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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
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Coordinated
Research
COORDINATED
RESEARCH
& Experimental
INthe
THE
EXPERIMENTAL
MORPHOSYNTAX
in
Morphosyntax
S
S
OFSouth
SOUTH
SLAVIC
LANGUAGES
of
Slavic
Languages
&
(EMSS)
EMSS
&
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! 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.
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Monday,
08.09.2014
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10:00-10:30 !
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10:30-11:00
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11:00-11:30
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11:30-13:00
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Welcoming Participants
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Jana Willer-Gold
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Introductions
by All
Experimental
Morphosyntax
Participants
&
of South
Slavic
Languages
S
S
Coffee
break (provided)
EMSS
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&
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
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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)
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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
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Partial Conjunct Agreement: Experiments and Typology
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Andrew Nevins, UCL
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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.
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A Masterclass on the Dual: Syntactic, semantic, and psycholinguistic properties
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Lanko Marušič, University of Nova Gorica
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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.
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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.
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Split Conjunctions, Abstract Nouns and Agreement
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Roberto Zamparelli, University of Trento
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16:30-18:00, Lecture Theatre 118
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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).
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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
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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.
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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.