Prosody of Focus and Contrastive Topic in K'iche'

This paper discusses the findings of an experimental study about the prosodic encoding of focus and contrastive topic in K'iche'. The central question being addressed is whether prosody plays a role in distinguishing string-identical sentences where the pre-predicate expression can be interpreted as being focused or contrastively topicalized depending on context. I present a production experiment designed to identify whether such sentences differ in their prosodic properties as has been impressionistically suggested in the literature (Larsen 1988; Aissen 1992; Can Pixabaj & England 2011). The overall strategy of the experiment was to obtain naturally occurring data from native speakers of K'iche' by having them repeat target sentences they heard in conversations. The phonological analysis showed that content words in K'iche' have a rising pitch movement, a finding which is in line with Nielsen (2005). The acoustic analyses of several variables yielded a significant effect of condition only in the range of the F0 rise associated with focused and contrastively topicalized expressions. However, the difference across conditions is only ~6 Hz which may not be perceivable by listeners.The fieldwork for this project is funded by the Department of Linguistics and the College of Arts and Humanities at The Ohio State University

Tonal marking of absolutive case in Samoan

Samoan is an ergative-marking, (reportedly) non-tonal Polynesian language in which ergative case is marked segmentally, but absolutive case has been said to be unmarked. This paper shows that in fact, a high edge tone co-occurs with absolutive arguments, based on converging evidence from the phonetic and phonological analysis of intonational patterns in the spoken utterances of a systematically varied set of syntactic structures. This empirical observation raises puzzles that probe the nature of the syntax-prosody interface and the relation between tone and intonation: what is the relation between this absolutive high edge tone and: (i) other case markers in Samoan, which are all segmental?, and (ii) other high edge tones in Samoan that co-occur with fronted expressions and coordination? I propose that: (i) the absolutive high edge tone is a tonal case marker that may be related to an apparently moribund stressed, segmental absolutive particle [ˈia], (ii) the high tones that co-occur with absolutives, fronting, and coordination are all syntactically determined and each inserted in the spellout of distinct syntactic configurations, and (iii) there is another class of edge tones which reliably co-occur with pauses—intonational phrase boundary tones—that are not inserted in spellout but by the phonological grammar. While my proposal may seem surprising at first, I show that it fits the current data better than any alternative

A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language

This thesis presents a linguistic analysis of the Mara language, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northwest Myanmar and in neighboring districts of India. Data has been gathered through interviews with a native speaker. The analysis includes a full phonetic segment inventory of the dialect and a phonological analysis of contrastive sounds and contextual variants. Sound files embedded in the document illustrate the phonetic system. Mara\u27s distinctive phonetic features include the loss of word-final consonants, a set of voiceless sonorants, pre- and post- aspirated nasals, and lowered and unlowered vowel pairs. The morphosyntax of Mara pronominal words demonstrates a split-ergative case marking pattern. A deictic hierarchy of pronominal words accounts for variations in pronominal word presence and order

(In)variability in the Samoan syntax/prosody interface and consequences for syntactic parsing

While it has long been clear that prosody should be part of the grammar influencing the action of the syntactic parser, how to bring prosody into computational models of syntactic parsing has remained unclear. The challenge is that prosodic information in the speech signal is the result of the interaction of a multitude of conditioning factors. From this output, how can we factor out the contribution of syntax to conditioning prosodic events? And if we are able to do that factorization and define a production model from the syntactic grammar to a prosodified utterance, how can we then define a comprehension model based on that production model? In this case study of the Samoan morphosyntax-prosody interface, we show how to factor out the influence of syntax on prosody in empirical work and confirm there is invariable morphosyntactic conditioning of high edge tones. Then, we show how this invariability can be precisely characterized and used by a parsing model that factors the various influences of morphosyntax on tonal events. We expect that models of these kinds can be extended to more comprehensive perspectives on Samoan and to languages where the syntax/prosody coupling is more complex

Mokilese Reference Grammar

Humanities Open Book Program, a joint initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon FoundationThis is the first attempt to present for native speakers of Mokilese the essential features of the language. Written primarily for a lay audience with no prior knowledge of linguistics, this work will be useful as well to the professional linguist seeking data on a Micronesian language. The grammar covers the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Mokilese. Separate treatment is given to the nominal reference system, quantification and counting, possession, transitivity, modality, direction markers, verbal aspect, complex sentences, derivation, and questions of topicalization and focus. An appendix discusses problems in devising an orthography for Mokilese and the methodology employed

Are language production problems apparent in adults who no longer meet diagnostic criteria for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder?

In this study, we examined sentence production in a sample of adults (N = 21) who had had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as children, but as adults no longer met DSM-IV diagnostic criteria (APA, 2000). This “remitted” group was assessed on a sentence production task. On each trial, participants saw two objects and a verb. Their task was to construct a sentence using the objects as arguments of the verb. Results showed more ungrammatical and disfluent utterances with one particular type of verb (i.e., participle). In a second set of analyses, we compared the remitted group to both control participants and a “persistent” group, who had ADHD as children and as adults. Results showed that remitters were more likely to produce ungrammatical utterances and to make repair disfluencies compared to controls, and they patterned more similarly to ADHD participants. Conclusions focus on language output in remitted ADHD, and the role of executive functions in language production

Verbal Extensions: Valency Decreasing Extensions in The Basà Language

This work investigates verbal extensions that affect the valency of verbs in the Basà language (Western Kainji). It focuses on verbal inflections that result in the reduction of the verb’s valency by one argument with regard to the basic structure. This current study attempts to investigate the morphosyntactic effects of reciprocal and reflexive affixes in the Basà sentences. The significance of this work hinges on the fact that no known work has described these processes in Basà. The language is endangered because its native speakers neglect speaking it in favour of English and Hausa. Furthermore, there is dearth of information on Basà, especially in areas of morphology and syntax, which are basic to the study of language. This study will therefore attempt to fill this existing gap in the literature. In addition to the native intuitions of one of the researchers, as a native speaker of the Basà language, data collected for this work include discourse observation, staged and elicited spoken data from fluent native speakers. It was found in the study that affixes attached to the verb root result in deriving an intransitive verb from a transitive one, and a transitive verb from a bi- or ditransitive. Both operations are triggered by verbal extensions and move the internal argument (object) to the subject position. The derived structure, therefore, is headed by a complex noun phrase but the verb no longer subcategorizes an internal argument. The work explores the morphosyntax of Basà verbs and serves as a springboard for this aspect of Basà morphosyntax. It also contributes to the morphosyntactic literature