! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Keynote speakers EMSS London 2014 The 1st EMSS Workshop September 8-10th, 2014 University College London London, UK Lanko Marušič {University of Nova Gorica} Andrew Nevins {UCL} Roberto Zamparelli {University of Trento} !Organisers Andrew Nevins { Lanko Marušič { Boban Arsenijević { Jana Willer-Gold } Leverhulme EMSS Project } UCL } !Project Coordinated Research in the Experimental Morphosyntax of South Slavic Languages ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! & & ! E M & S S M E Coordinated Research COORDINATED RESEARCH & Experimental INthe THE EXPERIMENTAL MORPHOSYNTAX in Morphosyntax S S OFSouth SOUTH SLAVIC LANGUAGES of Slavic Languages & (EMSS) EMSS & ! !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! for Slovenian by the experimental The research builds on methodology developed morphologists, Andrew Nevins and Lanko Marušič, to be applied in parallel at the partner Workshop Programme institutions using elicited production and comprehension tasks. The Network’s activities will ! the effects of word order, topicality, yield research broadly applicable to understanding ! controllers, and will bring clarity to prosody, and inflection on the choice of agreement incommensurable current descriptions of these ! phenomena based on non-experimental The combinatorial possibilities provided by the unique number and gender morphology of the South Slavic languages create a rich array of morphosyntactic variability both within and across speakers in this language area. While a long dialectal tradition classifies local varieties in terms of lexical items (specifically, words for ‘what’), the present project aims to leverage experimental psycholinguistic research as a means of charting the morphosyntaxes of these languages. methods. EMSS Network Meeting London 2014 The Network envisions set of coordinated endeavours through research 1sta EMSS Workshop, September 8-10th, 2014meetings, onsite expertise transfer, and digital resource sharing to foster a new set of collaborative Chandler House, University College London, London, UK partnerships addressing E M questions in geographically-based variation alongside M E morphosyntactic theory through the use of parallel research cooperation in experimental & methods. & ! ! Monday, 08.09.2014 ! 10:00-10:30 ! S S S & E M 10:30-11:00 & S S 11:00-11:30 & 11:30-13:00 ! S & Welcoming Participants ! ! ! ! Jana Willer-Gold M E Introductions by All Experimental Morphosyntax Participants & of South Slavic Languages S S Coffee break (provided) EMSS ! ! & Project Introduction: Partial Conjunct Agreement: Experiments and Typology Andrew Nevins G15 G15 13:00-14:30 Lunch (provided) The combinatorial possibilities provided by the unique number and gender morphology of the South Slavic languages create a rich array of morphosyntactic variability both within 14:30-16:00 Presentation Willer-Gold and across speakers inManual this language area.and WhileJana a long dialectal traditionG15 classifies local Discussion varieties in terms of lexical items (specifically, words for ‘what’), the present project aims to leverage experimental psycholinguistic 16:00-16:30 Coffee break (provided)research as a means of charting the morphosyntaxes of these languages. 16:30-18:00 A Masterclass on the Dual: Syntactic, semantic, and psycholinguistic properties Lanko Marušič ! ! Lecture Theatre 118 Tuesday, 09.09.2014 10:00-11:30 Pilot experiment: presentations by each site 11:30-12:00 Coffee break (provided) 12:00-13:00 Discussion 13:00-14:30 Lunch (not provided) 14:30-16:00 Future Experiments: Presentation 16:00-16:30 Coffee break (provided) 16:30-18:00 Split Conjunctions, Abstract Nouns and Agreement. EMSS Partners Boban Arsenijević, Mia Batinić, Nermina Čordalija, Marijana Kresić, Nedžad Leko, Lanko Marušič, Tanja Miličev, Nataša Miličević, Anita Peti-Stantić, Branimir Stanković, Tina Šuligoj, Jelena Tušek Lecture Theatre 118 G15 Jana Willer-Gold B07 Basement teaching laboratory Roberto Zamparelli Lecture Theatre 118 Dinner (provided) ! ! Wednesday, 10.09.2014 10:00-11:30 Project discussion for Phase 1, Q&A 11:30-12:00 Coffee break (provided) 12:00-13:00 Planning for Year 2 and next Workshop 13:00-14:00 Lunch (provided) 14:00-15:00 Closing discussion EMSS Network G15 EMSS Network G15 G15 ! ! ! ! ! ! Partial Conjunct Agreement: Experiments and Typology ! Andrew Nevins, UCL ! ! ! 11:30-13:00, G15 In a variety of languages (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, Hindi, Ndebele), coordinated subjects (and in some cases, objects) consisting of two noun phrases can trigger verbal agreement with only one of these noun phrases, rather than with the coordination as a whole. Such 'partial agreement' can be with the linearly closest conjunct, or with the hierarchically highest conjunct, but apparently never with a conjunct that is neither highest nor closest. Assuming these two choices to be possible, a number of factors determine when they are actually chosen, including whether the coordination is preverbal or postverbal, and a number of specific features, including a) the case, b) the number, c) the gender, and d) the animacy of the conjunct to be agreed with, and sometimes how these relate to the values for such features of the coordination as a whole. A factorial design is clearly the best way to sort out the contribution of all of these independent variables to the dependent variables, and once a reliable picture emerges from these experimental results, we can begin to ask what other properties within the languages in question these specific relations correlate with, and how the characteristics of these relations may be used to classify language varieties on morphosyntactic terms, including the possibility of "language atlases", akin to those of the SAND project for Dutch, but built on the results of morphosyntactic experimental data. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! A Masterclass on the Dual: Syntactic, semantic, and psycholinguistic properties ! Lanko Marušič, University of Nova Gorica ! ! ! 16:30-18:00, Lecture Theatre 118 Dual is crosslinguistically fairly rare as a grammatical number – only a handful of modern European languages use it productively, but it is quite healthy in Slovenian. Although it has a long history of study dating back to Tesniere 1925’s pioneering inspection of personal dating ads in the newspaper, many aspects of the dual are understudied and still largely poorly understood. Within the context of markedness, we will look at some of the data that suggests that the dual is more marked than the plural, but that it patterns like the plural in certain respects. One of these comes from the pragmatics of use of the dual (see Dvořak and Sauerland 2005), which is largely unused with inherently paired objects – although when it is, it has an extremely marked meaning (e.g. two shoes that are not from the same pair). In dialectal varieties that lost the dual in certain contexts (e.g. verbal forms but not nominal or adjectival ones) it is the plural that overtakes the dual (Jakop 2008). Because it is more marked (Nevins 2011), dual is expected to be acquired after plural, but as children acquire natural numbers gradually and given that dual intuitively has an exact meaning, it should be easier to acquire than plural. A recent study (Almoammer, Sullivan, Donlan, Marušič, Žaucer, O’Donnell, & Barner 2013) comparing Slovenian and Saudi Arabic found that learning dual morphology affects children’s acquisition of the number word two in both languages, relative to English. I will present an overview of these findings and the existing theoretical treatments of the dual in linguistics and psycholinguistics. Finally, I will present an overview of ongoing work, in which we examine the semantics and pragmatics of dual in children and adults. ! Selected references: Almoammer, A., Sullivan, J., Donlan, C., Marušič, F., Žaucer, R., O'Donnell, T., and D. Barner. 2013. Grammatical morphology as a source of early mathematical content. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110: 18448-18453. Dvořák, B. and U. Sauerland. 2005. The semantics of the Slovenian dual. Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 14. The Princeton Meeting. Jakop, T. 2008. Dvojina v slovenskih narečjih. Založba ZRC, ZRC SAZU in Ljubljana. Nevins, A. 2011. Marked Triggers vs. Marked Targets and Impoverishment of the Dual. Linguistic Inquiry 42: 413-444. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Split Conjunctions, Abstract Nouns and Agreement ! Roberto Zamparelli, University of Trento ! 16:30-18:00, Lecture Theatre 118 ! ! Singular noun conjunctions under a single D can yield either a joint reading, where two compatible properties apply to the same individual (1a), or a split one (Bergmann 1982; Heycock and Zamparelli 2005), where they apply to different individuals, triggering plural verb agreement in spite of the singular determiner. (1) a. Dylan, the famous [N singer] and [N songwriter], was here for a concert. b. This wild [N cat] and [N dog] are always fighting under our windows. The second reading is unexpected in an intersective/boolean view of coordination, and raises a number of interesting questions: not all languages allow the split readings with all determiners (in Italian, ogni, 'every' ciascuno 'each' and nessuno 'no' do, but not definites and demonstratives), but mixed split/joint readings are cross-linguistically widely available in the plural (cf. many men and women got married today). ! Even in the singular, certain types of abstract nouns seem to allow a greater range of determiners and agreement patterns, compared to concrete ones (in the Italian (2) and (3) even singular definites are allowed). 2) La lunghezza e larghezza del tavolo mi ?sembra / sembrano eccessiva/e ! The sing width and length of the table to_me seems / seem excessive 3) La sua rapidità e precisione ?era / erano impressionante/i The sing his speed and precision was / were impressive. In this talk I will give an overview of one approach to tackle these cases, discuss some problems and focus on the issue raised by abstract noun conjunction, under the assumption that certain cases of plural agreement are necessarily semantic-driven. ! Selected references: Bergmann, M. 1982. Cross-categorial semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy 5: 299-401. Heycock, C. and R. Zamparelli. 2005. Friends and colleagues: Plurality, coordination, and the structure of DP. Natural Language Semantics 13: 201-270.