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SL6BY021

Goals

Beyond sounds, the suprasegmental part of speech (prosody and intonation) interacts with other domains of the linguistic structure. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the domain of prosody by analyzing the phonetic forms of the prosodic contours, as well as their associations and their functions, particularly in interaction with syntax, discourse, emotions, and attitudes. Particular attention will be given to the prosody/syntax and the prosody/discourse interfaces. Knowledge students will acquire with this course

Students will learn how to explain the concept of prosody, its forms and its functions. They will be able to quantitatively characterize prosody, and to make a typological description (accents, tones, stress). They will learn how to explain the prosodic characteristics of utterances with a particular accentual or phrase pattern, or to establish links with syntax, discourse, emotions and attitudes. They will also learn how to read and summarize recent articles on prosody (in French and in English) and to address research questions.

Competence students will acquire with this course

• Prosodic (typological) description of a language
• Conduct an acoustic analysis in order to describe prosody and to solve tasks related to prosodic phonology questions: identify accents, contours, relations between a contour and a
• syntactic structure or a discourse phenomenon
• Make prosodic morphing

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SL6BY041

Le début des années 90 a vu l’émergence d’un programme de recherche bien défini, appelé “phonologie de laboratoire”. Par la nature des nouvelles questions posées et par la méthodologie adoptée, il marque une meilleure intégration de la linguistique, notamment la phonologie, dans le contexte général des sciences cognitives. Il adopte des méthodologies propres aux disciplines expérimentales comme la phonétique, la sociolinguistique, la psycholinguistique, l’étude de l’acquisition du langage. A travers plusieurs études précises, nous allons voir comment les méthodes classiques expérimentales peuvent s’appliquer à des questions phonologiques : comment valider les hypothèses avancées par les phonologues ? Nous aborderons à la fois la partie théorique à travers la lecture de différents articles, mais aussi la partie pratique, avec notamment la réflexion de nouvelles problématiques et la conception d’expériences permettant de tester un phénomène phonologique.

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SL6BY011

Ce cours étudie les questions principales posées par la phonologie théorique et les solutions proposées. Le contenu se concentre sur la phonologie autosegmentale (Goldsmith 1976). Les phénomènes étudiés concernent en particulier le niveau suprasegmental (la structure proposée au-dessus du segment) : les tons, la syllabe, la more, l’accent, le pied. On revient au segment à travers le modèle autosegmental de la géométrie des traits (Clements 1985). Le modèle autosegmental commence à introduire la notion de contrainte. Au final, un formalisme différent, basé sur un système de contraintes phonologiques (la théorie de l’optimalité – Prince & Smolensky 1993) sera introduit. Les modèles étudiés sont tous des modèles génératifs. Indépendamment du mécanisme formalisé (système de règles ou système de contraintes), ils impliquent l’obtention d’une forme de surface à partir d’une forme sous-jacente, suivant dans ce sens le modèle SPE (Chomsky & Halle 1968).

Références (articles fondateurs)

Chomsky, N. & M. Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English / Clements, G.N. 1985. The geometry of phonological features. Phonology Yearbook 2. 225-252 / Goldsmith, J. 1976. Autosegmental phonology. MIT PhD dissertation / Prince, A. & P. Smolensky. 1993. Constraint interaction in generative grammar

This course studies the major questions posed by theoretical phonology and the main solutions offered. The focus is on Autosegmental phonology (Goldsmith 1976) and on processes at the suprasegmental level (the proposed level of structure above the segment): tone, the syllable, the mora, stress, and the foot. We return to segments through the autosegmental model of Feature geometry (Clements 1985). Autosegmental phonology introduces the notion of constraint, and a new formal model is subsequently developed based on a system of phonological constraints (Optimality theory - Prince & Smolensky 1993). The models studied in the course are all generative. Regardless of the formal mechanism proposed (rules or constraints) they all involve the mapping of an underlying form onto a surface form, following in this sense the SPE model (Chomsky & Halle 1968).

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SL6BY031

This class is dedicated to quantitative approaches to morphology. The goal of the class is make students familiar with the state of the art in interdisciplinary research on morphology. We will look at relevant work in theoretical linguistics, typology, corpus linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. After a general introduction motivating the relevance of a quantitative approach to morphological issues, we will examine:

• Properties of the distribution of words in corpora
• Morphological irregularity and its psycholinguistic manifesttions
• How morphological systems are organized in terms of predictability
• Properties of words families, and how there relate to inflectional paradigms.

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SL6BY071

Islands

The aim of this class is to reflect on the nature, the boundaries and the explanations of island constraints. It will have both a theoretical and an empirical/experimental stance, including 1) a survey of the theoretical proposals that have been made and their problems ; 2) an exploration of radically alternative proposals advocating processing difficulties or pragmatic oddities as the only factors explaining islands ; 3) the setting of some experimental guidelines on how to tease apart these factors.

Students taking the seminar will have a) to discuss a paper b) to present about an experiment to be: to pick up an island, an analysis and a language, and set up an experiment aiming at testing the predictions of that analysis for that island effects on that language.

The main text : Cedric Boeckx . 2012. Syntactic Islands, CUP.

References

• Beck 2006. Intervention effects follow from focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics. 14 : 1-56
• Boeckx, C. and A. Gallego. 2011. Deriving CED effects from phases: some reasons for skepticism. Ms., ICREA/UAB.
• Cinque, G. 1978. Towards a unified treatment of island constraints. In Proceedings of the 12th International Congress of Linguistics, Insbrucker Beitragezur Sprachwissenschaft, W. Dressler and W. Meid (eds.), 344–348.
• Epstein, S. D., H. Kitahara, and T. D. Seely. 2010. Structure building that can’t be. Ms., University of Michigan, Keio University, and Michigan StateUniversity.
• Hofmeister and Sag 2010. Cognitive constraints and island effects. Language 86 :366-415.
• Hornstein, N., H. Lasnik, and J. Uriagereka. 2007. The dynamics of islands: speculations on the locality of movement. Linguistic Analysis 33: 149–175.
• Hornstein, N. and J. Nunes. 2008. Some thoughts on adjunction. Biolinguistics2: 57–86.
• Hornstein, N., J. Nunes, and K. K. Grohmann. 2006. Understanding Minimalism. Cambridge University Press.
• Huang, C.-T. J. 1982. Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. Doctoraldissertation, MIT.
• Müller, G. 2010. On deriving CED effects from the PIC. Linguistic Inquiry 41: 35–82.
• Nunes, J. and J. Uriagereka. 2000. Cyclicity and extraction domains. Syntax 3: 20–43.
• Phillips, C. 2006. The real-time status of island constraints. Language 82: 795–823.
• Phillips, C. 2009. Should we impeach armchair linguists? In S. Iwasaki, ed., Japanese-Korean Linguistics 17. Stanford: CSLI.
• Phillips, C. 2011. Some arguments and non-arguments for reductionist accounts of syntactic phenomena. Language and Cognitive Processes 26: 1–32.
• Rizzi, L. and U. Shlonsky. 2007. Strategies of subject extraction. In Interfaces + Recursion = Language? Chomsky’s Minimalism and the View from Syntax-semantics, ed. U.
• Sauerland and M. Gaertner, 115–160. Mouton: de Gruyter
• Sprouse, J. 2009. Revisiting satiation. Linguistic Inquiry 40(2): 329–341.
• Sprouse, J., M. Wagers, and C. Phillips. To appear. A test of the relation between working memory capacity and syntactic island effects. Language.
• Stepanov, A. 2007. The end of CED? Minimalism and extraction domain. Syntax 10: 80–126.
• Szabolcsi A. 2006. Strong and Weak islands. In M. Everaert and H. van Riemsdjk, The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, vol1, CH. 64.
• Takahashi, D. 1994. Minimality of movement. Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut.

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SL6BY061

• Syntactic theories have long relied on partial introspective data. The availability of large annotated corpora and experimental methods has radically changed our empirical basis. This class will present recent discoveries and explored the consequences for theoretical syntax. We will deal in particular with:

1. argument order and transivity alternation (ditransitive verbs, passives)
2. locality constraints on long distance dependencies (“islands”)
3. elliptical sentences, such as sluicing (Paul left, I dont know when) or gapping (Paul left yesterday and Mary this morning), which are very common in speaking and writing and which challenge most syntactic theories.

The theories are tested with attested data (from large corpora) and with controlled experiments (acceptability judgements, maze task, eye-tracking).

• Students taking the seminar will have to discuss a paper or to perform an empirical study (systematic search and annotation in a large corpus or set up an experiment).

References

A. Abeillé, B. Hemforth, E. Winckel, E. Gibson 2020. Extraction from subject : differences in acceptability depend on the discourse function of the construction, Cognition, 204. Futrell, Levy, R.P., & Gibson, E. (2020). Dependency locality as an explanatory principle for word order. Language. Gibson, E. & Fedorenko, E. 2013. The need for quantitative methods in syntax and semantics research. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28:88–124. Poppels, T., & Kehler, A. 2019. Reconsidering asymmetries in voice-mismatched VP-ellipsis. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1), 60.

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SL6BY051

Wh-questions in less canonical forms

The aim of the seminar is to make students familiar with contemporary research on topics of semantics and pragmatics, and the interfaces with other fields. The specific content varies each year. This year we look at issues about wh-questions in less canonical forms.
 Here are some of the central questions addressed:

• Properties of canonical questions
• Noncanonical forms and proposals for characterising them
• Peculiarities of reason questions. How are they reflected in the functional and/or grammatical means that are used
• Participants in the discourse, and their commitments

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