, listeners generalize these adjustments to new talkers, and do so particularly strongly when they believe that both old and new talkers are devices. These results have implications for models of speech perception, theories of human-computer interaction, and the interface between social cognition and linguistic theory.
{"title":"Listener beliefs and perceptual learning: Differences between device and human guises","authors":"Georgia Zellou, Michelle Cohn, Anne Pycha","doi":"10.1353/lan.2023.a914191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2023.a914191","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Listeners have a remarkable ability to adapt to novel speech patterns, such as a new accent or an idiosyncratic pronunciation. In almost all of the previous studies examining this phenomenon, the participating listeners had reason to believe that the speech signal was produced by a human being. However, people are increasingly interacting with voice-activated artificially intelligent (voice-AI) devices that produce speech using text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. Will listeners also adapt to novel speech input when they believe it is produced by a device? Across three experiments, we investigate this question by exposing American English listeners to shifted pronunciations accompanied by either a ‘human’ or a ‘device’ guise and testing how this exposure affects their subsequent categorization of vowels. Our results show that listeners exhibit perceptual learning even when they believe the speaker is a device. Furthermore, listeners generalize these adjustments to new talkers, and do so particularly strongly when they believe that both old and new talkers are devices. These results have implications for models of speech perception, theories of human-computer interaction, and the interface between social cognition and linguistic theory.","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139010108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1353/lan.2023.a914193
M. Toosarvandani
Abstract: We are used to thinking about person, number, and gender as features to which the grammar is sensitive. But the place of animacy is less familiar, despite its robust syntactic activity in many languages. I investigate the pronominal system of Southeastern Sierra Zapotec, identifying an interpretive parallel between animacy and person. Third-person plural pronouns, which encode a four-way animacy distinction in the language, exhibit associativity, a cluster of interpretive properties that have been argued also to characterize first-and second-person plural pronouns. Building on Kratzer’s (2009) and Harbour’s (2016) theories of person, I propose a plurality-based semantics for animacy that captures their shared properties. The compositional mechanism underlying this semantics ties person and animacy features to a single syntactic position inside the noun phrase. This enables an understanding of these features’ shared relevance to syntactic operations, including those underlying pronoun cliticization. In these Zapotec varieties, it is constrained both by person (in the well-known person-case constraint) and by animacy.
{"title":"The interpretation and grammatical representation of animacy","authors":"M. Toosarvandani","doi":"10.1353/lan.2023.a914193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2023.a914193","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: We are used to thinking about person, number, and gender as features to which the grammar is sensitive. But the place of animacy is less familiar, despite its robust syntactic activity in many languages. I investigate the pronominal system of Southeastern Sierra Zapotec, identifying an interpretive parallel between animacy and person. Third-person plural pronouns, which encode a four-way animacy distinction in the language, exhibit associativity, a cluster of interpretive properties that have been argued also to characterize first-and second-person plural pronouns. Building on Kratzer’s (2009) and Harbour’s (2016) theories of person, I propose a plurality-based semantics for animacy that captures their shared properties. The compositional mechanism underlying this semantics ties person and animacy features to a single syntactic position inside the noun phrase. This enables an understanding of these features’ shared relevance to syntactic operations, including those underlying pronoun cliticization. In these Zapotec varieties, it is constrained both by person (in the well-known person-case constraint) and by animacy.","PeriodicalId":17956,"journal":{"name":"Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138614270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}