Izi Vowel Harmony and Selective Cyclicity

In this paper, I provide an analysis of vowel harmony in Izi, an Igbo language spoken in the East - Central State of Nigeria. Using data from Meier, Meier, and Samuel (1975; hereafter MMB), I argue that harmony in complex verbal structures in Izi is inadequately accounted for within a level ordered model of lexical phonology (Kiparsky 1982, Mohanan 1982, etc...), claiming instead that harmony facts are best accommodated within a non-level ordered approach (cf. Halle and Vergnaud 1987, Halle and Kenstowicz 1991; Halle, Harris, and Vergnaud 1991). In sections 1 and 2, I provide a description of the general pattern of the [ATR]-based vowel harmony system in Izi and motivate [+ATR] as the only value of the feature [ATR] present at the level of underlying representation. In section 3, data are presented demonstrating the inadequacy of a level -ordered treatment of vowel harmony in verbal structures. Finally, in section 4, I propose an alternative, non-level ordered analysis that derives the attested harmony facts via cyclic rule application at a single level. Crucially, particular morphemes in verbal structures are claimed to undergo a pass of the cyclic rules prior to concatenation, a phenomenon which I call selective cyclicity

Reciprocity in Spanish: Two Puzzles of Scope

Published as Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics from A-ZHeim, Lasnik, and May (1991a, henceforth HLMa) note an interesting contrast in the behavior of the following sentences in English (their 78a -b): 1.a) They look like each other. b) They look alike. As HLMa point out, when embedded, the two sentences have distinct properties (their 79a -b): 2.a) John and Mary think they look like each other. b) John and Mary think they look alike. Sentence (2a) is ambiguous between broad and narrow scope interpretations. Thus, (2a) can either mean 'John thinks he looks like Mary, and Mary thinks that she looks like John' (the broad reading) or 'John and Mary think they (John and Mary) look like each other' (the narrow reading). In contrast, (2b) can only be construed with narrow scope. For HLMa the ambiguity of (2a) receives an explanation in terms of the morphological complexity of the reciprocal expression each other. Specifically, the quantificational distribution element each is adjoined to an antecedent, which is then subject to QR via the rule move-α at logical form (see May 1977, 1985). Put simply, this allows for different scope interpretations, depending on how far up the phrase marker each is moved. In contrast, the morphologically simplex alike contains no detachable distribution element, and, as a result, only the narrow scope reading is available. Of interest here is the fact that HLMa base their argument on the distinction between reciprocal meaning that is incorporated within a morphologically simplex versus a morphologically complex item. In support of this claim, they offer the following minimal pair of sentences from Italian (attributed to Luigi Rizzi): 3.a) I due pensano [di essersi battuti] (contradictory); the two thought be-each other-clitic beaten b) I due pensano [di avere prevalso l'uno sull'altro] (ambiguous); the two thought have prevailed the one over the other HLMa note that when taken by themselves, the embedded clauses in (3a -b) are both contradictory, but that only (3b) receives a non -contradictory reading in the embedded construction. In a manner analogous to their treatment of the English data in (1 -2), HLMa claim that this distinction is attributable to the fact that the clitic in (3a) forms a morphological unit with the verb to which it is attached and, thus, cannot be moved at LF. In contrast, they follow Belletti (1982) in arguing that the full form of the Italian reciprocal l'uno...l'altro includes a distributor l'uno which can be detached and moved at LF. Though no specific analysis is provided, it is assumed that the broad scope, and hence non -contradictory, construal of (3b) is attributable to the adjunction of the distributor l'uno to the antecedent I due. With these facts in mind, I consider the question of scope in Spanish reciprocal constructions. In sections 2 and 3, I present a surprising scope asymmetry between non -full (clitic) and full reciprocal constructions, which indicates that unlike English, the full reciprocal el uno al otro in Spanish does not allow for broad scope interpretations when embedded. In section 4, I argue that el uno al otro in Spanish is best analyzed as an adjunct, rather than as the subcategorized argument of the verb. And in section 5, I explore HLM's (1991b) "each-binding" variant of the movement analysis proposed in HLMa, showing that the asymmetry between full and non -full reciprocals can be accounted for in terms of the obligatory local A'-binding of the variable el uno of the adjoined full form. In section 6, I expand the data, providing evidence of another scope asymmetry. Specifically, I show that in contrast to the el uno al otro adjunct of the clitic doubled construction, VP adjuncts such as prepositional phrases with a reciprocal object do allow broad construals from embedded clauses. I argue that this asymmetry motivates the need to formally distinguish between at least two types of adjuncts, appositional adjuncts such as the doubled el uno al otro construction, and standard adjuncts such as PPs. I suggest that a profitable way of making this distinction can be found in restricting the assignment of referential indexes in the Relativized Minimality framework (Rizzi 1990). This approach both preserves the account of the asymmetry between non-full or clitic reciprocals and their doubled counterparts, as allows for broad construals from standard adjuncts.The Coyote Papers are made available by the Arizona Linguistics Circle at the University of Arizona and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] with questions about these materials

Salience Effects: L2 Sentence Production as a Window on L1 Speech Planning

Salience influences grammatical structure during production in a language-dependent manner because different languages afford different options to satisfy preferences. During production, speakers may always try to satisfy all syntactic encoding preferences (e.g., salient entities to be mentioned early, themes to be assigned the syntactic function of object) and adjust when this is not possible (e.g., a salient theme in English) or, alternatively, they may learn early on to associate particular conceptual configurations with particular syntactic frames (e.g., salient themes with passives). To see which of these alternatives is responsible for the production of passives when dealing with a salient theme, we looked at the second language effects of salience for English-speaking learners of Spanish, where the two preferences can be satisfied simultaneously by fronting the object (Prat-Sala and Branigan in J Mem Lang 42:168-182, 2000). In accordance with highly incremental models of language production, English speakers appear to quickly make use of the alternatives in the second language that allow observance of more processing preferences

The gender congruency effect during bilingual spoken-word recognition

We investigate the ‘gender-congruency’ effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian–Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / ‘find the scarf’) and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects’ name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed