A large amount of sentence-processing work has focused on revealing how the parser incrementally integrates each incoming word into the current linguistic representation. It is often explicitly or implicitly assumed that the structure endorsed by the parser should determine the ultimate interpretation of the sentence. The current study investigates whether the interpretive bias in sentence comprehension necessarily tracks the parsing bias. Our case study concerns the locality bias in nonlocal dependencies, specifically Mandarin WH-in-situ scope dependencies. Our findings suggest a misalignment between parsing and interpretative decisions at the global level. In particular, for Mandarin WH-in-situ constructions that involve scope ambiguity, there is a locality bias in parsing, but an antilocality bias in interpretation. Building upon the RATIONAL SPEECH ACT framework, we propose a Bayesian pragmatic analysis to account for these findings. Under our proposal, the seeming conflict between parsing and interpretation will ultimately disappear because parsing preferences will be naturally embedded under the pragmatic reasoning process to generate the ultimate interpretation. The current study therefore makes novel contributions, both empirically and theoretically, to addressing the broader question about the relationship between parsing and interpretation.

This paper describes and analyzes the onset-sensitive stress system of Iron Ossetian (Eastern Iranian; Russia, Georgia; henceforth Iron). Iron instantiates a rare stress pattern that has been controversially identified in previous literature. Attested onset sensitive systems are commonly sensitive to onset presence or quality (Hyde 2007; Gordon 2005; Topintzi 2010). However, stress in Iron is categorically sensitive to onset complexity, but not onset presence. Syllables with simplex onsets or null onsets are light. Those with complex onsets are heavy. Such a pattern has only been claimed for a few languages, often controversially (Topintzi 2010, 2022). This pattern provides a challenge for current OT frameworks designed to analyze onset sensitive stress. This paper first establishes evidence for the weight of the aforementioned syllable types and then provides an OT analysis for this onset sensitive pattern.

In dementia in inflecting and agglutinating languages, morphosyntax is much better preserved than lexical access or pragmatics, but little is known about how dementia affects language in polysynthetic agglutinating languages with their complex verb morphology. Fortuitously, a series of narratives by a skilled Arapaho storyteller includes sessions from late in his life, when he was evidently dementing. Verb forms and clausal connectors in the speaker's Arapaho predementia and dementia narratives were sorted computationally and analyzed statistically. We found a decline in subordination and an increase in utterances missing verbs. There was a shift from using transitive active verb forms toward impersonal and passive verb forms, which require less pragmatic and syntactic computation to deploy, and a shift in subordination markers away from those requiring explicit consideration of the temporal relations between clauses.

Old English underwent diachronic change in its vowel inventory between its predecessor West Germanic and Middle English. We provide an analysis of the addition and loss of vowels in Old English from the perspective of modified contrastive specification (Dresher et al. 1994). Three main themes emerge from our analysis: (i) the phonological representation of contrast in the vowels in English has remained remarkably stable for over a thousand years, (ii) the proposed analysis improves upon and supersedes similar analyses proposed in Dresher 2015 and Purnell & Raimy 2015, and (iii) the adoption of privative features provides an improved representationally based understanding of phonological activity, feature geometry, and how phonology reflects general cognitive features of memory.

Cross-category harmony is one of the most well-known typological universals. It describes a trend of consistent alignment of different syntactic categories across phrases within a language. Explanations for this universal vary as to whether cognitive factors play a role or the tendency is instead due to mechanisms of language change alone. In this article we report a series of artificial language learning experiments that aim to test a hypothesized link between cognition and cross-category harmony. As with the typological tendency itself, we find mixed evidence for harmony across different types of phrases. Specifically, learners are biased in favor of consistent alignment of the verb in the verb phrase and the adposition in the adpositional phrase. However, the bias for consistent alignment of the verb in the verb phrase and the adjective in the noun phrase depends on the semantic similarity between adjectives and verbs. When adjectives are active and therefore more verb-like (e.g. broken), we find harmony; when they are stative and therefore less verb-like (e.g. blue), we do not. These results suggest that the bias for cross-category harmony is not purely based on the syntactic notions of head and dependent, but reflects the interaction between a general cognitive bias favoring consistent order and cross-category similarity.

This article develops a formal semantic and syntactic analysis of distributive numerals in Tlingit, a highly endangered language of Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon. Such numerals enforce a ‘distributive reading’ of the sentence, and thus are one instance of the broader phenomenon of ‘distance distributivity’ (Zimmermann 2002). As in many other languages, a Tlingit sentence containing a distributive numeral can describe two distinct kinds of ‘distributive scenarios’: (i) a scenario where the distribution is over some plural entity (e.g. ‘My sons caught three fish each’), and (ii) one where the distribution is over some plural event (e.g. ‘My sons caught three fish each time’) (Gil 1982, Choe 1987, Zimmermann 2002, Oh 2005). Despite this apparent ambiguity, I put forth a univocal semantics for Tlingit distributive numerals, one whereby they consistently invoke quantification over events. Under this semantics, the ability of distributive numerals to describe both kinds of scenarios in (i) and (ii) is due not to an ambiguity, but instead to the sentences having relatively weak truth conditions. In contrast to prior analyses of distributive numerals and distance distributivity, the proposed semantics does not actually make use of distributive operators, but nevertheless retains a rather conservative picture of the syntax-semantics interface. The analysis can also account for certain locality effects noted for distance distributives in Korean and German (Zimmermann 2002, Oh 2005), as well as an intriguing puzzle regarding distributive numerals and pluractionality in Kaqchikel (Henderson 2011). Finally, I show how the analysis can be extended to the well-known case of English ‘binominal each’.*

Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.com) is the most widely consulted inventory of the world's languages used today. The present review article looks carefully at the goals and description of the content of the Ethnologue‘s 16th, 17th, and 18th editions, and reports on a comprehensive survey of the accuracy of the inventory itself. While hundreds of spurious and missing languages can be documented for Ethnologue, it is at present still better than any other nonderivative work of the same scope, in all aspects but one. Ethnologue fails to disclose the sources for the information presented, at odds with well-established scientific principles. The classification of languages into families in Ethnologue is also evaluated, and found to be far off from that argued in the specialist literature on the classification of individual languages. Ethnologue is frequently held to be splitting: that is, it tends to recognize more languages than an application of the criterion of mutual intelligibility would yield. By means of a random sample, we find that, indeed, with confidence intervals, the number of mutually unintelligible languages is on average 85% of the number found in Ethnologue.

As is common in work on prosodic typology, the notions ‘tone’ and ‘stress’ play a key role in Wee's 2016 study of the tone system of Hong Kong English (HKE). Based on the absence of phonetic correlates of stress and the distribution of tone in polysyllabic words, Wee claims that HKE must have lexical (high) tone. In this reply, we argue that, even in the absence of phonetic correlates of stress, foot structure provides a more parsimonious account of the distribution of surface tones. Multiple high tones within words follow from predictable morphological structure and/or tonal spreading, rather than from lexical tone.

This study explores the implementation of critical thinking via metacognition in linguistics courses. It employs surveys to examine strategies used by students in two courses, Morphosyntax and Field Methods, devoted to the development of analytical skills in linguistics. We hypothesized that the application of metacognition surveys would enhance students' awareness of techniques that promote critical thinking and active learning. Two surveys built in as core components in each course were deployed at different points during the semester. Students' responses indicate that metacognition surveys can help students and instructors gain greater awareness of learning concerns and capabilities and identify areas for intervention.

This paper provides an overview of post-study employability for students of linguistics. We begin with a review of the literature on employability, education, and skills. We then conduct an analysis of fifty-one interviews with people who studied linguistics and went on to work in a diverse range of occupations. We provide a summary of the interview participants, and then conduct an analysis of the domain-specific and transferable skills reported and the advice offered in these interviews. Finally, we look at how linguistics programs can use the existing literature and insights from these interviews to help their students think about careers.

Our commentary is mainly concerned with Kissine's first argument in his 2021 target article: that mind reading is not necessarily needed for pragmatics. We fully agree with Kissine, and we present (i) additional recent empirical evidence in support of this view and (ii) a new model of pragmatics and mind reading, based on the situation of language use rather than the type of pragmatic phenomenon that is instantiated. The last part of our commentary concerns the logical validity of Kissine's argument, taking into account important concepts in autism research such as heterogeneity, equifinality, and neurodiversity, but also evaluating how relevant the empirical evidence from learning language from TV is to the debate on nativism vs. constructivism. We conclude that there is much to love (as regards pragmatics) and some to query (as regards the conclusions we can draw about nativism vs. constructivism) in this timely and thought-provoking article.

Two explanations are offered in the literature for the origin of lexical patterns of consonantal voicing cooccurrence: (i) speaker-oriented: a cooccurrence pattern may result from voicing assimilation under ease-of-articulation pressures, and (ii) listener-oriented: a cooccurrence pattern may result from systematic misperception by listeners. This article argues for a third possible origin of such patterns: (iii) lexical accumulation: a series of unrelated sound changes may conspire to create a lexical pattern of voicing cooccurrence. Once introduced into the lexicon of some language through any of these three routes, speakers can elevate such a pattern to a grammatical principle. A new voicing cooccurrence pattern in Afrikaans is presented as an example of a pattern that arose via this third route of lexical accumulation. Evidence is also presented that this pattern is being learned as a grammatical constraint by Afrikaans speakers.

With regard to change in inflection, historical linguistics fundamentally relies on the concept of morphological analogy, which is held responsible for nearly all change not attributable to phonological factors. Despite its central importance, how morphological analogy operates has never been established. Two different opinions are held in contemporary linguistics. The first position assumes that morphological analogy modifies inherited inflectional forms, making them more similar to other inflectional forms. According to the second position, in the course of morphological analogy, inherited inflectional forms are not merely modified but rather are replaced by forms created entirely anew on a model pattern already present in the grammar. This research report tries to establish what kind of data may constitute the evidence sufficient to differentiate between the two views. It argues that all relevant data point to whole-word replacement as the only mechanism of analogical change in inflection.