Linguistics

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), founding father of the United States and general polymath, included language among his many interests as a scientist, educator, and publisher. A particularly significant work in this area is his phonetic alphabet for English, which he proposed in 1768 for a “reformed mode of spelling”. The basic principles upon which he based this alphabet are familiar to linguists, but his descriptions show a deeper understanding of the sounds of language and how they may be grouped according to articulatory principles. We report on this alphabet and his comments thereon, including his correspondence with Mary Stevenson and later with Noah Webster, and discuss other obse..

This paper explores the comparative analysis of vowel systems within British, American, and Irish English accents, examining their phonetic characteristics, historical roots, and social implications. English has evolved into numerous varieties worldwide, primarily influenced by regional and social factors. The paper focuses on Received Pronunciation (RP) in British English, General American in American English, and Supraregional Irish English in Irish English, highlighting their distinct phonological features. Rhoticity and lexical sets are examined as key aspects of variation. Differences in the pronunciation of /r/ contribute to unique phonetic landscapes, with British English exhibiting n..

In this paper, we present a preliminary analysis of Tagalog intonational phonology. We argue for three levels of prosodic phrasing above the prosodic word: an Accentual Phrase (AP), an Intermediate Phrase (iP) and an Intonational Phrase (IP). Each of these phrases are defined by edge tones, which contributes to the regular tonal melody of Tagalog utterances. We argue that Tagalog is typologically unusual in that some tones display variability in terms of their alignment: sometimes these tones target prominent syllables, while other times they appear to ignore them and target phrase edges. In particular, the left edge tone of an iP-medial AP is some- times aligned to an (unstressed) AP-initia..

Plural and non-count nouns have been characterized as having homogeneous reference, the combination of the second-order properties of cumulative and divisive reference. Homogeneous reference is a useful property that captures similarities in the behavior of count plural and non-countable nouns. However, formal semantic definitions of divisive reference—the property that any part of what a noun refers to can also be referred to with that noun—run into the Problem of Minimal Parts. While both a portion of water and another portion of water that it is a part of can be referred to with the noun phrase water, both have parts such as hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are not water. This paper int..

Two types of syllables with ambiguous stress-status are identified: open syllables with a full vowel adjacent to the primary stress (e.g. no.tá.tion) and closed syllables with a full vowel that occur non-adjacent to, but to the right of the primary stress syllable (e.g. cá.ra.van}). Both syllable types have a full vowel but need not be heavy; the latter type also has a coda consonant. These two segmental properties of syllables were separated into two "big" syllable shapes, [Cæ] and [Cəs]. Two perception studies were run in which these syllables were given the prosodic characteristics of unstressed syllables and placed in syllable strings where a listener would expect a stressed syllable..

Existing accounts of Georgian relative clauses mention two relativization strategies, one involving the complementizer rom, and the other involving the relativizing clitic -c. While Foley (2013); Bhatt & Nash (2023) provide a syntactic account of these structures, their semantics remains unstudied. In this paper I present novel data on preposed relative clauses in Georgian formed via the relativizing clitic -c, and argue for a correlative-like semantics of these structures along the lines Dayal 1996’s analysis of Hindi correlatives. Moreover, contra Bhatt & Nash (2023) I argue it is these multiple wh-romelic relative clauses rather than the multiple headed rom relative clauses that..

Referring to people using only their name (e.g. Jones came in) is known to evoke the assumption that the individual is male. The same holds with some role nouns (e.g. mechanic, boxer). We explore these effects through the lens of pronoun interpretation in English. In two sentence-completion studies, we show that both form-based (last-name-only style) and meaning-based gender biases (from role nouns) are powerful enough to eliminate otherwise robust verb semantic effects on pronoun interpretation (implicit causality). In addition, the results provide initial evidence that meaning-based biases (at least the ones tested here) can be stronger than form-based biases, which may stem from differenc..

Italian absolute clauses have been treated as small clauses under previous analyses (Belletti, 1990; Bruno, 2011), meaning they have been claimed to feature reduced functional structure. Additionally, the way in case assignment within absolute clauses has been analyzed has not been uniform, featuring a range of case assignment mechanisms which are not independently motivated such as case assignment via C (Belletti, 1990) or AspP (Bruno, 2011) In the present study, we develop an non-small clause analysis of Italian absolute clauses, based on adverb and clitic placement, the presence of negation, and certain facts about the C-domain of these clauses. Crucially, under our account, these clauses..

What are the constraints on agreement, and how does it interact with other syntactic operations? Recent studies suggest that syntactic dependencies are tier-based strictly local (TSL) over Minimalist Grammar derivation trees, a computationally restrictive model which closely fits many aspects of the formal typology (Graf 2022, Hanson 2025). Using this framework, I provide an analysis of upward complementizer agreement in Lubukusu (Diercks 2013), and show that it correctly predicts lack of agreement with hyperraised subjects without any additional assumptions. I argue further that the phenomenon should be understood as a kind of syntactic counterfeeding, which together with the existence of f..

Duration may be phonologically meaningful, as with contrastive segment length or as a cue to stress, or it can be purely phonetic, as with final lengthening. This paper explores the amount of durational variation present in the articulation of rimes that have different sources of duration. We show evidence to support the hypothesis that phonological duration is more stable and phonetic duration is more variable. We present evidence from new analyses of two English production studies (Lunden 2016, 2017) with nonce words that show significantly greater durational variability due to final lengthening than durational differences due to vowel quality or stress. Variability in duration was calcula..

A popular hypothesis in linguistics posits that language learners are biologically predisposed to learn structures attested in human language – for example, a hierarchically nested phrase structure, while eschewing hypotheses for linguistically unattested structures – for example, one consisting of non-consecutive, linearly alternating “constituents”. The current study explores the robustness of such a predisposition within a controlled artificial language learning task as well as a non-linguistic, general puzzle-solving task. We find evidence that suggests learners more easily acquire linguistically attested hierarchically structured patterns compared to unattested non-hierarchical ..

This paper argues that it is possible to develop a uniformitarian account of at least some of the similarities. With the adoption of the Interpretability Hypothesis (Hawkins & Hattori 2006; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou 2007), it is predicted that uninterpretable features are particularly vulnerable and may be lost in creole genesis because of the critical role of L2 acquisition in this process. In contrast, inter-pretable features are more resilient. Thus, it is predicted that, under the assumption of a feature interpretability-based analysis of gender (Kramer 2014, 2015), grammatical gender is very likely to be lost during creolization, while natural gender is more likely to be retaine..

This study shows that Tamil exhibits wh-scope-marking constructions that share general properties with those found in other languages such as German and Hindi. In the literature, wh-scope-marking has been analyzed such that the embedded question functions as a restriction on the matrix propositional wh-phrase, with the two forming a constituent in the underlying structure. However, this constituent structure has been motivated solely on semantic grounds and lacks direct syntactic support. I argue that Tamil wh-scope-marking provides syntactic support for the constituency between the matrix wh-phrase and the embedded questoin, using a Proper Binding Condition (PBC) effect as a diagnostic. The..

English neopronouns have been reported difficult to learn or use because of their low frequency, and because pronouns are a closed category, and are rated below ceiling in acceptability surveys. Hekanaho (2022) reports that metalinguistic commentary about neopronouns includes themes of prescriptivism, unfamiliarity, ‘weirdness,’ and confusion. In this study, we examine whether exposure to neopronouns during a survey increased acceptability ratings. Neopronouns were rated higher when seen later in the survey. We analyze metalinguistic comments from the survey in which participants report their experiences in the survey as educational or instructive, suggesting that some order effects may ..

In recent years, a growing body of research has sought to explain linguistic phenomena in terms of the dynamics of neural activity, through the lens of Dynamic Field Theory (DFT: Schöner, Spencer & DFT Research Group 2016). DFT is a general framework for understanding perception, action, and cognition as resulting from activity in interconnected populations of neurons. DFT formalizes neural activity in the language of nonlinear dynamical systems. This expression allows apparently categorical behavior to emerge from an underlyingly continuous state space. In this paper, I provide a review of research investigating linguistic phenomena through the lens of DFT, with a particular emphasis o..

Gender-based sound symbolic patterns have been documented in corpora of given names in several languages. Name-gendering experiments show that native speakers use many, but not all, of these patterns to assign gender to nonce names in their native and non-native languages, suggesting that some patterns may be productive in speakers’ minds. This study extends this experimental work to a new language, French, by examining how French speakers assign gender to English and French nonce names and comparing their results to those of English speakers. It finds that, like speakers of other languages, French speakers use some, but not all, factors to assign gender to names in both their native and n..

Metalinguistic awareness of sociophonetic features may vary based on social or individual factors (e.g. dialect region, production, perception), as well as properties of the dialects or features themselves (e.g. their markedness). It is necessary to quantify metalinguistic awareness in order to consider these relationships statistically. This study tests a method of quantifying metalinguistic awareness using three tasks (written dialect description, written dialect identification, auditory dialect identification) and four sociophonetic features of North American English (/\ae g/-raising, /aj/-monophthongization and, Canadian raising of /aj/ and /aw/, considered separately). It finds that it ..

This paper examines Superiority constraints in Turkish, a wh-in-situ language that permits both A- and A'-scrambling. Previous accounts argue that Turkish lacks Superiority constraints when multiple wh-phrases occur within the same clause; that is, both wh-phrases can freely move to the left periphery, and the lower syntactic wh-phrase can take scope over the higher one at LF. Previous accounts have only observed Superiority phenomena in Turkish when both wh-phrases originate in separate clauses and the movement is cross-clausal, aligning it with languages like English. We show that this generalization does not fully hold and make two central claims. First, Turkish exhibits Superiority effec..

This paper examines language ideologies surrounding the perceived indexicality of gendered pronouns among speakers who use multiple pronoun sets. Through a discourse analysis of research interviews with speakers who use multiple pronouns in English, I argue that these language ideologies must be understood as grounded in trans epistemologies—trans-affirming ways of thinking and knowing about gender that emerge from trans communities—to understand how such ideologies both resist and align with dominant understandings of the exclusive and constitutive relationship between pronouns and gender. The analysis not only expands our understanding of multiple pronoun use, but also broader gendered..

This study examines tone sandhi for disyllabic words in the Sinitic Wu dialect of Huangyan. Huangyan typically shows right-dominance – word-final tones remain unchanged while word-initial tones change. However, other sandhi types are also observed: left-dominance (only final tones changes), both-change (both initial and final tones change), and no-change cases. I propose to incorporate contour slope [±smooth] and movement [±fall] into the feature geometry of tones to capture the tonal inventory and sandhi processes in this language. For word-initial sandhi, contour slope (sharp vs. smooth) predicts whether the contour is preserved, while contour movement (fall vs. non-fall) predicts whet..

Mwaghavul is an underdocumented Chadic language spoken in Plateau State, Nigeria, by approximately 150,000 people (Blench 2011). Mwaghavul has tonal lowering in associative constructions, where the first nominal in the construction surfaces with low tone, regardless of its tone in isolation (Arokoyo & Fwangwar 2019). However, tonal lowering is not fully predictable, as some high tone nominals surface as mid tone in associative constructions, instead of low. Number of syllables, vowel length and quality are not consistent predictors, as there are minimal pairs for high tone alternations. We investigate the phonetics of these high tones, to determine whether two phonetically distinct high ..

Both humans and large language models (LLMs) are known to exhibit effects of gender stereotypicality. We conducted a series of studies to systematically assess to what extent humans’ and LLMs’ interpretational patterns align, how different kinds of linguistic expressions (role nouns vs. adjectives) contribute, and to what extent these patterns extend to text-to-image models. Experiments 1 and 2 test how gender-biased role nouns (e.g. plumber, nurse) and adjectives (e.g. powerful, kind) influence humans’ and GPT-4o’s assumptions about gender in a fill-in-the-blank task. Experiment 3 tests how role nouns and adjectives influence images created by the image generator DALL-E 3 (a text-to..

This study investigates how monolingual English and Turkish speakers, as well as English-dominant Turkish heritage speakers (HSs) interpret strict/sloppy ambiguity in verbal ellipsis structures (e.g., John defended his friend, and Noah did too). Prior work shows that HSs often diverge from monolinguals in interpreting null subjects (Laleko & Polinsky, 2017; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006), yet it is unclear whether this extends to null constructions beyond subject pro-drop. To test this, we examined the interpretations of baseline English and baseline Turkish speakers for ambiguous verbal ellipsis sentences, compared to Turkish HSs, who completed picture choosing tasks in English (Exp. 1) an..

The cognitive mechanisms that underlie the phenomenon of similarity-based interference during language processing remain a controversial issue. One well-known approach attributes the source of interference to activation patterns during the retrieval process. We report research on Vietnamese that examines the possibility of similarity-based interference effects during the processing of an optional dependency between a wh-phrase and a Question-particle (Q-particle). In this dependency, the presence of the second element is optional. Using acceptability ratings and self-paced reading methods, we provide evidence for a retrieval-based account. We also provide evidence that a sub-part of a word ..

The advent of the internet has been both a blessing and a curse for once marginalised communities. When used well, the internet can be used to connect and establish communities crossing different intersections; however, it can also be used as a tool to alienate people and communities as well as perpetuate hate, misinformation, and disinformation especially on social media platforms. We propose steering hate speech research and researchers away from pre-existing computational solutions and consider social methods to inform social solutions to address this social problem. In a similar way linguistics research can inform language planning policy, linguists should apply what we know about langua..

Okinawan is said to have two causative forms: -(r)as and -(r)ashimi, with the former primarily expressing forcible causation and the latter, permission causation. However, this is just a tendency, not an absolute rule. This paper adopts Miyara’s (2015a) view that -(r)ashimi consists of two morphemes -(r)as and -imi but proposes that -imi functions ambiguously either as a causative morpheme or as a benefactive morpheme. This makes it possible to understand some complex interpretational facts observed in causative constructions in Okinawan. A theoretical analysis of the causative suffixes is also offered in the framework of Distributed Morphology.

Recent research (Paul 2014, Erlewine 2017) has found Mandarin sentence-final particles (SFPs) to be C heads, as per Rizzi (1997). This apparently violates the proposed universal Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC; Sheehan et. al. 2017), which prohibits the projection of any head-final phrase over a head-initial one. This paper brings this issue into Taiwanese, which has the added complexity of a head-initial complementizer kóng. I use co-occurrence restrictions to argue that Taiwanese SFPs occupy multiple head positions, and show that only one of these can be embedded. The result is argued to support the generalization from Richards (2016) and Erlewine (2017) that FOFC applies only within ind..

As the United States Supreme Court has become more textualist, it has become increasingly likely to rely on descriptive linguistic claims about mainstream American English in its interpretive decision-making processes. In this paper I discuss the role that linguists play at the Supreme Court through amicus briefing. I find that engagement with amicus briefs filed by linguists remains limited in most legal domains. I argue that limited understanding of linguistics, the nature of nongovernmental amicus filings, and the division of factual and legal issues contribute to this lack of engagement. As a means of improving engagement with linguists in the legal profession, I propose that linguists s..

Based on novel empirical work on the Kyrgyz (Turkic) nine-term demonstrative system, this paper investigates the spatial uses of demonstratives and the relationship between demonstratives' attention-drawing and spatial denotations, which has been a fundamental question for the study of demonstrative semantic content (Skilton 2019, Levinson 2018). While Kyrgyz, similarly to Turkish (Küntay & Özyürek 2002, 2006), appears to have a specialized attention-drawing demonstrative indicating that attention-drawing and spatial denotations can be entirely distinct, careful elicitations reveal that attention drawing is derived from a (joint-attention) sociocentric distal meaning.

Mauritian Creole is known to form polar questions in two ways: by using the utterance-initial particle eski, derived from French est-ce que 'is it the case that', or by applying a rising intonation to the declarative sentence. This paper asks the question whether both question forms are syntactically interrogative sentences or instead have different underlying structures. The question is relevant if we consider that a number of languages use declarative sentences to ask (biased) polar questions, a question type known as ''declarative questions'' in the literature (also: ''rising declaratives'' in English). We evaluate the possibility of intonation questions being the equivalents of declarati..