Depuis Spitta-Bey (1880), une littérature riche et détaillée décrit invariablement l'inventaire vocalique de surface de l'arabe du Caire comme incluant des voyelles moyennes brèves, [e] et [o]. Une nouvelle ère s'ouvre un siècle plus tard avec l'apparition soudaine d'un consensus massif sur l'idée que les voyelles moyennes brèves ne sont pas attestées en arabe cairote. Une différence d'une telle nature et d'une telle ampleur a nécessairement des conséquences sur l'analyse du système phonologique. Certaines de ces conséquences sont mises en évidence dans le présent article. Il est montré que le déni de la présence de [e] et [o] dans la langue conduit mécaniquement à inférer l'existence de processus phonologiques fictifs, et qu'une description de la réalité impose la reconnaissance de ces voyelles. La littérature pertinente est passée en revue, des tests originaux permettant de vérifier cette affirmation sont proposés, ainsi que le témoignage de mesures instrumentales.

This paper investigates the syncretism exhibited by the Korean verbal suffix -eci. In addition to its widely known appearance in the passive construction, -eci can also be used to derive verbs expressing potentiality. In this paper, I show that two independently motivated theoretical tools — (i) the articulated verbal structure with root, verbalizer, and Voice; and (ii) the assumption that morphological identity signifies the morpheme's realization of an identical syntactic head — accurately explain the passive-potential syncretism in Korean. Specifically, I argue that -eci realizes a syntactic head that the passive and potential structures have in common: vGO, the verbalizer marking the eventuality of ‘change’. I attribute the systematic morpho-syntactic and semantic contrasts between passives and potentials to the (non)existence of VoicePASS, the projection introducing an implicit external argument. The analysis successfully captures the properties of the other constructions formed upon -eci — namely, derived change-of-state and lexical inchoative predicates.

This article examines passive-type constructions in Mauritian Creole, arguing that they are topic, not passive constructions. I claim that their initial argument (the displaced object) occupies the specifier position of a Topic Phrase, not the structural subject position. This proposal is motivated by the fact that nothing at the surface identifies the displaced object as a grammatical subject, except its position relative to an auxiliary or verb. The topic analysis is supported by both semantic restrictions relating to specificity and animacy and syntactic restrictions relating to distribution (word order) and coordination. It is also supported by the fact that these same restrictions do not apply in unaccusatives, a structurally similar type of construction. The important contribution of this article is that passive-type constructions in Mauritian Creole are ‘apparent’ rather ‘real’ passives, with the wider implication being that creoles, like many languages, do not use canonical passives to express passive meaning.

Previous evidence has suggested that acoustic similarity between first language (L1) and second language (L2) sounds is an accurate indicator of the speakers’ L2 classification patterns. This study investigates this assumption by examining how speakers of an under-researched language, namely Cypriot Greek, classify L2 English vowels in terms of their L1 categories. The experimental protocol relied on a perception and a production study. For the purpose of the production study, two linear discriminant analysis (LDA) models, one with both formants and duration (FD) and one with only formants (F) as input, were used to predict this classification; the models included data from both English and Cypriot Greek speakers. The perception study consisted of a classification task performed by adult Cypriot Greek advanced speakers of English who permanently resided in Cyprus. The results demonstrated that acoustic similarity was a relatively good predictor of speakers’ classification patterns as the majority of L2 vowels classified with the highest proportion were predicted with success by the LDA models. In addition, the F model was better than the FD model in predicting the full range of responses. This shows that duration features were less important than formant features for the prediction of L2 vowel classification.

We investigate whether Palestinian Arabic (PA), as spoken by the local Palestinian refugee population in Beirut, is converging with Lebanese Arabic (LA), the majority variety. Using a sociolinguistic framework, we target three variables considered to be susceptible to convergent change. We find evidence of contact-induced change in PA in the variable raising of word-medial /a:/ to [e:], as well as in the attrition of socially marked exponents of verbal negation. By contrast, in the case of the third variable, the future temporal reference system, the evidence for convergence is less compelling on account of key differences between the contact varieties, including the vertiginous rise of the proclitic future marker ħa- in PA. We implicate the respective social salience of the targeted variables in their differential susceptibility to convergence. Our results afford new insights into dialect contact and elucidate under-studied patterns of grammatical variation and change in Levantine Arabic.

This paper develops a new analysis of partial wh-movement in Indonesian, a construction which raises seemingly challenging problems for criterial freezing. It is proposed that partially-moving wh-phrases in Indonesian are structured as focused expressions properly containing a wh-interrogative phrase. It is argued that the derivation of partial wh-movement in Indonesian involves sub-extraction, or movement out of a moved element, to evade a freezing violation that would otherwise ensue. More specifically, it involves focus movement of the focused XP to the intermediate non-interrogative C-system, followed by sub-extraction of the QP from the XP to the matrix interrogative C-system. The analysis receives independent empirical support from the amelioration of freezing effects observed in focused wh-questions in Japanese.

This article provides the first systematic account of relativization in Likpakpaln, an understudied Mabia (Gur) language of Ghana. Broadly speaking, Likpakpaln features two types of relative clauses: restrictive and non-restrictive. Both types of relative clauses are finite and marked by a relative pronoun as well as a clausal definite determiner. The first type is always headed by an indefinite noun. The second is invariably headed by a definite head noun, is additionally marked by a prosodic break, and is usually under focus. The relative pronoun is a composite form comprised of a noun class agreement marker and an invariant relative marker. A number of the features of relative clauses in Likpakpaln align it with other Mabia languages of the region, whereas others distinguish it from these languages. This analysis situates Likpakpaln within its genealogical and areal context while providing new typological perspectives on the Mabia languages as a whole.

In this squib, I provide arguments in favour of the view that Danish rundt is a postposition. The functional, semantic, and syntactic properties of adpositions are discussed, and I show that competing analyses of rundt are falsifiable while the postposition analysis itself is not falsified.

Cinque (2020) presents a unified theory positing that various types of relative clauses (RCs) originate from a single, double-headed universal structure via raising or matching. The Frame Noun-Modifying Clause (FRC) as described and analyzed by Matsumoto et al. (2017a, 2017b) presents a significant challenge to Cinque's framework, as it does not conform to any of Cinque's identified RC types, which include amount RCs, kind(-defining) RCs, restrictive RCs and non-restrictive RCs. The FRC eludes derivation via the proposed matching or raising mechanisms. Determining the semantic link between the head noun and the FRC, as well as its external merger position, remains elusive. One might suggest that inserting additional material into the FRC, which incorporates a plausible internal head, could clarify their connection. This approach falls short of providing a systematic and coherent syntactic criterion, relying instead on semantic intuition that lacks operational reliability.

This squib discusses a construction heard during weather reports on CBC Radio One in Manitoba whereby personal pronouns appear as the subjects of weather predicates. We show that the use of we/you in statements like we are minus 15 degrees and Brandon, you are sunny is unlike other non-prototypical uses for personal pronouns that have been noted in the literature and argue they index place rather than person. We note that the deictic coordinates of the utterance that are spelled out by these pronouns are necessary for a felicitous interpretation of weather statements, even though they are typically implicit. This implicit deixis, in turn, sheds light on a long-standing claim that weather-it, in contrast to a true expletive, is ‘quasi-argumental’ (Chomsky 1981). That is, we suggest that the deictic coordinates of an utterance are ‘quasi-arguments’.

The multilingual landscape of Canada creates opportunities for many heterogeneous bilingual communities to experience systematic phonetic variation within and across languages and dialects, and exposes listeners to different pronunciation variants. This paper examines phonetic variation through the lens of an ongoing sound change in Cantonese involving word-initial [n] and [l] across two primed lexical decision tasks (Experiment 1: Immediate repetition priming task, Experiment 2: Long-distance repetition priming task). Our main question is: How are sound change pronunciation variants recognized and represented in a Cantonese-English bilingual lexicon? The results of both experiments suggest that [n]- and [l]-initial variants facilitate processing in both short and long-term spoken word recognition. Thus, regular exposure to Cantonese endows bilingual listeners with the perceptual flexibility to dually and gradiently map pronunciation variants to a single lexical representation.

Aoun and Li (2003) argued that whether the head of Chinese relative clauses can reconstruct at Logical Form is determined by its phrasal category. When the head is a noun phrase, it can reconstruct; but when it is a quantifier phrase, it cannot. This paper uses a sentence-picture matching experiment to investigate this claim. The results showed that a quantifier phrase can reconstruct. Thus, we do not need to stipulate a noun phrase/quantifier phrase distinction for the reconstruction of heads in Chinese relative clauses. Both types of phrases can reconstruct, predicted by the head-raising analysis of relative clauses.

Most people working in the field of linguistics in the US and Canada have an intuitive sense of who the “major players” are among PhD-granting linguistics departments. Our analysis demonstrates that the frequently-perceived hierarchy of linguistics programs is indeed correct. Drawing on publicly available information from Winter/Spring, 2019 on faculty at all PhD-granting linguistics programs across the US and Canada, we use social network and heat map visualizations to demonstrate the existence of an extraordinarily strong and relatively stable hierarchy of programs whose graduates dominate the linguistics academic job market. A secondary finding is that many of the top programs are characterized by gender imbalances. We argue that the top programs’ tremendous influence on the job market as a whole affords these programs the ability – indeed, the responsibility – to take the lead in effecting positive change in the field's hiring patterns more broadly.