刊讯｜SSCI 期刊《语言》2022年第1-2期

LANGUAGE

Volume 98, Number 1-2, 2022

LANGUAGE（SSCI二区，2021 IF：1.8）2022年第1-2期共发文17篇。研究论文涉及会话转折、语言趋同、童年语言变化、认知与社会因素对个人语言语境敏感性的影响、自由语序语言、美式英语发音位置、名义修饰语、语料库教学等。

目录

Volume 98, Number 1

■ Distinguishing cognitive from historical influences in phonology, by Gašper Beguš

■ Predicting conversational turns: Signers' and nonsigners' sensitivity to language-specific and globally accessible cues, by Connie de Vos, Marisa Casillas, Tom Uittenbogert, Onno Crasborn, and Stephen C. Levinson

■ Experimental evidence for expectation-driven linguistic convergence, by Lacey Wade

■ Tracking linguistic change in childhood: Transmission, incrementation, and vernacular reorganization, by Jennifer Smith, Sophie Holmes-Elliott

■ Word-meaning variation in English have-sentences: The impact of cognitive versus social factors on individuals' linguistic context-sensitivity, by Muye Zhang, María Mercedes Piñango, Ashwini Deo

■ Pronoun resolution and ergativity: Effects of subjecthood and case in Niuean, by Rebecca Tollan, Daphna Heller

■ The CARE approach to incorporating undergraduate research in the phonetics/phonology classroom, by Christina Bjorndahl, Mark Gibson

■ Senior theses: Creating a community of scholars for original, authentic research, by Donna Jo Napoli, Emily Gasser, Shi-Zhe Huang

■ On Whorfian socioeconomics, by Thomas B. Pepinsky

Volume 98, Number 2

■ Sentence planning and production in Murrinhpatha, an Australian 'free word order' language, by Rachel Nordlinger, Gabriela Garrido Rodriguez, Evan Kidd

■ Irrealis is real, by Kilu von Prince, Ana Krajinović, Manfred Krifka

■ Uniformity in phonetic realization: Evidence from sibilant place of articulation in American English, by Eleanor Chodroff, Colin Wilson

■ Completive todo in Rioplatense Spanish, by Carolina Fraga

■ An emerging SELF: The copula cycle in American Sign Language, by Tory Sampson, Rachel I. Mayberry

■ Nominal appositives in grammar and discourse, by Edgar Onea, Dennis Ott

■ Exploring the use of corpus tools for teaching language variation to L2 Spanish majors, by Nausica Marcos Miguel

■ Real-time speaker evaluation: How useful is it, and what does it measure? by Martha Austen, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler

摘要

Distinguishing cognitive from historical influences in phonology

Gašper Beguš， University of California, Berkeley

Abstract Distinguishing cognitive influences from historical influences on human behavior has long been a disputed topic in behavioral sciences, including linguistics. The discussion is often complicated due to empirical evidence being consistent with both the cognitive and the historical approach. This article argues that phonology offers a unique test case for distinguishing historical and cognitive influences on grammar, and it proposes an experimental technique for testing the cognitive factor which controls for the historical factor. The article outlines a model called CATALYSIS for explaining how learnability influences phonological typology and presents experiments that simulate this process. Central to this discussion are unnatural phonological processes, that is, those that operate against universal phonetic tendencies and require complex historical trajectories in order to arise. By using statistical methods for estimating historical influences, mismatches in predictions between the cognitive and historical approaches to typology can be identified. By conducting artificial grammar learning experiments on processes for which the historical approach makes predictions that differ from those of the cognitive approach, the experimental technique proposed in this article controls for historical influences while testing cognitive factors. Results of online and fieldwork experiments on two languages, English and Slovenian, show that subjects prefer postnasal devoicing over postnasal fricative occlusion and devoicing in at least a subset of places of articulation, which aligns with the observed typology. The advantage of the proposed approach over existing experimental work is that it experimentally confirms a link between synchronic preferences and typology that is most likely not influenced by historical biases. Results suggest that complexity avoidance is the primary influence cognitive bias has on phonological systems in human languages. Applying this technique to further alternations should yield new information about those cognitive properties of phonological grammar that are not conflated with historical influences.

Key words cognitive influences, historical bias, phonology, artificial grammar learning experiments, experimental fieldwork, sound change

Predicting conversational turns: Signers' and nonsigners' sensitivity to language-specific and globally accessible cues

Connie de Vos, Marisa Casillas, Tom Uittenbogert, Onno Crasborn, and Stephen C. Levinson

Abstract Precision turn-taking may constitute a crucial part of the human endowment for communication. If so, it should be implemented similarly across language modalities, as in signed vs. spoken language. Here, in the first experimental study of turn-end prediction in sign language, we find support for the idea that signed language, like spoken language, involves turn-type prediction and turn-end anticipation. In both cases, turns like questions that elicit specific responses accelerate anticipation. We also show remarkable cross-modality predictive capacity: nonsigners anticipate signed turn ends surprisingly well. Finally, we show that despite nonsigners' ability to intuitively predict signed turn ends, early native signers do it much better by using their access to linguistic signals (here, question markers). As shown in prior work, question formation facilitates prediction, and age of sign language acquisition affects accuracy. The study thus sheds light on the kinds of features that may facilitate turn-taking universally, and those that are language-specific.

Key words turn-taking, turn-end anticipation, interactional linguistics, conversation analysis, discourse processing, Sign Language of the Netherlands, gesture

Experimental evidence for expectation-driven linguistic convergence

Lacey Wade

Abstract This article examines the role of sociolinguistic expectations in linguistic convergence, using glide-weakened /aɪ/—a salient feature of Southern US English—as a test case. I present the results of two experiments utilizing a novel experimental paradigm for eliciting convergence—the WORD-NAMING GAME task—in which participants read aloud (baseline) or hear (exposure) clues describing particular words and then give their guesses out loud. Participants converged toward a Southern-shifted model talker by producing more glide-weakened tokens of /aɪ/, without ever hearing the model talker produce this vowel. Participants in the control (Midland talker) condition exhibited no such response. Convergence was facilitated by both living in the South and producing less-weakened baseline /aɪ/ glides, but attitudinal and domain-general individual-differences measures did not reliably predict convergence behaviors. Results are discussed in terms of implications for the cognitive mechanisms underlying convergence behaviors and the mental representations of sociolinguistic knowledge.

Key words sociolinguistic cognition, convergence, individual differences, experimental sociolinguistics, Southern US speech, glide-weakened /aɪ/

Tracking linguistic change in childhood: Transmission, incrementation, and vernacular reorganization

Jennifer Smith, Sophie Holmes-Elliott

Abstract The mechanisms underlying linguistic change are well documented for adolescent and adult speech, but much less is known about how such change emerges in the childhood years. In this article we address this gap by conducting a real-time analysis of the acquisition of a rapidly expanding variable in young speakers, first in preschool and later in preadolescence. By tracking a variable undergoing change at two key stages of sociolinguistic development, transmission and incrementation, we observe directly the processes operating on individual and community grammars as children shift to the leading edge of change.

Key words variation, acquisition, transmission, incrementation, vernacular reorganization, children, glottal replacement

Word-meaning variation in English have-sentences: The impact of cognitive versus social factors on individuals' linguistic context-sensitivity

Muye Zhang, María Mercedes Piñango, Ashwini Deo

Abstract We investigate the role of two possible sets of factors, cognitive and social, in modulating an individual's linguistic context-sensitivity: the capacity of a neurocognitive system to identify information in a communicative context that satisfies the meaning requirements of a given expression in that context. We assess whether the degree of contextual facilitation of an otherwise dispreferred reading of an English have-sentence is correlated with domain-general cognitive factors—by using the AUTISM-SPECTRUM QUOTIENT (AQ) to index an individual's 'autistic-like' traits—and/or with social factors associated with gender expression—by using participants' gender group.

Acceptability ratings (n = 271) for a dispreferred but plausible locative reading were significantly higher only after the facilitatory context, suggesting that relevant context can modulate the acceptability of different readings of a have-sentence. Crucially, the degree of facilitation correlates with participants' AQ scores, but not gender group, directly implicating cognitive variability in linguistic context-sensitivity differences, and leaving open the question of individual-level variability arising from social factors. Our findings are consistent with a model of language variation in which individuals with certain cognitive styles implement their grammatical knowledge at a larger 'communicative scope' than others, thereby inducing novel usage patterns of existing variants in their speech community.

Key words sentence comprehension, contextual modulation, individual differences, meaning variation, cognitive style, autism quotient, gender

Pronoun resolution and ergativity: Effects of subjecthood and case in Niuean

Rebecca Tollan, Daphna Heller

Abstract Anaphoric pronouns such as 'it' are referentially underspecified and therefore depend on prior context for interpretation. The factors influencing their interpretation are a long-standing topic of research in syntactic and pragmatic literature. We present a novel study of pronoun resolution in the ergative-absolutive Polynesian language Niuean, investigating whether Niuean exhibits the same subject preference found for nominative-accusative languages (e.g. Chafe 1976) or whether, alternatively, the absolutive argument is preferred as a referent. Niuean also exhibits split ergativity, allowing for isolation of further effects of case (wherein listeners show a preference for antecedents that bear the same case as the pronoun) and transitivity (wherein direct objects are preferred as antecedents as compared with adjuncts). Most importantly, we observe that ergative arguments are consistently preferred as referents over clause-mate absolutive arguments, providing evidence that ergative arguments exhibit behavior parallel to that of 'subjects' in nominativeaccusative languages.

Key words pronouns, subjecthood, case, transitivity, ergativity

The CARE approach to incorporating undergraduate research in the phonetics/phonology classroom

Christina Bjorndahl, Mark Gibson

Abstract We introduce a pedagogical initiative, which we call COLLABORATIVE ACTIVE LEARNING RESEARCH-BASED EDUCATION (CARE), for incorporating authentic research into the undergraduate classroom. CARE is founded on a broad base of pedagogical scholarship, which we summarize. We propose that there are numerous benefits to engaging students in research at the undergraduate level in the phonetics/phonology classroom, provided that the integration of research is done in a pedagogically sound manner. We describe an initiative carried out in the Spring 2019 semester, in which students in combined phonetics/phonology classes carried out acoustic and ultrasound studies of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation while simultaneously investigating vowel harmony from a phonological perspective. We propose that the CARE approach to developing a course-based undergraduate research experience is one way to integrate laboratory phonology into the undergraduate curriculum.

Key words pedagogy, undergraduate research, laboratory phonology

Senior theses: Creating a community of scholars for original, authentic research

Donna Jo Napoli, Emily Gasser, Shi-Zhe Huang

Abstract After many years of having a loosely structured thesis seminar for our senior majors, the Tri-College Linguistics Department recently redesigned our program to offer students a highly scaffolded environment in which to complete their capstone requirement, which has led to improved outcomes. We argue here for the benefits of asking students to write a senior thesis and to carry out original, authentic research on a topic of their choice. We describe our seminar design and its key components—frequent incremental assignments, peer and instructor feedback leading to repeated revisions, and intentional community building—and suggest how the program might be implemented, in whole or in part, at other institutions with similar pedagogical goals.

Key words theses, writing across the curriculum, authentic research, undergraduate capstone requirements, peer review

On Whorfian socioeconomics

Thomas B. Pepinsky

Abstract Whorfian socioeconomics is an emerging interdisciplinary field of study that holds that linguistic structures explain differences in beliefs, values, and opinions across communities. This field, which draws on linguistic relativity but extends it radically, holds that linguistic features are a fundamental explanation for variation in human behavior. This essay provides a conceptual overview and methodological critique of Whorfian socioeconomics, with a particular emphasis on empirical studies that document a correlation between the presence or absence of a linguistic feature in a survey respondent's language and their responses to survey questions. Using the universe of linguistic features from the World atlas of language structures online and a wide array of responses from the World Values Survey, I show that such an approach produces highly statistically significant correlations in a majority of analyses, irrespective of the theoretical plausibility linking linguistic features to respondent beliefs and behavior. I show how two simple and well-understood statistical fixes can more accurately reflect uncertainty in these analyses, and use them to replicate two prominent findings in Whorfian socioeconomics. The essay concludes by reflecting on the common methodological challenges facing linguists and other social scientists interested in nonlinguistic effects of linguistic structures.

Key words linguistic relativity, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, survey research, social sciences, observational studies

Sentence planning and production in Murrinhpatha, an Australian 'free word order' language

Rachel Nordlinger, Gabriela Garrido Rodriguez, Evan Kidd

Abstract Psycholinguistic theories are based on a very small set of unrepresentative languages, so it is as yet unclear how typological variation shapes mechanisms supporting language use. In this article we report the first on-line experimental study of sentence production in an Australian free word order language: Murrinhpatha. Forty-six adult native speakers of Murrinhpatha described a series of unrelated transitive scenes that were manipulated for humanness (±human) in the agent and patient roles while their eye movements were recorded. Speakers produced a large range of word orders, consistent with the language having flexible word order, with variation significantly influenced by agent and patient humanness. An analysis of eye movements showed that Murrinhpatha speakers' first fixation on an event character did not alone determine word order; rather, early in speech planning participants rapidly encoded BOTH event characters and their relationship to each other. That is, they engaged in RELATIONAL ENCODING, laying down a very early conceptual foundation for the word order they eventually produced. These results support a WEAKLY HIERARCHICAL account of sentence production and show that speakers of a free word order language encode the relationships between event participants during earlier stages of sentence planning than is typically observed for languages with fixed word orders.

Key words sentence planning, sentence production, Australian languages, free word order, conceptual accessibility, eye-tracking, typology

Irrealis is real

Kilu von Prince, Ana Krajinović, Manfred Krifka

Abstract The question of whether irrealis is a meaningful concept in crosslinguistic comparison has been the subject of long-standing controversy. In this article, we argue that the semantic domain of irreality is split into two domains—the possible and the counterfactual—and that an 'irrealis' marker in a given language may refer either to only one of these domains or to both. A significant part of the crosslinguistic variation in what is referred to by the term irrealis can be traced back to this distinction. Other factors that obscure the realis/irrealis divide include functional subdivisions of the irrealis domain and paradigmatic competition within the TAM system of a language. We conclude that 'irrealis' is a crosslinguistically meaningful notion.

Key words irrealis, mood, semantics, typology, Oceanic languages

Uniformity in phonetic realization: Evidence from sibilant place of articulation in American English

Eleanor Chodroff, Colin Wilson

Abstract Phonetic realization is highly variable and highly structured within and across talkers. We examine three constraints that could structure the phonetic space of related speech sounds: target, contrast, and pattern uniformity. Target uniformity requires a uniform mapping from distinctive features to their corresponding phonetic targets within a talker, contrast uniformity requires a consistent difference in the phonetic targets that realize featural contrasts across talkers, and pattern uniformity requires a uniform template of phonetic targets across talkers. Focusing on American English sibilant fricatives, we measure and compare each constraint's influence on the phonetic targets corresponding to place of articulation. We find that target uniformity is the strongest constraint: each talker realizes a given distinctive feature value in highly similar ways across related sounds. Together with similar findings for other sound classes, this result reveals fine-grained systematicity in the mapping from phonology to phonetics and has implications for theories of speech production and speech perception.

Key words phonetic realization, sibilant fricatives, uniformity, talker variability, Bayesian models

Completive todo in Rioplatense Spanish

Carolina Fraga

Abstract In Spanish, the element todo 'all' agrees in gender and number with the noun it quantifies over (todas las ventanas 'all.F.PL the.F.PL windows.F.PL'). In this article I discuss a novel construction in Rioplatense Spanish, restricted to existentials and possessives, in which todo agrees in gender and number with a given nominal in the structure but is neither syntactically nor semantically related to it (e.g. Hay toda agua en el baño (have.PRS all.F.SG water.F.SG in the bathroom) 'There's water over the whole bathroom floor'). I argue that the syntax and the interpretation of this construction can be explained only if todo 'all' is understood to be modifying a silent element (in the sense of Kayne 2004). In particular, I propose that todo is the modifier of a PP headed by the silent preposition WITH, and that the nominal that agrees with todo is the complement of this silent P. This analysis sheds light on the structure of existential sentences and supports the view put forth in Levinson 2011, contra Freeze 1992, that a single underlying structure for possessive structures cannot be maintained.

Key words todo, all, existentials, possession, silent WITH, silent SPACE, Spanish

An emerging SELF: The copula cycle in American Sign Language

Tory Sampson, Rachel I. Mayberry

Abstract We question the commonly accepted assumption that American Sign Language (ASL) has no overt copula. We present evidence that one of the functions of the sign SELF in present-day ASL is as a copula. This sign evolved into its current function by way of a grammaticalization process called the 'copula cycle' (Katz 1996). The copula cycle consists of a deictic item transforming into a demonstrative pronoun and then into a copula by means of a series of syntactic reanalyses. We present corpus evidence from Old French Sign Language (LSF) in the 1850s, Old ASL in the 1910s, and present-day ASL dating to the 2000s and the late 2010s, and with these data analyze ASL examples of syntactic structures outlined by Li and Thompson (1977) that led to the increased use of SELF as a copula. We also find that SELF, which is not generally regarded as a pointing sign, follows the grammaticalization scheme for pointing signs outlined by Pfau and Steinbach (2006), indicating that the scheme may be used for signs that are derived from demonstratives. Ultimately, we conclude that ASL undergoes the same grammaticalization processes as spoken languages.

Key words grammaticalization, copula, copula cycle, corpus linguistics, historical linguistics, American Sign Language

Nominal appositives in grammar and discourse

Edgar Onea, Dennis Ott

Abstract In this article, we develop a theory of the form and interpretation of nonrestrictive nominal appositives (NAPs) by combining two recent syntactic and pragmatic approaches. Following Ott (2016), we assume that NAPs are independent elliptical speech acts, which are linearly interpolated into their host sentences in production. Building on insights in Onea 2016, we argue that NAPs make their pragmatic contribution as short answers to discourse-structuring POTENTIAL QUESTIONS. We show how these two assumptions combine to yield a comprehensive theory of NAPs that captures their central syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties and furthermore sheds light on the mechanisms that govern their linear interpolation.

Key words apposition, questions, ellipsis, parenthesis, syntax, pragmatics, discourse

Exploring the use of corpus tools for teaching language variation to L2 Spanish majors

Nausica Marcos Miguel

Abstract Discussing language variation in introductory linguistics courses is a given in helping university students understand that speakers and communities use language differently. For Spanish majors/minors in the US, such content can be explored in linguistics courses taught in Spanish. However, little research has been done on pedagogy for teaching Hispanic linguistics in this context. Following an action-based design, this study contributes to research on linguistics pedagogy by exploring how students in four sections of an introductory Spanish linguistics course reacted not only to the topic of social and/or structural variation but also to the use of corpus tools in exploring this topic.

Key words corpus tools, language awareness, linguistics pedagogy, materials research, Spanish L2, action research, language variation

Real-time speaker evaluation: How useful is it, and what does it measure?

Martha Austen, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler

Abstract Indexical associations are a crucial construct in third-wave variationist work, but little is understood about how perceivers incorporate indexical information over the course of sociolinguistic perception. In classic speaker evaluation, participants listen to a stimulus and report evaluations after listening, limiting our access to the moment-to-moment process of updating social percepts. Studies developing in-the-moment tools have combined methods development with substantive theoretical questions, hindering assessment. We test a continuous evaluation tool using a gestalt style shift and the English variables (ING) and like. The tool captures the expected reactions but has poor time granularity and very high variability. Divergence between slider responses and after-the-fact ratings suggests that the tasks may depend on a different mix of processes, underlining the multiplicity of sociolinguistic cognition processes.

Key words sociolinguistic cognition, sociolinguistic perception, speaker evaluation, methods, sociolinguistic monitor, (ING), vernacular like

期刊简介

Language, a journal of the Linguistic Society of America, is published quarterly and contains articles, short reports, and book reviews on all aspects of linguistics, focusing on the area of theoretical linguistics. Since 2013, Language features online content in addition to the print edition, including supplemental materials and articles presented in various sections: Teaching Linguistics; Language and Public Policy; Commentaries; Research Reports; and Perspectives. Language has been the primary literary vehicle for the Society since 1924.

Language是美国语言学会的期刊，每季度出版一次，收录语言学各个方面的文章、简短报告和书评，重点关注理论语言学领域。自2013年以来，《语言》除了印刷版外，还提供在线内容，包括补充材料和文章，在不同的部分呈现：教学语言学；语言与公共政策；评论；研究报告；和展望。自1924年以来，语言一直是协会的主要文字载体。

官网地址：

https://www.linguisticsociety.org/lsa-publications/language

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