Michael T. Putnam

Coactivation in bilingual grammars: A computational account of code mixing

A large body of research into bilingualism has revealed that language processing is fundamentally non-selective; there is simultaneous, graded co-activation of mental representations from both of the speakers’ languages. An equally deep tradition of research into code switching/mixing has revealed the important role that grammatical principles play in determining the nature of bilingual speech. We propose to integrate these two traditions within the formalism of Gradient Symbolic Computation. This allows us to formalize the integration of grammatical principles with gradient mental representations. We apply this framework to code mixing constructions where an element of an intended utterance appears in both languages within a single utterance and discuss the directions it suggests for future research.

Scrambling and the Survive Principle

Languages with free word orders pose daunting challenges to linguistic theory because they raise questions about the nature of grammatical strings. Ross, who coined the term Scrambling to refer to the relatively ‘free’ word orders found in Germanic languages (among others) notes that “… the problems involved in specifying exactly the subset of the strings which will be generated … are far too complicated for me to even mention here, let alone come to grips with” (1967:52). This book offers a radical re-analysis of middle field Scrambling . It argues that Scrambling is a concatenation effect, as described in Stroik’s (1999, 2000, 2007) Survive analysis of minimalist syntax, driven by an interpretable referentiality feature [Ref] to the middle field, where syntactically encoded features for temporality and other world indices are checked. The purpose of this book is to investigate the syntactic properties of middle field Scrambling in synchronic West Germanic languages, and to explore, to what possible extent we can classify Scrambling as a ‘syntactic phenomenon’ within Survive -minimalist desiderata.

New Structural Patterns in Moribund Grammar: Case Marking in Heritage German

Research treats divergences between monolingual and heritage grammars in terms of performance—‘L1 attrition,’ e.g., lexical retrieval—or competence—‘incomplete acquisition’, e.g., lack of overt tense markers (e.g., Polinsky, 1995; Sorace, 2004; Montrul, 2008; Schmid, 2010). One classic difference between monolingual and Heritage German is reduction in morphological case in the latter, especially loss of dative marking. Our evidence from several Heritage German varieties suggests that speakers have not merely lost case, but rather developed innovative structures to mark it. More specifically, Heritage German speakers produce dative forms in line with established patterns of Differential Object Marking (Bossong, 1985, 1991; Aissen, 2003), suggesting a reallocated mapping of case. We take this as evidence for innovative reanalysis in heritage grammars (Putnam and Sánchez, 2013). Following Kamp and Reyle (1993) and Wechsler (2011, 2014), the dative adopts a more indexical discourse function, forging a tighter connection between morphosyntax and semantic properties. Moribund grammars deploy linguistic resources in novel ways, a finding which can help move us beyond simple narratives of ‘attrition’ and ‘incomplete acquisition.’

The future of code mixing research: Integrating psycholinguistic and formal grammatical theories

Our keynote article “Coactivation in bilingual grammars: A computational account of code mixing” (Goldrick, Putnam & Schwarz) aimed to provide a framework that would begin to unify psycholinguistic and formal grammatical approaches to code mixing. We situated our account within a large body of psycholinguistic and phonetic evidence suggesting that, under many conditions, multiple representational elements simultaneously occupy (to varying degrees) a single position within a linguistic structure. The presence of such blends in multilingual cognition is not compatible with many formal grammatical approaches that assume mental representations are necessarily discrete.

Functional Convergence and Extension in Contact: Syntactic and Semantic Attributes of the Progressive Aspect in Pennsylvania Dutch

This paper investigates the extension of the progressive aspect in contemporary Pennsylvania Dutch. The scope of convergence in contact varieties is a debated subject in theoretical linguistics; the most recent and promising research finds that convergence in contact is not a simple one-to-one mapping, nor an opportunity for any structural anomaly to present. Previous studies concluded that Pennsylvania Dutch had matched and gone beyond English semantic constraints for the progressive aspect. The extent of the progressive in Pennsylvania Dutch has not been systematically documented. To account for these findings, we propose, as most recently suggested by Putnam and Sanchez (2013), an analysis of feature reconfiguration, with the result of progressive aspect appearing with different aspectual classes of verbs (most notably, with certain types of statives).

Null Arguments in Transitional Trilingual Grammars: Field Observations from Misionero German.

Abstract In this field note we discuss findings from pilot research on a variety of heritage German spoken in the Northeastern Province of Misiones of Argentina. Based on sociolinguistic field interviews with 25 consultants possessing varying degrees of proficiency in the language, we show that this variant of heritage German does in fact occasionally display instances of both null subjects (e.g. pro-drop) and null objects. These preliminary findings are consistent with other recent studies in the contact linguistics literature (cf. Camacho et al. 1997; Sánchez 1997, 1999a, 1999b; Cuza et al. 2013). In conclusion, we introduce suggestions for future research.

Feature reassembly as constraint satisfaction

Abstract Research on bilingual grammars from a formal perspective has often come under the guise of mainstream generative grammar. Since the inception of Chomsky’s (1995 et seq.) Minimalist Program (MP), many scholars have adopted the notion of formal features representing abstract grammatical information that can be associated with lexical items. To model changes in bilingual grammars due to the acquisition of particular forms, the attrition of information by means of incomplete acquisition or the lack of usage throughout the course of the lifespan, or due to intense contact with another grammar, the mechanism known as feature reassembly (e.g. Lardiere 1998) – whereby abstract grammatical information in the form of formal features can be detached and reassigned to other lexical items – has enjoyed a great deal of success in the literature. In this article we argue that in spite of this success, the analysis of aspects of bilingual grammars can be improved upon by replacing the notion of feature reassembly with the satisfaction of constraints. Here we provide conceptual and empirical evidence arguing for the adoption of constraint satisfaction in place of the feature reassembly mechanism. Finally, in addition to constraint satisfaction we also make the case for adopting a parallel model of cognition and language for the bilingual mind, which is strongly supported by recent psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies.

The emergence of middle voice structures with and without agents

Abstract This article presents evidence that, cross-linguistically or within the same language (family), there appears to be no morphosyntactic properties and/or structures specifically designated for the formation of middle voice constructions. What has been labeled a ‘middle voice construction’ is a semantic interpretation that, crucially, is blocked when an event variable is existentially closed by T. This article focuses on two ways of expressing a middle statement; namely (i) middle voice readings that occur with lexical-s passives, and (ii) adjectival middles – in Mainland Scandinavian, showing that properties such as the availability of an agent in middles pattern with whether an event variable is present (in the structure) or not. These are the result of two equally valid and productive grammatical structures: one where an event variable is present, an agent is projected and a modal operator blocks existential closure of the event variable, and another one where the event variable is not present in the structure, and therefore the operator is not necessary – hence impossible.

How interrogative pronouns can become relative pronouns: the case of was in Misionero German

Abstract Misionero German (MG), a variety of heritage German spoken in the Misiones Province of Argentina, allows the interrogative pronoun was ‘what’ to function as a relative pronoun in similar and analogous contexts to those found in Brazilian Portuguese. We argue that this shift in the grammar is the result of replica grammaticalization, likely due to extreme contact with Brazilian Portuguese over the course of the last century.

Integrated, Not Isolated: Defining Typological Proximity in an Integrated Multilingual Architecture

On the surface, bi- and multilingualism would seem to be an ideal context for exploring questions of typological proximity. The obvious intuition is that the more closely related two languages are, the easier it should be to implement the two languages in one mind. This is the starting point adopted here, but we immediately run into the difficulty that the overwhelming majority of cognitive, computational, and linguistic research on bi- and multilingualism exhibits a monolingual bias (i.e., where monolingual grammars are used as the standard of comparison for outputs from bilingual grammars). The primary questions so far have focused on how bilinguals balance and switch between their two languages, but our perspective on typology leads us to consider the nature of bi- and multi-lingual systems as a whole. Following an initial proposal from Hsin (2014), we conjecture that bilingual grammars are neither isolated, nor (completely) conjoined with one another in the bilingual mind, but rather exist as integrated source grammars that are further mitigated by a common, combined grammar (Cook, 2016; Goldrick et al., 2016a,b; Putnam and Klosinski, 2017). Here we conceive such a combined grammar in a parallel, distributed, and gradient architecture implemented in a shared vector-space model that employs compression through routinization and dimensionality reduction. We discuss the emergence of such representations and their function in the minds of bilinguals. This architecture aims to be consistent with empirical results on bilingual cognition and memory representations in computational cognitive architectures.