Speaker: Martha Johnson (QP2)
Title: The relationship between frequency and semantic transparency for derived-base pairs in English and Russian
Abstract: There is an observation in the morphological literature that derived words that are more frequent than their bases (like government, which is more frequent than its base govern) tend to diverge semantically from their bases (Hay 2001). In other words, high-frequency derived words tend to lack semantic transparency. However, there is also some evidence that languages differ in how sensitive the meaning of a derived word is to word frequency (Günther et al. 2018, McKenzie and Sims 2019). Using word vectors, I examine the relationship between word frequency and semantic transparency of English and Russian derived words. I find that the relationship is different in the two languages. I discuss whether the results can be explained by differences in morphological structure in the two languages.
Speaker: Yu Jin Song (QP1)
Title: Children’s use of uptalk in narratives
Abstract: Uptalk refers to the phenomenon in which a speaker uses a rising intonational contour at the end of a declarative utterance (Warren, 2016). While it is fairly well documented that speakers across English varieties, age, and gender use uptalk to convey meanings such as continuation (e.g., Shokeir, 2008), little attention has been paid to the use of uptalk by children. In this work, I aim to fill this gap by examining the use of uptalk in narratives produced by children speaking Midwestern American English. Twenty-four female adults (ages 19-29), older (ages 10-11) and younger (ages 6-7) children narrated a wordless picture book of two well-known stories. Utterances were annotated to identify the phonological form and were analyzed with reference to the picture stimuli to investigate the function. Results suggest that children as young as 6 years of age use the same uptalk forms in their narratives as often as adults do. However, while adults and older children used uptalk more mid-narrative, possibly associating uptalk with continuation, younger children did not show the same pattern. This could suggest that younger children either might not have acquired the same form-function association or could use uptalk for a different function. Further function analysis is necessary to understand such differences.
Speaker: Damayanti Tiwari (QP1)
Title: Gujarati Demonstratives: change in semantic content and the role of exophoricity
Abstract: Modern Gujarati, a standard Indo-Aryan language spoken in Western India, makes a four-way distinction in its demonstrative system. This pattern contrasts with closely related standard languages Hindi and Marathi, which only make a two-way distinction. Fieldwork on the non-standard Bhili-Khandeshi languages reveals that there are synchronic varieties with four-way demonstrative contrasts (Vasava, Chodri, Noiri) and three-way ones (Gamit, Kukna, Pawri). In this talk, I attempt to understand the distinction between two-way, three-way, and four-way demonstrative contrasts by focusing on a diachronic examination of the Gujarati demonstrative system. A study of representative data shows that Old Gujarati was similar to Hindi and Marathi in making only a two-way demonstrative distinction, while 19th century Gujarati made a three-way distinction. The synchronic four-way contrast of Gujarati appears to be only a recent development. In this presentation, I will describe the distribution of demonstratives at each stage of Gujarati, focusing on the distinction between exophoric and anaphoric uses. My diagnostics are based on Ahn (2017, 2019), who provides cross-linguistic data to argue that languages distinguish between the two kinds of readings. I will show that while Gujarati shows sensitivity to this distinction, its demonstratives do not perfectly map onto this distinction, indicating the need for closer investigation.
Accommodation statement: If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, please contact Ashwini Deo at deo.13@osu.edu. In general, requests made two weeks before the event will allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.