This study investigates whether alternation learning is facilitated by a matching phonotactic generalization. In a series of artificial grammar learning experiments, English learners were trained on artificial languages evincing categorical vowel harmony alternations across morpheme boundaries. These languages differed in the degree of harmony within stems (disharmonic, semi-harmonic, and harmonic), and thus the degree of phonotactic support for the alternation. Results indicate that alternation learning was best when supported by matching stem phonotactics (harmonic language; experiment 1). Learners, however, were reluctant to extend a learned phonotactic constraint to novel unseen alternations (experiments 2 and 3). Taken together, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that alternation learning is facilitated by a matching static phonotactic generalization, but that learners are conservative in positing alternations in the absence of overt evidence for them.

The CARTOGRAPHIC PROGRAM has investigated interesting crosslinguistic linear orderings among various sentence constituents. Its signature technical move is to postulate HIERARCHIES OF FUNCTIONAL PROJECTIONS related by functional selection. I note three problems that functional hierarchies encounter in capturing linear order: ‘explanation’, ‘plenitude’, and ‘rigidity’. I compare linearity in cartography with linearity in the integers, which involves a single relation (<) ordering the domain. I consider work by Scontras et al. (2017) arguing for a single ‘inequality relation’ underlying the ordering of attributive adjectives in nominals and show how this result can be incorporated into a feature-driven theory of syntactic projection. This captures crosslinguistic linear orderings without appeal to functional selection or functional hierarchies.

Many languages of the Mayan family restrict the extraction of transitive (ergative) subjects for focus, WH-questions, and relativization (Ā-extraction). We follow Aissen (2017b) in labeling this restriction the ERGATIVE EXTRACTION CONSTRAINT (EEC). In this article, we offer a unified account of the EEC within Mayan languages, as well as an analysis of the special construction known as AGENT FOCUS (AF) used to circumvent it. Specifically, we propose that the EEC has a similar source across the subset of Mayan languages that exhibit it: INTERVENTION. The intervention problem is created when an object DP structurally intervenes between the Ā-probe on C0 and the ergative subject. Evidence that intervention by the object is the source of the problem comes from a handful of exceptional contexts that permit transitive subjects to extract in languages which normally ban this extraction, and conversely, a context that exceptionally bans ergative extraction in a language which otherwise allows it. We argue that the problem with Ā-extracting the ergative subject across the intervening object connects to the requirements of the Ā-probe on C0: the probe on C0 is bundled to search simultaneously for [Ā] and [D] features. This relates the Mayan patterns to recent proposals for extraction patterns in Austronesian languages (e.g. Legate 2014, Aldridge 2017b) and elsewhere (van Urk 2015). Specifically, adapting the proposal of Coon & Keine 2020, we argue that in configurations in which a DP object intervenes between the probe on C0 and an Ā-subject, conflicting requirements on movement lead to a derivational crash. While we propose that the EEC has a uniform source across the family, we argue that AF constructions vary Mayaninternally in how they circumvent the EEC, accounting for the variation in behavior of AF across the family. This article contributes both to our understanding of parametric variation internal to the Mayan family and to the discussion of variation in Ā-extraction asymmetries and syntactic ergativity crosslinguistically.

Velum movement signals generated from real-time magnetic resonance imaging videos of thirty-five German speakers were used to investigate the physiological conditions that might promote sound change involving the development of contrastive vowel nasality. The results suggest that, in comparison to when a nasal consonant precedes a voiced obstruent, the velum gesture associated with a nasal consonant preceding a voiceless obstruent undergoes gestural rescaling and temporal rephasing. This further suggests that the diachronic development of contrastive vowel nasality comprises two stages: the first stage involves gestural shortening and realignment, while the second stage involves a trading relationship between source and effect.

There has been considerable debate as to whether word-level metrical prominence asymmetries are a universal feature of languages. African tone languages have been at the heart of this debate, as many of these languages do not show clear phonetic evidence of lexical stress. This article explores metrical prominence asymmetries in Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language, by examining such asymmetries through the lens of speech timing. Forged within a dynamical model of metrical structure, a metronome-based phrase-repetition task known as SPEECH CYCLING is used to investigate the relative timing of syllables hypothesized to be metrically prominent and metrically weak. Previous research using the task has shown that metrically prominent syllables are attracted to certain relative positions within a repetition cycle. Results of two experiments show that foot heads in Medʉmba also show this behavior, supporting their status as metrically prominent. These results suggest that true metrical prominence asymmetries exist in a broader range of languages than previously thought, and that relative timing serves as an important unifying property of metrical structure crosslinguistically.

The mission of the Teaching Linguistics section of Language is to publish high-quality peer-reviewed articles in the area of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Publications in the section focus on issues that relate not only to the direct teaching of linguistics, but also to the application of linguistic concepts and theories and the insight it provides about teaching and education more broadly.

Using novel data from Kipsigis (Southern Nilotic; Kenya), we present the first attested case of across-the-board paradigmatic tonal polarity. The nominative case forms of nominal modifiers (adjectives, possessives, and demonstratives) are segmentally identical to their oblique case counterparts but have the opposite tonal pattern across the board: nominative and oblique modifiers differ in not just one but EVERY tonal specification. Kipsigis polarity thus results in maximal tonal contrast between two morphologically related words. We show how the Kipsigis pattern may be captured in an item-and-process theory of morphology with dedicated exchange mechanisms and in an item-and-arrangement theory that allows for morpheme-specific phonology; we suggest that an item-and-process approach may provide a more straightforward account.

In this impressive volume, GREGORY MATOESIAN and KRISTIN ENOLA GILBERT provide the field of law-and-language studies with an important set of analytic tools, insisting that systematic study of multimodal conduct be integrated into research on legal communication. In particular, M&G focus on modes of communication such as gesture, gaze, posture, movement, and speakers' interactions with physical objects—modes that have not received as much attention within language-and-law research as has legal language in a more traditional conception. For scholars who are unfamiliar with studies of multimodal conduct, the book offers a rigorous but accessible introduction to the field, along with sophisticated analyses of legal interactions demonstrating the value of the authors' approach. For linguists, sociolinguists, and linguistic anthropologists more generally, the volume offers an inventive entry in the growing literature integrating multimodal analysis into microanalysis of linguistic exchanges—and the macroanalysis of language within institutions. For those interested in research on legal language, this study advances the field through its comprehensive vision of how we can incorporate multimodal analysis into existing paradigms.