2013-2014
Meeting times: Fridays 1-2:30 pm, room 117 (alternating with the Agreement reading group)
This group is part of the Syntactic Interfaces Research Group (SIRG) and investigates interactions between phonology and sentence structure. The goal this semester is to look at how word order and prosody interact. More specifically, the goal is to see how prosodic evidence can be used certain syntactic analyses, with a special focus on VSO and VOS word orders across different languages. Please email emily.elfner [at] mcgill.ca (Emily Elfner) to be added to the email list. All are welcome!
Lauren Eby Clemens and Maria Polinsky: Verb-initial word-orders (Primarily in Austronesian and Mayan languages)”.
| Date | Topic & Presenter | Reading(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Fall 2013 | ||
| Friday, Sept 20 | Emily/Michael | Kristine Yu (2009). The sound of ergativity: morphosyntax-prosody mapping in Samoan. Proceedings of NELS 39. Grosjean, Grosjean, and Lane (1979): The patterns of silence: Performance structures in sentence productions. |
| Friday, Sept 27 | Emily/Lisa | Lauren Eby Clemens and Maria Polinsky: Verb-initial word-orders (Primarily in Austronesian and Mayan languages). |
| Friday, Nov 15 | Michael | Structural Ambiguities and Prosody. (Snedeker & Truswell 2003, Kraljic & Brennan 2005, Lehiste 1973) |
| Friday, Nov 29 | Maayan Adar and Henrison Hsieh | Report on current experiment on Tagalog. Also: Sasha Calhoun "The Interaction of Prosody and Syntax in Samoan Focus Marking" |
| Friday, Dec 14 | Henrison and Maayan | More on experiment |
| Winter 2014 | ||
| Friday, Jan 20 | Emily | Lauren Eby Clemens’ recent NELS paper “The prosody of Niuean Pseudo Noun Incorporation” |
| Friday, Feb 7 | Maire Noonan | Norvin Richard's (2010) "Uttering Trees" |
| Friday, Feb 21 | Lisa/Henrison | Joey Sabbagh's "Word order and prosodic structure constraints in Tagalog" |
| Friday, Feb 28 | Emily | Experimental evidence for prosodic phrasing in Irish |