Sibilant harmony in Santiago Tz’utujil (Mayan)

We analyze sibilant harmony in the Santiago Atitlán dialect of Tz’utujil (Mayan), a phenomenon that was briefly described by Dayley (1985). Novel data show that the obligatory harmony process (i) is asymmetrical (triggered only by [+ant] sibilants), (ii) progressive, and (iii) applies long-distance. Furthermore, we argue that the process is not stem-controlled. In contextualizing the phenomenon within the typology of sibilant harmony (Hansson 2010), we conclude that it is unique. Finally, we suggest that Santiago Tz’utujil sibilant harmony has been stable diachronically because the target segment /ʃ/ is always in the stressed syllable, thus being salient in the input during acquisition

Coordination without grammar-internal feature resolution

Morphological agreement with coordinate phrases involves a computation that takes as its input a set of features from each conjunct and outputs exactly one resolved set of features (number, person, grammatical gender/noun class, commonly labelled phi-features). Such resolution is typically taken to be grammar-internal because it relies on other grammar-internal ingredients (phi-features, agreement, coordination), and at least in some instances seems to follow systematic rules that may be captured by familiar grammatical operations. Exceptions to these apparent rules, if not ignored altogether, have received disparate analyses depending on the language, framework, and the particular features involved. In this thesis, I argue that it is such exceptions that are illuminating, and that the appearance of rigid rules is misleading. Treating variation in agreement with coordinate phrases as exceptional with respect to the otherwise deterministic output rules either delays the task of explaining the surface data, or risks weakening the language competence theory by adding the baroque stipulations that a purely grammar-internal treatment would require. Phi-agreement with coordinate phrases is subject to inter- and intra-speaker variability and ineffability; such variation is widespread in the world’s languages, even the ones with limited phi-agreement morphology like English. I therefore reject the grammar-internal approach to agreement with coordinate phrases and argue instead that the agreement morphology we observe on the surface is due to grammar-external mechanisms being recruited to determine the resulting agreement morphology. Under this approach, systematicity in agreement with coordinations is only apparent and can be manipulated. The reason a grammar-internal mechanism is unavailable is because it would have to take place on the agreeing head (e.g., Infl0 or v0), and what we know about agreement between a syntactic head and multiple arguments (e.g., from omnivorous agreement and the Person Case Constraint) renders it ill-suited for the task of coordination resolution

Agreement in K’iche’ (Mayan): Reflections on Microvariation and Acquisi- tion

We explore plausible acquisition trajectories that give rise to microvariation in 3PL agreement realization in K’iche’ (Mayan). We report elicitation data with two speakers of the language. For one speaker, all inanimate 3PL arguments control agreement optionally. For another speaker, inanimate 3PL arguments base-generated in a specifier position control agreement obligatorily, while those base-generated in complement position control agreement optionally. Taking England (2011)’s corpus study of the language as a starting point, we show how the interplay of universal and non-universal factors during acquisition might give rise to these different grammars

Optional agreement in Santiago Tz’utujil (Mayan) is syntactic

Some Mayan languages display optional verbal agreement with 3pl arguments (Dayley1985; Henderson2009; England2011). Focusing on novel data from Santiago Tz’utujil (ST), we demonstrate that this optionality is not reducible to phonological or morphological factors. Rather, the source of optionality is in the syntax. Specifically, the distinction between arguments generated in the specifier position and arguments generated in the complement position governs the pattern. Only base-complements control agreement optionally; base-specifiers control agreement obligatorily. We provide an analysis in which optional agreement results from the availability of two syntactic representations (DP vs. reduced nominal argument). Thus, while the syntactic operation Agree is deterministic, surface optionality arises when the operation targets two different sized goals

Successes and shortcomings of phonological accounts of Scandinavian object shift

Object shift (OS) is a word order phenomenon in Scandinavian languages where under some circumstances the object appears before a sentential adverb. Despite the frequent assumptions that word order is determined in syntax, and despite the link of OS and syntactic phenomena like V2, there is no consensus that OS is a syntactic phenomenon. Particularly, it has been observed that OS targets specifically prosodically weak elements. This motivated recent analyses of OS as a prosodic phenomenon. We focus on two proposals that look for a synchronic motivation for OS in a correlation between its distribution and some prosodic property: (i) Erteschik-Shir et al. (2020) posit that OS is motivated and modulated by prosodic incorporation, and (ii) Hosono (2013) hypothesizes that shifted pronominal objects help facilitate downstep. We identify concrete predictions from both proposals (default prosodic incorporation, and no downstep in unshifted OS-context sentences, respectively) and test them using novel data. The results show that neither of the proposals can be maintained in its original form. In addition to the empirical shortcomings of the prosodic proposals, we explore a missed syntactic generalization regarding the role objecthood plays in OS