Society for Computation in Linguistics paper

Grace LeFevre, Micha Elsner and Andrea Sims had their paper “Formalizing Inflectional Paradigm Shape with Information Theory” published in the Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, vol. 4. The paper is based on Grace’s B.A. thesis work. She did really impressive work and we are happy to see it make it out into the world!

Abstract: “Paradigm shape,” our term for the morphological structure formed by implicative relations between inflected forms, has not beenformally quantified in a gradient manner. We develop a method to formalize paradigm shape by modeling the joint effect of stem alternations and affixes. Applied to Spanish verbs,our model successfully captures aspects of both allomorphic and distributional classes.These results are replicable and extendable to other languages.

Paper on Balkan verbal complex published

Andrea Sims and Brian Joseph’s paper ‘Morphology versus syntax in the Balkan verbal complex‘ has just been published in the volume Balkan syntax and (universal) principles of grammar, edited by Iliana Krapova and Brian Joseph.

Paper Abstract: Various Balkan languages have a string of material called here the “verbal complex”, in which a verb occurs with various markers for tense, modality, negation, and argument structure. We examine here this verbal complex with regard to its status as a syntactic element or a morphological element. First, we carefully outline the theoretical basis for determining the status of a given entity and we then argue that the verbal complexes display different degrees of morphologization in the different languages. Albanian and Greek show the highest degree of morphologization of the verbal complex, with Macedonian close to them in this regard. Bulgarian shows a lesser degree of morphologization than Macedonian, making for an interesting split within East South Slavic, and Serbian shows an even lesser degree. We argue further that certain aspects of the verbal complex, especially in the languages with the greatest morphologization, represent contact-related convergence, and draw from this a general claim about the role of surface structure in language contact.

Martha awarded small grant

Martha Johnson has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Graduate Research Small Grant for fieldwork in Tanzania this summer. Martha will be doing elicitation for her First Qualifying Paper, on the topic of optional multiple exponence of subject agreeement in Kihehe verb constructions. Cool stuff!

Welcome, Michael!

Welcome to Michael Sullivan! Michael is an undergraduate major in Linguistics. He is working with Bob Levine and Andrea Sims on his B.A. thesis project. For his thesis, Michael is developing a new, formal theory of the morphology-syntax interface and testing it on the relationship between passive and impersonal constructions in Croatian. Watch this space as the work develops!

Welcome, Martha!

Welcome to Martha Johnson, a new Ph.D. student in the Linguistics Department!

Martha is interested in Bantu morphology and phonology. As a Fulbright Fellow to Tanzania she conducted fieldwork on Kihehe, adding to descriptive knowledge about the language. She is currently developing that work into a project on affix ordering in Kihehe verbs. Specifically, the order of subject agreement markers vs. TAM markers differs from the ordering in Swahili and other related languages, and seems to show variation. Martha is examining how this ordering has arisen as a result of morphologization of a former auxiliary as part of the main verb and resulting multiple exponence. She plans to return to Tanzania this summer for more fieldwork.

Joint morphology and computational linguistics seminar

This semester Andrea Sims and Micha Elsner are holding joint meetings of Andrea’s graduate morphology seminar and Micha’s graduate computational linguistics seminar. The joint seminar, focusing on Models of Morphological Learning and Change, is designed to bring together students with backgrounds in morphology, computational linguists, language acquisition, and historical and sociolinguistics… but not necessarily more than one of these. It is an experiment in talking across subdisciplinary boundaries, with the hope that the whole will be more than the sum of its parts (not unlike morphological structure!). We are excited to see what projects will develop!

Seminar description: Where do languages come from, and how do they evolve? We learn the languages we speak as infants or students; as adults, we transmit them to new generations of speakers. In a variety of linguistic sub-areas, researchers have claimed that this process of iterated language learning influences the kinds of languages which exist in the world (language typology) and the process of language change over time. Many of these researchers have proposed computational models of this process, enabling the rapid simulation of “learners” exposed to different language inputs, and of many generations of “teaching” and “learning”.

This seminar will investigate the learning process, with special reference to the case of inflectional morphology (grammatical forms of a word, such as singular cat ~ plural cats). We will bring together research in several areas of linguistics in order to discover how the different perspectives taken across sub-communities combine (or fail to combine!) to address the problem. The reading list will cover:

  1. Typology of inflectional systems: what sort of languages are out there
  2. Learning-based theories of morphological typology and change
  3. Cognitive models of morphological learning
  4. Engineering models of inflection prediction
  5. Computational work on iterated language learning

Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore Conference

OSU-affiliated people at the 2018 Balkan & South Slavic ConferenceYellowstone National ParkThe Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore was, as always, a great time. It was full of Balkan food, dancing, nature and wildlife (courtesy of nearby Yellowstone National Park), and even some academic papers. (Andrea presented a talk, “Greek noun stress and the notion ‘head’ in morphology”. Linguistics grad student Rexhina Ndoci also gave a talk titled “Greetings and politeness in Albanian”.) And it was great to catch up with some OSU alums!

Thanks to Elena Petroska and Paul Foster for being great hosts at Montana State University, Billings.