The imperfective-perfective contrast in Middle Indo-Aryan

This paper examines the distribution of two morphological paradigms inherited from Old Indo-Aryan in Middle and New Indo-Aryan languages – the Old Indo-Aryan Present (labeled PRES) and the Past Participle (labeled PERF). It is argued that these forms, contra standard assumptions, do not realize the present and past tenses, but rather the imperfective and perfective aspects with no tense specification. This hypothesis provides an explanation for the puzzling occurrences of the Present and the Past Participial forms with past and future reference in Middle Indo-Aryan. It also makes sense of some distributional patterns of these paradigms in New Indo-Aryan. This, in turn, supports the idea that the Middle Indo-Aryan proto-system that gave rise to the New Indo-Aryan languages was an aspect-based system with no present-past distinction

Coordinated on the context: the many uses of Marathi =ts

Several Indo-Aryan languages, including Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, and Marathi contain a discourse clitic whose uses overlap with those of English particles like exclusives only/just, anaphoric indeed/that very, intensifiers really/totally, precisifiers right/exactly/absolutely, and scalar additive even without corresponding perfectly to any of them. This paper focuses on the Marathi variant =ts and offers a detailed empirical picture of a subset of its uses – uses involving discourse salience and noteworthiness or unexpectedness. I put forward the hypothesis that =ts conventionally signals that interlocutors are in mutual agreement that the proposition denoted by the prejacent is uniquely salient among alternatives in the current question. That is, =ts conveys that the proposition expressed by the prejacent offers a schelling point (or focal point) for the interlocutors to coordinate on

Imperfective Readings: Partitions as Quantificational Domains

No abstract

Copula Distinction and Constrained Variability of Copula Use in Iberian and Mexican Spanish

Spanish has two copulas, ser and estar, which are often translated as English ‘be’. Here, we study their differences by investigating their contrastive distributional patterns in combination with adjectival predicates. Specifically, we test the processing predictions of a presupposition-based analysis (Deo et al. 2016) that accounts for a wide range of distributional patterns of the copulas. This analysis has the advantage that it explains the variable copulas’ uses observed across Spanish varieties. Our focus is on Iberian and Mexican Spanish. The presupposition-based analysis establishes a clear-cut distinction between the two copulas: estar presupposes the contingency of the prejacent, ser does not. Accordingly, the use of estar requires that the common ground contextually entails that its prejacent is contingent. If the common ground does not imply the contingency of the prejacent, this new information would need to be accommodated by the hearer. We hypothesize that estar predications, when presented in isolation with adjectival predicates that show a preference to appear with ser, will engender a processing cost as a result of adding to the common ground the proposition that the prejacent holds contingently. This hypothesis is tested in two studies, an acceptability questionnaire and a self-paced reading. The results show that when the context does not explicitly support estar’s presupposition, sentences are scored lower (study 1, acceptability questionnaire) and read slower (study 2, self-paced reading) by both Iberian and Mexican speakers. In addition, the data provide experimental evidence for the ‘constrained’ variability across Spanish dialects. The results suggest that Mexican speakers are able to accommodate the contingency-presupposition of estar without relying on explicit contextual cues to a larger extent than Iberian speakers. Altogether, the data support an analysis of copula distinction in Spanish that takes into account the contingency-presupposition of estar and the variability in copula use across Spanish dialects

Operationalizing the Role of Context in Language Variation: The Role of Perspective Alignment in the Spanish Imperfective Domain

We present a cognitively grounded analysis of the pattern of variation that underlies the ​use of two aspectual markers in Spanish (the Simple-Present marker, Ana baila ‘Ana dances’, and the Present-Progressive marker, Ana está bailando ‘Ana is dancing’) when they express an event-in-progress reading. This analysis is centered around one fundamental communicative goal, which we term perspective alignment: the bringing of the hearer’s perspective closer to that of the speaker. Perspective alignment optimizes the tension between two nonlinguistic constraints: Theory of Mind, which gives rise to linguistic expressivity, and Common Ground, which gives rise to linguistic economy. We propose that, linguistically, perspective alignment capitalizes on lexicalized meanings, such as the progressive meaning, that can bring the hearer to the “here and now”. In Spanish, progressive meaning can be conveyed with the Present-Progressive marker regardless of context. By contrast, if the Simple-Present marker is used for that purpose, it must be in a context of shared perceptual access between speaker and hearer; precisely, a condition that establishes perspective alignment non-linguistically. Support for this analysis comes from a previously observed yet unexplained pattern of contextually-determined variation for the use of the Simple-Present marker in Iberian and Rioplatense (vs. Mexican) Spanish—in contrast to the preference across all three varieties for the use of the Present-Progressive marker—to express an event-in-progress reading

From change to value difference

Degree achievements and directed motion verbs are standardly taken to describe events in which an individual undergoes change over time. The spatial uses of these verbs, giving rise to what are known as their extent readings, indicate that a temporal change based semantics is not general enough to capture their behavior. In this paper, we introduce a further range of facts that argues for a fully general analysis of the meaning of degree achievements and directed motion verbs in terms of value difference rather than temporal change. These verbs are uniformly analyzed as intensional verbs that take functional arguments and encode a difference in the value of this argument over a contextually given ordered domain. This analysis accounts naturally for their interaction with a range of adverbial modifiers

Language change for the worse

Many theories hold that language change, at least on a local level, is driven by a need for improvement. The present volume explores to what extent this assumption holds true, and whether there is a particular type of language change that we dub language change for the worse, i.e., change with a worsening effect that cannot be explained away as a side-effect of improvement in some other area of the linguistic system. The chapters of the volume, written by leading junior and senior scholars, combine expertise in diachronic and historical linguistics, typology, and formal modelling. They focus on different aspects of grammar (phonology, morphosyntax, semantics) in a variety of language families (Germanic, Romance, Austronesian, Bantu, Jê-Kaingang, Wu Chinese, Greek, Albanian, Altaic, Indo-Aryan, and languages of the Caucasus). The volume contributes to ongoing theoretical debates and discussions between linguists with different theoretical orientations

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory