17th November 2023 12:20 PM

Phonetics Lab Meeting

We will continue our discussion of Kramer's paper on vowel nasalisation:

KRÄMER, M. (2019). Is vowel nasalisation phonological in English? A systematic review. English Language & Linguistics, 23(2), 405-437. doi:10.1017/S1360674317000442

27th November 2023 04:30 PM

Linguistics Colloquium Speaker: Anna Bugaeva to speak on Appositive Possession in Ainu and Indigenous American Languages

The Department of Linguistics proudly presents Dr. Anna Bugaeva, Associate Professor at Tokyo University of Science. 

Dr. Bugaeva will speak on "Appositive Possession in Ainu and Indigenous American Languages: Inherited Feature or Rarum?".

Abstract:

This talk is based on Bugaeva et al (2022) and draws from Bugaeva's ongoing collaboration with Johanna Nichols aiming to find out with what American linguistic populations Ainu matches best.

Ainu is probably a good match for northwestern North America as well as with the loose areal grouping known as Paleosiberian, but we need to verify this supposition using quantitative typology.

Appositive possession is one shared typological property proposed by Nichols; this talk presents the Ainu construction in detail,  and then examines its worldwide and North American distribution.

I then examine Nichol’s current hypothesis whereby North America is settled in three distinct waves:  coastal entries ~25,000 and ~15,000 years ago and inland entry from ~15,000 years ago.

29th November 2023 12:20 PM

PhonDAWG - Phonetics Lab Data Analysis Working Group

Yao will discuss her Q-paper project.

30th November 2023 04:30 PM

Linguistics Colloquium Speaker: Amalia Skilton will discuss Anaphoric Demonstratives

The Cornell Linguistics Department proudly presents Linguistics Colloquium Speaker and Cornell Klarman Fellow  Dr. Amalia Skilton, who will give a talk titled:

"Anaphoric demonstratives occur with fewer and different pointing gestures than exophoric demonstratives"

Abstract:

Demonstratives such as this/that and here/there have a close relationship with gesture: when people produce these words, they are very likely to point. But not every demonstrative occurs with a gesture, and not every pointing gesture displays the same articulatory form.

Thus, in this talk I explore the lexical and information-structural factors that affect the co-organization of demonstratives and pointing. My data comes from speakers of Ticuna, an Indigenous Amazonian language isolate which displays six place-referring demonstratives.

I show that four of the Ticuna place-referring demonstratives are always exophoric (i.e., pick out a referent from the physical surroundings) while two are primarily anaphoric (picking out a referent from the preceding discourse), and I argue that this contrast in phoric type overlaps with, but is distinct from, the pragmatic contrast between new and previously mentioned referents.

Looking to a video corpus of landscape description interviews, I then examine how phoric type and new vs. mentioned status affect the participants' use of pointing gestures accompanying demonstratives. In contrast to claims in the pragmatics literature, Ticuna interview participants pointed with a substantial minority of anaphoric demonstratives.

However, they pointed more often with exophoric demonstratives and with demonstratives -- whether exophoric or anaphoric -- that introduced new referents. Participants were also more likely to use index-finger handshapes with exophoric demonstratives, and to use full arm extension with demonstratives introducing new referents.

These findings indicate that the lexical and pragmatic properties of demonstratives influence, but do not deterministically control, the rate and form of co-demonstrative gesture.

Bio:

Amalia studies language use in interaction across cultures and the lifespan. Her research interests include first language acquisition, pragmatics, and language documentation. All of her research is based on her own fieldwork – she has conducted over 26 months of fieldwork in the Amazon Basin with speakers of two Indigenous languages, Ticuna (isolate) and Máíhɨ̃ki (Tukanoan).

As of July 2021, Amalia became a Klarman Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at Cornell University. Previously, she was an NSF SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellow, affiliated with the Department of Linguistics at UT Austin and the Language Development Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. Amalia received her PhD from Berkeley Linguistics in 2019.

In her current postdoctoral work, Amalia studies language acquisition and pragmatic development in young children (aged 1-7 years) learning Ticuna. Specifically, she asks how children acquire demonstrative words like this/that and here/there; how they co-organize these words with visual behaviors, such as pointing and gaze; and how demonstrative use varies cross-linguistically. Read more about Amalia's research with Ticuna speakers on her Research web page.