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
Arabic Conjunct-Sensitive Agreement and Primitive Operations
The puzzle of subject-agreement in varieties of Arabic.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Bradley Larson
Dates:
In some Arabic dialects pre-verbal coordinated subjects cause plural agreement on the verb while post-verbal ones cause either plural agreement or singular agreement. This paradigm has been addressed by Aoun, Benmamoun, and Sportiche (1994, 1999) and Munn (1999) to varying degrees of success. This reply offers an improvement on the previous analyses by utilizing the concept of decomposed merge (Hornstein 2009) whereby merge is reanalyzed as two suboperations. Previously unexplained cases that flaunt the paradigm are explained here by a decomposition of the extension condition (Chomsky 1995) and a derivational account of pronoun binding across coordination.
Dissociating N400 effects of prediction from association in single word contexts
The N400 component in ERP is modulated both by the predictability of the stimulus, and by its congruence with the semantic context. Ellen Lau and collaborators show that the effect of the former is much greater.
Contributor(s): Ellen LauNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Phillip Holcomb, Gina Kuperberg
Dates:
When a word is preceded by a supportive context such as a semantically associated word or a strongly constraining sentence frame, the N400 component of the ERP is reduced in amplitude. An ongoing debate is the degree to which this reduction reflects a passive spread of activation across long-term semantic memory representations as opposed to specific predictions about upcoming input. We addressed this question by embedding semantically associated prime-target pairs within an experimental context that encouraged prediction to a greater or lesser degree. The proportion of related items was used to manipulate the predictive validity of the prime for the target while holding semantic association constant. A semantic category probe detection task was used to encourage semantic processing and to preclude the need for a motor response on the trials of interest. A larger N400 reduction to associated targets was observed in the high than the low relatedness proportion condition, consistent with the hypothesis that predictions about upcoming stimuli make a substantial contribution to the N400 effect. We also observed an earlier priming effect (205-240 ms) in the high proportion condition, which may reflect facilitation due to form-based prediction. In sum, the results suggest that predictability modulates N400 amplitude to a greater degree than the semantic content of the context.
The semantics and pragmatics of belief reports in preschoolers
Children under 4 respond in nonadultlike ways to uses of verbs like "think". Shevaun, Valentine and Jeff argue that this arise from pragmatic difficulty understanding the relevance of belief, rather than from conceptual or semantic immaturity.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Shevaun Lewis
Dates:
Children under 4 years have been claimed to lack adult-like semantic representations of belief verbs like think. Based on two experiments involving a truth-value judgment task, we argue that 4-year olds' apparently deviant interpretations arise from pragmatic difficulty understanding the relevance of belief, rather than from conceptual or semantic immaturity.
A single stage approach to learning phonological categories: Insights from Inuktitut
Much research presumes that we acquire phonetic categories before abstracting phonological categories. Ewan Dunbar argues that this two-step progression is unnecessary, with a Bayesian model for the acquisition of Inuktitut vowels.
Contributor(s): William IdsardiNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Brian W Dillion, Ewan Dunbar,
Dates:
We argue that there is an implicit view in psycholinguistics that phonological acquisition is a 'two-stage' process: phonetic categories are first acquired, and then subsequently mapped onto abstract phoneme categories. We present simulations that suggest two problems with this view: first, the learner might mistake the phoneme-level categories for phonetic-level categories and thus be unable to learn the relationships between phonetic-level categories; on the other hand, the learner might construct inaccurate phonetic-level representations that prevent it from finding regular relations among them. We suggest an alternative conception of the phonological acquisition problem that sidesteps this apparent inevitability, and present a Bayesian model that acquires phonemic categories in a single stage. Using acoustic data from Inuktitut, we show that this model reliably converges on a set of phoneme-level categories and phonetic-level relations among subcategories, without making use of a lexicon.
On Headless XP Movement/Ellipsis
Kenshi Funakoshi adapts the theory of movement in syntax.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Kenshi Funakoshi
Dates:
I make two proposals in this article: (a) an economy condition on the operation Copy, which states that Copy should apply to as small an element as possible, and (b) the “two types of head movement” hypothesis, which states that Universal Grammar allows head movement via substitution as well as head movement via adjunction. I argue that with these proposals, we can not only explain two generalizations about what I call headless XPs, but also attribute crosslinguistic variation in the applicability of these generalizations to parameters that are responsible for the availability of multiple specifiers.
Null Complement Anaphors as definite descriptions
"Ron won" is less like "Ron won it" than it is like "Ron won the contest."
Contributor(s): Alexander Williams
Dates:
This paper develops the observation that, for many predicates, Null Complement Anaphora (NCA) is like anaphora with a descriptively empty definite description (Condoravdi & Gawron 1996, Gauker 2012). I consider how to distinguish this sort of NCA from pronouns theoretically, and then observe an unnoticed exception to the pattern. For verbs like notice, NCA is neither like a definite description nor like a pronoun, raising a new puzzle of how to represent it.
On restructuring infinitives in Japanese: Adjunction, clausal architecture, and phases
Postdoc Masahiko Takahashi investigates the variety of restructuring verbs in Japanese.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Masahiko Takahashi
Dates:
This paper investigates the syntax of Japanese restructuring verbs and makes two major claims: (i) there are (at least) three types of restructuring infinitives in Japanese, which is consistent with Wurmbrand's (2001) approach to restructuring infinitives and (ii) there is a general ban on adjunction to complements of lexical restructuring verbs, which is best explained by an interaction of spell-out domains and Case-valuation. It is also shown that this ban regulates adverb insertion, adjective insertion, and quantifier raising.
Conservativity and Learnability of Determiners
Tim Hunter and Jeff Lidz find evidence that 4- to 5-year olds expect determiner meanings to be Conservative
Contributor(s): Jeffrey LidzNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Tim Hunter
Dates:
A striking cross-linguistic generalization about the semantics of determiners is that they never express non-conservative relations. To account for this one might hypothesize that the mechanisms underlying human language acquisition are unsuited to non-conservative determiner meanings. We present experimental evidence that 4- and 5-year-olds fail to learn a novel non-conservative determiner but succeed in learning a comparable conservative determiner, consistent with the learnability hypothesis.
Read More about Conservativity and Learnability of Determiners
Embedding epistemic modals in English: A corpus-based study
A corpus study on the distribution of epistemic modals, targeted at the question of whether such modals do or do not contribute to the content of their sentences.
Contributor(s): Valentine HacquardNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Alexis Wellwood
Dates:
The question of whether epistemic modals contribute to the truth conditions of the sentences they appear in is a matter of active debate in the literature. Fueling this debate is the lack of consensus about the extent to which epistemics can appear in the scope of other operators. This corpus study investigates the distribution of epistemics in naturalistic data. Our results indicate that they do embed, supporting the view that they contribute semantic content. However, their distribution is limited, compared to that of other modals. This limited distribution seems to call for a nuanced account: while epistemics are semantically contentful, they may require special licensing conditions.
Read More about Embedding epistemic modals in English: A corpus-based study
Young Children's Understanding of "more" and Discrimination of Number and Surface Area
How do three-year-olds understand "more"? This study suggests they use Approximate Number System in verifying claims with "more" and a count noun, and an Approximate Area System with mass nouns.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Darko Odic, Tim Hunter, Justin Halberda
Dates:
The psychology supporting the use of quantifier words (e.g., “some,” “most,” “more”) is of interest to both scientists studying quantity representation (e.g., number, area) and to scientists and linguists studying the syntax and semantics of these terms. Understanding quantifiers requires both a mastery of the linguistic representations and a connection with cognitive representations of quantity. Some words (e.g., “many”) refer to only a single dimension, whereas others, like the comparative “more,” refer to comparison by numeric (“more dots”) or nonnumeric dimensions (“more goo”). In the present work, we ask 2 questions. First, when do children begin to understand the word “more” as used to compare nonnumeric substances and collections of discrete objects? Second, what is the underlying psychophysical character of the cognitive representations children utilize to verify such sentences? We find that children can understand and verify sentences including “more goo” and “more dots” at around 3.3 years—younger than some previous studies have suggested—and that children employ the Approximate Number System and an Approximate Area System in verification. These systems share a common underlying format (i.e., Gaussian representations with scalar variability). The similarity in the age of onset we find for understanding “more” in number and area contexts, along with the similar psycho- physical character we demonstrate for these underlying cognitive representations, suggests that children may learn “more” as a domain-neutral comparative term.