bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Effects of Relative Deprivation on Intention to Rebel: A Multiple Mediation Model
Authors: Chen Xiang-Yu , Wang Xin-Qiang , Liu Jian-Ping , Dong Sheng-Hong , Zhu Jun-Cheng , Huo Jun-Yu
Published: February 2018

This study examined the mediating effects of future social expectations and interpersonal distrust on the relationship between individual relative deprivation and intention to rebel. Data were gathered from 807 people from multiple occupational backgrounds in a municipality in southwest China. Structural equation modelling showed that individual relative deprivation predicted intention to rebel directly and also that it predicted intention to rebel indirectly via negative future social expectations, interpersonal distrust, and a chain mediating effect of negative future social expectations and interpersonal distrust. These results highlight the importance of the associations between future social expectations and interpersonal distrust with intention to rebel in people who report relative deprivation. The findings also indicate that prevention and intervention programs related to relative deprivation and intention to rebel in China are worthy of further research.
Green leafy and cruciferous vegetable consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes: results from the Singapore Chinese Health Study and meta-analysis
Authors: Chen Guo-Chong , Koh Woon-Puay , Yuan Jian-Min , Qin Li-Qiang , van Dam Rob M.
Published: February 2018

Several previous prospective studies suggest that consumption of green leafy and cruciferous vegetables may lower the risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). We investigated the association between consumption of different types of vegetables in relation to T2D risk in an Asian Population. We included 45 411 participants (age range: 45–74 years) of the Singapore Chinese Health Study (SCHS) free of diabetes, cancer or CVD at baseline (1993–1998). Dietary information was collected using a validated FFQ. Physician-diagnosed incident diabetes was reported at follow-up I (1999–2004) and II (2006–2010) interviews. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate hazard ratio (HR) and 95 % CI of T2D risk. An updated meta-analysis was also conducted to summarise results for green leafy and cruciferous vegetables. During 494 741 person-years of follow-up, 5207 incident T2D occurred. After adjustment for potential confounders, neither total vegetables (top v. bottom quintile HR=1·08; 95 % CI 0·98, 1·18, Ptrend=0·66) nor specific vegetables including dark green leafy vegetables (HR=1·05; 95 % CI 0·96, 1·15, Ptrend=0·21) and cruciferous vegetables (HR=0·97; 95 % CI 0·88, 1·06, Ptrend=0·29) were substantially associated with risk of T2D. A meta-analysis (eleven studies with 754 729 participants and 58 297 cases) including the SCHS and all previous prospective studies suggested borderline significant inverse associations between green leafy (summary relative risk (RR)=0·91; 95 % CI 0·84, 1·00) and cruciferous vegetable consumption (RR=0·87; 95 % CI 0·76, 1·00) and T2D risk, with moderate-to-high heterogeneity. In conclusion, green leafy or cruciferous vegetable consumption was not substantially associated with risk of T2D in an Asian population. Meta-analysis of available cohort data indicated that evidence for a beneficial effect of green leafy or cruciferous vegetable consumption on T2D risk is not convincing.
Early effects on the intestinal barrier and pancreatic function after enteral stimulation with protease or kidney bean lectin in neonatal rats
Authors: Arévalo Sureda Ester , Prykhodko Olena , Weström Björn
Published: February 2018

Gut maturation naturally accelerates at weaning in altricial mammalian species, such as the rat. Mimicking this, gut development can also be induced precociously, 3–4 d earlier than it would occur naturally, by enteral exposure to phytohaemagglutinin (PHA), or various proteases. We investigated the early effects of gut provocation on intestinal barrier and pancreatic functions, to get a better understanding of the mechanisms that initiate gut maturation. The effects of oral administration of protease (trypsin) or PHA to 14-d-old suckling rats were studied during 24 h in comparison with water-fed controls. Intestinalin vivopermeability was assessed by oral administration of different-sized marker molecules and measuring their passage into the blood or urine 3 h later. A period of 24 h following oral administration, both PHA and protease provocation stimulated small intestinal (SI) growth and pancreatic secretion, as indicated by decreased pancreatic trypsin and increased luminal enzyme content. Within 1 h of oral administration, both treatments prevented the absorption of macromolecules to blood that was observed in controls. PHA treatment hindered the passage of fluorescein isothiocyanate-dextran (FD) 4 to blood, whereas protease treatment temporarily increased plasma levels of FD4, and the urine lactulose:mannitol ratio, indicating increased intestinal leakiness. Following protease treatment, fluorescence microscopy showed decreased vesicular uptake of FD70 in the proximal SI and increased epithelial fluorescence in the distal SI. In conclusion, PHA and protease differed in their early effects on the intestinal barrier; both exerted a blocking effect on epithelial endocytosis, whereas protease treatment alone temporarily increased epithelial leakiness, which seemed to be confined to the distal SI.
Evaluational reactions to spoken French and English in Montreal: Does mother tongue really matter?
Authors: Laur Elke
Published: February 2018

Montreal became famous in socio-psychological and sociohnguistic circles half a century ago, when a group of researchers—Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, and Fil-lenbaum — invented a new methodology to measure speech evaluations indirectly. They came up with an innovative technique, called matched guise, which allows researchers to access subjects’ reactions without asking for their opinions directly or doing extensive field work. In 2004, another matched guise study of the evaluational reactions of Montrealers added new aspects to the original methodological design in order to test some of its limits. The fundamental methodological difference was to include members of different language groups in a representative sample of the population of Montreal so that multivariate analysis could determine the extent to which belonging to a specific linguistic group could actually account for reactions to spoken language. This analysis reveals that some earlier interpretations should be realigned.
On the D-linked character of genitive interrogatives in Iraqi Arabic
Authors: Sterian Laura Andreea
Published: February 2018

This paper focuses on genitive interrogatives in Iraqi Arabic. I argue that these constructions are inherently D-linked (Discourse-Linked). Similarly to D-linked interrogatives, when genitive interrogatives appear in content questions in which both the resumptive strategy and the gap strategy are possible, the genitive interrogatives have a D-N structure when the gap strategy is employed and aD-φ-Nstructure when the resumptive strategy is employed. I then propose the following hypothesis: what defines D-linking is the presence of a domain restriction in the form of an overt noun.
Two types of wh-omission in first language acquisition
Authors: Roberge Yves , Strik Nelleke
Published: February 2018

Omission of various components of a sentence is a common phenomenon in first language (LI) acquisition across different languages. Omission can affect arguments, such as subjects and objects, as well as functional elements, such as determiners and inflectional morphology (Borer and Rohrbacher 2002, Pérez-Leroux et al. 2008, among others).
Missing objects in special registers: The syntax of null objects in English
Authors: Ruda Marta
Published: February 2018

Even though null definite objects are usually ungrammatical in English, they are widely used in certain special registers. This paper investigates object drop in the recipe and, to a lesser extent, match broadcasting registers in English, contributing an analysis of a substantial set of naturally occuring data, hence making it possible to verify observations from previous syntactic studies of the phenomenon, which were based on a restricted array of isolated sentences. Having shown that the data support the assumption that the unrealised object is syntactically active, I propose a novel analysis of missing objects in special registers, guided by recent developments in the generative linguistic theory. Null realisation of the object is considered as an issue of externalisation and intralinguistic variation is attributed to the rules operating at the SM interface which make it possible to extend the application of copy deletion, as assumed within the copy theory of movement
Given two be’s, how do they Agree?
Authors: Massam Diane , Grant Erin
Published: February 2018

This squib contributes to the literature on intrusive-be constructions in English, examples of which appear in (1). Notably, there are two main sub-types, commonly referred to as double-be (la) and single-be (lb) constructions, which together have been termed intrusive-be constructions (Massam 2013). In this squib, we focus on double-be constructions, in which two instances ofbe (belandbe2) appear adjacent to each other as in (la), and we examine the tense and agreement forms thatbecan take in such constructions.
Matching productivity indexes and diachronic evolution: The Old English affixesful-, -isc, -cund, and-ful
Authors: Mendaza Raquel Mateo
Published: February 2018

This article measures the productivity index of the Old English suffixes-cund, -ful,and-iscas well as the prefixful-and checks the results against the diachronic evolution of the affixes. The frameworks brought to the discussion includeType frequencymeasurement, as well as productivity indexes proposed by Baayen (1992, 1993, 2009) and Trips (2009). The sources are both textual(The Dictionary of Old English Corpus)and lexicographical (the lexical database of Old EnglishNerthus).The conclusion drawn is that Baayen's (1992, 1993, 2002) index ofGlobal Productivityprovides the most consistent results with the diachronic evolution of the affixes.
A microparametric analysis of apparent postverbal negation in Taiwanese Southern Min
Authors: Wang Chyan-An Arthur
Published: February 2018

This article investigates the postverbal negation construction in Taiwanese Southern Min. I propose that the construction is derived in a way similar to resultatives and that the postverbal negationboand its affirmative counterpartuare particular kinds of aspectual elements in the resultative complement. Given this, the lack of (apparent) postverbal negation in the closely-related language Mandarin Chinese can be ascribed to the fact that Mandarin Chinese lacks this particular aspectual use of affirmativeyouand negativemei(you) and thus it fails to generate the structure under investigation. It is also shown that the proposed analysis is supported by cross-linguistic correlations among Chinese languages.
Learning to Parse Second Language Consonant Clusters
Authors: Archibald John
Published: February 2018

In this article, a number of broad questions related to the acquisition of consonant clusters in a second language are investigated. Drawing on the structural relations and phonological principles of Government Phonology, it is argued that the behaviour of second language learners can be accounted for by a top-down, left-to-right phonological parser. Appealing to a model of cognitive architecture, it is demonstrated that one can account for the different behaviours of speakers of languages that share the trait of lacking tautosyllabic clusters (Korean and Finnish) when learning a language which allows such clusters (English). Properties of the LI segmental inventory and a licensing strength scale are proposed to explain why Finnish learners have less trouble than Korean learners when acquiring English clusters.
Variable and Stable Clusters: Variation in the Realisation of Consonant Clusters
Authors: Jongstra Wenckje
Published: February 2018

This article reports on between-individual and within-individual variation in consonant cluster reduction strategies (where C1C2is realised as C(or C2) among young children. The empirical base of the study is a Dutch database with over 9,000 instances ofC1and C2realisations of 23 word-initial consonant clusters from 45 children aged between two and three years old. The study finds that within-child variation is very limited, whereas between-child variation occurs. It is also shown that there are typological implications; that is, realising C2in clustery, implies realising C2in cluster y, but not vice versa. The data provide support for the position that variation can be accounted for by a finer grained notion of sonority where the sonority distance between the two consonants in a cluster plays a crucial role in establishing prosodic constituency.
A Phonological Analysis of Schwa in German First Language Acquisition
Authors: Kehoe Margaret , Lleó Conxita
Published: February 2018

In this article, two approaches to schwa representation are evaluated using data from four German children (aged 1;3 to 3;1). The first, the No Mora account, claims that schwa is segmentally but not prosodically specified, whereas the second, the Projection account, proposes that schwa is prosodically but only minimally segmentally specified, as [-cons]. The data reveal several stages in acquisition: an early phase characterised by vowel reduplication or deletion; a middle phase characterised by production of a full vowel (and consonant); and a final phase characterised by production of a central vowel, schwa, or syllabic consonant. In addition, the data show that children produce syllabic consonants earlier than schwa, and that they often produce filler schwas even when they substitute target schwas with full vowels. It is argued that these findings, in particular the different timeline observed for schwa versus syllabic consonants and the presence of filler schwas, can be best accounted for by the Projection account.
The Development of Lexical Pitch Accent Systems: An Autosegmental Analysis
Authors: Ota Mitsuhiko
Published: February 2018

This article presents an autosegmental analysis of the development of pitch phonology in Swedish and Japanese, which mark both lexical accent and phrasing through movements in fundamental frequency (F0). Predictions that follow from the autosegmental model are tested against spontaneous production data from child Japanese. In support of the analysis that lexical pitch accent and phrasal intonation are acquired as separate sequences of tonal features, the falling and rising slopes of F0 contours are shown to develop independently. The late emergence of the phrase-initial rise is attributable to the allophonic surface realisation of the low boundary tone. Moreover, developments in contour shapes are characterised by demarcated emergence of F0 turning points that are aligned with specific segments, providing further support for the view that pitch phonology is acquired as strings of tonal units associated with segments and prosodic constituents.
Place Specification and Segmental Distribution in the Acquisition of Word-Final Consonant Syllabification
Authors: Rose Yvan
Published: February 2018

This article focusses on data from two first language learners of Québec French, Clara and Théo. In both corpora, all word-final consonants are acquired before word-medial codas, except Clara’s [ʁ], which is acquired at the same time as medial codas. The behaviour of Clara’s [ʁ] is explained through the hypothesis that it is analysed by the child as placeless and that, in the unmarked case, place-specified consonants are syllabified word-finally as onsets, while placeless consonants are syllabified as codas. Supporting cross-linguistic evidence is provided from adult languages and from the acquisition of Japanese. Finally, data on the acquisition of Spanish are discussed. Based on distributional evidence, it is suggested that these learners of Spanish posit a coda syllabification for the word-final, place-specified coronal consonants of their language. These data support the view that default options are overridden when positive evidence steers the learner toward more marked options.
L’émergence du système phonologique chez l’enfant: l’apport de la modélisation articulatoire
Authors: Ménard Lucie , Boë Louis-Jean
Published: February 2018

The impact of anatomical transformations on the acquisition of sounds by infants remains poorly understood. Using theVariable Linear Articulator? Model, we simulate vowel production in the course of non-uniform vocal tract growth. Production abilities related to vocal tract growth are described by simulating French vowels, generated by assuming that sensori-motor control abilities are identical in newborns and adults. Despite small vocal tract size, an infant is able to produce all the vowels of its first language. The recurrence of certain units in the babbling inventory is attributable to motor control immaturity and cognitive abilities. Simulation of articulatory fibers provides a more accurate view of the relation between articulatory strategies and acoustic targets. The results highlight differences relative to labial and lingual articulators.
L’adaptation de la voyelle /y/ en /ju/ dans les emprunts en russe: un cas de palatalisation, non de biphonémicité
Authors: Paradis Carole , Thibeault Mélanie
Published: February 2018

Lexical borrowings provide important clues regarding the internal structure of segments. We focus on the internal structure of the front rounded vowel /y/ and the arguments which led us to maintain that /y/ is a simple vowel. The unpacking of /y/ in /ju/ in many Russian borrowings from French, German, and several languages of the Turkish family is not the consequence of /y/ including two vowels underlyingly but the consequence of the fact that Russian allows the majority of its consonants to be palatalized. The front rounded vowel /y/ includes the feature combination [−back] ~ [+round]. When an adaptation strategy causes [—back] to delink from /y/ in Russian, [—back] is salvaged by the preceding consonant when this consonant is palatalizable, thus yielding the realization /Cju/.
On the Learning of Auxiliary Use in the Referential Variety by Speakers of New Brunswick Acadian French
Authors: Balcom Patricia
Published: February 2018

This study investigates the learning of Referential French by speakers of Acadian French at the university level. One difference between the two varieties lies in their use of auxiliaries in compound tenses. In Acadian French,avoiris used categorically in compound tenses with verbs of inherently directed motion and pronominal verbs, while Referential French usesêtre. A controlled-production task and an acceptability judgment task were administered to 80 speakers of New Brunswick Acadian French who were students at a francophone university in New Brunswick, 40 first-year students and 40 fourth-year students. Results show that, while there is still variability in the fourth-year students’ auxiliary use, their performance is significantly closer to Referential French than that of the first-year students.
La flexion postverbale -ont en français acadien : une analyse sociolinguistique
Authors: Beaulieu Louise , Cichocki Wladyslaw
Published: February 2018

We present a sociolinguistic analysis of the third person plural verbal suffix-ontin the variety of Acadian French spoken in the northeastern region of New Brunswick. The analysis shows that variation in the use of this traditional morpheme is conditioned by external factors and in particular by social network. In addition, retention of-ontis conditioned by an internal factor, as this suffix regularizes the singular/plural contrast in stems, and the 3SG/3PL contrast in verbal paradigms. The more-ontoptimizes these contrasts, the greater the tendency to maintain this morpheme. Thus, forms such asi-pouvont, i-voulont, andi-buvont— which allow speakers to communicate their identity and social position within their speech community as well as to optimize the use of forms in the verb paradigms — have a greater probability of being retained than other forms that offer fewer benefits.
Agreement Paradigms across Moods and Tenses: The Case of Romanian Subjunctives and Imperatives
Authors: Pirvulescu Mihaela
Published: February 2018

This article argues that the realization of agreement in subjunctive and imperative verbs is a consequence of the syntactic status of Tense in these two moods. Crucially, certain agreement paradigms across Romance languages show very a close resemblance: the subjunctive and imperative paradigms are identical, in most cases, to the indicative paradigms. Systematically, moods such as the subjunctive and the imperative do not show specific tense affixes or specific tense-induced allomorphy on their agreement affixes. The proposal is illustrated with Romanian verbal agreement, which is analyzed within the Distributed Morphology framework. The analysis shows that tense information is not used in subjunctive and imperative agreement morphology, unless it is exactly the same information as in another paradigm — the present indicative. It is proposed that at the syntactic level, Tense is unspecified in the subjunctive and absent in the imperative, and that the realization of agreement affixes is a consequence of this syntactic representation.
Neutral vowels in Lokaa harmony
Authors: Akinlabi Akinbiyi
Published: February 2018

This paper discusses the four neutral vowels in Lokaa harmony, [i, u, ə, a]. Crosslinguistically, neutral segments are either transparent or opaque. Lokaa harmony is important in three crucial respects. First, languages with both transparent and opaque vowels are not common; Lokaa has both. Secondly, though Lokaa has an eight-vowel inventory the vowels [a] and [ə] have not “re-paired”. Thirdly, the historic ATR contrast found in Benue-Congo high vowels shows up when high vowel stems take mid-vowel prefixes, though the high vowels can only be [+ATR] on the surface; the ATR merger of high vowels in Lokaa is not complete. I show that the analytic framework of “headed span” theory accounts for a system with both transparent and opaque vowels. More importantly, I propose that within the headed span approach to harmony, both co-occurrence constraints and ASSOCIATEHEAD are crucial. Co-occurrence constraints control the language inventory, and the different rankings of the ASSOCIATEHEAD constraints indicate whether or not a feature will form part of an harmonic span.
Le statut des compléments du nom en [de NP]
Authors: Knittel Marie Laurence
Published: February 2018

This paper deals with noun complements in French. I show that French has a particular kind of noun complement, regularly expressed by [de NP], that cannot be analysed as a PP or as a Possessor, but nevertheless requires a syntactic account. A detailed analysis reveals that these constituents share morphosyntactic, semantic and discourse properties with those of pseudo-incorporated nominals in various languages. I thus propose that they be analysed as pseudo-incorporated into a possessive nominal head.
Choice and balance in Michif negation
Authors: Wolfart H.C.
Published: February 2018

The Michif language, while distinct from both Cree and French, combines a largely French-based nominal complex with a largely Cree-based verbal system. The syntax of negation cuts across these dimensions. Declarative sentences in Michif show the Cree-based negatornamôand the French-basednôinterchangeably. (This is also the only context forpas.) Imperatives, by contrast, demand the Cree-basedêkâ (ya) exclusively.

In subordinate clauses, Michif permits eitherêkâornô. In Cree, all such constructions require the deontic negatorêkâ. The integration of the two Cree-based negation types and the French-basednoandpasinto a single new system in Michif poses not only problems of constituency and syntactic analysis. It also raises once again the thorny question of balance: Is the imbrication of Cree and French symmetrical, or is one of the two languages dominant?
The syntax/morphology interface in Spanish L2 acquisition: Focus on quantified DPs
Authors: Androutsopoulou Antonia , Español-Echevarría Manuel , Prévost Philippe
Published: February 2018

This article examines whether L2 acquisition of morphology and syntax develops independently (the Separation Hypothesis) or not (the Rich Agreement Hypothesis), focusing on the acquisition of Number specification on certain Spanish quantifiers by French speakers. In Spanish, some quantifiers are specified for Number and directly precede the head noun, in contrast to their French counterparts where a dummy prepositiondemust appear inside the DP. Results from a grammaticality judgement task and a production task show that intermediate and advanced learners perform poorly on plural inflection with some quantifiers, and reject the use ofde. This suggests that they have acquired Number specification on these quantifiers, which allows Case marking on the following noun, but do not produce the appropriate morphology. These results support the Separation Hypothesis, but not the Rich Agreement Hypothesis.
Linguistic levelling in Spanish: The analogical strong preterites
Authors: Pato Enrique
Published: February 2018

Certain Peninsular Spanish varieties have two third-person plural forms in the simple past indicative of verbs with ‘strong’ (stem-stressed) preterites. While this phenomenon is documented in large-scale linguistic atlas surveys, its current geographic distribution and diachronic origins remain under-studied. This paper sets out to: 1) establish the geographic distribution of these variants; the differing methodologies and epochs of the data sources make them particularly interesting to compare, showing that these analogical strong preterites have suffered a drastic decline over the last century; 2) use historical corpus data to show that the vernacular variant is by no means a recent phenomenon; 3) examine external history as a source of explanation in linguistic reconstruction, showing that this process of analogical levelling took place after the reconquest and resettlement of these regions. These findings support the hypothesis of a feature which spread over the centuries by linguistic diffusion.
Omission des déterminants : Contraintes d’alternances rythmiques ou contraintes liées aux niveaux supérieurs de la structure prosodique
Authors: Fréchette Roseline , Labelle Marie
Published: February 2018

This article focuses on whether determiner omission by two-year-old children is constrained at the level of the prosodic foot or whether it is a function of the different levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Nine French-speaking children aged 2;0 to 2;7 were asked to repeat 54 four- or five-word sentences of the form “Pronoun V NP” with three conditions: a) det + monosyllabic noun; b) det + bisyllabic noun; c) det + monosyllabic adjective + monosyllabic noun. The results show 1) more determiner omission in condition b than in a; 2) more determiner omission in c than in b. It is shown that determiner omission is not accounted for by a low-level stress-alternation constraint and that the level of prosodic structure to which the determiner is attached plays a role in determiner omission.
Redefining what matters: Syntactic explanation in American linguistics, 1955-1970
Authors: Martin-Nielsen Janet
Published: February 2018

The postwar decades are well known for having brought dramatic change to American linguistics on many fronts. This paper explores an internally focused aspect of this change: conditions of explanation. The two questions at stake are, firstly, what counts as explanation in linguistics? and, secondly, how is this decided? I argue that transformational grammarians dominated the setting of explanatory criteria in 1960s American syntax, and that this dominance was essential to the overall success of that theory. Importantly, rival grammarians were forced to devote as much time and effort to fitting their theories to the transformational criteria as they were to advancing their own explanatory priorities. By successfully naming the conditions for explanation, transformationalists provided their own supporters with significant questions to pursue and, simultaneously, drew energy away from rivals. This monopoly over explanatory criteria was central to the dominant position transformational grammar established in the American academic linguistics community.
Some remarks on subject positions and the architecture of the left periphery in Spanish
Authors: Pöll Bernhard
Published: February 2018

This article reexamines the puzzling issue of where subjects, lexical and null, are located in Spanish and offers a novel explanation for the incompatibility of preverbal lexical subjects with fronted focussed constituents. Both SpecIP and the left periphery appear to be potential landing sites for subjects, according to discourse-pragmatic factors. Assuming thatprois a clitic, it is argued that the aforementioned incompatibility can be captured by a simple rule: SpecIP must be empty for focus fronting to occur. This is the case withpro, which adjoins to Infl, or with postverbal subjects since they remain in SpecVP. From this analysis it follows that: 1) the subject field in Spanish is less articulated than is generally assumed, 2) the differences between Spanish and other null subject languages with respect to the availability of preverbal subjets can be reduced to this rule and a different ordering of focus and topic phrases, and 3) it is unnecessary to posit two different topic positions.
Mesure de la productivité morphologique des créoles : au-delà des méthodes quantitatives
Authors: Brousseau Anne-Marie
Published: February 2018

Most recent measures of morphological productivity are reliable only if they are based on a large corpus of the language. This article presents a detailed demonstration of a method for establishing an inventory of productive affixes in a language for which a large corpus is not available. This method evaluates the productivity of an affix first and foremost on the basis of its threshold of profitability (the number of different words derived via the affix) in correlation with other diagnostics to bolster reliability. These other diagnostics are the semantic and phonological transparency of derived words and the decomposability of such words. The application of the method is illustrated step-by-step with data from St. Lucian.
Synchronic evidence of a diachronic change: Voicing and duration in French and Spanish stop-liquid clusters
Authors: Colantoni Laura , Steele Jeffrey
Published: February 2018

This article investigates the role that the phonetic parameters of duration and voicing play in shaping asymmetric patterns of Romance stop-liquid cluster realization. Based on acoustic analysis of experimental data from Quebec French and Argentine Spanish, we demonstrate the existence of an asymmetry in the proportional duration of the stop and a following epenthetic vowel or lateral: sonorants are shorter after voiceless stops in stop-liquid clusters. Rhotics do not participate in this process. The Spanish tap does not vary significantly in length, and the French dorsal fricative is longer in voiceless clusters. We propose that compensatory adjustments of the following sonorant are the result of the interaction of coarticulatory constraints, both universal (shorter sonorants after voiceless stops or fricatives) and language-specific (voicing in dorsal fricatives in French). Parallels are drawn between the synchronic variation attested and well-known patterns of diachronic change in Romance.
Media representations of minority French: Valorization, identity, and theAcadiemanphenomenon
Authors: Comeau Philip , King Ruth
Published: February 2018

This article is concerned with the role of media representations of language use in the promotion of language ideologies and in identity construction. It focuses on media representations of Chiac, a traditionally low-status variety of Acadian French. We consider performances of this variety in the adventures of an animated superhero, Acadieman, presented in a cable TV show running on Rogers TV from 2005 to 2009. We first contextualizeAcadiemanin terms of the linguistic and cultural contexts in which Chiac is spoken. We then consider how particular social meanings are created through contrasts between Chiac-speaking characters and speakers of other varieties. While the juxtaposition of varieties is at one level quite humorous, on another level it draws on complex indexicalities and valorizes the local variety and, by extension, its speakers. Finally, we argue that theAcadiemanphenomenon provides a discursive space within which present-day Acadian identities can be negotiated.
The OCP as a synchronic constraint in Arabic
Authors: Mustafawi Eiman
Published: February 2018

This paper provides evidence for the activity of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) as a constraint on dynamic alternations in the synchronic grammar of Qatari Arabic. It shows that the OCP is subject to proximity and to a gradient similarity effect. In Qatari Arabic, there are two variable phonological alternations that interact with the OCP, affrication and lenition. The velar stops /g/ and /k/ affricate to [ʤ] and [ʧ], respectively, when adjacent to [i(:)]. However, affrication is blocked when the outcome includes a sequence of segments that are highly similar. Lenition applies variably to the phoneme /ʤ/, which surfaces as [ʤ] or [j]. Usually, the probability of lenition applying to its eligible candidates is around the level of chance. The process, however, applies categorically when a violation of the OCP would otherwise be incurred. The data are analyzed within the framework of Optimality Theory.
Systematic Irregularity in JapaneseRendaku: How the grammar mediates patterned lexical exceptions
Authors: Rosen Eric
Published: February 2018

Exceptions to Japaneserendakuvoicing that are independent of Lyman’s Law have usually been considered to be random and unsystematic. This article proposes that such exceptions are largely systematic and can be explained through lexical specification and Positional Markedness. Two main types of systematicity are examined: the clustering of blocking cases around particular lexical items, and a prosodic size effect, where “long” compounds, with at least one constituent exceeding two moras, will disable blocking under most conditions. Lexical clustering is explained through lexical specification of features under Combinatorial Underspecification while the prosodic size effect is seen as an expression of Positional Markedness. It is argued that only in long compounds is the morpheme boundary at the edge of a Prosodic Word, a prosodically strong position that more freely permits the marked [−sonorant, +voice] featural combination ofrendakuvoicing to occur.
The Production of Social Meaning Via the Association of Variety and Style: A Case Study of French Vowel Lengthening in Belgian
Authors: Hambye Philippe , Simon Anne Catherine
Published: February 2018

This article questions the common usage of the concept of “linguistic variety” and the usual view of vernacular speech as the expression of a speaker’s identity. The term “variety” in linguistics has an ambiguous status: it is used to describe “linguistic representations” (social constructs) as well as actual linguistic practices. An alternative way of understanding the function of varieties in the sociolinguistic space is proposed: we explain how varieties relate to speech styles in a way that captures the social significance of linguistic variation. A case study about vowel lengthening in the French spoken in Belgium is then presented. Through both a quantitative and qualitative analysis, it is shown how marked regional variants are used to produce a particular social meaning, even among middle-class speakers.
Propriétés des substances, conditions sur la syntaxe et explication en linguistique
Authors: Bouchard Denis
Published: February 2018

In linguistics, explanation is based on whatever initial conditions are imposed on language, and so it necessarily functions within the range of options allowed by the laws of nature. Thus, since syntax is a computational system, it is subject to principles of efficient computation. Moreover, the Faculty of Language is located in human beings, so this means that it is constrained by the conceptual and perceptual systems of human beings. In this context, three topics are presented that have been repeatedly discussed over the last 50 years: inversion in interrogatives, long-distance dependencies, and recursion. For these cases, the computational approach favoured by Generative Grammar leads one to inscribe lists of unexplained elements in Universal Grammar. This is but a measure of our ignorance. On the other hand, a fully biolinguistic approach that takes into account the conceptual and perceptual basis of language opens a way to a true explanation.
Sociolinguistics and the Language Faculty
Authors: Chambers J.K.
Published: February 2018

The discovery that some processes are primitive rather than learned provides a window into the properties of the language faculty. One of the postulated modules of the language faculty is sociolinguistic competence, the ability to use language appropriately in its socio-cultural nexus. I present three cases where variable phenomena exhibit regularities that appear to be essential rather than accidental. First is the Ethan Experience, which inures children engaged in acquiring the community accent from learning foreign features that must later be unlearned. The experience entails an innate accent-filter, and its influence has been observed in all situations in which the accent being acquired differs from the home accent. Second is Sex-Based Variability, whereby women use fewer non-standard variants and have wider stylistic repertoires than men of the same social class in the same settings. Third is Vernacular Roots, the discovery that a number of sociolinguistic variables recur in English vernaculars wherever they have been studied, as well as in interlanguage, Creoles, and child language. The ubiquity of these features presumably reflects their privileged status in the language faculty.
Syntactic Dependencies as Memorized Sequences in the Brain
Authors: Grodzinsky Yosef
Published: February 2018

The prospects of a cognitive neuroscience of syntax are considered with respect to functional neuroanatomy of two seemingly independent systems: Working Memory and syntactic representation and processing. It is proposed that these two systems are more closely related than previously supposed. In particular, it is claimed that a sentence with anaphoric dependencies involves several Working Memories, each entrusted with a different linguistic function. Components of Working Memory reside in the Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus, which is associated with Broca’s region. When lesioned, this area manifests comprehension disruptions in the ability to analyze intra-sentential dependencies, suggesting that Working Memory spans over syntactic computations. The unification of considerations regarding Working Memory with a purely syntactic approach to Broca’s regions leads to the conclusion that mechanisms that compute transformations—and no other syntactic relations—reside in this area.
Introduction
Authors: Avery Peter , D’Arcy Alexandra , Rice Keren
Published: February 2018

The past twenty-five years have seen an enormous growth in research into World Englishes, reflecting a new recognition of the status of the many national English dialects. Canadian English has been no exception to this trend and we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the quantity and quality of research into this variety. The stature it is now accorded as a separate dialect of English is reflected in the number of dictionaries, thesauruses, usage guides, and other reference works published since the late 1990s that were devoted specifically to Canadian English (e.g., Guide to Canadian English usage; Canadian Oxford dictionary; Oxford Canadian Dictionary; Collins essential Canadian English dictionary and thesaurus; Fitzhenry and Whiteside Canadian thesaurus) as well as audio-visual productions (e.g., Dialects of Canadian English; Talking Canadian).
Canadian Raising, Opacity, and Rephonemicization
Authors: Idsardi William J.
Published: February 2018

Canadian Raising—the phonetic changes in vowel quality and quantity in the diphthongs /ai/ and/ au/ before voiceless consonants—has been of considerable importance to phonological theories ever since Joos (1975). The opaque interaction of Canadian Raising and flapping in words such aswriterconsitutes one of the main arguments for rule ordering in phonology (Chomsky and Halle 1968; Chambers 1975). Recently, Mielke, Armstrong, and Hume (2003) have challenged Joos’s phonemic splitting analysis and have argued that Canadian Raising, rather than being a productive phonological process, is a static lexicalized generalization implemented as a choice between allomorphic variants. A rebuttal to this allomorphic analysis is offered based on evidence that, for some speakers, Canadian Raising productively applies in novel morphological contexts, in language games, and in the phrasal phonology, none of which are amenable to an allomorphic analysis.
Vowel Production in Winnipeg
Authors: Hagiwara Robert
Published: February 2018

General properties of the Canadian English vowel space are derived from an experimental-acoustic study of vowel production underway in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Comparing the preliminary Winnipeg results with similar data from General American English confirms previously described generalizations for Canadian English: the merger of low-back vowels, the relative retraction of /æ/, and the relative advancement of /u/ and /Ʊ/. However, a similar comparison of the Winnipeg sample with comparable Southern California data disputes the accuracy of the claim that Canadian Shift (Clarke et al. 1995) is a feature of ‘general’ Canadian and Californian English. An acoustic analysis uncovers subtle phonetic distinctions that make possible a more precise characterization of Canadian Raising: rather than only adjusting the height of the nucleus, Winnipeg speakers produce a directional shift in both the nucleus and offglide of the diphthongs /aɪ, aƱ/; this process applies to all three diphthongs (including /oɪ/).
Linguistic Resistance on the Maine-New Brunswick Border
Authors: Burnett Wendy
Published: February 2018

Prior studies have established that the Atlantic region of Canada constitutes a dialect zone. Data from the Dialect Topography of New Brunswick, gathered from 2001 to 2003, permit a comparison of linguistic trends in this part of the Atlantic region with those observed in the Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario. In both cases, there is a convergence towards American forms. However, at a certain point on the border between New Brunswick and Maine, where there is significant social contact between Canadians and Americans, the data suggest that Canadian youth are resisting adoption of several American forms. The present study considers this border effect in the responses of 14–19-year-olds living in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and in the adjacent town of Calais, Maine. Sixteen items identified as Canadian/American shibboleths in the Golden Horseshoe study are examined, and the results are assessed in relation to the Boberg’s (2000) claims regarding geo-linguistic diffusion.
Beyond the Isogloss: Isographs in Dialect Topography
Authors: Pi Chia-Yi Tony
Published: February 2018

Isoglosses do not accurately reflect linguistic usage in a region, because the isolated conservative forms they are based on do not represent actual variants extant in the population. The isograph enables researchers to find more representative dialect trends. Canadian and American data from the Dialect Topography database are submitted to isographic analysis of linguistic boundaries at the provincial, national, and cross-border levels. Topography provides a multi-dimensional picture of how variants are used. Variants occur in different proportions, so analysis is quantitative and implies the abandonment of the isogloss because the discrete datum-points of dialect geography are unavailable. The isograph compares adjacent regions, and plots potential channels for language spread. Percentage differences between neighbouring regions are calculated, and a line is drawn between neighbours with the least difference. When all lines of minimum distance have been drawn, the result is a constellation of the most similar regions.
The Modal Auxiliarieshave toandmustin theCorpus of Early Ontario English: Gradient Change and Colonial Lag
Authors: Dollinger Stefan
Published: February 2018

The notion ‘drift’ plays an important role in the development of the modalshave toandmustin early Canadian English in relation to British and American English during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.Have tois first found in texts that reflect informal usage, and for the period in question (1750–1849),have tois only attested with deontic readings; the data suggest that its rise was not exclusively conditioned by the defective paradigm ofmust. Mustmaintains its epistemic function in relation to its Late Modern English competitors. In early Canadian English, changes progress gradually, with individual variables following different directions. Canadian English epistemicmustlags behind, while deontichave tohas spread more quickly in North America, with Canadian English more progressive than British English varieties, but less so than American English. Within a more general drift towardshave to, Canadian English shows independent development in successive periods.
“So cool, right?”: Canadian English Entering the 21st Century
Authors: Tagliamonte Sali A.
Published: February 2018

A socially stratified sample—theToronto English Corpus—together with the construct of apparent time (with speakers aged 10–90 years) reveal that certain features are declining, including futurewill, deontichave got to, possessivehave got, intensifiervery, and the sentence tagyou know. On the other hand, some features are on the rise, including futuregoing to, deontichave to, possessivehave, intensifiersreallyandso, and sentences tags such aswhatever, so, andstuff like that. The younger generation is pushing these changes forward more rapidly. While some developments date back hundreds of years in the history of English, they are not particular to Canada, and are consistent with research on other English corpora. Other changes appear to be progressing in a unique way in Canada, including deontic and possessivehave. I argue that the broader socio-historical context is a critical factor: geographic and economic mobility as well as changes in communication technology may explain the rapid acceleration of certain types of linguistic change.
The Subclassification of Southern Wakashan
Authors: Jacobsen William H.
Published: February 2018

The Southern Wakashan (or Nootkan) languages exhibit a sort of chain relationship, from south to north: Makah, Nitinat, and Nootka. Given the intermediate geographic position of Nitinat with respect to Makah (situated more to the south) and Nootka (situated more to the north), one can ask which of these languages is most closely related to Nitinat. At present, this question remains unresolved, as reflected by the disagreement in the literature. Relying primarily on lexical data, but also considering aspects of sound changes and grammatical criteria, it is proposed that the closer grouping of Nitinat is with Makah.