Category: Student News

Anya Lunden (UCSC PhD, 2006), Jessica Campbell, Mark Hutchens and Nick Kalivoda (UCSC) published a paper on “Vowel-length contrasts and phonetic cues to stress: an investigation of their relation” in Phonology this past December. The abstract is given below.

The functional load hypothesis of Berinstein (1979) put forward the idea that languages which use a suprasegmental property (duration, F0) contrastively will not use it to realise stress. The functional load hypothesis is often cited when stress correlates are discussed, both when it is observed that the language under discussion follows the hypothesis and when it fails to follow it. In the absence of a more wide-ranging assessment of how frequently languages do or do not conform to the functional load hypothesis, it is unknown whether it is an absolute, a strong tendency, a weak tendency or unsupported. The results from a database of reported stress correlates and use of contrastive duration for 140 languages are presented and discussed. No support for the functional load hypothesis is found.

Graduate student Erik Zyman‘s paper “Quantifier Float as Stranding: Evidence from Janitzio P’urhepecha” has been accepted for publication in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. The paper argues that Janitzio P’urhepecha quantifier float (cf. The girls are all reading) is derived by movement that splits up an underlying nominal (cf. all the girls), stranding the quantifier—challenging the view that floated quantifiers are (always) adverbials adjoined to some clausal projection. One of the main arguments comes from Janitzio P’urhepecha’s strikingly wide array of DP positions (most of them subject positions): whether an ordinary DP is possible, impossible, or marginal in a given position, a floated quantifier behaves the same way in that position. The large array of subject positions uncovered in this investigation lends new support to the “distributed” view of subjecthood. A preprint version of the article may be found here.

Congratulations to Jake Vincent, who successfully defended his first qualifying paper on 9/28, titled “D-raising in Chamorro relative clauses and other A’ constructions”. The main goal of the paper is to motivate an analysis for Chamorro internally headed relative clauses, a construction in which the noun phrase being modified by a relative clause surfaces as an argument inside that relative clause. Jake proposes an analysis in which the head noun phrase is a DP headed by a null operator that undergoes long head movement, stranding the head noun phrase inside the clause. The analysis is motivated by other A’ constructions in Chamorro in which overt determiners raise independently of their nominal restrictor. His committee consisted of Sandy Chung (chair), Matt Wagers, and Maziar Toosarvandani.