Fdsl 13 Book of Abstracts
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
FDSL 13 13th European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages University of Göttingen December 5-7, 2018 BOOK OF ABSTRACTS conference venue Alte Mensa, Wilhelmsplatz 3 (city center) invited speakers John Bailyn (Stony Brook University) Catherine Rudin (Wayne State College) Irina Sekerina (CUNY) Duško Vitas (University of Belgrade) workshops – Semantics of Noun Phrases organized by Ljudmila Geist (Stuttgart) – Heritage Slavic Languages in Children and Adolescents organized by Natalia Gagarina (Berlin) funded by Invited Speakers ––– in order of appearance ––– Cost%and%intervention:%a%strong%theory%of%weak%islands% In%this%talk,%I%address%certain%problems%in%the%analysis%of%weak%islands%that%emerge%within%the% feature<driven%account%of%movement%commonly%assumed%in%recent%syntactic%theory.%The%puzzle% involves%the%tension%between%Phase%Theory%(Chomsky%2001%etc.)%with%its%assumed%core%PIC% constraint%(the%Phase%Impenetrability%Condition)%under%which%no%feature%can%probe%down%inside% the%complement%of%a%phase%head,%and%the%observation%that%basic%wh<island%effects%are%“mild”,% everything%else%being%equal%(hence%their%description%as%“weak”%islands):%%% % 1)% a.%%??Who%do%you%wonder%whether%John%knows%%t%?% % % (mild)% % b.%%%*How%do%you%wonder%whether%John%fixed%the%car%t"?% % (severe)% % Traditional%theories%attribute%the%mild%deviance%of%(1a)%to%Subajcency%(the%“mild”%constraint)% and%the%severe%deviance%of%(1b)%to%the%Empty%Category%Principle,%which%in%traditional%form%(Rizzi% 1990),%required%that%adjuncts,%but%not%arguments,%be%antecedent%governed.%The%problem%is%that% the%adjunct<argument%asymmetry%in%(1)%is%entirely%unexpected%under%current%theories,%which% predict%that%all%wh%island%extractions%should%be%equally%underivable,%since%the%phase%edge% (intermediate%SpecCP)%is%occupied%(here%by%whether),%and%without%accessing%the%edge,%an% element%cannot%be%targeted%for%movement.%% % In%this%talk%I%motivate%a%theory%that%accounts%for%adjunct<argument%asymmetries%without% recourse%to%any%GB<era%machinery.%%The%account%relies%on%a%feature<based%version%of% intervention%(Rizzi%2004),%on%the%one%hand,%and%the%cost%of%building%additional%edge%positions% for%long%distance%extraction,%on%the%other.%%I%show%that%the%theory%successfully%accounts%for% Scrambling%/%wh<movement%asymmetries%in%Slavic%as%well%as%for%the%well<known%indicative% extraction%ban%found%in%Russian%and%Polish%long<distance%wh<movement.% Demonstratives and Definiteness: Multiple Determination in Balkan Slavic Catherine Rudin (Wayne State College) Multiple Determination constructions — nominal phrases with more than one marker of definiteness — raise numerous questions about the morphology, syntax, and semantics of definite DPs within and across languages. This talk focuses in particular on one instance of Multiple Determination, DPs containing a demonstrative plus one or more definite articles in colloquial Bulgarian and Macedonian, with implications for the study of Multiple Determination more generally. This type of Multiple Determination is not mere definiteness agreement; rather, the demonstrative and article each constitute an independent semantic and syntactic element. The distinctive meaning and usage of these constructions suggests a possibly-universal semantics for Demonstrative + Definite phrases. Multiple Determination constructions in the two Balkan Slavic languages are extremely similar, but differ in crucial details. In Bulgarian but not Macedonian a “doubling” article is limited to adjectives and other modifiers; in Macedonian nouns can also host the article. This distinction in which lexical categories can be definite-marked supports a more elaborated syntactic structure of DP in Bulgarian, containing an additional projection not present in Macedonian. Finally, a glance at other types of Multiple Determination in the Balkan languages (including Balkan Slavic) indicates a patchwork of appositive and non- appositive constructions; the existence of Multiple Determination has been considered a Balkanism, but the constructions involved are far from uniform. Psycholinguistics, Experimental Syntax, and Syntactic Theory of Russian Irina A. Sekerina (The City University of New York) Since the introduction of formal experimental methods to syntactic theory (Cowart, 1997; Schütze, 1996) implemented in experimental syntax (Myers, 2009; Sprouse et al., 2016), there is an ongoing debate about what experimental methods can tell us about syntactic theory. On the one hand, informal grammaticality judgments traditionally used in theoretical syntax are the necessary starting point for a systematic reflection on linguistic phenomena (Phillips, 2010). On the other, formal methods may be necessary to give us more precise and stable tools for developing the empirical basis of theories and thus significantly contribute to establishing these theories. However, a complete switch from informal judgments to formal experiments is costly in terms of time and money. In this talk, I will explore a potential contribution of formal experimental data from adult participants to morphosyntactic theories by applying Sprouse’s (2016) experimental syntax framework to Russian. In Study 1, Wh-Movement vs. Scrambling, I will compare a syntactic explanation of filler-gap dependencies with an explanation from another cognitive system. In Study 2, Gender Prediction, I will present online empirical evidence for restructuring of the category of grammatical gender in heritage Russian. Finally, in Study 3, Genitive of Negation, I will discuss preliminary data from a factorial design experiment with a large sample that investigates constraints on usage of the genitive of negation in modern Russian. The formalization of Serbian: lexical resources and tools Duško Vitas University of Belgrade In this presentation we will present the processing of texts/corpora in Serbian that are based on lexical recognition methods that are supported by Unitex/GramLab, a corpus processing suite. These methods use various types of morphological dictionaries; in more details, we will present the principles of the classification of inflected words, the formalisms of the production of morphological dictionaries of Serbian, the inflection of multi-word units and its formalization, the processing of derivational phenomena, and treatment of unknown words. The interface between these dictionaries and syntax is established through local grammars. Their use will be illustrated by examples of homography disambiguation with so-called ELAG grammars and by the recognition of some classes of nested named entities. We will also briefly present corpora of contemporary Serbian, more specifically the aligned Serbian-Croatian literary corpus that is based on the ASPAC text collection. This corpus is used to investigate the statistical relevance of often listed discriminators of these two usus. Workshop Heritage Slavic Languages in Children and Adolescents Wednesday, Dec 5 9:30-15:00 Taberna – in alphabetical order – Code-switching in French-Russian simultaneous bilingual acquisition (2;1 to 4;0) Oksana Bailleul, PhD, Sorbonne Nouvelle University Introduction Recent research on bilingual acquisition has shown that young bilinguals have differents paths in the development of two distinct languages. At two-words stage some young bilinguals start to produce unilingual sentences in their both languages (De Houwer, 1990; Sinka & Schelletter, 1998; Deuchar & Muntz, 2003, etc.), while others use mixed utterances and simple syntactic structures in their weaker language (Schlyter, 1995; Lanza 1997; Deuchar & Quay, 2000; Serratrice, 2002; Jisa, 2000; Juan-Garau & Pérez-Vidal, 2000; Müller & Kupisch, 2003; Comeau et al., 2007). Since bilingual children are exposed to two languages, they may receive less total exposure to each of their languages than monolingual children. Thus, unbalanced input may result in unbalanced proficiency, e.g. one language developing faster or slower than the other one (Lanza, 1997; Döpke, 1998; King & Fogle, 2013). The societal language can sometimes influence the weaker one and the child would use more mixed utterances in his/her heritage language on the level of vocabulary (content and function words, Deprez, 1994; Jisa, 2000), morphology (grammatical morphemes) and syntax (Schlyter, 1993; Quay, 2008). Methodology This study focuses on language acquisition of a bilingual child growing up in a French- Russian speaking family (French-speaking father and a Russian-speaking mother) and hears these two languages from her birth. The couple applies 'one parent - one language' principle. The child lives in France and has developed dominance in the societal language. The child has been recorded during spontaneous and natural interaction with both of her parents for the period of two years (from 2;00 to 4;00). The corpora consist of 68 hours recordings and of 28 hours of transcriptions. The data was collected on weekly basis during dyadic and triadic natural 'parent - child' conversations in different contexts: picture-book reading, guided activity and a free play. Results The findings have shown a shift from dominant bilingualism to the harmonious use of both languages at the age of 3. At this age, the acquisition of Russian grammatical categories was characterised by a rapid growth. The shift from dominant bilingualism to the harmonious use of both languages was accompanied by the changes of the child’s linguistic soundscape, the use of parental discourse strategies and input frequency in Russian. Unilingual French