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
Derivational order in syntax: Evidence and architectural consequences
A précis of the evidence for left‐to‐right derivations in syntax, and how this relates to the nature of real‐time mechanisms for building linguistic structure.
Contributor(s): Colin PhillipsNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Shevaun Lewis
Dates:
Publisher: Elsevier
Publisher: Elsevier
Standard
generative
grammars
describe
language
in
terms
that
appear
distant
from
considerations
of
everyday,
real‐time
language
processes.
To
some
this
is
a
critical
flaw,
while
to
others
this
is
a
clear
virtue.
One
type
of
generative
grammar
defines
a
well‐formed
sentence
as
a
static,
structured
representation
that
simultaneously
satisfies
all
relevant
constraints
of
the
language,
with
no
regard
to
how
the
representation
is
assembled
(e.g.,
Sag,
Wasow,
&
Bender,
2003).
Another
type
of
generative
grammar
defines
a
well‐formed
sentence
as
a
derivation,
or
sequence
of
representations,
that
describes
how
the
sentence
is
gradually
assembled,
often
including
various
transformations
that
move
words
or
phrases
from
one
position
to
another
in
a
structure.
In
the
most
popular
current
version
of
the
derivational
approach,
derivations
proceed
‘upwards’,
starting
from
the
most
deeply
embedded
terminal
elements
in
the
sentence,
which
are
often
towards
the
right
of
a
sentence
(e.g.,
Chomsky,
1995;
Carnie,
2006).
Such
derivations
tend
to
proceed
in
a
right‐to‐left
order,
which
is
probably
the
opposite
of
the
order
in
which
sentences
are
assembled
in
everyday
tasks
such
as
speaking
and
understanding.
Since
these
theories
make
no
claim
to
being
accounts
of
such
everyday
processes,
the
discrepancy
causes
little
concern
among
the
theories'
creators.
Generative
grammars
are
typically
framed
as
theories
of
speakers’
task‐independent
knowledge
of
their
language,
and
these
are
understood
to
be
distinct
from
theories
of
how
specific
communicative
tasks
might
put
that
knowledge
to
use.
Set
against
this
background
are
a
number
of
recent
proposals
that
various
linguistic
phenomena
can
be
better
understood
in
terms
of
derivations
that
incrementally
assemble
structures
in
a
(roughly)
left‐to‐right
order.
One
can
evaluate
these
proposals
based
simply
on
how
well
they
capture
the
acceptability
judgments
that
they
aim
to
explain,
i.e.,
standard
conditions
of
'descriptive
adequacy'.
But
it
is
hard
to
avoid
the
question
of
whether
it
is
mere
coincidence
that
left‐to‐right
derivations
track
the
order
in
which
sentences
are
spoken
and
understood.
It
is
also
natural
to
ask
how
left‐to‐right
derivations
impact
the
psychological
commitments
of
grammatical
theories.
Are
they
procedural
descriptions
of
how
speakers
put
together
sentences
in
real
time
(either
in
comprehension
or
in
production)?
Do
they
amount
to
a
retreat
from
linguists’
traditional
agnosticism
about
‘performance
mechanisms’?
These
are
questions
about
what
a
grammatical
theory
is
a
theory
of,
and
they
are
the
proverbial
elephant
in
the
room
in
discussions
of
left‐to‐right
derivations
in
syntax,
although
the
issues
have
not
been
explored
in
much
detail.
Here
we
summarize
the
current
state
of
some
of
the
evidence
for
left‐to‐right
derivations
in
syntax,
and
how
this
relates
to
a
number
of
findings
by
our
group
and
others
on
the
nature
of
real‐time
structure
building
mechanisms.
Some
of
these
questions
have
been
aired
in
previous
work
(e.g.,
Phillips
1996,
2004),
but
we
have
come
to
believe
that
the
slogan
from
that
earlier
work
(“the
parser
is
the
grammar”)
is
misleading
in
a
number
of
respects,
and
we
offer
an
updated
position
here.
Input and Intake in Language Acquisition
Acquiring a grammar involves representing the environment and making statistical inferences within a space of linguistic hypotheses. Annie illustrates with experimental, computational and corpus studies of children acquiring Tsez, Norwegian and English.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Ann C. Gagliardi
Dates:
This dissertation presents an approach for a productive way forward in the study of language acquisition, sealing the rift between claims of an innate linguistic hypothesis space and powerful domain general statistical inference. This approach breaks language acquisition into its component parts, distinguishing the input in the environment from the intake encoded by the learner, and looking at how a statistical inference mechanism, coupled with a well de fined linguistic hypothesis space could lead a learn to infer the native grammar of their native language. This work draws on experimental work, corpus analyses and computational models of Tsez, Norwegian and English children acquiring word meanings, word classes and syntax to highlight the need for an appropriate encoding of the linguistic input in order to solve any given problem in language acquisition.
Without Specifiers: Phrase Structure and Events
Terje Lohndal argues both that verbs have no arguments, and that there is no distinction between complements and specifiers.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Terje Lohndal
Dates:
This dissertation attempts to unify two reductionist hypotheses: that there is no relational difference between specifiers and complements, and that verbs do not have thematic arguments. I argue that these two hypotheses actually bear on each other and that we get a better theory if we pursue both of them.
The thesis is centered around the following hypothesis: Each application of Spell-Out corresponds to a conjunct at logical form. In order to create such a system, it is necessary to provide a syntax that is designed such that each Spell-Out domain is mapped into a conjunct. This is done by eliminating the relational difference between specifiers and complements. The conjuncts are then conjoined into Neo-Davidsonian representations that constitute logical forms. The theory is argued to provide a transparent mapping from syntactic structures to logical forms, such that the syntax gives you a logical form where the verb does not have any thematic arguments. In essence, the thesis is therefore an investigation into the structure of verbs.
This theory of Spell-Out raises a number of questions and it makes strong predictions about the structure of possible derivations. The thesis discusses a number of these: the nature of linearization and movement, left-branch extractions, serial verb constructions, among others. It is shown how the present theory can capture these phenomena, and sometimes in better ways than previous analyses.
The thesis closes by discussing some more foundational issues related to transparency, the syntax-semantics interface, and the nature of basic semantic composition operations.
A test of the relation between working-memory capacity and syntactic island effects
Syntactic island effects are more likely to be due to grammatical constraints or grounded grammaticized constraints than to limited processing resources.
Contributor(s): Colin PhillipsNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Jon Sprouse, Matt Wagers
Dates:
The source of syntactic island effects has been a topic of considerable debate within linguistics and psycholinguistics. Explanations fall into three basic categories: grammatical theories, which posit specific grammatical constraints that exclude extraction from islands; grounded theories, which posit grammaticized constraints that have arisen to adapt to constraints on learning or parsing; and reductionist theories, which analyze island effects as emergent consequences of non-grammatical constraints on the sentence parser, such as limited processing resources. In this article we present two studies designed to test a fundamental prediction of one of the most prominent reductionist theories: that the strength of island effects should vary across speakers as a function of individual differences in processing resources. We tested over three hundred native speakers of English on four different island-effect types (whether, complex NP, subject, and adjunct islands) using two different acceptability rating tasks (seven-point scale and magnitude estimation) and two different measures of working-memory capacity (serial recall and n-back). We find no evidence of a relationship between working-memory capacity and island effects using a variety of statistical analysis techniques, including resampling simulations. These results suggest that island effects are more likely to be due to grammatical constraints or grounded grammaticized constraints than to limited processing resources.
A Dilemma with Accounts of Right-node Raising
No current analysis of Right Node Raising is correct.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Bradley Larson
Dates:
There is a dilemma in current studies of right-node raising (RNR): The main approaches to the construction make fundamentally contradictory predictions that account for overlapping sets of data points. In this paper I argue that no single current analysis can account for the range of data and argue against the possibility that the analyses work in concert to account for the data. That is, given that current analyses each account for some but not the entirety of the documented data, there are two logical possibilities: 1) None of the analyses are correct. 2) More than one analysis is correct in its limited purview and duties are shared such that all the data is accounted for. I argue for the former.
Under the second option introduced above, RNR is derived either by means of one particular operation or a different one. That is, the term “right-node raising” is better seen as a surface-level description for a family of derivations: some stemming from an application of the first operation, the others via the second (as argued by Barros and Vicente (2010)). If this were the case it would be a sharp departure from the assumptions of most work in RNR and require critical investigation. When investigated further, there turns out to be no motivation to analyze RNR as being derived in two entirely separate ways. This being the case, the RNR dilemma remains.
Head Movement in the Bangla DP
A new analysis of the DP in Bangla, with special attention to its numeral classifiers.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Dustin Chacón
Dates:
Bengali/Bangla is unusual among South Asian languages in that it uses numerical classifiers. In this paper, I propose a new analysis of the DP structure in Bangla motivated by data previously unaccounted for and typological concerns. Specifically, I propose that Bangla has DP-internal NP movement to Spec,DP to mark definiteness, that the numeral and classifier form separate heads in the syntax, and that there is noun to classifier movement when there is no overt classifier. I propose a feature for each of these phenomena, and attempt to explain the ungrammatical examples using principled reasons de- rived from this structure. Also, I give an analysis for the quantificationally approximate construction, in which the classifier appears on the left of the numeral. I claim that the model presented in this paper can account for these constructions, and that the differences found between “classifier-compatible” nouns and “classifier-less” nouns with regard to the quantificationally approximate structures follows naturally from my analysis.
Height-Relative Determination of (Non-Root) Modal Flavor: Evidence from Hindi
The Hindi future marker "gaa" has a variety of interpretations. Dave Kush shows how these correspond to different syntactic contexts.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Dave Kush
Dates:
In this paper I pursue the idea that a modal's flavor is determined by its attachment height. The various interpretations of the Hindi future marker gaa, which is taken to be a modal, are discussed. The idea put forth is that modal flavor is indirectly constrained by the semantic type of the modal’s prejacent instead of being solely determined via contextual assignment. Modal Bases are re-envisioned as being comprised of different types of alternatives (worlds, world-time pairs, etc.), rather than just sets of worlds determined by different accessibility relations. The correlation between height and attachment site falls out as a consequence of the different types of alternatives Modal Bases make available for semantic computation.
Seeing what you mean, mostly
How is perception of numerosity related to the meaning of words like "most"? Paul Pietroski, Jeff Lidz and collaborators explore the question experimentally.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Tim Hunter, Darko Odic, Justin Halberda
Dates:
Publisher: Emerald
Publisher: Emerald
Idealizing, a speaker endorses or rejects a (declarative) sentence S in a situation s based on how she understands S and represents s. But relatively little is known about how speakers represent situations. Linguists can construct and test initial models of semantic competence, by supposing that sentences have representation-neutral truth conditions, which speakers represent somehow; cf. Marr's (1982) Level One description of a function computed, as opposed to a Level Two description of an algorithm that computes outputs given inputs. But this leaves interesting questions unsettled. One would like to find cases in which S can be held fixed, while modifying s in ways that have predictable effects on the nonlinguistic cognitive systems recruited to evaluate S. Extant work in perceptual psychology offers opportunities for eliciting judgments from speakers in highly controlled settings where something is known about the cognitive systems that speakers recruit when endorsing or rejecting a target sentence. In such settings, behavioral data can reveal aspects of how the human language system interfaces with other systems of cognition that are presumably shared with other species. As an illustration, we focus on the quantificational word “most” and how perception of numerosity is related to the meaning of “Most of the dots are blue,” in the hope that studies of other perceptual systems may provide analogous opportunities for investigating how words are related to prelinguistic representations.
The adicities of thematic separation
A syntax suited to a neo-Davidsonian semantics, where each dependent is interpreted as a conjunct.
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Terje Lohndal
Dates:
This paper discusses whether or not verbs have thematic arguments or whether they just have an event variable. The paper discusses some evidence in favor of the Neo-Davidsonian position that verbs only have an event variable. Based on this evidence, the paper develops a transparent mapping hypothesis from syntax to logical form where each Spell-Out domain corresponds to a conjunct at logical form. The paper closes by discussing the nature of compositionality for a Conjunctivist semantics.
Interrogatives, Instructions, and I-languages: An I-Semantics for Questions
An internalist semantics for interrogative clauses, from Terje Lohndal and Paul Pietroski.
Contributor(s): Paul PietroskiNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Terje Lohndal
Dates:
It is often said that the meaning of an interrogative sentence is a set of answers. This raises questions about how the meaning of an interrogative is compositionally determined, especially if one adopts an I-language perspective. By contrast, we argue that I-languages generate semantic instructions (SEMs) for how to assemble concepts of a special sort and then prepare these concepts for various uses - e.g., in declaring, querying, or assembling concepts of still further complexity. We connect this abstract conception of meaning to a specific (minimalist) conception of complementizer phrase edges, with special attention to wh-questions and their relative clause counterparts. The proposed syntax and semantics illustrates a more general conception of edges and their relation to the so-called duality of semantics.