Previously

Automne/Autumn 2021

Oct 1 : Mireille Tremblay, UdeM : Un changement de paradigme en français laurentien : le cas des pronoms complexes

Oct. 15 : Ileana Paul and Lisa Travis, Western and McGill : Malagasy pronouns : inside and out

Nov 5 : Audrey Laurin and Heather Newell, UQAM : Function words: implications for the syntax-phonology interface

Nov 19 : Lisa Travis, McGill : Prefixes as E-merged Adjuncts

Dec 3 : Richard Compton, UQAM : Les pronoms en inuktitut

Hiver/Winter 2019

Winter 2019 our regular meeting time is Friday 1:30pm-3pm, and we will meet in room DS-3470 at UQAM (Pavillon J.-A.-DeSève: 320, rue Sainte-Catherine Est). Please email Lisa Travis to be added to the email list, or if you wish to present some work.

All are welcome!

Please note, upcoming meetings below are subject to modification.

Winter

2019

DS-3470 UQAM
Date Discussion leader Topic Readings
Fri, Apr 5 Tim O’Donnell TBA TBA
Fri, Mar 29 Tim O’Donnell TBA TBA
Fri, Mar 15
AT McGILL
1085 Dr Penfield, Room 117
Claudia Pérez Herrera Structure Bermudez-Otero, R. (2016) We do not need structuralist morphemes, but we do need constituent structure. In Daniel Siddiqi & Heidi Harley (eds), 2016, Morphological metatheory (Linguistics Today 229), 387–430. Amsterdam : John Benjamins.
https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002774
Fri, Mar 8
AT McGILL
1085 Dr Penfield, Room 117
Mpoke Mimpongo Blocking Embick, D. & Marantz, A. (2008). Architecture & Blocking. Linguistic Inquiry, 39(1):1-53.
Fri, Feb 22 Ben Oldham Reduplication Skinner, T. (2009). Investigations of downward movement, Section 2.2: Reduplication in Ndebele (pg. 71-95) (in Dropbox)
Myler, N. (2017). Exceptions to the Mirror Principle and morphophonological “action at a distance”: The role of “word”-internal phrasal movement and spell out (pg. 18-34): https://www.dropbox.com/s/m20nv4x50ne3jg1/Myler%20Corrected%20Final%20Draft%20MP%20Violations%20Word%20Structure%20Volume%20-%20Copy%20Edited_2.pdf?dl=0
Fri, Feb 15 Richard Compton Locality Embick, D. (2010). Localism versus globalism in morphology and phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chapters 1 and 2.
https://babel.ucsc.edu/~hank/mrg.readings/allo-dist-09.pdf
Fri, Feb 8 Lisa Travis and Nico Baier Morphology before phonology (and infixation) Kalin, L. (2018) Morphology before phonology: A case study of Turoyo (Neo-Aramaic)
https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004258
Fri, Feb 1 Emmanuel Parenteau DM vs. Nano Starke, M. (2018) Exploring Nanosyntax, Ch9.
Caha, P. (2016) Notes on insertion in Distributed Morphology and Nanosyntax https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002855
Fri, Jan 18 Vanna Willerton Morphology, syntax, adjacency Bobaljik, J. (1994) The Morphology-Syntax Connection. MITWPL 22. H. Harley & C. Phillips (eds.)
Fri, Jan 11 All Introduction, organisation Harley & Noyer 1999 ; Bobaljik 2015

FALL

2018

DS-3470 UQAM
Date Discussion leader Topic Readings
Mon, Nov 12 Isabelle Boyer Subsyllabic morphemes in Mandarin: Demonstratives zhei and nei No reading
Mon, Oct 29 Surprise Party for Lisa Travis Heading in the right direction: Linguistic treats for Lisa Travis. McGill alums Laura Kalin, Ileana Paul and Jozina Vander Klok present Lisa with this Festschrift of 44 papers on the occasion of her retirement. Published by McWPL; available online shortly screen shot 2019-01-09 at 14.37.20
Mon, Oct 22 Nico Baier Discussion of morphological expressiveness of A’-related morphology No reading
Mon, Oct 15 Heather Newell There are no Bracketing Paradoxes Newell, H. 2018. There are no Bracketing Paradoxes, or How to be a Modular Grammarian Ms. UQÀM
Mon, Sept 24 Lisa Travis A morphological puzzle in Austronesian no reading
Mon, Sept 17 The Group Organizational no reading

SUMMER

2018

DS-3470 UQAM
Date Discussion leader Topic Readings
Tues, June 19 Rm 117 at McGill Heather Newell and group Discussion on modularity, bracketing paradoxes, infixation, and reduplication rough draft
Tues, June 12 Rm 117 at McGill Heather Newell There are no Bracketing Paradoxes, or How to be a Modular Grammarian rough draft
Tues, June 5 10:45 at Rm 117 at McGill Heather Goad and Lisa Travis A phonological solution to a morpho-syntactic problem in Athabaskan
Tues, May 29 Richard Compton Inuit φ-markers as the exponence of agree: Evidence from granularity, default forms
Tues, May 22 No meeting MfM Fringe in Manchester
Tues, May 15, 1:30-3 Ievgeniia Kybalchych Japanese Particles Vances, Timothy J. 1993. Are Japanese Particles Clitics?

WINTER

2018

DS-3470, UQAM
Date Discussion leader Topic Readings
Tues, April 17 Mathieu Paillé Algonquian agreement Oxford, W. (2013) Multiple Instances of Agreement in the Clausal Spine:
Evidence from Algonquian
Tues, April 10 Nadia Ziani Non-obligatory Agreement Kayne and Pollock (2012) Locality and agreement in French hyper-complex inversion.
Tues, April 3 Richard Compton Non-obligatory Agreement, cont. Preminger, O. (2014) Agreement and its features Ch. 4
Tues, March 27 Isabelle Marcoux Non-obligatory Agreement Preminger, O. (2014) Agreement and its features Ch. 1-3
Tues, March 20 Clint Parker Agreement and clitics in Shugni Kramer, R. (2014) Clitic doubling or object agreement:
the view from Amharic
Tues, March 13 Johnatan Nascimento The syntax of clitics and agreement Nevins (2011) Multiple agree with clitics: person complementarity vs. omnivorous number.
Tues, March 6 Matthew Schuurman Person Case Constraint and Agree Bejar and Rezac (2009) Cyclic agree. .
Tues, Feb 20 The Group Person Case Constraint Elena Anagnostopoulou (2005) Strong and Weak Person Restrictions.
Tues, Feb 13 Heather Newell For Clitic Groups Vogel (2009) The status of the clitic group
Tues, Feb 6 Heather Newell Against Clitic Groups Booij (1996) Cliticization as prosodic integration: the case of Dutch
Tues, Jan 30 Heather Newell Clitics in the Prosodic Hierarchy Nespor & Vogel (1986) Prosodic phonology. chapter 5
Tues, Jan 23 Meeting cancelled (no metro)
Tues, Jan 16 Tom Leu Clitics vs. inflection Zwicky and Pullum (1983) Cliticization vs. inflection: English n’t.
Tues, Jan 9 Heather Newell Term topic: Clitics vs. Agreement Newell et al. (2017) The structure of words at the interfaces: Introduction

FALL

2017

Date Discussion leader Topic Readings
Friday, Dec 8, 1-2:30 Tim O’Donnell
Inducing phonological rules: Perspectives from Bayesian program learning,
Kevin Ellis & Tim O’Donnell
How do linguists come up with phonological rules, how do kids learn artificial grammars, and how does one acquire pig latin? The solutions to these problems share a common representation, which we show can be modeled as a program, and the corresponding learning problems modeled as program induction. This framing lets us apply ideas from Bayesian Program Learning to induce grammars, which combines program synthesis techniques with a compression-based inductive bias. This lets the models capture phonological phenomena like vowel harmony or stress patterns and learn synthetic grammars used in prior studies of artificial grammar learning. Going beyond individual grammar learning problems, we consider the problem of jointly inferring many related rule systems. By solving many textbook phonology problems, we can ask the model what kind of inductive bias best explains the attested phenomena.
Friday, Dec 1, 1-2:30  Máire Noonan The R in R-pronouns – a decompositional approach
Friday, Nov 24, 1-2:30  Nico Baier Impoverishment and the internal organization of phi-features
Friday, Nov 17, 1-2:30   Tim O’Donnell Productivity and Reuse in Language A much-celebrated aspect of language is the way in which it allows us
to express and comprehend an unbounded number of thoughts. This
property is made possible because language consists of several
combinatorial systems which can be used to productively build novel
forms using a large inventory of stored, reusable parts: the lexicon.For any given language, however, there are many more potentially
storable units of structure than are actually used in practice —
each giving rise to many ways of forming novel expressions. For
example, English contains suffixes which are highly productive and
generalizable (e.g., -ness; Lady-Gagaesqueness, pine-scentedness) and
suffixes which can only be reused in specific words, and cannot be
generalized (e.g., -th; truth, width, warmth). How are such
differences in generalizability and reusability represented? What are
the basic, stored building blocks at each level of linguistic
structure? When is productive computation licensed and when is it not?
How can the child acquire these systems of knowledge?I will discuss a theoretical framework designed to address these
questions. The approach is based on the idea that the problem of
productivity and reuse can be solved by optimizing a tradeoff between
a pressure to store fewer, more reusable lexical items and a pressure
to account for each linguistic expression with as little computation
as possible. I will show how this approach addresses a number of
problems in English inflectional and derivational morphology, and
briefly discuss its applications to other domains of linguistic structure.
Friday, Nov 3, 1-2:30  Tom Leu Debating morphemes and the lack thereof Some morphemes are more prevalent than is traditionally assumed, while others are less so. In this talk I will suggest that the definite article belongs to the former, while 3SG inflection belongs to the latter, essentially replacing the latter by the former, at least in some cases. More concretely: English verbal inflection is strange in having a 3SG -s which contrasts with zero in all other persons and which is absent in the past. The German 3SG verbal inflection -t is also strangely absent in the past. In fact, 3SG is strange in and of itself, if it is correct that 3rd person is really absence of person, and singular is really absence of number, i.e. 3SG is simply not. But if there is no such thing as 3SG, English -s and German -t cannot be strange variants of 3SG morphemes. In fact, I will discuss the possibility that they are, instead, a sort of present tense morphemes, anchoring the clause in the utterance situation. I will further suggest that there is some plausibility to the idea that they are variants of the definite article. If correct, there are two variants of the definite article in the clausal spine, one affixed to the finite verb and one in the left periphery. […]
Friday, Oct 27, 1-2:30  THE GROUP  Mini Workshop on Person Bring some data on complex pronominal systems to discuss!
Friday, Oct 20, 1-2:30  Gabe Daitzchman  Daniel Harbour Harbour, Daniel. (2016). Impossible Persons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Friday, Oct 13, 1-2:30  Gabe Daitzchman  Ackema and Neeleman Ackema, Peter, and Neeleman, Ad. (2013). Person features and syncretism. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31(4). 901-950
Friday, October 6, 1-2:30  Lisa Travis  Malagasy augmented pronouns  Zribi-Hertz, Anne and Liliane Mbolatianavalona. 1999. Towards a modular theory of linguistic deficiency: Evidence from Malagasy personal pronouns. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17: 161–218.
 Friday, September 29, 1-2:30  Tom Leu  Déchaine and Wiltschko  ‘Decomposing Pronouns’ by R-M. Dechaine and M. Wiltschko (2002; Linguistic Inquiry 33(3), p.409-442)
Friday, Sept 22, 1-2:30  No meeting  Manitoba Person Workshop
Friday, Sept 15, 1-2:30  All members  Organizational meeting

WINTER

2017

Rm 117, McGill
Date Discussion leader Topic Readings
Friday, May 12, 8h30-17h Colloque à l’Association francophone pour le savoir, ACFAS 85. Université McGill, Rutherford 114, 3600 rue University. Le mot : syntaxe, morphologie et phonologie Programme ici
Friday, April 28 Heather Goad and Lisa Travis The role of phonology in Mirror Principle violations: the case of Navajo & Chilcotin (continued)
Friday, April 7 Heather Goad and Lisa Travis DIFFERENT ROOM: DS-3459 The role of phonology in the Navajo Mirror Principle problem Harley, H. 2010. Affixation and the Mirror Principle. In R. Folli & C. Ullbricht (eds). Interfaces in Linguistics, Oxford:OUP, 166-186. 

lingbuzz/001534

Friday, March 31 Peter Guekguezian (University of Southern California) Toward a Typology of Prosodic Word Structure Effects of Morphosyntactic Phases. Templates as the Interaction of Recursive Word Structure and Prosodic Well-formedness.

    (Ms. Univ. of Southern California).
Friday, March 24 No meeting (MOT is happening at UQAM)
Friday, March 17 No meeting (Half of group at GLOW)
Friday, March 10 Meeting cancelled
Friday, March 3 No meeting (Study Break at UQAM and McGill)
Friday, Feb. 24 Jurij Božič and Lisa Travis
  • Non-local allomorphy in Kiowa;
  • Mirror Principle Violations in Navajo
  • Bonet, Eulàlila, & Daniel Harbour. 2012. Contextual allomorphy. In The morphology and phonology of exponence, Trommer, J. (ed), Oxford: OUP, pp. 195–235.
  • Harley, Heidi. 2010. Affixation and the Mirror Principle. In Interfaces in Linguistics: New Research Perspectives, Folli, R. & Ulbricht, C. (eds), Oxford: OUP, pp. 166– 186
Friday, Feb. 17; 10:30-11:30 All Meeting with Boris Harizanov
    Note place & time change! Meeting is at McGill this week, room 117, at 10:30.
Friday, Feb. 10 Máire Noonan and Lisa Travis Revisiting Long Head movement
  • Borsley, R., M.-L. Rivero, and J. Stephens. 1996. Long head movement in Breton. In The syntax of the Celtic languages: A comparative perspective, R. D. Borsley and I. Roberts (eds), 53-74. CUP.
  • King, T. H. 1996. Slavic clitics, long head movement and prosodic inversion. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 4(1):274-311.
  • Rivero, M.-L. 1994. Clause structure and V-movement in the languages of the Balkans. NLLT 12: 62–120.
Friday, Feb. 3 All Head movement in syntax and morphology? Gribanova, V. & Harizanov, B. (2016): Whither Head Movement (the manuscript)
Friday, January 20 All Head movement in syntax and morphology? Two handouts from the Workshop on the Status of Head Movement in Linguistic Theory (Stanford University, Sept. 16-17, 2016):

Gribanova, V. & Harizanov, B. (2016): Whither Head Movement

Harley, H. (2016): What Hiaki stem forms are really telling us

Friday, January 13 Organisational meeting Discussion on the upcoming ACFAS workshop

Winter 2016

This term our regular meeting time is Thursday 10:30 AM-12 PM, and we will meet in room DS-3470 in the Department of Linguistics at UQAM (320 St-Catherine East). The focus this term is on morpheme order.

Please email Máire Noonan to be added to the email list, or if you wish to present some work. All are welcome!

Please note, upcoming meetings below are subject to modification.

Date Presenter Topic Background readings
Thursday, Jan 14 Richard Compton and Tom Leu To LCA or not to LCA Abels, K. and A. Neeleman. 2012. Linear Asymmetries and the LCA. Syntax 15.1:25-74. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9612.2011.00163.x
Thursday, Jan 21 Glyne Piggott Prefixes vs. suffixes (Bantu) Hyman, Larry M. 2008. Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of words, with special reference to Bantu. Linguistics 46–2: 309–350. DOI 10.1515/LING.2008.012
Thursday, Jan 28 Glyne Piggott Prefixes vs. suffixes (Bantu) cont. Hyman, Larry M. 2008. Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of words, with special reference to Bantu. Linguistics 46–2: 309–350.
Thursday, Feb  4 NO MEETING
Thursday, Feb 11 Máire Noonan and Lisa Travis Morpheme Order: Generalized U20 vs. Local Dislocation vs. ‘tucking in’ Koopman, H. 2015. A Note on Huave morpheme ordering: Local dislocation or (generalized) U20? Ms. UCLA, October 2015

Koopman, Hilda. 2015. Generalized U20 and Morpheme Order. Ms. UCLA, October 2015

Thursday, Feb 18 Heather Newell Morpheme orders and phonological domains in Cupeño and Turkish. Newell, H. 2008. Aspects of the Morphology and Phonology of Phases. PhD dissertation, McGill University. Chapter 2.  http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000807
Thursday, Feb 25 Lisa Travis Comparing tools to account for morpheme order —-
Thursday, March 3 NO MEETING —-
Thursday, March 10 All Morpheme orders & phonological domains in Cupeño and Turkish cont.

Organisational

Newell, H. 2008. Aspects of the Morphology and Phonology of Phases. PhD dissertation, McGill University. Chapter 2.  http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000807
Thursday, March 17 All Organisational: Bring specific research questions and language suggestions
Thursday, March 24 Heather Newell Phonology of possession (Slides)
Thursday, April 7  All Head movement vs. head movement and XP movement vs. XP movement  —
Thursday, April 14 All Head movement vs. head movement and XP movement vs. XP movement continued  —
Wednesday, April 27, 2-4 p.m. All Agreement paradigm in Algonquian verbal paradigms compared to agreement in possessive constructions Oxford, William R.. 2014. Microparameters of agreement: A diachronic persepctive on Algonquian verb inflection. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto. Chapter 2.
Wednesday, May 11, 2-4 p.m. (Location tba) All Algonquian agreement paradigms and morpheme order Oxford, William R.. 2014. Microparameters of agreement: A diachronic persepctive on Algonquian verb inflection. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto. Chapters 3-4.