Collins and Postal (2014) postulate that English NPIs represent two distinct structures: a unary NEG structure and a binary NEG structure. Some NPIs, such as any and ever expressions, can instantiate either of these two structures in different contexts. Others (such as one use of jackshit) have only unary NEG structures. The present article seeks to provide cross-linguistic support for this hypothesis by showing that the two series of NPIs in Serbian/Croatian (Progovac 1994) should be analyzed in terms of the two structure types postulated for English NPIs.

Numeral phrases in Standard Arabic are known for gender and number mismatches1 between the numeral and the enumerated noun. This article reduces these mismatches to two morphological deletion rules. The first deletes the feminine morpheme of the numeral when the enumerated noun is feminine, and the second deletes the plural morpheme of the enumerated noun when the numeral carries a plural morpheme. The first rule is further restricted to deleting only feminine morphemes that are underlyingly part of the numeral, and not inherited via agreement with a feminine enumerated noun via a syntactic agreement process. The analysis in this article is consistent with Sadiqi's (2006) claim that the feminine form in Arabic is the basic one from which the masculine was derived historically by reducing the feminine form. The deletion analysis here also finds support from Chomsky's approach of deriving the masculine from the feminine as theoretically less costly and more explanatorily adequate.

This article investigates supralaryngeal characteristics of Japanese and Korean length and laryngeal contrasts in stops and affricates. Electropalatography data collected from five Japanese and five Korean speakers revealed similar differences among the consonants in the degree of linguopalatal contact and duration of the closure. Japanese (voiceless) geminate and Korean fortis obstruents were most constricted and had the longest duration (although considerably longer in Japanese). Japanese voiced and Korean lenis obstruents were least constricted and had the shortest duration. Japanese voiceless (singleton) and Korean aspirated obstruents showed intermediate degree of contact and duration. Both stops and affricates showed a positive correlation between degree of contact and duration. The results show that the two very different sets of phonological contrasts are implemented similarly at the supralaryngeal level. These cross-language similarities and cross-category differences are proposed to result from the application of independently-motivated phonetic enhancement rules to distinct phonological representations of laryngeal/length contrasts in the two languages.

A complete text-to-speech system has been created by the authors, based on a tube resonance model of the vocal tract and a development of Carré’s “Distinctive Region Model”, which is in turn based on the formant-sensitivity findings of Fant and Pauli (1974), to control the tube. In order to achieve this goal, significant long-term linguistic research has been involved, including rhythm and intonation studies, as well as the development of low-level articulatory data and rules to drive the model, together with the necessary tools, parsers, dictionaries and so on. The tools and the current system are available under a General Public License, and are described here, with further references in the paper, including samples of the speech produced, and figures illustrating the system description.

We argue that a multimodal approach to defining a depictive class of words called ‘ideophones’ by linguists is essential for grasping their meanings. Our argument for this approach is based on the formal properties of Pastaza Quichua ideophones, which set them apart from the non-ideophonic lexicon, and on the cultural assumptions brought by speakers to their use. We analyze deficiencies in past attempts to define this language's ideophones, which have used only audio data. We offer, instead, an audiovisual corpus which we call an ‘antidictionary’, because it defines words not with other words, but with clips featuring actual contexts of use. The major discovery revealed by studying these clips is that ideophones’ meanings can be clarified by means of a distinction found in modality and American Sign Language studies. This distinction between speaker-internal and speaker-external perspective is evident in the intonational and gestural details of ideophones’ use.

The articles in this issue were developed from presentations in the Intersections workshop held concurrently with NWAV44. The goals of that workshop were to widen and deepen the study of linguistic variation by creating intersections with other approaches to linguistic analysis.

This article engages questions about translation, phonological iconicity, and seductive ideophony. I begin by discussing the work of Paul Friedrich as it relates to questions of linguistic relativity and poetics and the qualities of music and myth that constitute poetry. I then present a poem written in Navajo by Rex Lee Jim and four translations of the poem. Three are from Navajo consultants and one of those translations will be, from a certain perspective, rather surprising. Namely, why does one consultant translate this poem as if it is composed of ideophones? The fourth translation is mine. I then work through the morphology of the poem in Navajo, saying something more about the translators and the process of translation. I then provide a transcript of a conversation I had with Blackhorse Mitchell about this poem. I use this to take up questions of phonological iconicity (punning) and the seductive quality of ideophony (the pole of music). I also place this poem within a context of the stick game in Navajo philosophy (the pole of myth). This leads, in the conclusion, to reflections about linguistic relativity, misunderstandings, sound, and poetics.

Typically, a study of variation starts from the known and works its way into the unknown. But what happens when you are analyzing variation at the same time as you are grappling with the fundamental structure of the language? Whereas variationist methods often involve doing strategic violence to the data, isolating single variables, documentation tends to encourage a broader perspective. This article shows how documentation of Nkep (Central Eastern Oceanic, Vanuatu) has progressed when guided by a focus on internal and social variation. Three variables are discussed (the near merger of two front vowels, lexical borrowing, and the expression of subject agreement) to highlight the rewards and challenges associated with drawing together two subdisciplines (variation and documentation) that have not traditionally had much to say to each other. Analyzing variation alongside documentation encourages us to write ‘symphonies of variation’, as opposed to ‘sonatas’ of individual variables.

Using the Criterial Freezing approach to movement and chain formation (Rizzi 2005, 2006, 2014; Rizzi and Shlonsky 2006, 2007), this study explores the strategies Jordanian Arabic makes available for subject extraction. I argue that subject extraction in this variety of Arabic is constrained by the postulated D-linking condition of the Subject Criterion – i.e., [spec,SubjP] is filled by an element with the same D(iscourse)-linking status as that of the subject wh-word (D-linked vs. non-D-linked). In case of questions with a D-linked wh-word, [spec,SubjP] can be filled by the D-linked particle illi or a deictic (time-point/place-point) adjunct. Unlike time-point adjuncts, the use of place-point adjuncts to fill [spec,SubjP] is subject to the effects of the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky 2001), given their low base positions. In contrast, in case of questions with a non-D-linked wh-word, I assume that [spec,SubjP] is filled by an expletive pro.

This article examines how three factors determine the surface forms of English stop-stop coarticulation across word boundaries in both native and nonnative speech: place of articulation, frequency, and speech rate. The release percentage and closure duration ratio produced by English (L1) and Mandarin (L2) speakers were measured. The results showed that a place order effect was only partially supported in L1 speech but not shown at all in L2 speech. The results also confirmed a gradient lexical effect, finding a significant correlation between self-rated frequency and overlap. In addition, the results showed that increased speech rate did not induce increased overlap, given that speakers from both groups had either more or less overlap at the fast speech rate than at the slow rate.

Coahuitlán Totonac is spoken in Veracruz, Mexico, and has been variously ascribed to two different branches of the Totonacan family tree. While recent work has begun to bring empirical evidence to the internal structure of this family tree, there remain several important areas of disagreement, in addition to the disputed affiliation of Coahuitlán. This article informs the family tree and demonstrates that Coahuitlán belongs to the Northern branch using shared innovations and two computational methods. The comparative method seeks sets of shared innovations for evidence of subgrouping. This article presents proposed shared innovations in phonology, morphology, and lexicon, which fall into two sets, one belonging to the Sierra and Lowland branches, and the other belonging to the Northern. Coahuitlán Totonac overwhelmingly shares innovations found in Northern languages and lacks innovations found in Sierra. Two quantitative methods are also used to show that Coahuitlán groups groups closely with other Northern languages.

Ideophones are described as expressive marked linguistic units with a dramaturgic depictive function. Although commonly regarded in traditional general linguistics as rare and marginal, recent research on this topic has shown that these elements are pervasive in all languages and that they might share some linguistic characteristics across languages. This article analyses Basque ideophones from a typological perspective. The main goal is to describe the structure, meaning and function of Basque ideophones and to discuss how the Basque ideophonic system fits into the cross-linguistic characterisation of these linguistic units.

We argue that an evaluation of morphosyntactic convergence between Picard and French must consider multiple variables, comparing rates of (co-)occurrence of Picard-like and French-like variants and linguistic constraints across the two varieties. Contemporary oral data from interviews with Picard–French bilinguals and French monolinguals were analyzed and contrasted with older Picard data. While future temporal reference in Picard and in French appear similar based on frequency, linguistic conditioning reveals differences across varieties and over time. Auxiliary selection displays clearer Picard–French distinctions, especially when considering the effect of linguistic factors. The intersection of variables shows that the differences between Picard and French are qualitative and not simply quantitative. In the context of the debate over the status of Northern France's obsolescent varieties, we provide empirical evidence for a mental grammar in Picard distinct from that of French, and show the relevance of comparative sociolinguistics for language planning.

The present paper is concerned with a historical puzzle: the changing position of the marker si in the extant Baltic languages, Lithuanian and Latvian. Si appears before the root in prefixed verbs and verb-finally in prefixless verbs in Lithuanian and dialectal Latvian, as opposed to a consistently verb-final position in standard Latvian and in Slavic languages, specifically Russian. This ordering is examined within a larger picture of morpheme linearization – focusing primarily on Lithuanian, but also bringing in Latvian and Latgalian data – to account for the Baltic paradigm. Historically a pronoun, si is argued to have incorporated into the verbal structure, and to maintain nowadays a binding relation with the subject of the sentence. The placement of si within the verb is shown to depend on two factors: the type of the antecedent and the morphosyntactic composition of the verb. The findings presented here also provide new evidence against the Lexicalist Hypothesis.

This article outlines the differences in goals, methods and results that variationist researchers may encounter when exploring and/or documenting a threatened language variety, and underscores special considerations and aspects of the research program that linguists must work to control for when working with endangered varieties of Western languages. In particular, it examines questions and strategies for dealing with sparse data for longitudinal studies; fewer speakers for stratified samples; the inverse relation between linguistic fluency and age; social network constraints in small speech communities; literacy-centric exercises in oral language communities; and larger project protocols designed for stable linguistic communities. Throughout the paper, the collection and analysis of Louisiana French liaison data from 1939, 1977, and 2010 provide an application of the proposed methods.

Cet article étudie la dérivation de deux types de dépendances Aʹ – les relatives et les structures à dislocation à gauche – dans le cadre du programme minimaliste. Le mandarin montre qu'une relative contenant soit un pronom résomptif soit une lacune et une dislocation à lacune sont dérivées par l'opération Accorder et sont soumises aux contraintes de localité et qu'une dislocation résomptive est dérivée par Match sans conditions d’îlot. «Transferts multiples» et « épellations multiples » sont légitimés dans les dépendances établies par Accorder mais pas dans celles dérivées par Match. Le choix du mécanisme dérivationnel dépend de l'interprétabilité des traits formels attachés à la sonde ainsi qu’à la cible dans une dépendance Aʹ.

The Munda languages of South Asia exhibit sound symbolism in their use of mimetic reduplication, to which they devote a surprisingly large percentage of their lexicons, typically upwards of ten percent. We present an extensive empirical typology of mimetic reduplication in seven Munda languages: Ho, Kera Mundari, Kharia, Mundari, Remo (Bondo), Santali, and Sora (Savara). Munda Mimetic forms can depict sensory qualities of sound, space, movement, texture, smell, taste, temperature, feelings, and sensations. The typology of mimetic reduplication in Munda varies across syntactic class, semantic domain and phonological form. This can shed light on the breadth of diverse structures in Munda languages, and may also be extrapolated to other languages and other examinations of reduplication and/or mimesis. This work provides a wealth of data to researchers of mimesis and reduplication, challenging the definition of what it means for forms to be sound-symbolic or reduplicated.