Research

Linguistics Seminar

Seminars typically take place each Monday from 4-5 PM, either in-person or over Zoom. In-person seminars are normally held in the Lucy Ellis Lounge (LCLB 1080).

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Linguistics and the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics.

Contact Isela Silvera for Zoom links and details and if you’d like to be added to the mailing list and receive announcements of new talks every week.

Fall 2025 Schedule
  • 8 Sept: Workshop -  Digital Accessibility Workshop for Grad students and Faculty (Amber Dunse)
  • 15 Sept: Grad Student Workshop - Faculty Job Search Essentials  (Derek Attig)
  • 29 Sept: Elaine Francis (Purdue)
    • Talk Title: On the importance of theoretical assumptions for experimental syntax research

    • Abstract: As Schütze (1996) and many others have shown, there are a variety of factors in addition to syntactic constraints that can affect participants’ responses in an acceptability judgment task. These include semantic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, and prosodic constraints as well as general cognitive factors, task effects, and effects of language background and experience. Thus, a major challenge for syntax research is to be able to isolate the effects due to syntactic constraints and interpret their theoretical implications. Although a well-controlled factorial design is crucial, I argue that theoretical assumptions are equally important. In this presentation, I discuss three basic assumptions which are important for interpreting judgment data: (1) strict form-meaning isomorphism vs. flexible form-meaning mappings; (2) gradient vs. categorical notions of grammaticality; and (3) narrow vs. broad notions of grammatical competence. I situate these assumptions with respect to four families of theoretical frameworks: (1) derivational theories; (2) constraint-based theories; (3) competition-based theories; and (4) usage-based theories. I then discuss examples from our own studies of relative clause extraposition in English showing how different theoretical assumptions can lead to different interpretations of the same data. Finally, I show how additional data from corpus studies and elicited production tasks can shed further light on competing theoretical accounts.


       
  • 6 Oct: Hans Henrich Hock (Illinois - LING)
    • Talk Title: Issues in South Asian language contact: The case of retroflexion 

    • Abstract: South Asia has for a long time been recognized as a major convergence area, and one of its defining features is retroflexion, i.e. a contrast between dental and retroflex consonant (an exception being the Northeast). The origin of retroflexion is most commonly attributed to unidirectional Dravidian substratum influence on prehistoric Indo-Aryan. I critically examine the arguments in favor of this explanation, against the background of the uneven chronological attestation of South Asian languages, the possibility of chance similarities, and the fact that Indo-Aryan retroflexion can be explained by internal developments. In these developments the presence of a voiceless retroflex sibilant ṣ plays a major role.  The fact that Sanskrit/Indo-Aryan has, in fact, a triple sibilant contrast (ś : ṣ : s) points in the direction of a different account. This contrast is widespread in the northwestern transition zone between South and Central Asia, from a very early time. Sanskrit/Indo-Aryan, thus, can be assumed to have had that contrast in the Northwest before its speakers entered the peninsula. Subsequent changes of retroflex sibilant + dental stop introduced retroflex stops. This development is paralleled by prehistoric Dravidian changes of alveolar or retroflex liquids + dental stop yielding alveolar and retroflex stops, a fact that suggests convergence between Dravidian and Indo-Aryan. I conclude by arguing that these changes reflect bi- or multi-directional interactions, rather than unidirectional substratum influence of one language on the other(s). I suggest that the motivating factor is accommodation in the context of bi- or multilingual of speakers communicating with each other, and that this is the usual way ithat speakers interact in situations of extended bi- or multilingualism.

       

  • 13 Oct: Anastasia Tsilia (MIT) - Gregory Hall 223
    • Talk Title: Evidentiality & the Future

    • Abstract: Languages have ways of indicating whether the available evidence for an utterance is direct or indirect/inferred; what we often call ‘evidentiality’ (see e.g., Aikhenvald 2004). Cross-linguistically, evidential distinctions are mostly marked in the past or the present. When the future is used as an evidential it either loses its futurity (e.g., French, Italian, Greek, Dutch, German (Haegeman 1983; Comrie 1985; Palmer 2001; Kush 2011; Matthewson 2012; Giannakidou & Mari 2018; Ippolito & Farkas 2021; Frana & Menéndez-Benito 2019, 2023 a.o.)) or it is an indirect evidential (e.g., Muylaq’ Aymara, Sanuma (Borgman 1990, Coler 2014)). Therefore, there seems to be a typological gap: we do not observe any direct evidential that is also a future modal (e.g., Aikhenvald 2004,  Dall'Aglio Hattnher 2013). Based on original fieldwork from Colloquial Jakartan Indonesian (Tsilia 2025), I will show that this is not a real typological gap. I will focus on ‘mau’ in Indonesian, which can be both a desire verb (meaning ‘want’) and a proximate future (meaning ‘about to’). I will argue that when it is a proximate future, it requires direct evidence for the proposition it takes. But, how can one have direct evidence of the future? I will argue that language has precisely a way of talking about what counts as ‘direct enough’ evidence of the future. The future usage of ‘mau’ in Indonesian requires evidence for a proposition that directly leads to the proposition about the future. This introduces a new category of evidentials, namely direct inferential evidentials, which involve such a small reasoning step that for the purposes of linguistic marking it does not count as reasoning. Formally, building on previous work on epistemic ‘must’ as an indirect evidential and as a marker of cognitive complexity (von Fintel & Gillies 2010, 2021, Wurm 2023), I model what counts as ‘direct enough’ evidence of the future, starting from the set of propositions that are direct in the context and inductively defining a nested sequence of sets of propositions. Finally, I will present some ongoing work on negated proximate futures cross-linguistically, showing that an unexpected reading arises, similar to a desire reading, even when the proximate future is not ambiguous between ‘want’ and ‘will’ morphologically.

       

  • 20 Oct: Kendra Calhoun (Illinois - ANTH)
    • Talk Title: "Black language" on TikTok: Black discursive practice, digital representation, and raciolinguistic ideologies
    • Abstract: In this talk I analyze how the digital community known as “Black TikTok” represents linguistic diversity within the Black diaspora in ways that challenge dominant ideas about what constitutes “Black language.” I analyze how U.S.-based Black TikTok creators highlight variation within African American English, give a platform to language varieties often marginalized within the broader category of African American Language (including Black American Sign Language, Gullah/Geechee, and creoles), and represent multilingualism and multivarietalism as social and linguistic skills. I demonstrate how Black language on U.S. Black TikTok is more diverse than (a) dominant raciolinguistic ideologies and (b) scholarly fields including linguistics and anthropology portray or have historically conceptualized it as. I argue that this is made possible by TikTok’s uptake by Black people from around the world, TikTok’s support of multimodal content, and the agency of representation that social media affords it users. I conclude with a discussion of how Black TikTok’s discourses about Black language often contradict contemporary theories of language and race that aim to denaturalize the perceived relationship between the two, and the productive tension that this creates in the critical study of language, race, and Blackness
  • 27 Oct: Kyle Gorman (CUNY) - Gregory Hall 319
    • Talk Title: "Unexceptional targets and triggers in phonology"
    • Abstract:  Nearly all work in phonology follows from the central but usually-implicit premise that "narrow" phonological solutions are to be preferred, ceteris paribus, to analyses which make reference to morphemic identity or morphosyntactic context ("exceptionality"), or which employ suppletion. Crucially, the literature fails to provide a mechanistic explanation for how children converge on these narrow analyses over exceptional or suppletive alternatives.
      Logical Phonology (LP), a novel and formally austere approach to phonological computation, addresses this by hypothesizing that children are epistemically bounded to select empirically adequate narrow phonological analyses. This hypothesis, coupled with LP's novel approach to rules and representations, predicts that many phenomena previously labeled as exceptional are, in fact, encoded exceptionlessly within the narrow phonology through the systematic use of "archiphonemic" underspecification. This talk details five key taxonomic patterns arising from LP: 1) the mutability of underspecified targets versus the inalterability of prespecified targets (cf. Inkelas et al.), 2) the catalysis of prespecified triggers versus the quiescence of underspecified triggers, 3) interactions between mutability and catalysis (cf. Kisseberth's theory of exceptionality), 4) underspecification as a mechanism for non-derived environment blocking, and 5) a counterintuitive constraint on segment deletion called delete the rich. Case studies illustrating these principles are drawn from Barrow Inupiaq, Baztan Basque, Blackfoot, Czech, English, Finnish, Hungarian, Spanish, and Turkish.
  • 3 Nov: Veneeta Dayal (Yale)
    • Talk Title: "The Left Periphery and the Status of Intonation in Grammar"
    • Abstract:  In this talk I focus on two puzzles where intonation seems to be critical. 
      Puzzle 1: In languages like Hindi-Urdu, where a dedicated wh expression does not exist, overt  disjunction is needed for indirect question interpretation for polar questions.
      However, the disjunctive phrase becomes optional if the embedded question has the rising intonation associated with matrix questions, a case of quasi-subordination in the sense of Dayal (2023).
      Puzzle 2: One view about rhetorical questions is that they are no different from ordinary questions in their syntax and semantics, the different effects arising from the contexts in which they are uttered(Rhode 2006, Caponigro and Sprouse 2007). Experimental studies have shown that string identical questions differ between information-seeking and rhetorical-question readings, depending on their  intonational contour.
      I build on the proposal about the interrogative left periphery in Dayal (2023), where question meaning is  built up incrementally in three steps: clause-typing at CP, centering at PerspP, illocutionary force at SAP.  These three steps reveal themselves in different types of embedding. Intonation crucially does not enter 
      the derivation at the level of CP and is not manifested in standard cases of subordination; it does enter at  the level of PerspP and is visible in cases of quasi-subordination; it is also present at the level of SAP  and manifests itself in matrix questions and questions under quotation. 
      The question I ask in this talk is the following: is there a way to formally represent the role of intonation  at the left periphery that does justice to the power it seems to have over the interfaces
  • 10 Nov: Amy Atiles (UIUC)
    • Talk Title: L2-English article acquisition: A case for Structured Input
    • Abstract: using the and a appropriately is a very difficult task. L2ers must learn that singular count nouns in English are definite when (1) both the speaker and hearer are aware of the referent and (2) the referent is unique (Heim, 1991). Furthermore, L2ers must learn to disregard salient concepts which alone do not necessitate the use of the, like Specificity (Ionin et al., 2004) where the speaker intends to refer to an entity that has a noteworthy property (but not necessarily hearer knowledge) or Presuppositionality (Ko et al., 2010) where the speaker intends to refer to an entity that is known to the hearer (but is not necessarily unique). Several intervention studies have attempted to use such generative second language acquisition (SLA) hypotheses to teach L2ers about definiteness; however, these interventions have been either ineffective (Snape & Yusa, 2013; Snape & Umeda, 2018) or counterproductive (Lopez, 2019). In this talk, I will argue that explicit instruction is not enough to create correct form-meaning mappings and that such instruction must be accompanied by pedagogically-matched techniques. If L2ers are incorrectly mapping the onto Specificity or Presuppositionality, then a pedagogical technique which directly addresses mapping issues should be implemented. Structured Input (VanPatten, 1996, 2004), which highlights and attempts to overhaul learners’ incorrect parsing strategies, has much potential for article acquisition. I will demonstrate the effectiveness of Structured Input in the acquisition of articles by L1-Chinese L2-English learners through a step-by-step description of a 6-week intervention. Four experimental groups received a different combination of instructional content (disregarding Specificity vs. disregarding Presuppositionality) and article practice (structured input tasks vs. traditional fill-in-the-blank tasks) while a Control group completed an intervention on prepositions. Participants completed a Self-Paced Reading Task, Forced Choice Task, and Acceptability Judgment Task before and immediately after the intervention. The results of the Forced Choice Task, which assessed the influence of Specificity, will be presented in this talk. Preliminary results from the other two tasks, which assessed the influence of Presuppositionality, will also be provided. Finally, I will discuss the importance of intervention research in the fields of Generative and Instructed SLA.
  • 17 Nov: Kristopher Kyle (Oregon)
  • 1 Dec: TBA
Spring 2025 Schedule
  • 3 March:  Geoff LaFlair (Duolingo)
    • Talk Title: Accelerating Item Development and Di3iculty Estimation with NLP and Responsible AI
    • Abstract: A key challenge of high stakes language assessment is introducing new test items rapidly while minimizing the amount of response data required for accurate item parameter estimation. This is especially true for computer adaptive tests (CATs), such as the Duolingo English Test, which require the creation and maintenance of large item pools. With advances in automated item generation (Attali et al., 2023), it is possible to create large numbers of items with relatively little e3ort. However, these items need parameter estimates if they are to be used operationally. Traditional methods of parameter estimation rely on extensive pilot testing, which is time-consuming, costly, and poses security risks, a limitation that can be overcome with machine-learning (ML) driven feature-based parameter estimation.
  • 10 March: Grad Student Workshop - Applying for Internships in Industry (Mingyue Huo)
  • 31 March: Cynthia Gordon (Georgetown)
  • 7 April: Grad Student Workshop - Project Management & Organizational Tools (Amy Atiles & Britni Moore)
 

For a list of seminars held in previous semesters, please see Past Seminars.