Issue 10 of San Diego Linguistics Papers, our open-access online working papers series, has just been published and available here.
The current issue has been edited by Yuan Chai, Neşe Demir, Duk-Ho Jung, and Nina Hagen Kaldhol. This issue includes one manuscript on Gua phonology written by our recent graduate Dr. Michael Obiri-Yeboah: “Tone melody and tense, mood, aspect marking in Gua”
Graduate student Joshua Wampler has a new paper out in Glossa.
Wampler, J. (2021). Do thus: an investigation into anaphoric event reference. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 6(1), 78. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1297
Abstract:
Work on anaphoric event reference has focused on do so, do it, do this, and do that. This paper reports on an analysis of a heretofore unstudied form of event reference, do thus. Using a corpus of naturally occurring examples, I present evidence that do thus occupies the final slot in a hitherto incomplete paradigm for English event anaphora. Syntactically and semantically, do thus is similar to do so; but at the discourse level it patterns more like do this and do that. The data point to thus as an adverbial demonstrative on par with nominal this and that, which, when paired with do, can be used for complex event reference.
Faculty member Emily Clem has a new paper in Linguistic Inquiry titled “Cyclic expansion in Agree: Maximal projections as probes“. This paper draws on her fieldwork on Amahuaca, a Panoan language spoken in Peru.
Graduate student Michael Obiri-Yeboah and faculty member Sharon Rose have a new paper out in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory:
Obiri-Yeboah, Michael & Sharon Rose. 2021. Vowel harmony and phonological phrasing in Gua
Abstract
In Gua, an underdocumented Tano Guang language spoken in Ghana, regressive ATR vowel harmony applies within words and non-iteratively across word boundaries. Although vowel harmony is known to cross word boundaries in some languages, little is known about the domains and extent of such harmony. We show that ATR harmony in Gua operates within phonological phrases that preferentially consist of two or three words, with binary phrases at the left edge and ternary phrases at the right edge of the utterance. Syntactic structure can exert an influence, but only with respect to subjects. In addition, we demonstrate that unary phrases are permitted, but not at the edge of the utterance. Gua is the first reported vowel harmony case that shows the same kind of phonological phrasing sensitivity as other prosodic phenomena, such as tone and duration.
Issue 9 of San Diego Linguistics Papers, our open-access online working papers series, has just been published and available here. It was edited by Yuan Chai, Neşe Demir, Duk-Ho Jung, and Nina Hagen Kaldhol, and includes two papers:
Faculty member Eva Wittenberg, together with her colleague Ashwini Vaidya (IIT Delhi), has published a new open access article on processing Hindi light verb constructions:
Ashwini Vaidya & Eva Wittenberg (2020). Productivity and argument sharing in Hindi light verb constructions. Journal of South Asian Linguistics 11, 52-82. PDF
Issue 8 of San Diego Linguistics Papers, our online working papers series, has just been published and is freely available. It was edited by Yuan Chai, Neşe Demir, Duk-Ho Jung, and Nina Hagen Kaldho, and includes five papers by our graduate students, encompassing theoretical and empirical work on phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax,semantics, pragmatics, and fieldwork:
Alumna Qi Cheng (Ph.D. 2020), currently assistant professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Washington, and faculty Rachel Mayberry have recently published a research paper finding that late first-language learners of ASL use event structure rather than word order to comprehend basic sentence structure.
Cheng Q. & Mayberry, R. I. 2020. “When event knowledge overrides word order in sentence comprehension: Learning a first language after childhood.” Developmental Science.
DOI: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.13073
Scott Seyfarth (Ph.D. 2016) and Marc Garellek published an article in LabPhon entitled “Physical and phonological causes of coda /t/ glottalization in the mainstream American English of central Ohio.”
In this paper, Scott and Marc claim that voiceless stops in American English involve glottal constriction to produce voicelessness in coda position. The distribution of glottalized coda /t/ in the Buckeye Corpus can be explained by phonetic conditions which either favor reduction of the oral closure, or else reinforce the irregular voicing associated with the glottal constriction gesture. However, they find evidence that glottalization is also phonologically planned, especially before sonorants.
Seyfarth, S., & Garellek, M. (2020). Physical and phonological causes of coda /t/ glottalization in the mainstream American English of central Ohio. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 11(1), 24. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.213
LCL alumnus Adam Morgan has published a paper on the comprehension of resumptive pronouns in English, together with former UCSD postdoc Titus von der Malsburg, psychology faculty Victor Ferreira, and LCL lab PI Eva Wittenberg. A preprint can be found here,