Skip to main content
Skip to main content

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.

Show activities matching...

filter by...

Restrictions on the Meaning of Determiners: Typological Generalisations and Learnability

Are nonconservative meanings for determiners unlearnable? And what about a determiner that means 'less than half'?

Linguistics

Contributor(s): Jeffrey Lidz
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Tim Hunter, Alexis Wellwood, Anastasia Conroy
Dates:
In this paper we examine the relationship between learnability and typology in the area of determiner meanings. We begin with two generalisations about the meanings that determiners of the world’s languages are found to have, and investigate the learnability of fictional determiners with unattested meanings. If participants in our experiments fail to learn such determiners, then this would suggest that they are unattested because they are unlearnable. If, on the other hand, participants are able to learn the determiners in question, then some other explanation for their absence in the languages of the world is necessary.

Cross-linguistic representations of numerals and number marking

Numerals are restrictive modifiers.

Linguistics

Non-ARHU Contributor(s):

Michaël Gagnon, Alan Bale, Hrayr Khanjian

Dates:

Inspired by Partee (2010), this paper defends a broad thesis that all modifiers, including numeral modifiers, are restrictive in the sense that they can only restrict the denotation of the NP or VP they modify. However, the paper concentrates more narrowly on numeral modification, demonstrating that the evidence that motivated Ionin & Matushansky (2006) to assign non-restrictive, privative interpretations to numerals – assigning them functions that map singular sets to sets containing groups – is in fact consistent with restrictive modification. Ionin & Matushansky (2006)’s argument for this type of interpretation is partly based on the distribution of Turkish numerals which exclusively combine with singular bare nouns. Section 2 demonstrates that Turkish singular bare nouns are not semantically singular, but rather are unspecified for number. Western Armenian has similar characteristics. Building on some of the observations in section 2, section 3 demonstrates that restrictive modification can account for three different types of languages with respect to the distribution of numerals and plural nouns: (i) languages where numerals exclusively combine with plural nouns (e.g., English), (ii) languages where they exclusively combine with singular bare nouns (e.g., Turkish), (iii) languages where they optionally combine with either type of noun (e.g., Western Armenian). Accounting for these differences crucially involves making a distinction between two kinds of restrictive modification among the numerals: subsective vs. intersective modification. Section 3 also discusses why privative interpretations of numerals have trouble accounting for these different language types.

Relating Movement and Adjunction in Syntax and Semantics

Tim Hunter renders movement and adjunction as different combinations of more primitive operations, in a way that unifies adjunct islands with freezing effects, and supports a new view of the argument/adjunct distinction in a neo-Davidsonian semantics.

Linguistics

Non-ARHU Contributor(s):

Timothy Hunter

Dates:

In this thesis I explore the syntactic and semantic properties of movement and adjunction in natural language, and suggest that these two phenomena are related in a novel way. In a precise sense, the basic pieces of grammatical machinery that give rise to movement, also give rise to adjunction. In the system I propose, there is no atomic movement operation and no atomic adjunction operation; the terms "movement" and "adjunction" serve only as convenient labels for certain combinations of other, primitive operations. As a result the system makes non-trivial predictions about how movement and adjunction should interact, since we do not have the freedom to stipulate arbitrary properties of movement while leaving the properties of adjunction unchanged, or vice-versa. I focus first on the distinction between arguments and adjuncts, and propose that the differences between these two kinds of syntactic attachment can be thought of as a transparent reflection of the differing ways in which they contribute to neo-Davidsonian logical forms. The details of this proposal rely crucially on a distinctive treatment of movement, and from it I derive accurate predictions concerning the equivocal status of adjuncts as optionally included in or excluded from a maximal projection, and the possibility of counter-cyclic adjunction. The treatment of movement and adjunction as interrelated phenomena furthermore enables us to introduce a single constraint that subsumes two conditions on extraction, namely adjunct island effects and freezing effects. The novel conceptions of movement and semantic composition that underlie these results raise questions about the system's ability to handle semantic variable-binding. I give an unconventional but descriptively adequate account of basic quantificational phenomena, to demonstrate that this important empirical ground is not given up. More generally, this thesis constitutes a case study in (i) deriving explanations for syntactic patterns from a restrictive, independently motivated theory of compositional semantics, and (ii) using a computationally explicit framework to rigourously investigate the primitives and consequences of our theories. The emerging picture that is suggested is one where some central facts about the syntax and semantics of natural language hang together in a way that they otherwise would not.

Priming of abstract logical representations in 4-year-olds

"Every horse did not jump over the fence." Preschoolers tend to hear this as meaning that none did. But the preference is not grammatical, as it can be reduced either by priming or changes to the context.

Linguistics

Contributor(s): Jeffrey Lidz
Non-ARHU Contributor(s):

Joshua Viau, Julien Musolino

Dates:

Though preschoolers in certain experimental contexts strongly prefer to interpret ambiguous sentences containing quantified NPs and negation on the basis of surface syntax (e.g., Musolino’s (1998) “observation of isomorphism”), contextual manipulations can lead to more adult-like behavior. But is isomorphism a purely pragmatic phenomenon, as recently proposed? In Experiment 1, we begin by isolating the contextual factor responsible for children’s improvement in Musolino and Lidz (2006). We then demonstrate in Experiment 2 that this factor can be used to prime inverse scope interpretations. To remove pragmatics from the equation altogether, we show in Experiment 3 that the same effect can be achieved via semantic priming. Our results represent the first clear evidence for priming of the abstract logico-syntactic structures underlying these interpretations and, thus, highlight the importance of language processing alongside pragmatic reasoning during children’s linguistic development.

On the Event-Relativity of Modal Auxiliaries

The syntactic position of modal auxiliaries restricts interpretations of their uses. Valentine Hacquard explains why, with a modification of the standard Kratzerian assumptions: modal auxiliaries are evaluated with respect to an event, not a world.

Linguistics

Contributor(s): Valentine Hacquard
Dates:

Crosslinguistically, the same modal words can be used to express a wide range of interpretations. This crosslinguistic trend supports a Kratzerian analysis, where each modal has a core lexical entry and where the difference between an epistemic and a root interpretation is contextually determined. A long standing problem for such a unified account is the equally robust crosslinguistic correlation between a modal’s interpretation and its syntactic behavior: epistemics scope high (in particular higher than tense and aspect) and roots low, a fact which has led to proposals that hardwire different syntactic positions for epistemics and roots (cf. Cinque’s hierarchy). This paper argues that the range of interpretations a modal receives is even more restricted: a modal must be keyed to certain time-individual pairs, but not others. I show that this can be captured straightforwardly by minimally modifying the Kratzerian account: modals are relative to an event—rather than a world—of evaluation, which readily provides a time (the event’s running time) and (an) individual(s) (the event’s participants). I propose that this event relativity of modals can in turn explain the correlation between type of interpretation and syntactic position, without having stipulation of an interpretation-specific height for modals.

Negative Concord and (Multiple) Agree: A Case Study of West Flemish

A conservative, Agree-based account of negative concord in West Flemish.

Linguistics

Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Liliane Haegeman, Terje Lohndal
Dates:
This paper examines the formalization of negative concord in terms of the Minimalist Program, focusing entirely on negative concord in West Flemish. It is shown that a recent analysis of negative concord which advocates Multiple Agree is empirically inadequate. Instead of Multiple Agree, it is argued that a particular implementation of the simpler and less powerful binary Agree is superior in deriving the data in question.

A lexical basis for N400 context effects: Evidence from MEG

Within-subject MEG studies on the topography of N400 effects suggest that such effects reflect facilitated access to lexical information, and not difficulty integrating a word with its semantic context.

Linguistics

Contributor(s): Ellen Lau
Non-ARHU Contributor(s):

Diogo Almeida, Paul Hines, David Poeppel

Dates:

The electrophysiological response to words during the ‘N400’ time window (approximately 300–500 ms post-onset) is affected by the context in which the word is presented, but whether this effect reflects the impact of context on access of the stored lexical information itself or, alternatively, post-access integration processes is still an open question with substantive theoretical consequences. One challenge for integration accounts is that contexts that seem to require different levels of integration for incoming words (i.e., sentence frames vs. prime words) have similar effects on the N400 component measured in ERP. In this study we compare the effects of these different context types directly, in a within-subject design using MEG, which provides a better opportunity for identifying topographical differences between electrophysiological components, due to the minimal spatial distortion of the MEG signal. We find a qualitatively similar contextual effect for both sentence frame and prime-word contexts, although the effect is smaller in magnitude for shorter word prime contexts. Additionally, we observe no difference in response amplitude between sentence endings that are explicitly incongruent and target words that are simply part of an unrelated pair. These results suggest that the N400 effect does not reflect semantic integration difficulty. Rather, the data are consistent with an account in which N400 reduction reflects facilitated access of lexical information.

Themes, cumulativity, and resultatives: Comments on Kratzer 2003

Alexander Williams argues against Kratzer's claim that direct objects do not in general bind a general thematic relation.

Linguistics

Contributor(s): Alexander Williams
Dates:

According to Kratzer (2003), the thematic relation Theme, construed very generally, is not a ‘‘natural relation.’’ She says that the ‘‘natural relations’’ are ‘‘cumulative’’ and argues that Theme is not cumulative, in contrast to Agent. It is therefore best, she concludes, to remove Theme from the palette of semantic analysis. Here I oppose the premises of Kratzer’s argument and then introduce a new challenge to her conclusion, based on the resultative construction in Mandarin. The facts show that Theme and Agent are on equal footing, insofar as neither has the property that Kratzer’s conjecture requires of a natural relation.

On the Interaction of Aspect and Modal Auxiliaries

"Sam was able to eat a dozen eggs" may imply that Sam did eat a dozen eggs. Such implications arise, argues Valentine Hacquard, from interactions between the modal predicate and perfective or imperfective aspect.

Linguistics

Contributor(s): Valentine Hacquard
Dates:

This paper discusses the interaction of aspect and modality, and focuses on the puzzling implicative effect that arises when perfective aspect appears on certain modals: perfective somehow seems to force the proposition expressed by the complement of the modal to hold in the actual world, and not merely in some possible world. I show that this puzzling behavior, originally discussed in Bhatt (1999) for the ability modal, extends to all modal auxiliaries with a circumstantial modal base (i.e., root modals), while epistemic interpretations of the same modals are immune to the effect. I propose that implicative readings are contingent on the relative position of the modal w.r.t. aspect: when aspect scopes over the modal (as I argue is the case for root modals), it forces an actual event, thereby yielding an implicative reading. When a modal element scopes over aspect, no actual event is forced. This happens (i) with epistemics, which structurally appear above tense and aspect; (ii) with imperfective on a root modal: imperfective brings in an additional layer of modality, itself responsible for removing the necessity for an actual event. This proposal enables us to solve the puzzle while maintaining a standardized semantics for aspects and modals.

When Domain General Learning Succeeds and When it Fails

Learning how to interpret anaphoric "one" requires domain-specific mechanisms.

Linguistics

Contributor(s): Jeffrey Lidz
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Lisa Pearl
Dates:
We identify three components of any learning theory: the representations, the learner’s data intake, and the learning algorithm. With these in mind, we model the acquisition of the English anaphoric pronoun one in order to identify necessary constraints for successful acquisition, and the nature of those constraints. Whereas previous modeling efforts have succeeded by using a domain-general learning algorithm that implicitly restricts the data intake to be a subset of the input, we show that the same kind of domain-general learning algorithm fails when it does not restrict the data intake. We argue that the necessary data intake restrictions are domain-specific in nature. Thus, while a domain-general algorithm can be quite powerful, a successful learner must also rely on domain-specific learning mechanisms when learning anaphoric one.