Syntax and Semantics

Jenks in Germany

February 27, 2019

Peter Jenks will be giving two talks in Germany next week. First, he will give an invited talk at Universität Potsdam on March 5, entitled Pronominal distinctions as definiteness distinctions. Then, he will be an invited speaker at the "Sorting out the concepts behind definiteness" workshop at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in Bremen on Wednesday, March 6, with a talk entitled Anaphoric definites as anchored definites.

Linguistics events this week (Feb 22-Mar 1, 2019)

February 22, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 22 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-5pm
Jorge Hankamer (Santa Cruz) & Line Mikkelsen (Berkeley): CP complements to D Phorum - Monday Feb 25 - 1303 Dwinelle - 12-1pm
Jeremy Steffman (UCLA): TBA Linguistics Dept Colloquium - Monday Feb 25 - 370 Dwinelle - 3-5pm
Jessica Coon (McGill): Mayan Agent Focus and the Ergative Extraction Constraint: Facts and Fictions Revisited SLUgS - Thursday Feb 28 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm and 6-7pm
Discussion with three Cal Linguistics alumni that now work at Google, followed by "Helpful SLUgS" (unofficial tutoring hour) from 6-7 pm. Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday March 1 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Margaret Kroll (UC Santa Cruz) and Amanda Rysling (UC Santa Cruz): The search for truth: Semantic or pragmatic judgments

Amazonianist and Celtic conferences

February 25, 2019

March 15-17 will see not one but two conferences of interest for, and organized by, department members:

Third biennial Symposium on Amazonian Languages (SAL3)
March 16-17; 1229 Dwinelle Hall
Program here! The 41st California Celtic Conference
March 15-17, 2019; 370 Dwinelle Hall
Program here!

Coon colloquium

February 21, 2019

The 2018-2019 colloquium series continues this coming Monday, February 25, with a talk by Jessica Coon (McGill). Same time as always, same place as always: 3:10-5 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall. The talk is entitled Mayan Agent Focus and the Ergative Extraction Constraint: Facts and Fictions Revisited, and the abstract is as follows:

Many languages of the Mayan family restrict the extraction of transitive (ergative) subjects for focus, wh-questions, and relativization (A’-extraction). We follow Aissen (2017) in labelling this restriction the ergative extraction constraint (EEC). In this talk, we offer a unified account of the EEC within Mayan languages, as well as an analysis of the special construction known as Agent Focus (AF) used to circumvent it. Specifically, we propose the generalization in (1).

(1) Mayan EEC generalization:
When a pronounced copy of the object structurally intervenes between the subject and the A’-probe on C, the subject is restricted from undergoing A’-extraction.

Building on existing literature on syntactic ergativity, we argue that the restriction in (1) has a similar source across the subset of Mayan languages which exhibit it: locality. Evidence that locality is the source of the problem comes from a handful of exceptional contexts which permit transitive subjects to extract in languages which normally ban this extraction, and conversely, contexts which exceptionally ban ergative extraction in languages which otherwise allow it.

We argue that the problem with A’-extracting the ergative subject across the intervening object connects to the requirements of the A’-probe on C: Mayan C is relativized to the feature [D]. This connects the Mayan patterns to recent proposals for extraction patterns in Austronesian languages (e.g. Aldridge, to appear) and elsewhere (van Urk 2015). Specifically, adapting the proposal of Coon and Keine (2018), we argue that in configurations in which a DP object intervenes between the probe on C and an A’-subject, conflicting requirements on movement lead to a derivational crash. While we propose that the EEC has a uniform source across the family, we argue that AF constructions vary Mayan-internally in how they circumvent the EEC, accounting for the variation in behavior of AF across the family. This paper both contributes to our understanding of parametric variation internal to the Mayan family, as well as to the discussion of variation in A’-extraction asymmetries and syntactic ergativity cross-linguistically.


(collaborative work with Nico Baier and Theodore Levin)

Linguistics events this week (Feb 15-22, 2019)

February 15, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Linguistics & Near Eastern Studies special lecture - Friday Feb 15 - 254 Barrows Hall - 2pm
Lutz Edzard (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg): The morphosyntax of compounding in Semitic Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Peter Jenks (Berkeley): Anaphoric definites as anchored definites Ling 47 ("Communication Disorders") special event - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4pm
Viewing and discussion of the documentary When I Stutter
Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 20 - Dwinelle 1303 - 11-12:30PM
Practice talks for ICLDC: Julia Nee (Berkeley): Communication Based Instruction and Evaluation of Language Revitalization; Anna Berge (Alaska Native Language Center) and Edwin Ko (Berkeley): Interactive Maps, Place, and Context Philosophy Dept Work in Progress Talk - Wednesday Feb 20 - Moses 301 - noon-1
Amy Rose Deal (Berkeley): Factivity and uncentered attitudes Climate care tea/coffee hour - Friday Feb 22 - 3401 Dwinelle - 2-3pm
Discussion of goal setting
Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 22 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-5pm
Jorge Hankamer (Santa Cruz) & Line Mikkelsen (Berkeley): CP complements to D

Linguistics events this week (Feb 8-15, 2019)

February 8, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

BLS Workshop: Countability Distinctions - Friday Feb 8 & Saturday Feb 9
Join us for talks including keynotes by Suzi Lima (Toronto) and David Barner (UCSD)! The complete program is available here. Phorum - Monday Feb 11 - 1303 Dwinelle - 12-1pm Georgia Zellou, Michelle Cohn, & Bruno Ferenc Segedin (UCD): Talking Tech: How does voice-AI influence human speech? Linguistics Colloquium - Monday Feb 11 - 370 Dwinelle - 3:10-5pm
Larry Hyman: The Fall and Rise of Vowel Length in Bantu Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 13 - Dwinelle 1303 - 11-12:30PM
Andrew Garrett, Dmetri Hayes, and Ronald Sprouse: TBA SLUgS - Thursday Feb 14 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm
Viewing of Atlantis Linguistics & Near Eastern Studies special lecture - Friday Feb 15 - 254 Barrows Hall - 2pm
Lutz Edzard (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg): The morphosyntax of compounding in Semitic Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Peter Jenks: TBA

BLS workshop on countability distinctions

February 1, 2019

Coming up next week is a workshop on Countability Distinctions, organized by Emily Clem, Virginia Dawson, Amy Rose Deal, Paula Floro, Peter Jenks, Tyler Lemon, Line Mikkelsen, Tessa Scott, and Yi-Chi Wu. The workshop will feature two plenary talks, one each on Friday Feb 8 and Saturday Feb 9:

Suzi Lima (Toronto): A typology of the count/mass distinction in Brazil and its relevance for count/mass theories David Barner (UC San Diego): Quantification in Context is Multidimensional

In addition, there will be talks on mass/count related phenomena in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Kipsigis, Hungarian, Romanian, and English. All are welcome. Check out the full schedule here!

Linguistics events this week (Feb 1-8, 2019)

February 1, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 1 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Round Robin Lecture in Hispanic Linguistics - Friday Feb 1 - 5125 Dwinelle - 1-2pm Jhonni Carr (Berkeley): Spanish in Los Angeles Urban Signage: Language Attitudes and Linguistic Communities Phorum - Monday Feb 4 - 1303 Dwinelle - 12-1pm
Gopala Anumanchipalli (UCSF), Josh Chartier (UCSF, Berkeley), & Edward Chang (UCSF): Synthesizing speech directly from the human brain Language Variation and Change reading group - Wednesday Feb 6 - 5303 Dwinelle - 11a-noon Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 6 - Dwinelle 1229 - 11-12:30PM
Meg Cychosz (Berkeley): TBA SLUgS - Thursday Feb 7 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm
Game night, plus informal tutoring afterwards from 6-7pm BLS Workshop: Countability Distinctions - Friday Feb 8 and Saturday Feb 9 - Dwinelle 370
Schedule available here!

O'Hagan papers to appear in WSCLA

January 27, 2019
Zach O'Hagan has two new papers to appear in the proceedings of WSCLA, both based on his fieldwork on Caquinte and both in collaboration with 2018 PhD alumni: Baier, Nico and Zachary O'Hagan. to appear. Morphological Reflexes of Subject Extraction in Caquinte. Proceedings of WSCLA 23. [pdf] Rolle, Nicholas and Zachary O'Hagan. to appear. Different Kinds of Second-position Clitics in Caquinte. Proceedings of WSCLA 23. [pdf]

Congrats, Zach!

Wu, Deal publish in Snippets

January 23, 2019

The journal Snippets has recently released a special issue on Non-local Contextual Allomorphy. Included in the volume are two short papers by Berkeley linguists:

Amy Rose Deal: Locality in allomorphy and presyntactic bundling: A case of tense and aspect Yi-Chi Yvette Wu: Non-local allomorphy in Kannada

Congrats, Yvette, on your first publication!