Browsing by Subject "Linguistics"

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The acquisition of consonant feature sequences: Harmony, metathesis and deletion patterns in phonological development.
(2010-12) Gerlach, Sharon Ruth
This dissertation examines three processes affecting consonants in child speech: harmony (long-distance assimilation) involving major place features as in coat [kok]; long-distance metathesis as in cup [pak]; and initial consonant deletion as in fish [is]. These processes are unattested in adult phonology, leading to proposals for child-specific constraints. Initial consonant deletion in particular is a little-understood phenomenon thought to be idiosyncratic. However, my survey of initial consonant deletion as reported in eight languages reveals systematic deletion patterns affecting continuants and sequences of different consonants. I argue that all of these child-specific processes are tied to the acquisition of consonant sequences. In order to understand the role of these processes in phonological development, I examine consonant acquisition data from a diary study of Grace, an English-acquiring child. I adopt the Bernhardt and Stemberger (1998) variant of Optimality Theory for the analysis since their view of default underspecification, sequences of features, and feature-based approach to sonority permit a unified analysis of harmony, metathesis and initial consonant deletion that explains Grace's trajectory of acquisition as well as the frequency of certain patterns across children. I show that independently motivated constraints governing feature sequences, onset sonority preferences, initial velars, and the tendency to anticipate features within a prosodic domain explain all of these processes, as well as Grace's onset cluster reduction patterns (e.g. snake [seɪk]) and gradual acquisition of different cluster types. Children must learn to produce consonant feature sequences within a word before producing sequences within an onset. Child-specific processes are eliminated as children acquire the speech planning skills necessary to express the contrasts of a mature language, though the constraints remain active in adult phonology. The longitudinal data provide evidence for both constraint demotion and promotion in learning, as well as distinct roles for two types of faithfulness constraints. One mandates the preservation of non-default features that are specified in the underlying representation, while the other evaluates identity of a correspondent segment to any non-default feature associated with a segment. This distinction permits the derivation of initial consonant deletion as a response to positional constraints on features or feature sequences.
A cognitive approach to analyzing demonstratives in Tunisian Arabic.
(2009-11) Khalfaoui, Amel
Demonstratives have traditionally been analyzed as `pointing words' whose primary function is to indicate relative spatial or temporal distance of a referent from speech participants. Recent research argues that the meaning of demonstratives is not limited to spatial distance and has given alternative accounts for the use of demonstratives that focus on other cognitive and pragmatic meanings (e.g., Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski 1993, Enfield 2003, Botley and McEnery 2001, OH 2001). This dissertation contributes to research that looks at alternative meanings for demonstratives, focusing on Tunisian Arabic (TA). The goal of the dissertation is two-fold. First, working within the Givenness Hierarchy framework (Gundel et al.), it aims to show how TA demonstratives are used to indicate cognitive status, the assumed memory and attention status of a referent in the mind of the addressee. A combined methodology of questionnaires and corpus analysis is used to test hypotheses formed in a previous study (Khalfaoui: 2004) about proposed correlations between cognitive status and single demonstrative forms in TA and extend the analysis to phrases with double demonstratives. The second goal of this dissertation is to show how other factors can further restrict the choice among certain demonstrative forms that encode the same cognitive status. Specifically, it is shown that when there is more than one activated referent, communicators choose the demonstrative haða as a determiner, but not as a pronoun, although both the determiner and the pronoun encode the same cognitive status. I argue that Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986/1995) provides a cognitive explanation for why communicators avoid the demonstrative pronoun in such case. This dissertation also discusses the advantages and limitations of the questionnaire and the corpus analysis as research tools.
Dataset for African-American English Hip-hop research
(2011-10-07) Chesley, Paula
This dataset corresponds to the paper "You know what it is: Learning words through listening to hip-hop" by Paula Chesley. The artists participants listed are given in alphabetical order and in order of frequency. An additional file lists the genre each artist was classified as (for when non-African-American hip-hop artists were not classified as hip-hop artists). An explanation file goes the dataset the studies were done from, and the dataset is given in file aaeHiphopChesley.csv. Please see the above paper for further details on the model, etc.
Development of scalar implicatures and the indefinite article.
(2012-01) Johnson, Kaitlin Rose
Previous research in pragmatic development suggests that children as old as ten often fail to make pragmatic inferences associated with quantifiers like some and modal verbs like might; instead they initially interpret these forms in terms of their logical meanings (i.e. some is compatible with all) (Chierchia et al., 2001; Noveck, 2001). This dissertation examines children's acquisition of pragmatic inferences associated with the definite and indefinite articles the and a (Gundel et al., 1993). In a series of three experiments, pragmatic comprehension of these forms is assessed in children and adults through two tasks: an evaluation-based comprehension task similar to tasks used by previous researchers (Puppet Task) as well as an action-based task (Action Task). The results of Experiment 1 indicate that, contrary to previous research with other scalar terms, by age 7 children overwhelmingly prefer the pragmatic interpretation of a. Experiment 1 also revealed that some 5-year-olds show non-adult-like behavior with respect to the definite article the--selecting a not-previously-mentioned object upon hearing the and accepting the puppet's actions when he did the same. Experiment 2 tests, and ultimately rejects, the hypothesis that the 5-year-olds' behavior in response to the in the previous experiment was due to processing difficulties as the result of their having a distributed attention. Experiment 3 attempts to arbitrate between two other explanations for the 5-year-olds' behavior in response to the; young children are either 1) less sensitive than adults and older children to the Relevance-based pragmatic inferences sometimes associated with the or 2) prone to favor new objects (in the Action Task) and agreeing with the puppet (in the Puppet Task) as opposed to attending to the linguistic input in each trial. The results of the Action Task in Experiment 3 lend support to the latter hypothesis; the results of the Puppet Task, however, support the former, suggesting that the Puppet Task was problematic and potentially calling into question some findings from previous research using evaluation-based tasks as a means of evaluating comprehension.
Ellipsis involving verbs in Japanese.
(2009-08) Buchanan, Michiko Todokoro
This dissertation presents a study of Japanese verb ellipsis that involves the copula da. My focus is on the copula structures where a sequence of elements including a verb is missing, yet the meaning of the sequence is recoverble. I address the following questions: how is the presence of the copula accounted for; what conditions allow this phenomenon; how is the meaning recovered? I investigate three types of verb ellipsis. (i) Structures where a DP with a marker (e.g., focus markers) is followed by the copula. (ii) Structures where an adverbial is followed by the copula. (iii) Structures where a DP without a marker is followed by the copula. The appearance of the copula suggests that clefting is involved in the ellipsis in question. Building on previous studies on Japanese Sluicing (e.g., Nishiyama 1995, Hiraiwa and Ishihara 2000), I propose that (i) and (ii) are derived from it's that-cleft (CP-focused Cleft), and that (iii) is derived from wh-cleft (DP-focused Cleft). The former type of ellipsis is referred to as CP-focused Clefted Ellipsis, the latter DP-focused Clefted Ellipsis. In the investigation of what allows verb ellipsis, I observe that case markers, focus markers (e.g., -mo 'also/too'), at all type of adverbial Negative Polarity Items, quantificational adverbial Positive Polarity Items, and the continuation-of-state aspectual adverbial mada 'yet/still' allow elements including a verb to be elided. Building on Lopez and Winkler's (2000) proposal that affirmative/negative expressions license VP ellipsis, I propose that linguistic materials which allow ellipsis are [+AFF] or [+NEG] and license ellipsis. Application of Hankamar and Sag's (1976) criteria of anaphora to the Japanese verb ellipsis indicates that CP-focused Clefted Ellipsis is Surface Anaphora, which requires a linguistic antecedent, and DP-focused Clefted Ellipsis is Deep Anaphora, where a linguistic antecedent is not required and the meaning is recovered pragmatically. This suggests that these two types of verb ellipsis have different structures. Based on the observation that CP-focused Clefted Sluicing is island sensitive and DP-focused Clefted Sluicing is not, I propose that elliptical sites of CP-focused Clefted Ellipsis have internal structures and those of DP-focused Clefted Ellipsis are base-generated pro.
Entity relation detection with Factorial Hidden Markov Models and Maximum Entropy Discriminant Latent Dirichlet Allocations.
(2012-01) Li, Dingcheng
Coreference resolution (CR) and entity relation detection (ERD) aim at finding predefined relations between pairs of entities in text. CR focuses on resolving identity relations while ERD focuses on detecting non-identity relations. Both CR and ERD are important as they can potentially improve other natural language processing (NLP) related tasks such information retrieval and extraction, web-searching, and question answering and also enhance non-NLP tasks such as computer vision, database constructions or ontologies. In this thesis, I propose models to handle both coreference resolution (CR) and entity relation detection (ERD). Both systems are built onmachine learningmodels. The CR system is based on Factorial Hidden Markov Models (FHMMs). The ERD is based on Maximum Entropy Discriminant Latent Dirichlet Allocation (MEDLDA). The work on CR only resolves pronouns. It is a supervised system trained on annotated corpus. The basic idea is that the hidden states of FHMMs are an explicit short-term memory with an antecedent buffer containing recently described referents. Thus an observed pronoun can find its antecedent from the hidden buffer, or in terms of a generative model, the entries in the hidden buffer generate the corresponding pronouns. In the hidden buffer, all references are expressed as diverse features. In this work, besides the common gender, number, person and animacy, I convertedGivennessHierarchy and Centering Theories to probabilistic features, thus greatly improving the accuracy. A system implementing this model is evaluated on the ACE corpus and I2B2 medical corpus with promising performance. For ERD, a novel application of topic models is proposed to do this task. In order to make use of the latent semantics of text, the task of relation detection is reformulated as a topic modeling problem. Themotivation is to find underlying topics which are indicative of relations between named entities. The approach considers pairs of named entities and features associated with them as mini documents. The system, called ERD-MEDLDA, adapts Maximum Entropy Discriminant Latent Dirichlet Allocation (MedLDA) with mixed membership for relation detection. By using supervision, ERD-MedLDA is able to learn topic distributions indicative of relation types. Further, ERD-MEDLDA is a topicmodel that combines the benefits of both Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) and Maximum Margin Estimation (MME), and themixed membership formulation enables the system to incorporate heterogeneous features. We incorporate diverse features into the system and perform experiments on the ACE 2005 corpus. Our approach achieves better overall performance for precision, recall and Fmeasuremetrics as compared to SVM-based and LDA-basedmodels. ERD-MedLDA also shows better overall performance than state-of-the-art kernels used previously for relation detection.
Frame Semantics as a Framework to account for the Foreign Language Effect
(2023) Al-Khatib, Mai
Linguistic meaning can be expressed in multiple languages. One may assume that equivalent texts/ utterances in two languages by means of translation generate equivalent meanings in their readers/ hearers. This follows if we assume that meaning calculation is solely objective in nature. However, research in language and cognition is building up to show otherwise. Meaning calculated from semiotic input is not objective but is influenced by and grounded in experience of the language acquisition process and the habitual interaction of the speaker with the referents of linguistic content. In this dissertation, I address a phenomenon that exposes the subjectivity of meaning called the Foreign Language Effect (FLE). It refers to the finding that late bilinguals exhibit different decision-making patterns when language content of emotional nature is presented to them in their native (L1) versus non-native (L2) language. I adopt Pavlenko’s (2012) account where she hypothesizes that this behavior reflects disembodiment of L2. I construct a semantic representation of embodied language processing through unifying two theories: The Embodied Simulation Hypothesis (Bergen, 2015a; 2015b) and Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1976) resulting in a cognitive model of meaning simulation: the Embodied Simulation Frame Semantic blueprint model (ES-FS blueprint). I implement it as an algorithm that calculates an information structure to serve as a representation of embodied meaning simulation yielding an insight to semantic memory with an embodied and grounded lens. The simulation blueprint is composed of frames retrieved from FrameNet: an implementation of Frame Semantics as a network of background knowledge concepts (Ruppenhofer et al., 2016) called frames which depict total experiential situations indexed by words. I test my model on empirical data from the Semantic Priming Project (Hutchison et al., 2013) and find support for it in the L1 English. I then run a semantic priming experiment on L1 and L2 speakers of English to conduct a comparison of meaning processing across the two nativeness conditions. I provide preliminary support to Pavlenko’s account for the FLE from experiential grounding of language, a major factor of disparity in language acquisition and use between the L1 and the L2 in the late bilingual.
The interaction of structural and inferential elements in characterizing human linguistic communication.
(2012-01) Lucast, Ellen Irene
Is human linguistic communication different only in degree from other animal communication, or is it different in kind? If it is different in kind, can this difference best be attributed to one or a small number of core features? If so, what are these features? What role does the code itself play in characterizing human linguistic communication and what role is attributable to its communicative function? To answer these questions, I argue the following: Human linguistic communication is in fact different in kind from other animal communication; its difference can be attributed to two main factors, one coded and one communicative, that lie at the core of the phenomenon of human language; and these two factors are a discrete combinatorial system and the ability to infer others' mental states. I demonstrate that these two factors limit the function of systems which do not display them in ways that are characteristically different from the function of human linguistic communication. This work serves to update existing research on language features by integrating insight from the cognitivist research paradigm that currently prevails in linguistics. It also integrates two traditionally separate areas of inquiry, those of the functioning of the language code itself and of the inferential mechanisms that humans employ when using language for communication, to provide a more comprehensive theory on the nature of human linguistic communication.
Interview with Harvey Sarles
(University of Minnesota, 1994-10-19) Sarles, Harvey; Chambers, Clarke A.
Clarke A. Chambers interviews Harvey Sarles, professor for the Department of Anthropology and the Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies.
Iron Range English long-distance reflexives.
(2011-07) Loss, Sara Schmelzer
This dissertation investigates the distribution of Iron Range English (IRE) reflexives, using judgments collected in a Magnitude Estimation task (Bard et al 1996), and presents a phase-based analysis for their distribution. IRE reflexives (e.g., himself) can corefer with nominal expressions outside their minimal clause in subject or object position. Coreference with an expression outside the minimal clause is not acceptable in two environments: (i) if there is an intervening subject that does not match the reflexive for person (c.f., Blocking Effects in Mandarin) or (ii) if the reflexive is in an island. The distribution of IRE reflexives is unexpected because generally only monomorphemic reflexives behave this way (Pica 1987). Complex reflexives that behave this way, such as Malay diri-nya `himself/herself' (Cole & Hermon 2003) and Turkish kendi-sin `himself/herself' (Kornfilt 2001), are shown to have pronominal qualities. IRE reflexives do not have pronominal qualities since they exhibit Blocking Effects and island effects. Therefore, they are true long-distance reflexives. Blocking and island effects provide evidence that the reflexive undergoes raising to [Spec, CP], as is suggested for long-distance reflexives in other languages (e.g., Katada 1991). From the [Spec, CP] position, the reflexive is able to corefer with a nominal expression in a higher clause, in accordance with the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky 2001). Two processes are needed to account for the distribution of IRE long-distance reflexives (c.f., Cole & Wang 1996) since the set of expressions that are potential antecedents and the set of expressions that trigger Blocking Effects are not the same: a reflexive can corefer with a subject or an object, but only subjects trigger Blocking Effects. I posit that reflexives have a [VAR] feature that must be valued by a c-commanding nominal expression within the same phase via Agree, extending Hicks' (2009) analysis of English anaphors. Agree accounts for coreference and offers an inherent c-command relationship between the antecedent and reflexive. I account for Blocking Effects by considerably modifying Hasegawa's (2005) analysis for English anaphors. I suggest that a [+multi] feature on T licenses the reflexive and requires that the reflexive and the subject Agree for person.
Linguistic, cognitive, and social constraints on lexical entrenchment.
(2011-08) Chesley, Paula
How do new words become established in a speech community? This dissertation documents linguistic, cognitive, and social factors that are hypothesized to affect lexical entrenchment, the extent to which a new word becomes part of the lexicon of a speech community. First, in a longitudinal corpus study, I find that linguistic properties such as the range of a word's meaning and the donor language of a borrowing affect lexical entrenchment. Contextual factors such as frequency, dispersion, and a borrowing's cultural context also play a role in lexical entrenchment. Second, a psycholinguistic study examines the extent to which speakers remember previously unseen words. Through eye-tracking, lexical decision, and free recall tasks, I determine that, again, linguistic and contextual information plays a role in the memorability of a new word. Speakers are more likely to remember words used in particular contexts, and they are also more likely to remember certain word types than others. In a third study, I find that musical preferences, knowledge of popular culture, and social ties influence comprehension of African-American English vocabulary. Together, these studies suggest that lexical entrenchment is predictable to an extent previously undocumented. Results indicate that information relating to dynamical, non-linear systems could be profitable in further studies on lexical entrenchment.
Morphophonology of Joola Eegimaa.
(2012-07) Bassene, Mamadou
This dissertation explores the morphophonology of Joola Eegimaa (Eegimaa hereafter), an endangered West Atlantic language spoken in the southern region of Senegal. Previous researches on this language focus on the morphosyntax (Bassene 2007 and Tendeng 2007) and the semantics, specifically the semantic motivation of Eegimaa noun class system (Sagna 2008). This study is the first work devoted to the morphophonology of Eegimaa and therefore contributes significantly to the documentation of this language. This study provides a detailed description of Eegimaa morphology and phonology, and presents three case studies of such processes as reduplication, nasal assimilation and vowel harmony which are all very common in this language. The morphological analysis proposed in this study offers a detailed account of Eegimaa nominal classification and concord system as well as the rules for word formation in this language. This dissertation also provides valuable information regarding the Eegimaa phoneme inventory, the various processes affecting phonemes, and offers significant insights into the syllable structure of Eegimaa. The results of the experimental studies I conducted have revealed that vowel length is not a phonological feature in Eegimaa and that vowel sequences are always parsed into nuclei of separate syllables. I also argue, based on the results of the experiments and the behavior of ‘prenasalized’ consonants and geminates that in Eegimaa, these sounds should also be treated as a sequence of two segments instead of one Eegimaa reduplication is very complex and shows a dual behavior of consonants in the reduplicant coda. Voiceless singleton consonants and glides are deleted when they occur in the reduplicant coda whereas voiced consonants and liquids completely assimilate to the onset of the base. I attribute this dual behavior of consonants to a difference in moraicity, with voiceless singleton consonants and glides being nonmoraic and voiced singleton consonants and liquids being moraic; a claim supported by the acoustic study I conducted. Eegimaa nasal consonants also exhibit a dual behavior. When a nasal is followed by a voiced obstruent, it assimilates to the place of articulation of the obstruent. However, when a nasal is followed by a voiceless obstruent or an approximant, complete nasal assimilation occurs. I strongly argue that the two types of nasal assimilation processes are attributable to the Nasal-Consonant (NC) requirements in this language. Indeed, Eegimaa only allows NC sequences consisting of a nasal and a homorganic voiced obstruent and therefore, whenever a nasal is followed by a voiced obstruent, it assimilates to the place of the obstruent and when the nasal is followed by a voiceless obstruent or an approximant, complete assimilation occurs since the sequences nasal-voiceless obstruent (NC̥) and nasal-approximant (NC̞) are not allowed. The analysis of Eegimaa morphophonological processes is undertaken within the framework of Optimality Theory. However, it should be pointed out that the data upon which this dissertation draws do not favor any specific type of analysis. Therefore, throughout this dissertation, I adopt an approach which combines both descriptive and theoretical analyses and in many cases, these analyses are supplemented by experimental studies.
Noun Composition in Ojibwe
(2021-06) Johnson, Hunter, F
Ojibwe discourse markers.
(2009-08) Fairbanks, Brendan George
In this thesis, I describe the functions of a variety of discourse markers in the Ojibwe language, a language belonging to the Algonquian family of languages of North America. Discourse markers have been defined by Schiffrin as "sequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk" (Schiffrin 1987:31), and as elements which, among other things, are syntactically detachable from a sentence (i.e. independent of sentential structure), and commonly used in initial position (Schiffrin 1987:32, 328). This thesis shows that her initial characterization must be broadened in order to account for languages such as Ojibwe which show discourse markers occurring in both initial and second position, and for other languages which show discourse markers occurring in medial and final positions. Also, since many languages like Ojibwe and the Amazonian languages examined in this thesis make regular use of clitics and affixes as discourse markers, I show that not all discourse markers are `detachable' from their containing sentences. Based upon this and other cross-linguistic evidence, I offer a definition of discourse markers which essentially refines Schiffrin's characterization. This thesis ultimately reveals the exploitive nature of language (and ultimately of its speakers) in regards to discourse. While languages show that individual words, particles, lexicalized phrases, clitics, and affixes may be `exploited' for their sentence-level functions for work at the discourse level, Ojibwe shows that entire inflectional systems may also be targets for discourse work. For example, Ojibwe exploits the sentence-level cohesive function of conjunct verbs in order to mark the eventline structure of a narrative. This accounts for the seemingly contradictive ability of conjunct verbs to serve as subordinate clauses at the sentence level, but as independent clauses at the discourse level. Such behavior, termed in this thesis as "discourse marking," shows that the use of morphological forms must also be included within a viable definition of discourse markers.
Palatalization in West Germanic
(2010-08) van der Hoek, Michel
This dissertation examines the palatalization of consonants in historic and living dialects of three West-Germanic languages: Dutch, German, and Frisian. Palatalization was a common feature of the West-Germanic phonological system and can be found in some form in all West-Germanic languages of the present. It is argued that the extent of its presence and its importance in the development of West-Germanic phonology has been underestimated, and that it played a central role in the rise of i-umlaut. In the first chapter, the term palatalization is defined and the most important research problems in several areas, including phonological theory, historical linguistics, paleography, and dialectology, are outlined. The dissertation dis-cusses the terms that have been in use in different traditions for consonant palatalization (especially German Mouillierung and English palatalization and the problems created by the fact that the modern term palatalization encompasses several related phenomena. The different treatments of consonant palatalization in phonological theories of the past century are examined; weaknesses in the description of palatalization within current theoretical frameworks are noted. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 discuss the existence and role of consonant palatalization and palatal(ized) consonants in the past and present dialects of Dutch, German, and Frisian, respectively.
Pariphrasis
(2012-05) Wagner, Jeremy Lucas
Periphrasis is a work for large chamber orchestra that has been designed for easy adaptation to a full orchestral score. It is the first in a series of works exploring the structural connections between music and language and seeks a semiotic construction of musical narrative through a working metaphor to linguistics and related literary art forms. Periphrasis was composed for the Minneapolis-based CMW Ensemble supported in part by the American Composers Forum through the 2011 McKnight Composer Fellowship Program.
PHRASE-FINAL VOWEL ALTERNATIONS IN CROW
(2014-03-28) Heuer, Ian;
In the Siouan language Crow, only a particular set of vowel structures are observed at the end of the phonological phrase. Phrase-internally, monomoraic vowels, bimoraic vowels and bimoraic diphthongs with a non-moraic off-glide are observed in free distribution. In inputs ending in a single-vowel sequence, only bimoraic mid vowels and bimoraic diphthongs are observed phasefinally in the output. To prevent marked vowel structures from appearing phrase-finally, Crow vowels undergo processes of lengthening, neutralization and diphthongization. Vowel sequences in Crow are also restricted phonotactically. Sequences of consecutive long vowels or long vowels following short vowels are prohibited. Marked sequences undergo processes of shortening and height dissimilation in order to satisfy these sequence restrictions. In cases where vowel sequences are phrase-final, restrictions on possible vowel sequences and possible phrasefinal structures conflict. The result is that structures are observed in the output which are prohibited by phrase-final restrictions in single vowel sequences. This interaction gives insight into how phonotactic processes interact and shows that in Crow, phrase-final restrictions are violable in order to satisfy vowel sequence restrictions, which are undominated in the data. In my analysis, formulated in Optimality Theory, I model these restrictions and associated processes by introducing positional markedness constraints and ranking them with respect to faithfulness constraints. My constraints and analysis provide a model for how the phonotactic restrictions in Crow are motivated and give insight into the interaction and conflict that takes place when both sets of restrictions target the same structure.
Pronouns in Kumyk discourse: a cognitive perspective.
(2009-03) Humnick, Linda Anne
This dissertation investigates pronominal forms of referring expressions in Kumyk, a Turkic language spoken primarily in the Dagestan region of Russia. The Kumyk language has six third person pronominals, including null arguments, demonstratives, and reflexives. Morphologically, each of these forms is unmarked for gender or animacy. This work provides an explanatory account of the distribution and interpretation of different pronominal forms in Kumyk primarily in terms of what these forms communicate about the status of their referents in the minds of the speech participants, specifically claiming that different pronominal forms signal differences in the cognitive status of their referents, following the Givenness Hierarchy model of Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski (1993). The analysis is based primarily on data from a corpus of oral and written Kumyk texts with supporting evidence from grammaticality judgments of constructed examples in questionnaires. According to the analysis, null arguments and reflexives signal the status, ‘in focus’, while demonstratives signal the status, ‘activated’. Particular attention is given to the role of scalar implicatures which arise from the unidirectional entailment of statuses on the Givenness Hierarchy and the fact that the demonstrative sho, which signals activation, has a particular association with this implicature. A unique contribution of the analysis is the evidence for the fact that sho not only gives rise to a scalar implicature in contexts where two referents have different maximal cognitive status(e.g. one in focus versus one at most activated), but also in contexts where two referents have the same maximal cognitive status, a fact which leads to the conclusion that this form specializes in indicating the less salient of two or more entities. The study also provides evidence that the demonstrative bu specializes in indicating the more prominent of two or more entities that are at least activated. Finally, in addition to the role of pronominals in signaling cognitive status and communicating the relative prominence of multiple referents, the study explores contextual effects such as imposed salience, point of view, empathy, or contrastive focus that are associated with particular forms.
Sociophonetics of Hmong American English in Minnesota
(2011-09) Kaiser, Eden A.
This dissertation is a sociophonetic analysis of the English spoken by Hmong Americans living in the "Twin Cities" of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The Twin Cities has the largest urban population of Hmong Americans in the United States. Through studies of production and perception of vowels involved in sound changes, I investigate whether Hmong Americans|a relatively new ethnic group in the United States have established any elements of an ethnic dialect of English that communicates an identity that is uniquely Hmong American. Sound changes are particularly fruitful objects of sociophonetic study as they provide a spectrum of potential indexical variables for speakers exposed to those sound changes. I examine Hmong Americans' participation in three sound changes: the Northern Cities Shift, the low back merger, and fronting of the high back vowel (/u/ or goose). Their degrees of participation in those sound changes are compared to age-matched European Americans from the same area. It was expected that the inferred tight-knit nature of Hmong Americans' social networks would cause a slower uptake of current regional and supra-regional sound changes versus the comparatively looser networks of many European Americans in the Twin Cities. Furthermore, the target population should presumably experience some influence in their English from the Hmong language. Crucially for this study, the Hmong language has phonemic nasal vowels whereas English does not. This L2 influence of phonemic nasal vowels was hypothesized to emerge in Hmong Americans' English as less nasalization overall, and to decrease the likelihood that they will engage in the Northern Cities Shift. The results of the production study show that European American speakers seem to be participating in one supra-regional sound change, the fronting of the goose vowel, to a greater extent than in the past, and to a greater extent than Hmong Americans. Two other sound changes, the Northern Cities Shift (a regional change) and the low back merger (a supra-regional change), show inconclusive evidence of adoption by either EA speakers or HA speakers. The perception study, which was conducted with a new set of participants, aimed to uncover whether phonetic differences between Hmong Americans' and European Americans' vowel pronunciations are actually detectable by others. Words recorded during fieldwork were rated on a visual analog scale by listeners on several different dimensions of speakers' social characteristics, including ethnicity. It was found that although certain expected phonetic differences were not used to make judgments of speakers' ethnicities, other phonetic differences, some expected and some not, did indeed predict listeners' judgments of speaker ethnicity. Listeners seemed to use either formant values or vowel nasalization (or sometimes both) to judge speaker ethnicity, depending on vowel class, listener ethnicity, and listener birthplace. Taken together, the results of the two studies provide evidence that Hmong Americans' vowel pronunciations are not simply Hmong-influenced imitations of vowels as spoken by European Americans, and that listeners, especially other Hmong American listeners, can use these complex yet systematic phonetic patterns to make accurate decisions about speakers' ethnicities.
The syntax-pragmatics interface in language loss: covert restructuring of aspect in heritage Russian.
(2010-05) Laleko, Oksana Vladislavovna
Heritage grammars, linguistic varieties emerging in the context of intergenerational language loss, are known to diverge from the corresponding full-fledged baseline varieties in principled and systematic ways, as typically illustrated by errors made by heritage speakers in production. This dissertation examines covert restructuring of aspect in heritage Russian, a grammatical reorganization of the perfective-imperfective opposition not manifested in overt errors. The aspectual system instantiated in acrolectal varieties of heritage Russian is shown to exhibit signs of covert divergence from the baseline system at the interface between syntax and discourse-pragmatics, manifested in a reduction of pragmatically-conditioned functions of the imperfective aspect with total single events. This emerging restriction leads to a gradual shift from a privative aspectual opposition in baseline Russian, where imperfective is the unmarked member, to an opposition of the equipollent type. Experimental evidence presented suggests that heritage speakers differ from baseline Russian speakers in their use, acceptability ratings, and accuracy of interpretation of the imperfective aspect. In Russian, both aspects are compatible with completed events; however, aspectual competition is resolved in favor of the imperfective in the presence of discourse-pragmatic triggers that condition the general-factual functions of the imperfective: statement of fact, annulled result, thematicity and backgrounding. Assuming a multi-level approach to aspect, I maintain that the two aspectual systems converge on the level of the verbal predicate, where aspectual values of activities and accomplishments reflect compositional telicity, but diverge on the level of sentential aspect, where the contribution of telicity may be overridden by grammatical aspectual operators and discourse-pragmatic aspectual triggers. The restructuring of aspect in advanced heritage grammars affects the highest level of sentential structure, a domain in which syntactic information is mapped onto discourse-pragmatic information (the C-domain). In addressing the role of linguistic input in heritage language acquisition, the dissertation examines additional data from bilingual Russian-English speakers, including parents of heritage speakers. While bilingual speakers pattern with monolingual controls on comprehension tests, they differ from monolinguals in production of the imperfective with total single events, suggesting that competence divergence in advanced heritage grammars may be linked, across generations, to impoverished performance on C-domain properties.

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