Lexical Access in Bulgarian : Nouns and Adjectives with and without Floating Vowels

The main goal of the experiments described in this paper was to compare the behavior of Bulgarian words with vs. without «vowel/Ø» alternation. The Ø-form may for instance be observed, within the relevant word paradigms, in noun plurals, in adjectives' gender and plural inflections, and in derived nouns. The materials in experiment 1 consisted of six sets of frequency controlled Bulgarian words, contrasting with respect to the following factors: Alternation (sets A1, B1, C1 with alternation vs. A2, B2, C2 without alternation), Morphology (set A with plural formation, an inflectional process, vs. set C with abstract noun formation, a derivational process), and Stress pattern (set A with first syllable stress vs. set B with second syllable stress). The experimental paradigm was based on repetition priming with visual-input lexical decision. Alternation had a clear effect on the lexical decision time, while Morphology (in the specific manifestation of this parameter) was virtually ineffective and Stress had a minor effect. The materials in experiment 2 consisted of two sets of adjectives contrasting with respect to Alternation (D1 vs. D2), presented in three forms: base-form, inflected (plural) and derived (the corresponding abstract noun). The results of experiment 2 substantially replicate those of experiment 1. The converging results of experiments 1 and 2 offer themselves to a relatively straightforward interpretation. The Bulgarian participants showed a sharp inclination towards full listing, i.e. direct access, of the morphologically modified forms (both inflected and derived) of morphophonologically complex, thus opaque, alternating words. By contrast, the morphologically modified forms of non-alternating, transparent words were clearly processed compositionally. As for the contrast inflection/derivation, although the specific instantiation of this opposition did not prove to directly yield a statistical difference, its interplay with the morphophonological complication implied by the process of vowel/Ø alternation produced a relatively clear effect in terms of lexical decision speed. Finally, the combination of vowel alternation and second syllable stress, involving replacement of the stressed vowel in morphologically modified forms, seemed to enhance the intimations of direct access

The semantics of degree verbs and the telicity issue

This paper addresses the formal representation of Degree Verbs (DVs), also known as degreeachievements. After assessing the similarities and differences of DVs vis-à-vis the accomplishmentpredicates within the set of "incremental theme verbs", a double scale system is proposed to account for the telicity calculus. It is shown that DVs should be regarded as telic even though in most cases ,they do not imply culmination, but rather the mere attainment of a "contingent" telos. This formalism can be exploited to account for related phenomena, such as the so-called "conative oblique constructions" and "non-culminating" telic predicate

Reconstructing the possessive inflection of Proto-Zamucoan

[Extract]The Zamucoan family consists of two living languages: Ayoreo (AY) and Chamacoco (CH), spoken in Northern Chaco (between Bolivia and Paraguay) by approximately 4500 and 2000 people, respectively. The Zamucoan family also includes the now extinct Old Zamuco OZ), described in the early 18th century by the Jesuit Father Ignace Chomé (1958 [ante 1745]). The first stable contacts with the Ayoreos began around the half of the last century, whereas the Chamacocos were already in contact with the Western civilization at the turn of the XIX century, thus undergoing the linguistic influence of Spanish and Guaraní. The Zamucoan family is divided into two branches stemming from Proto-Zamucoan (PZ): according to glottochronological computations (Holman et al. 2011; Müller et al. 2013), CH split long ago from OZ and AY, and indeed it only shares 30% of its lexical roots with AY (Bertinetto 2009). This notwithstanding, all three languages present morphosyntactic correspondences, allowing robust diachronic insights (Ciucci 2013; Ciucci & Bertinetto, to appear)

On rare typological features of the Zamucoan languages, in the framework of the Chaco linguistic area

[Extract] The Zamucoan family only includes two surviving endangered languages:Ayoreo (AY) and Chamacoco (CH), spoken in northern Chaco between Bolivia and Paraguay by approximately 4500 and 2000 people, respectively. The Zamucoan family also includes an extinct language, Ancient Zamuco (AZ), described in the 18yh century by the Jesuit Father Ignace Chomé. AZ is very close to AY from the lexical point of view, but shows striking morphosyntactic correspondences with CH; this allows robust diachronic insights (Ciucci 2013; Ciucci & Bertinetto, submitted)