Andrew Nevins

The Role of Feature-Number and Feature-Type in Processing Hindi Verb Agreement Violations

This article presents studies of Hindi that investigate whether responses to syntactic agreement violations vary as a function of the type and number of incorrect agreement features, using both electrophysiological (ERP) and behavioral measures. Hindi is well suited to investigation of this issue, since verbs in Hindi mark agreement with the person, number, and gender features of the nominative subject noun phrase. In an ERP study evoked responses were recorded for visually presented verbs appearing at the end of a sentence-initial adverbial clause, comparing responses in a grammatically correct condition with four grammatically incorrect conditions that mismatched the correct agreement on different dimensions (Gender, Number, Gender/Number, Person/Gender). A P600 response was elicited in all grammatically incorrect conditions. No amplitude differences were found among the Gender, Number, and combined Gender/Number violations. This suggests that the feature distance between observed and expected word forms at the morphosyntactic level does not impact ERP responses, contrasting with findings on semantic and auditory processing, and suggests that the P600 response to agreement violations is not additive based on the number of mismatching features and does not reflect top-down, predictive mechanisms. A significantly larger P600 response was elicited by the combined Person/Gender violation, and two different violations involving the Person feature were judged as more severe and recognized more quickly in the behavioral studies. This effect is attributed to the greater salience of the Person feature at multiple levels of representation.

Marked Targets versus Marked Triggers and Impoverishment of the Dual

This article discusses morphological markedness as a trigger and target of postsyntactic feature-deletion operations (impoverishment; Bobaljik 2003, Bonet 1991, Halle 1997, Halle and Marantz 1993, Harley 2008, Noyer 1992, 1998) and, taking number as a case study, argues that dual is more marked than plural, in accordance with traditional and more recent approaches to inflectional morphology. In a system that employs abstract binary features, dual may be represented by a combination of the features [−singular, −augmented] (Conklin 1962, Noyer 1992), and the feature [−augmented] is marked in the context of [−singular]. This article draws a formal distinction between markedness-targeted impoverishment and markedness-triggered impoverishment, arguing that the latter is an important diagnostic for morphological markedness. Exemplification comes from syncretisms either directed at or conditioned by the dual in Sámi, Sorbian, Slovenian, Warlpiri, and Zuni, the last of which has been argued by Cowper (2005) to show that dual is less marked than plural.

Overwriting does not optimize in nonconcatenative morphology

Overwriting is modeled in Optimality Theory as a competition for a position within the derivational base (Alderete et al. 1999, Ussishkin 1997). Faithfulness constraints that are evaluated on the basis of segment counting predict a typology of languages in which (a) optimization dictates that the relative size of the affixal material determines whether it will win out and overwrite the base, and (b) optimization ensures that if both the affix and base material can surface without incurring phonotactic violations, this should be optimal. Both predictions are wrong. Hebrew denominal verb formation and Hindi echo reduplication demonstrate cases of nonconcatenative derivation in which overwriting is better understood as rule-induced change.

Prospects and challenges for a clitic analysis of (A)SL agreement

This commentary on Lillo-Martin and Meier (2011) (henceforth LMM) f ocuses on the clitic vs agreement question that pervades research in formal linguistics, by no means unique to sign languages. Their goal of re-examining sign l anguage agreement in the light of parallels with spoken language is laudable, and my objective in the present commentary is to suggest that by looking at even more data from spoken languages, the importance of further considering whether an agreement or clitic analysis is more appropriate for sign languages will emerge. While LMM argue that “Siewerska (2000) identifies several different types of person marking across the world’s languages, characterizing them according to whether they may or may not co-occur with a local or non-local controller. On her classification, whether the form itself is independent or dependent (affix or clitic) is not the crucial issue”, it is my contention that a complete formal analysis needs to indeed examine and account for properties of the form of such elements. Spoken language person-marking itself displays a cut between c litics and agreement, a topic of much current research (e.g. Arregi and Nevins (2011); Kramer (2011); Preminger (2009); Walkow (2011); Woolford (2010)), which can benefit from mutual dialogue with studies of (American) Sign L anguage – henceforth abbreviated (A)SL.

On Formal Universals in Phonology

Understanding the universal aspects of human language structure requires comparison at multiple levels of analysis. While Evans & Levinson (E&L) focus mostly on substantive variation in language, equally revealing insights can come from studying formal universals. I first discuss how Artificial Grammar Experiments can test universal preferences for certain types of abstract phonological generalizations over others. I then discuss moraic onsets in the language Arrernte, and how its apparent substantive variation ultimately rests on a formal universal regarding syllable-weight sensitivity.

Conjunct Agreement and Gender in South Slavic: From Theory to Experiments to Theory

Abstract:Agreement with coordinated subjects in Slavic languages has recently seen a rapid increase in theoretical and experimental approaches, contributing to a wider theoretical discussion on the locus of agreement in grammar (cf. Marušič, Nevins, and Saksida 2007; Bošković 2009; Marušič, Nevins, and Badecker 2015). This paper revisits the theoretical predictions proposed for conjunction agreement in a group of South Slavic languages, with a special focus on gender agreement. The paper is based on two experiments involving speakers of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) and Slovenian (Sln). Experiment 1 is an elicited production experiment investigating preverbal-conjunct agreement, while Experiment 2 investigates postverbal-conjunct agreement. The data provide experimental evidence discriminating between syntax proper and distributed-agreement models in terms of their ability to account for preverbal highest-conjunct agreement and present a theoretical mechanism for the distinction between default agreement (which has a fixed number and gender, independent of the value of each conjunct) and resolved agreement (which computes number and gender based on the values of each conjunct and must resolve potential conflicts). Focusing on the variability in the gender-agreement ratio across nine combinations, the experimental results for BCS and Sln morphosyntax challenge the notion of gender markedness that is generally posited for South Slavic languages.

A monoradical approach to some cases of disuppletion

Abstract This paper, a commentary on Harley 2014, explores cases of disuppletive roots, such as destroy/destruct, persons/people, and worse/badder, the predominant approach to which is to assume that these come from different roots. We adopt a monoradical approach to such cases, claiming that they always involve the same root, but that the suppletive allomorphy is conditioned by the presence or absence of additional functional heads in the structure. We also posit that defective verbs in Spanish, an extreme case of disuppletion (whereby one of the exponents of this root is ineffable), receive a straightforward analysis as a case of contextually limited allomorphy, following Harleys postulate that certain formatives may have no elsewhere item on either the LF or the PF side (the Encyclopedic List and the Exponent List, respectively).

Syntactic and semantic predictors of tense in Hindi: An ERP investigation

Although there is broad agreement that error signals generated during an unexpected linguistic event are reflected in event-related potential (ERP) components, there are at least two distinct aspects of the process that the ERP signals may reflect. The first is the content of an error, which is the local discrepancy between an observed form and any expectations about upcoming forms, without any reference to why those expectations were held. The second aspect is the cause of an error, which is a context-aware analysis of why the error arose. The current study examines the processes involved in prediction of morphological marking on verbal forms in Hindi, a split ergative language. This is a case where an error with the same local characteristics (illicit morphology) can arise from very different cues: one syntactic in origin (ergative case marking), and the other semantic in origin (a past tense adverbial). Results suggest that the parser indeed tracks the cause in addition to the content of errors. Despite the fact that the critical manipulation of verb marking was identical across cue types, the nature of the cue led to distinct patterns of ERPs in response to anomalous verbal morphology. When verbal morphology was predicted based upon semantic cues, an incorrect future tense form elicited an early negativity in the 200–400 ms interval with a posterior distribution along with a marginally significant P600 effect. In contrast, when verbal morphology was predicted based upon morphosyntactic cues, an incorrect future tense form elicited a right-lateralised anterior negativity (RAN) during the 300–500 ms interval, as well as a P600 response with a broad distribution.

When linearity prevails over hierarchy in syntax

Significance Syntactic distance is standardly measured hierarchically only by counting the nodes in a tree-like structure. The dominance of hierarchy over the other logically possible measure of distance—e.g., counting words in a linear order—stems from a large body of research. We show a strong preference for the linear strategy in coordination structures in South Slavic languages, with a design comparing agreement controllers that can come either before or after their target. A large-scale study over six geographically and linguistically distinct varieties discovered remarkable uniformity in this preference. Variation discovered was mostly intraindividual, strongly suggesting that a language can entertain synchronous “multiple grammars,” the most striking of which is the one requiring direct reference to linear order. Hierarchical structure has been cherished as a grammatical universal. We use experimental methods to show where linear order is also a relevant syntactic relation. An identical methodology and design were used across six research sites on South Slavic languages. Experimental results show that in certain configurations, grammatical production can in fact favor linear order over hierarchical structure. However, these findings are limited to coordinate structures and distinct from the kind of production errors found with comparable configurations such as “attraction” errors. The results demonstrate that agreement morphology may be computed in a series of steps, one of which is partly independent from syntactic hierarchy.

Fricative patterning in aspirating versus true voice languages

Building on the empirical insights of Beckman, Jessen & Ringen (2013), we compare the fricatives within the laryngeal systems of Russian and Turkish on the premise that the former is a final devoicing language, while the latter is not, but instead has alternations based on processes of intervocalic voicing and final fortition. This view has consequences for the analysis of fricatives in Russian vs. Turkish: Russian fricatives undergo final devoicing, while Turkish fricatives do not. By contrast, unlike Russian fricatives, Turkish fricatives induce [spread glottis] assimilation in following sonorants. We show that these differences are upheld in three phonetic studies, extending the relevance of the ‘laryngeal realism’ hypothesis to fricatives as well as stops.