Fieldwork and Language Documentation

A new kind of epistemic indefinite

Virginia Dawson
2018

Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India) has two series of epistemic indefinites: one whose epistemic effects arise via an anti-singleton constraint similar to Spanish algúun (Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito, 2010), and another, wide-scope indefinite whose epistemic effects must be derived differently. I propose that for these latter indefinites, ignorance arises not through domain constraints, but as a result of their choice functional nature through competition with other indefinites. Tiwa’s wide scope indefinites then constitute a new kind of epistemic indefinite, showing that ignorance...

Dawson publishes in Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung

October 3, 2018

Congrats to fifth-year grad student Virginia Dawson, whose paper A new kind of epistemic indefinite was recently published in the Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22!

Diglossia and change from below in Eastern Cham

Kenneth Baclawski Jr.
2018

Diglossia canonically refers to language situations with unequal attitudes towards a formal ‘H’ variety, connected to writing, and a colloquial ‘L’ variety, connected to everyday speech. This paper claims that variation that arises as a marker of diglossia can become dissociated from it and persist in the L variety, if it is sufficiently orthogonal to the writing system. With a sociolinguistic survey (n = 30), this paper examines five variables that were markers of quasi-diglossia in Eastern Cham in previous decades. Three of the variables continue to be...

Review of "Upper Perené Arawak Narratives of History, Landscape, and Ritual", by Elena Mihas, with Gregorio Santos Pérez and Delia Rosas Rodríguez

Zachary O'Hagan
2017

Iquito

Christine Beier
Lev Michael
Jaime Pacaya Inuma
2018

Matsigenka

Lev Michael
Christine Beier
Sr. Haroldo Vargas Pereira
2018

Accessibility and demonstrative operators in Basaá relative clauses

Peter Jenks
Emmanuel-Moselly Makasso
Larry M. Hyman
2017

Clefts and anti-Superiority in Moken

Kenneth Baclawski Jr.
Peter Jenks
2016

We describe an extraction asymmetry in Moken that presents apparent Anti-Superiority effects. We then show that this asymmetry is not rooted in Superiority at all. Evidence from island effects is used to demonstrate that the left-dislocation of wh-phrases is not the result of wh-movement as standardly conceived. Furthermore, the same Anti-Superiority effect obtains for non-wh-phrases and clefts. At the same time, standard Superiority effects in Moken do arise in certain environments. These observations lead to the conclusion that Anti-Superiority effects in Moken are not counterexamples to...

Grammatical tone: Typology and theory

Nicholas R. Rolle
2018

Wailaki Grammar

Kayla Rae Begay
2017