Many languages use phonation types for phonemic or allophonic distinctions. This study examines the acoustic structure of the phonetic space for vowel phonations across languages. Our sample of eleven languages includes languages with contrastive modal, breathy, creaky, lax, tense, harsh, and/or pharyngealized phonations, and languages with allophonic nonmodal phonation on particular tones. In compiling and analyzing this sample we address related issues such as contrast vs. allophony, phonetic similarity across languages, and understanding complex contrasts of several multidimensional phonetic categories via data reduction. Based on extensive acoustic analysis, all of the languages' phonations were mapped into a single phonetic space, which exhibits dispersion (languages with more categories use more of the space). The space is largely two-dimensional, with dimensions that can be interpreted phonetically (e.g. dimension 2 is like a traditional breathy-to-creaky continuum) and also can be related back to the acoustic measures that structure them, thus indicating which acoustic measures are most important across languages.

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.

The 1980 publication of ‘Transitivity in grammar and discourse’ by Paul Hopper and Sandra Thompson offered an alternative to the focus of much of the field at that time in both methodology and goals. Shared objectives were, of course, an understanding of what language is like and why. But views of just what this might mean and how to achieve it differed in several ways.

Pater's (2019) expansive review is a significant contribution toward bridging the disconnect of generative linguistics with connectionism, and as such, it is an important service to the field. But Pater's efforts for inclusion and reconciliation obscure crucial substantive disagreements on foundational matters. Most connectionist models are antithetical to the algebraic hypothesis that has guided generative linguistics from its inception. They eschew the notions that mental representations have formal constituent structure and that mental operations are structure-sensitive. These representational commitments critically limit the scope of learning and productivity in connectionist models. Moving forward, we see only two options: either those connectionist models are right, and generative linguistics must be radically revised, or they must be replaced by alternatives that are compatible with the algebraic hypothesis. There can be no integration without structured representations.

This work explores the effect of ease of articulation on speech by examining the rates at which various consonants occur in word lists representing thousands of languages. The data reveal that obstruents produced with oral obstruction closer to the glottis are less likely to be voiced when contrasted with their counterparts produced in the anterior region of the vocal tract. While this finding is explainable via previously documented aerodynamic factors, these new data suggest that such factors may have a more powerful influence on speech than typically assumed. The pattern in question is evident even after controlling for the relatedness and areal proximity of language varieties. This study isolates and quantifies the decrease in consonant voicing associated with the reduction in size of the supralaryngeal cavity.

This article investigates the nature of predication of so-called subject-oriented adverbs in English. It is noted that there are both conceptual and empirical issues to be addressed. On the conceptual side, there is no consensus in previous studies on what exactly the notion of subject is for these adverbs and why these adverbs have an orientation to the subject. On the empirical side, there are circumstances in which some of the adverbs seem to be construed with the object argument of the verb. This article focuses on these problems through an examination of the adverbs occurring in locative, passive, unaccusative, and resultative constructions. It is argued that when these adverbs seem to be associated with the object, they are predicated of a phonetically empty pronoun that occurs as the subject of a small clause, controlled by the object. Moreover, it is indicated that subject-oriented adverbs occurring in different positions across different constructions are all parasitically predicated of DPs that are introduced by a functional head in primary predication. Given the proposal made in recent studies that predication relationships between lexical categories and their external arguments in general are mediated by a functional head, it is claimed that subject-oriented adverbs also need to be supported by such a head to be associated with DPs. Thus, it is concluded that the notion of subject for these adverbs and their orientation are derived from the general theory of predication.

Recent research has shed new light on the role and characteristics of prosodic domains, including segmental and tonal feet, in an array of languages. This research extends to African languages, but much work remains to be done. Tonal African languages are particularly problematic, as correlates of stress or metrical prominence are often not well defined or are absent altogether. In addition, descriptive work may omit details of the structure and function of prosodic domains. An exception to this is Bambara, where research implicates a pivotal role for foot structure in segmental and tonal processes. These processes reference a foot domain; however, there are conflicting accounts of certain defining characteristics of its structure. This article aims to challenge two long-held claims about Bambara prosodic structure. The data presented support a claim that all Bambara feet are uniformly trochaic and parsed from left to right in all instances. I intend to illustrate that Bambara segmental and tonal feet are a single, structurally unified prosodic entity.

Despite the long tradition of using the scientific method to study language, there is a widespread, if largely anecdotally based, feeling among language scientists that the general public does not perceive language to be a classic object of scientific study. The goal of the current study was to investigate this notion. We report the results of three experiments conducted in informal science learning environments that: (i) confirm the public thinks of science and language as fundamentally different objects, and (ii) show there are some areas of language science that are more readily accepted as science than others. Our results also suggest that high-impact demonstrations of core linguistic phenomena may be used to encourage people to recognize that language can be, and often is, an object of scientific study. Although the public has an incomplete understanding of the study of language, we argue that the strong humanistic approach with which the public associates the study of language can be seen as an opportunity to broaden participation in science.

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.

The challenge of supporting literacy among deaf children is as much linguistic as educational, since a major stumbling block can be the lack of a firm first language foundation. It is critical to meet this challenge, given the range of serious negative correlates to illiteracy. Students on the campuses of Gallaudet University and Swarthmore College collaborate to address this issue in an inter-institutional course in which we make bimodal-bilingual videobooks designed for enjoyable shared reading activities between deaf children and their caretakers. These videobooks bring a good signing model into the home and help develop a range of essential preliteracy skills.

Stem alternations contribute a unique type of morphological complexity to inflectional systems (Baerman et al. 2015), but despite the fact that they can show remarkable stability over time (Maiden 2018), the manner in which they are maintained and the types of changes they undergo are still poorly understood, in particular when it comes to understudied languages for which diachronic data are usually nonexistent. The verbal inflection of Chichimec (Oto-Pamean, Mexico) is characterized by intricate distributions of stem alternations, and it affords us a unique opportunity to study them from a diachronic perspective, because, unlike most other minority languages, we have a precise and detailed description of its verbal inflection system from almost a century ago (de Angulo 1933) from which we are able to reconstruct the paradigms of 170 verbs. In this article, we compare the verbal system as it was registered by de Angulo in 1930 to our own primary data recorded during two recent field trips. We show evidence that certain elements of the intricate patterns of stem alternations have been reanalyzed and redistributed by the speakers. We argue that the changes make sense only from a morphological perspective in which stem alternations are seen as involving fixed configurations of cells, or ‘morphomes’ (Aronoff 1994). We also show that speakers have not manipulated these configurations in isolation but in clusters, resulting in a substantial restructuring of verbal inflection at the paradigmatic level. We conclude that the changes have not resulted in a simpler system, but rather one that, while almost the same in terms of morphological complexity, has become more consistent.

What are the basic building blocks of verb meanings, how are they composed into more complex meanings, and how does this explain the grammatical properties of verbs and their relationships to other words with related meanings? These questions are fundamental to the study of verb meaning, and some of the most fruitful attempts to answer them have come from event-structural theories, wherein verb meanings are assumed to be decomposed into an event template, which captures the verb's broad temporal and causal contours, and an idiosyncratic root shared across templates, which describes specific actions and states for a given verb. An open question is what the division of labor is between the template and the root in a given verb's event template, and whether their meanings are bifurcated: are broad eventive lexical entailments introduced only by the templates, never the idiosyncratic roots? Since event templates and not roots are the primary semantic correlates of a verb's grammatical properties, bifurcation would make strong predictions about the correlation of a verb's broad temporal and causal semantics and its syntax and morphology. We argue against this bifurcation by comparing translation equivalents of Levin's (1993) non-deadjectival vs. deadjectival change-of-state verb roots in English (e.g. result vs. property concept roots) across languages. A broad-scale typological study reveals that property concept roots tend to have unmarked stative forms and marked verbal forms, while result roots have the opposite pattern. Semantic studies of several languages confirm that terms built on result roots always entail change, while terms based on property concept roots do not. This supports a theory wherein result roots entail change independent of the template, contra bifurcation. This supports a more complex, albeit still principled, theory of possible event-structural meaning and its grammatical correlates, one that takes subclasses of roots into account, while showing the value of this type of crosslinguistic methodology for testing the predictions of event-structural approaches.

The Uto-Aztecan language family is one of the largest language families in the Americas. However, there has been considerable debate about its origin and how it spread. Here we use Bayesian phylogenetic methods to analyze lexical data from thirty-four Uto-Aztecan varieties and two Kiowa-Tanoan languages. We infer the age of Proto-Uto-Aztecan to be around 4,100 years (3,258–5,025 years) and identify the most likely homeland to be near what is now Southern California. We reconstruct the most probable subsistence strategy in the ancestral Uto-Aztecan society and infer no casual or intensive cultivation, an absence of cereal crops, and a primary subsistence mode of gathering (rather than agriculture). Our results therefore support the timing, geography, and cultural practices of a northern origin and are inconsistent with alternative scenarios.