Monthly Archives: April 2015

Tvica in Linguistics Thurs. 4/30, at 12:20

Seid Tvica, (University of Amsterdam) will give a talk this Thursday, April 30, at 12:20 in ILC: N451. A title and abstract follows.

Rich Agreement Hypothesis beyond Indo-European

It is well-established in the literature that many Germanic and Romance languages differ in the placement of adverbs, appearing either before or after the finite verb. This typological distinction is standardly accounted for via v-to-I movement, arguably triggered by the subject agreement features that are assumed to be located at I (cf. Roberts 1985; Kosmeijer 1986; Rohrbacher 1994; Vikner 1995;Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998; Koeneman and Zeijlstra 2014, among many others). The observed correlation between the properties of agreement morphology and verb movement gave rise to the so-called “rich agreement hypothesis” (RAH) which, in its strong version, states thatin controlled environments the finite verb moves to a vP-external position if and only if the agreement morphology is rich (cf. Koenemanand Zeijlstra 2014). Building on the work done so far in this talk, I present the results of a typological investigation of RAH, showing that RAH holds across many languages, well beyond the Indo-European family. In particular, I will discuss verb movement in three unrelated non-Indo-European languages.

First-year cognitive students at Cognitive Brown Bag, Weds. 4/29 at noon

The first-year graduate students in the cognitive division (Junha Chang, Qiuli Ma, and Merika Wilson) will be presenting their first year projects in the Cognitive Brown Bag series in Tobin 521B at noon Wednesday, April 29. Everyone is welcome.

Junha’s talk: Does the quality of target representation reduce the dual target cost in visual search?

Qiuli’s talk: Dilution and working memory

Merika’s talk: The Representational Hierarchical Account: A new theory of amnesia.

Duchaine at NSB Seminar Series, Weds. 4/29 at 4 p.m.

Brad Duchaine (Dartmouth College, Psychological and Brain Sciences) will be presenting Investigating Social Perception via Prosopagnosia in the NSB Seminar Series in 222 Morrill II at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 29. Everyone is welcome.

His lab uses neuropsychology, psychophysics, neuroimaging, twin studies, and TMS to explore the cognitive, neural, developmental, and genetic basis of social perception. Much of his work focuses on prosopagnosia, a condition defined by severe face recognition deficits.

Xiang in Linguistics, Wednesday 4/22 at 5:30 pm

Ming Xiang (University of Chicago)  will talk on  “The memory structure of covert dependencies” on Wednesday, April 22, at 5:30 in N400. An abstract of her talk follows.

While modeling the cross-linguistic structural variation, linguistic analysis often postulates abstract “covert” representations that do not have any morpho-phonological reflexes in the surface word string. Little is known as to whether such representations are actually constructed in language comprehension and production. In this talk, I will examine the processing of Mandarin wh-in-situ questions, which share the same word order with regular declarative sentences but  have a semantics identical to their English counterpart wh-questions. Drawing on data from production, eyetracking-reading, and speed-accuracy tradeoff paradigms, I will address two questions: (i) Does the parser construct a covert non-local syntactic dependency in processing? (ii) What are the parsing mechanisms that support such non-local dependencies? How similar/different are they from the processing of overt non-local dependencies?

Schwarzschild in Linguistics, Fri. 4/24 at 3:30pm

Roger Schwarzschild of MIT will be giving a talk in the Linguistics department titled “The Paradox of Mass Plurals” this Friday, 24 April at 3:30pm in ILC N400. Abstract follows. All are welcome.

“The Paradox of Mass Plurals”

The nouns used in (1) below are ‘lexical plurals’.

(1) He keeps the *books*
He gave me bad *directions*.

They contrast with the plurals in (2) below:

(2)  He bought two books.
They went in two different directions.

Other examples of lexical plurals are *coffee-grounds, proceeds, measles,canned-goods, remains, special effects, dregs, fumes*

I adopt the split analysis of plurality (Acquaviva 2008, Lowenstamm 2008, Alexiadou 2011, Kramer 2012) according to which the plural [*s*] in (1) is the realization of n[+PL], a morpheme that nominalizes category-neutral roots.  The [*s*] in (2) is the realization of Num[+PL].  The plurals in (1) and (2) do not block one another, since they are formed from different pieces (compare:  irregular *men* which blocks **mans*).   The meanings of lexical plurals are idiosyncratic — a common feature of words formed from roots, noted by the above cited references. But problems remain.

Lexical plurals are always mass nouns.  Assuming there is some semantic basis to the mass/count distinction, the meanings of lexical plurals are predictable *to some extent* and that needs to be explained.  Moreover, this feature of lexical plurals is not a peculiarity of English. Ojeda (2005), from whom the title of this talk was borrowed unchanged, provides examples of ‘mass plurals’ in Zuni and in Lingala (Bantu).  He further records that “according to Welmers (1973, 159), there is a semantic correlation in the large Bantu family between being a noun that denotes masses or liquids and being a noun that belongs to the plural Class 6.” (see also Taraldsen 2010:fn8 on Nguni). These then are the questions I’ll address:

Q1 Why does the combination of a root and n[+PL] produce a mass noun?

Q2 What, if anything, is plural about the meanings of these nouns?

Q3 Assuming that the idiosyncratic meanings of lexical plurals are encoded in the root, how do we guarantee that this meaning *only*surfaces in the presence of n[+PL] (rather than in any syntactic context that requires a mass meaning)?

– Following Schwarzschild (2011), I’ll argue that simple nouns are  predicates of states. This will allow for two kinds of pluralization,  within a state and among states, corresponding to inner, n[+PL] and outer  Num[+PL] plurals.

– Next, I’ll argue that a state is in the extension of a count noun only  if it is a state with a single participant. It follows, that n[+PL] are non-count.  And, given certain mereotopological assumptions about liquids (Grimm 2012), it will follow that liquid nouns must denote multi-participant states — hence are candidates for n[+PL] marking.

– Finally Q3 has to do with a correlation between word meaning and  morpho-syntactic context. I’ll propose a way to tie these two together  using ideas from Artstein (2004) about focus below the word level.

Kaufmann in Linguistics, Tues. 4/21 at 4:00pm

Magdalena Kaufmann of UConn will be giving a talk in the Linguistics department titled “Embedded imperatives: venturing into the cross-linguistic picture” on Tuesday 21 April at 4:00pm in ILC N400. Abstract follows. All are welcome.

Embedded imperatives: venturing into the cross-linguistic picture

Many languages are taken to have grammatical marking of imperative clauses (verbal morphology, clause type particles). For a long time, the standard assumption had been that such markers cannot occur in embedded sentences  (“Imperatives cannot be embedded”). More recent research has discovered a series of counter-examples to this generalization. At the same time, it remains to be acknowledged that embedding is severely restricted cross-linguistically. Building on, and extending, what I discussed in Kaufmann (2012, ch. 6.1), I investigate patterns in the exceptions to the putative ban on embedded imperatives. I focus on data from English, German, Japanese, Korean, and Slovenian (specifically, the interpretation of the imperative subject), and I suggest an account in terms of clashes between shiftable (in the sense of Schlenker 2003) and unshiftable indexicality. While the talk will focus mostly on imperatives in reported speech, I will discuss some connections to imperative marking in relative clauses and in matrix wh-sentences.

Keil at Five College Cognitive Science Speaker series, Thurs. 4/23 at 1 p.m.

Frank Keil (Yale University) will be presenting The Growth of Explanatory Insight: Causal Understanding and the Outsourced Mind as part of the Five College Cognitive Science Speaker series in Tobin 423 at 1 p.m. Thursday, April 23. Everyone is welcome – the abstract is below.

Abstract: Despite having highly impoverished understandings of the world at the mechanistic level, children and adults alike have strong interests in mechanistic explanations. These seemingly futile interests in mechanisms may in fact support the development of everyday understandings by enabling even the very young to build a sense of causal patterns that exist far above the level of mechanisms. That sense of causal patterns then works in combination with strategies for identifying and evaluating both experts and their explanations, enabling lay people of all ages to supplement their highly incomplete knowledge by accessing and relying on the divisions of cognitive labor that exist in all cultures. Illusions of explanatory depth and insight, as well as biases concerning distribution of knowledge across minds, create a false impression of the nature of folk science. Studies on the development of folk science in children, however, offer a more cognitively feasible account for all ages and levels of expertise.

Zobel at Cognitive Brown Bag, Weds. 4/15 at noon

Ben Zobel (PhD Candidate in PBS) will be presenting A neurobehavioral test of discrete-state and continuous recognition memory models in the Cognitive Brown Bag series in Tobin 521B at noon Wednesday, April 15. Everyone is welcome – the abstract is below.

Abstract: Behavioral and ERP measures were used to test the predictions of two models of recognition memory: 1) the Double High-Threshold Model (2HT), which posits that recognition memory involves judgements based on discrete mental states, and Signal Detection Theory (SDT), which posits that recognition memory involves judgements based on continuous values of memory strength. Behavioral analysis provided strong evidence in support of SDT and against 2HT. However, ERP analysis of the FN400, a putative index of memory strength, was not consistent with either model, suggesting that 1) the FN400 may not be a comprehensive index of memory strength, as previously assumed, but may only be useful at sufficiently high levels of strength, or 2) the FN400 may not index strength at all, but may instead represent an N400 effect facilitated by semantic/conceptual priming arising from word repetition (Voss and Federmeier, 2011).

Listgarten at Machine Learning and Friends Lunch, Thurs. 4/16 at 12:00pm

Jennifer Listgarten of Microsoft Research will give a talk titled “Methods for Genome and Epigenome-Wide Association Studies” at the Machine Learning and Friends Lunch this Thursday, 16 April at 12:00pm in CS150. Abstract follows. All are welcome.

“Methods for Genome and Epigenome-Wide Association Studies”

Understanding the genetic underpinnings of disease is important for screening, treatment, drug development, and basic biological insight. Genome-wide associations, wherein individual or sets of genetic markers are systematically scanned for association with disease are one window into disease processes. Naively, these associations can be found by use of a simple statistical test. However, a wide variety of confounders lie hidden in the data, leading to both spurious associations and missed associations if not properly addressed. These confounders include population structure, family relatedness, cell type heterogeneity, and environmental confounders. I will discuss the state-of-the art approaches (based on linear mixed models) for conducting these analyses, in which the confounders are automatically deduced, and then corrected for, by the data and model.