Mayfest 2025 - Constraints on Meaning
When and why are certain meanings missing?
Research
Research at our top-ranked department spans syntax, semantics, phonology, language acquisition, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.
Connections between our core competencies are strong, with theoretical, experimental and computational work typically pursued in tandem.
A network of collaboration at all levels sustains a research climate that is both vigorous and friendly. Here new ideas develop in conversation, stimulated by the steady activity of our labs and research groups, frequent student meetings with faculty, regular talks by local and invited scholars and collaborations with the broader University of Maryland language science community, the largest and most integrated language science research community in North America.
Featured Research News
Syntactic Bootstrapping
A review of evidence for syntactic bootstrapping in the acquisition of verb meanings.
Author/Lead: Jeffrey Lidz, Elizabeth Swanson
Dates:
Publisher: Elsevier
Publisher: Elsevier
In syntactic bootstrapping, children draw on syntactic information to constrain their hypotheses about word meanings. We review evidence for syntactic bootstrapping, focusing primarily on the acquisition of verb meanings. For verbs describing physical actions, children can use the argument structure from event descriptions to zero in on the verb meaning. For attitude verbs, which refer to mental states, the syntactic distribution is informative about their semantics. By making use of systematic syntax-semantics correspondences, syntactic bootstrapping provides a foothold for word learning when cues from the physical world are underinformative.
A Course in First Language Acquisition
Situating language acquisition at the intersection of theories of cognition, development, and grammar.
Author/Lead: Jeffrey LidzNon-ARHU Contributor(s):
Tyler Knowlton *21
Dates:
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
This textbook introduces fundamental concepts and results in the theory of first language acquisition, bringing together linguistic phenomena on the one hand and learning and cognitive development on the other. Grammar and development are woven together through a range of case studies that provide students with the tools to think about (a) what is already understood about language acquisition; (b) what methods we use to identity children's grammatical knowledge; and (c) how to approach problems in any area of grammatical acquisition.
The main event in resultatives
Analyzing change in terms of Cause does more harm than good.
Author/Lead: Alexander Williams
Dates:
I explore what modification and negation tell us about the logical form of resultatives: a resultative relates the events of its two parts, but is a predicate of a third event, a change, equal to neither. This is important for explaining the construction—most significantly, the direct object restriction—and understanding how it differs from others that seem similar. It also shapes how we might use resultatives in the analysis of synthetic causatives.
A pragmatic solution to anankastic conditionals
Necessitation By Attitude.
Author/Lead: Valentine Hacquard, Jingyi Chen
Dates:
Standard accounts of modals and conditionals fail to derive the correct meaning of anankastic conditionals like ‘If you want to go to Harlem, you have to take the A train’, where it seems as if the modal in the consequent is restricted by the embedded complement of want (you go to Harlem), rather than by the whole antecedent (you want to go to Harlem). This has led to proposals for a special semantics for want (Condoravdi and Lauer, 2016) or a covert purpose clause associated with teleological (goal-oriented) modality (von Fintel and Iatridou, 2005). In this paper, we show that the apparent non-compositionality of anankastic conditionals is more general, and can be replicated with other modal flavors and attitude verbs: all can trigger what we call “harmonizing readings”. We offer a pragmatic account that generalizes across modal flavors and attitudes. Specifically, we argue that harmonizing arises when the meaning of the antecedent together with background assumptions gives rise to a modal inference that matches in flavor with the consequent modal. Our account predicts when harmonizing is possible and when it isn’t, without relying on any lexical or syntactic idiosyncrasies.
Read More about A pragmatic solution to anankastic conditionals
Word learning challenges explain nonadult possibility language comprehension in preschoolers
On the challenge of learning what "have to" means.
Author/Lead: Valentine HacquardNon-ARHU Contributor(s):
Ailís Cournane (NYU, Anouk Dieuleveut (Maryland *21, Geneva), Chiar Repetti-Ludlow (*24, Carnegie Mellon)
Dates:
This article presents two experiments testing English children’s understanding of the “force” of modals, asking whether they understand that can expresses possibility and have_to expresses necessity. Prior studies show that children tend to over-accept necessity modals in possibility situations and argue this behavior stems from conceptual difficulties reasoning about open possibilities. However, these studies typically test modal force using epistemic modality (knowledge-based), which is less input-frequent than nonepistemic modalities (actual-world priorities or goals) and involves speaker perspective-taking. Our results with more familiar teleological (goal-oriented) modality show that preschoolers have an adult-like understanding of possibility can, but they seem to treat necessity have_to as a possibility modal, in affirmative (Experiment 1) and arguably in negative sentences (Experiment 2). We take these systematic errors to call into question conceptual accounts. We argue that younger preschoolers’ difficulties with modal force are due to word-learning challenges: They treat necessity modals as possibility modals.
Choose me! Optionality in wh-fronting and copy deletion: Evidence for overt-covert movement in Valdôtain Patois
Silent high copies in Alpine Arpitan.
Author/Lead: Luisa Seguin
Dates:
In this paper, I discuss new data on wh-movement in the Francoprovençal language Valdôtain Patois (ValPa) in support of overt-covert movement: overt movement with deletion of higher copies. wh-phrases in ValPa can either be fronted or occur clause-internally. Based on empirical evidence, I argue that ValPa clause-internal wh-phrases do not appear in-situ, but rather are displaced to the Low Left Periphery at the edge of vP. Furthermore, using evidence from intervention effects, binding, inverse scope, and parasitic gaps, I argue that clause internal wh-phrases do not remain in the Low Left Periphery, but overtly move to the position they take scope in. The different word-orders are then derived via a copy deletion mechanism, meaning that the optionality is not accounted for in narrow syntax.
Thematic Content, Not Number Matching, Drives Syntactic Bootstrapping
Toddlers do not expect the structure of a sentence to match the structure of the concept under which they view its referent.
Contributor(s): Jeffrey Lidz, Alexander WilliamsNon-ARHU Contributor(s):
Laurel Perkins *19, Tyler Knowlton *21
Dates:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Children use correlations between the syntax of a clause and the meaning of its predicate to draw inferences about word meanings. On one proposal, these inferences are underwritten by a structural similarity between syntactic and semantic representations: learners expect that the number of clause arguments exactly matches the number of participant roles in the event concept under which its referent is viewed. We argue against this proposal, and in favor of a theory rooted in syntactic and semantic contents – in mappings from syntactic positions to thematic relations. We (i) provide evidence that infants view certain scenes under a concept with three participant relations (a girl taking a truck from a boy), and (ii) show that toddlers do not expect these representations to align numerically with clauses used to describe those scenes: they readily accept two-argument descriptions (“she pimmed the truck!”). This argues against syntactic bootstrapping theories underwritten by mappings between structural features of syntactic and semantic representations. Instead, our findings support bootstrapping based on grammatical and thematic content. Children’s earliest inferences may rely on the assumption that the syntactic asymmetry between subject and object correlates with a difference in how their referents relate to the event described by the sentence.
Read More about Thematic Content, Not Number Matching, Drives Syntactic Bootstrapping
Language Discrimination May Not Rely on Rhythm: A Computational Study
Challenging the relationship between rhythm and language discrimination in infancy.
Contributor(s): Leslie Ruolan Li, Naomi FeldmanNon-ARHU Contributor(s):
Abi Aboelata (UMD), Thomas Schatz (Marseilles)
Dates:
It has long been assumed that infants’ ability to discriminate between languages stems from their sensitivity to speech rhythm, i.e., organized temporal structure of vowels and consonants in a language. However, the relationship between speech rhythm and language discrimination has not been directly demonstrated. Here, we use computational modeling and train models of speech perception with and without access to information about rhythm. We test these models on language discrimination, and find that access to rhythm does not affect the success of the model in replicating infant language discrimination results. Our findings challenge the relationship between rhythm and language discrimination,
Read More about Language Discrimination May Not Rely on Rhythm: A Computational Study
Visual perception supports 4-place event representations: A case study of TRADING
Can adults visually represent a trading as a single event with four participants?
Contributor(s): Alexander Williams, Jeffrey LidzNon-ARHU Contributor(s):
Ekaterina Khylstova (UCLA), Laurel Perkins (UCLA)
Dates:
Events of social exchange, such as givings and tradings, are uniquely prevalent in human societies and cognitively privileged even at early stages of development. Such events may be represented as having 3 or even 4 participants. To do so in visual working memory would be at the limit of the system, which throughout development can track only 3 to 4 items. Using a case study of trading, we ask (i) whether adults can track all four participants in a trading scene, and (ii) whether they do so by chunking the scene into two giving events, each with 3 participants, to avoid placing the visual working memory system at its limit. We find that adults represent this scene under a 4-participant concept, and do not view the trade as two sequential giving events. We discuss further implications for event perception and verb learning in development.
Read More about Visual perception supports 4-place event representations: A case study of TRADING
Being pragmatic about syntactic bootstrapping
Syntactic and pragmatic cues to the meanings of modal and attitude verbs.
Author/Lead: Valentine Hacquard
Dates:
Words have meanings vastly undetermined by the contexts in which they occur. Their acquisition therefore presents formidable problems of induction. Lila Gleitman and colleagues have advocated for one part of a solution: indirect evidence for a word’s meaning may come from its syntactic distribution, via SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING. But while formal theories argue for principled links between meaning and syntax, actual syntactic evidence about meaning is noisy and highly abstract. This paper examines the role that syntactic bootstrapping can play in learning modal and attitude verb meanings, for which the physical context is especially uninformative. I argue that abstract syntactic classifications are useful to the child, but that something further is both necessary and available. I examine how pragmatic and syntactic cues can combine in mutually constraining ways to help learners infer attitude meanings, but need to be supplemented by semantic information from the lexical context in the case of modals.
Read More about Being pragmatic about syntactic bootstrapping