Cross-categorial gradability in Logoori

The central empirical observation of this paper is that there are polysemous lexical items in a number of unrelated languages that have similar, not intuitively related, meanings. These meanings are 'to arrive'/'to reach,' 'to be enough,' and 'must.' The central theoretical claim of this paper is based on a case study of one such polysemous lexical item in Logoori (Bantu, JE 41; Kenya). We argue that these three meanings all arise from a single semantic denotation that is sensitive to a shared gradable component in the semantics of linguistic expressions referring to spatial paths, gradable predicates, measures of plural count nouns/mass nouns, and modals. The main theoretical issue addressed in this paper is the application of ordered, abstract scales in a model of grammar. This paper is an abridged version of Bowler & Gluckman, to appear

Conjunction and disjunction in a language without 'and'

Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan, Australia) has a single coordinator, manu. This coordinator occurs in constructions of the form P manu Q. In the following paper, I argue that manu has a non-strengthened disjunctive denotation which can undergo pragmatic strengthening to conjunction. I propose that the absence of a conjunctive coordinator in Warlpiri results in the set of scalar alternatives {P, Q, (P or Q)} for P manu Q. This is identical to the set of scalar alternatives for English P or Q proposed by Singh, et al. (2013) for English-speaking children. I follow Singh, et al. in using a recursive application of Fox's (2007) exhaustivity operator, Exh, to derive a strengthened conjunctive reading of P manu Q that is categorical in unembedded contexts. I also address strengthening under the scope of negation and in conditionals and Wh-questions, and place some pragmatic constraints on Exh application

Expletive agreement, evidentiality, and modality in Logooli

We discuss and analyze two subject agreement markers in Logooli (Bantu, Kenya). We show that e- (class 9 subject agreement) and ga- (class 6 subject agreement) give rise to a variety of apparently evidential or modal meanings when they occur in constructions translated with "expletive" subjects. We propose a treatment of the Logooli data following Matthewson, et al. (2007)'s and Rullmann, et al. (2008)'s choice function analysis of modality and evidentiality in St'át'imcets, and extend their original proposal to account for novel data in Logooli. We show that these two morphemes occur only with verbs that introduce modal bases, and propose that they differ from one another in the size of the subset of possible worlds that their associated choice functions select from the modal base. This in turn results in different interpretations based on the size of the subset of worlds that they select, the speaker's ordering source, and the modal base provided by the verb

Intensifying Ideophones in Three Luhya Languages

Ideophones are typically described as “marked words that depict sensory imagery” (Dingemanse 2011, 25). This paper addresses ideophone data from three Luhya languages: Llogoori, Lunyore, and Lutiriki (Bantu, Kenya). Our primary claim is descriptive: we show that there is a closed class of (previously undescribed) Luhya ideophones. We illustrate how the Luhya data is consistent with what is known about ideophones cross-linguistically, and give a preliminary semantic analysis of the Luhya ideophones as degree intensifiers

Collecting Semantic Data by Mechanical Turk for the Lexical Knowledge Resource of a Text-to-Picture Generating System

WordsEye is a system for automatically converting natural language text into 3D scenes representing the meaning of that text. At the core of WordsEye is the Scenario-Based Lexical Knowledge Resource (SBLR), a unified knowledge base and representational system for expressing lexical and real-world knowledge needed to depict scenes from text. To enrich a portion of the SBLR, we need to fill out some contextual information about its objects, including information about their typical parts, typical locations and typical objects located near them. This paper explores our proposed methodology to achieve this goal. First we try to collect some semantic information by using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (AMT). Then, we manually filter and classify the collected data and finally, we compare the manual results with the output of some automatic filtration techniques which use several WordNet similarity and corpus association measures

Data Collection and Normalization for Building the Scenario-Based Lexical Knowledge Resource of a Text-to-Scene Conversion System

WordsEye is a system for converting from English text into three-dimensional graphical scenes that represent that text. It works by performing syntactic and semantic analyses on the input text, producing a description of the arrangement of objects in a scene. At the core of WordsEye is the Scenario-Based Lexical Knowledge Resource (SBLR), a unified knowledge base and representational system for expressing lexical and real-world knowledge needed to depict scenes from text. This paper explores information collection methods for building the SBLR, using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (AMT) and manual normalization of raw AMT data. The paper follows with manual review of existing relations in the SBLR and classification of the AMT data into existing and new semantic relations. Since manual annotation is a time-consuming and expensive approach, we also explored the use of automatic normalization of AMT data through log-odds and log-likelihood ratios extracted from the English Gigaword corpus, as well as through WordNet similarity measures

Proceedings of the Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages (TripleA) 2

TripleA is a workshop series founded by linguists from the University of Tübingen and the University of Potsdam. Its aim is to provide a forum for semanticists doing fieldwork on understudied languages, and its focus is on languages from Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania. The second TripleA workshop was held at the University of Potsdam, June 3-5, 2015

Strict and non-strict negative concord in Hungarian: A unified analysis

Surányi (2006) observed that Hungarian has a hybrid (strict + non-strict) negative concord system. This paper proposes a uniform analysis of that system within the general framework of Zeijlstra (2004, 2008) and, especially, Chierchia (2013), with the following new ingredients. Sentential negation NEM is the same full negation in the presence of both strict and non-strict concord items. Preverbal SENKI `n-one’ type negative concord items occupy the specifier position of either NEM `not' or SEM `nor'. The latter, SEM spells out IS `too, even’ in the immediate scope of negation; it is a focus-sensitive head on the clausal spine. SEM can be seen as an overt counterpart of the phonetically null head that Chierchia dubs NEG; it is capable of invoking an abstract (disembodied) negation at the edge of its projection

Igbo-English intrasentential codeswitching and the Matrix Language Frame model

This paper uses data from Igbo-English intrasentential codeswitching involving mixed nominal expressions to test the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model. The MLF model is one of the most highly influential frameworks used in the study of grammatical aspects of codeswitching. Three principles associated with it, the Matrix Language Principle, the Asymmetry Principle and the Uniform Structure Principle, were tested on data collected from informal conversations by educated adult Igbo-English bilinguals resident in Port Harcourt. The results of the analyses suggest general support for the three principles and for identifying Igbo-English as a “classic” case of codeswitching

Diversity in African languages: Selected papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distribution of other papers highlights the need for intensified research into all the language families of Africa, including basic documentation, in order to comprehend linguistic diversities and convergences across the continent. In this regard, the chapter on Daats’íin (Gumuzic) stands out as the first-ever published article on this hitherto unknown and endangered language found in the Ethiopian-Sudanese border lands