Linguistics

Is prediction multilevel grammatical inference?
2024-01-31 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
Nearly all researchers agree that active dependency resolution relies, to some extent, on prediction: comprehenders appear to commit to analyses in advance of unambiguous confirmatory evidence. Researchers disagree, however, on how far in advance prediction occurs, what portions of linguistic representation(s) are predicted, and how to characterize the mechanisms that subserve predictive processes. In this talk, I’ll present results from a series of collaborative studies on the processing of dependencies in Norwegian, Dutch, and English (and maybe Tagalog) to probe the limits of prediction. I’ll argue (i) that comprehenders can make predictions earlier than is commonly assumed, (ii) that fine-grained predictions are made above the lexical level, and (iii) that predictive mechanisms are (relatively) grammatically faithful. I discuss how these results support a model of hierarchical prediction as inference to the best analysis across multiple levels of linguistic representation.

Dave Kush is an assistant professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. His areas of interest include sentence processing, syntax, and cross-linguistic variation.

Locality and linguistic theory: The crucial role of African tone languages
2024-02-01 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
We are at a juncture when the communication practices of other species are becoming better understood, which linguists can take as an opportunity to readdress a fundamental question: what makes human language human? In this talk, I will examine one core architectural property of language, namely “locality”, which restricts the possible long-distance interactions in linguistic representations. While theories of locality in phonology and morphology typically involve adjacency between interacting elements, this talk presents two novel case studies from minority African tone languages showing that linguistic tone has looser locality demands than counterpart consonants and vowels. Such work demonstrates the outsized role which low-resource languages continue to play in linguistic theory, and the importance of maintaining long-term collaborations with speaker communities.
Dr. Nicholas Rolle received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2018 and currently holds a research position at the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin, Germany. He is a phonologist whose research spans both linguistic theory and fieldwork-based language description, specializing in the languages of West Africa. Most recently, his research has focused on the ability of pitch in African sound systems to signal a wider range of meanings than in more familiar non-African languages. He has published widely in both theoretical and Africanist journals, including Phonology, Linguistic Inquiry, Morphology, and the Journal for African Languages and Linguistics.

What's in Universal Grammar? On participles and the inventory of grammatical primitives
2024-02-07 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
One of the goals of syntactic theory is to account for the distributional properties of grammatical units. My central question is whether the lexical categori(zer)s like n(oun), v(erb), and a(adjective), which are partially responsible for determining distribution, are associated with any intrinsic semantic content. I examine this question through the lens of participles. Based on a number of distributional diagnostics, I argue that participles are a derived category, and that they should therefore not be considered primitives of the grammar. Specifically, I argue that both eventive and stative participles in a number of related and unrelated languages are deverbal adjectives. This challenges the consensus in the generative literature, which has converged on the conclusion that eventive participles are verbal, while stative participles are adjectival. Based on this case study of participles, as well as evidence from (deverbal) nominals, I argue that there is no one-to-one mapping between syntactic categori(zer)s and semantic content (contra e.g., Baker 2003, Panagiotidis 2015). Returning to the issue of grammatical primitives, I then claim that there has so far been no uncontroversial evidence (syntactic or semantic) that the lexical categori(zer)s from more familiar languages are universal. I finish by considering the consequences of this conclusion for language acquisition and the contents of Universal Grammar.

Maša Bešlin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland. She works in the subfields traditionally called syntax and morphology, with an empirical focus on Slavic and Mayan languages. Her research has investigated such topics as the status of participles as a lexical category, locality constraints above and below the ‘word’ level, raising constructions, bare-NP adverbials, case, and ellipsis.

Computational sociolinguistics: How lexical meaning is dynamically constructed across partners and communities
2024-02-08 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | Louis A. Simpson International Building room A71
Why do we use language differently with different partners? In this talk, I will argue for a computational approach to sociolinguistics, which formalizes the obstacles standing in the way of effective communication and explains how people construct shared meaning to achieve their communicative goals with different audiences. Specifically, I’ll present a computational model of partner-specific coordination and convention via hierarchical Bayesian inference — using feedback from a partner to update one’s beliefs about what is meaningful to them. I test predictions of the model in two natural-language communication experiments where participants are grouped into small communities for a referential communication task. Finally, I’ll discuss ongoing work exploring broader implications across four areas: (1) code-switching and the relationship between language and social identity, (2) neural mechanisms of common ground in a hyper scanning study, (3) developmental trajectories of sociolinguistic competence, and (4) artificial agents that can flexibly construct meaning with human partners.

Robert Hawkins is an Assistant Professor of Psychology & Language Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his PhD in Psychology from Stanford University in 2019, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute before starting his own lab. His work has received multiple awards in cognitive science and computational linguistics, including Best Paper awards at EMNLP and NeurIPS in 2022 and the Cognitive Science Society Prize for Computational Modeling in Language in 2020.

On two types of resumptive Ā-dependencies and feature-driven syntax
2024-02-15 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
Previous investigations into Ā-dependencies terminating in resumptive pronouns (i.e. resumptive Ā-dependencies) have reached different and often contradictory conclusions regarding the nature of resumption: some contend that resumptive Ā-dependencies are derived via movement, while others argue that they are not. This talk contributes to the ongoing debate and resolves the apparent paradox by arguing—both from novel data and from a broad survey of the prior literature—that two types of resumptive Ā-dependencies must be differentiated cross-linguistically (building on proposals in e.g. Borer 1981, Koopman 1984, and Engdahl 1985). One type is base-generated without Ā-movement (e.g. in Iraqi, Syrian, and Tunisian Arabic; pace prior movement-based analyses of Arabic resumption, cf. Aoun et al. 2001), whereas the other co-occurs with Ā-movement (e.g. in Spanish). The basis for this distinction is a critical reassessment of what diagnoses (Ā-)movement and why. The diagnostics, which march in lockstep cross-linguistically to reliably distinguish the two types of resumptives, are overt morphophonological reflexes of movement, island-sensitivity, parasitic gap licensing, exactly stranding, and case-connectivity. The result is the most empirically successful account of cross-linguistic patterns of resumption to date.
Furthermore, I argue that the correct analysis of resumption sheds light on the driving force of syntactic operations. A key corollary of my analysis of resumption is that natural language syntax must be able to differentiate between (external) Merge and Move (qua internal Merge). To account for this distinction, I argue that Merge must be feature-driven (i.e. driven by features of lexical items; see Adger 2003; Müller 2011; and Merchant 2019), as opposed to being free (or untriggered; see Chomsky 2015; Collins 2017; Safir 2019). I adduce novel evidence in support of the feature-driven approach coming from variation in the construction of long-distance dependencies which interleave movement and base-generation (i.e. mixed chains, see McCloskey 2002).
Matt Hewett graduated with a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 2023 and he is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Syntax in the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. His research reevaluates the nature of syntactic and morphological dependencies, with a particular focus on resumptivity and Ā-dependencies, (l-)selection, (pseudo)passives, intervention effects, discontinuous agreement, and Semitic languages. His research has been published in (or accepted by) Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, and Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics.

Operational opacity at the clausal middlefield
2024-03-20 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
Early formulations of Phase Theory posit that each clause consists of two locality domains (phases): the complete clause (CP) and a clause internal domain located roughly around vP. Syntactic evidence for the phasehood of CP comes from two types of phenomena: footprints of successive cyclic movement and operational opacity. In contrast, evidence for a clause-internal phase has primarily come from successive cyclic movement (i.a. Legate 2003, Aldridge 2008, Bennett et al. 2012, van Urk 2015). Operational opacity is not observed at vP, a category notoriously transparent for syntactic relations. This contrast between CP and vP has led some researchers to conclude that only CP is a phase and that intermediate movement through the edge of vP must be explained differently. This talk presents the missing type of evidence, from operational opacity, for the clause-internal phase hypothesis. In particular, I argue that VoiceP in Zimbabwean Ndebele is opaque for A-movement and phi-agreement. A VoiceP-external probe can only access a VoiceP-internal goal if the goal moves to Spec,VoiceP, and not otherwise. The talk additionally motivates the assumption that successive cyclic movement, both A and A-bar, is feature-driven. This is based on the observation that all movement out of VoiceP in Ndebele is blocked when Voice is independently shown to lack a movement-triggering feature. I conclude with some thoughts on why operational opacity is much easier to detect at a CP boundary than at the clausal middlefield.

Asia Pietraszko is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Rochester. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago Linguistics Department. She is the director of the Field Syntax Lab at the University of Rochester and works in syntax and morphology, with a focus on Bantu languages. She studies questions related to clausal architecture and the processes that underlie structure building, such as selection and movement. Topics she’s worked on include verbal periphrasis, head-movement and do-support, A-movement, clausal embedding and nominalization, and backward control.

Workshop On Morphology at Princeton
2024-03-22 08:00 - 2024-03-23 17:00 UTC
The Workshop On Morphology at Princeton (WOMP) is a semi-annual workshop centered around developments in morphological theory.
The inaugural meeting of WOMP will take place on March 22-23, 2024. For preliminary details about the workshop, including the speaker/poster line-up and the basic schedule, click here.

Registration
Registration for WOMP is always free, but participants must register in advance. For details, see the page for the upcoming WOMP meeting.

Contact Information
Organizer: Laura Kalin (Princeton Program in Linguistics)
Contact address: lkalin@princeton.edu

Temporal Coordination as a Hallmark of Metrical Prominence Across Languages
2024-03-27 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
As our understanding of the factors shaping prosodic aspects of the speech signal grows, there has been growing skepticism about the explanatory role of structural factors such as metrical prominence in conditioning prosodic patterns. In this talk, I argue that such skepticism is misguided and is often rooted in problematic assumptions about the mapping between phonological structure and phonetic patterning. I draw on various types of data—notably, multimodal corpora from two Niger-Congo languages on the relationship between speech and co-speech gesture—to demonstrate that temporal coordination, more than any set of acoustic or articulatory enhancement strategies, is an essential property of metrically-prominent syllables across languages. Furthermore, I argue that metrical prominence asymmetries–though demonstrably helpful to the listener and to the learner–serve an essential role on the part of the speaker in facilitating aspects of language production.

Kathryn Franich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Harvard University, where she also directs the Harvard PhonLab. In her research, she examines patterns in speech acoustics, articulation, and perception in order to understand how language is structured, how it is used in communication, and how it gets passed on from one generation to the next. Much of her work draws on data from Niger-Congo languages, in particular Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon on which she has been conducting fieldwork since 2010. She is currently working on an NSF-funded grant project titled Speech and Communicative Timing Across Languages and Linguistic Contexts which aims to understand the mechanisms which underlie our ability to time our speech, from the level of the individual articulators (using electromagnetic articulography, for example), to coordination between speech and the body (as with the use of co-speech gesture, which we’ll hear more about today), to coordination with other individuals, as in conversational turn-taking.

American Sign Language Storytelling with Peter Cook
2024-03-28 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Maeder Hall Auditoriun
Peter Cook will present an evening of animated storytelling in American Sign Language. Many of his stories reflect his personal experience as a Deaf individual growing up in the world of sounds, providing a unique glimpse into Deaf community and culture.
English voice interpretation will be provided. No ASL knowledge is required.

Peter S. Cook is an internationally reputed Deaf performing artist whose works incorporate American Sign Language, pantomime, storytelling, acting, and movement. He has traveled extensively around the country and abroad with the Flying Words Project to promote ASL Literature with Kenny Lerner since 1986. Peter has appeared in Live from Off Center’s “Words on Mouth” (PBS) and “United States of Poetry” (PBS), produced by Emmy award winner Bob Holman. He has been featured at the National Storytelling festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and the Tales of Graz in Graz, Austria, The Deaf Way II and the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Peter has worked with Deaf storytellers/poets in Europe, Brazil, Israel, and Japan and was invited to the White House to join the National Book Festival in 2003. He has also been involved in numerous film projects including the ITV’s Signed Stories.

Peter lives in Chicago and is Associate Professor and Chair of the ASL Department at Columbia College Chicago. He received the 1997 Excellence in Teaching award and was one of the finalists for the 2018 Excellence in Teaching award.

This event is funded by the 250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education and the Humanities Council’s Program in Linguistics.

Program in Linguistics Sophomore Open House 2024
2024-04-03 16:30 - 17:30 (America/New_York) | Green Hall 1-C-4C
The Program in Linguistics invites students to meet with current faculty, independent majors and minors to learn about the program and application process. Refreshments will be served.
Please spread the word!

RSVP (mbasso@princeton.edu) is requested by March 27.

Replicating the typology of linguistic inferences using non-words: From gestures to sound effects to emoji
2024-04-17 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
Research in contemporary semantics has uncovered a typology of linguistic inferences, characterized by their conversational status and their behavior in complex sentences. This typology of linguistic inferences is usually thought to be specific to language and in part lexically encoded in the meanings of words. In this talk, I will present experimental evidence of implicatures, presuppositions, homogeneity inferences, and supplements, triggered variously by gestures, visual animations, sound effects, and emoji. The finding that we can replicate what are normally thought to be language-specific inferences – using non-words – raises new questions and challenges regarding the fundamental nature of linguistic inferences and how we might acquire them.

Lyn Tieu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto. She is also an Adjunct Fellow with the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour & Development at Western Sydney University and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University. Lyn conducts research in experimental and developmental semantics and pragmatics, using experimental methods to investigate the nature of linguistic meaning and how it is acquired by young children. Lyn also currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief at Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.

The mechanics of reciprocal shift
2024-09-19 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
In this talk, I will present ongoing work that I am conducting on the structure of complex reciprocals (e.g., English’s each other) cross-linguistically. I will show that in many languages the complex reciprocal can be split apart by adpositions in PPs and also by possessums in possessive structures. This word order is also strongly correlated with case agreement between part of the reciprocal and its antecedent. I present an analysis in terms of movement of part of the reciprocal and couple that with a syntactic case transmission mechanism. This analysis will have consequences for the domain of agreement operations, linearization, and the binding of reflexive anaphors and reciprocals inside PPs and DPs.

Troy Messick is an assistant professor in the department of linguistics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Connecticut. His specialization is in generative syntactic theory. He has worked on a wide variety of topics in the field of syntax and its interfaces including ellipsis, complementation, semantic agreement, the morphosyntactic representation of gender features, and the structure of complex reflexives and reciprocals. He has published his work in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Journal of Linguistics, Syntax and Glossa.

Additive Features of Tone and Intonation
2024-10-10 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
This talk introduces a unified featural model for the representation of tone and intonation. On the one hand, the model successfully addresses outstanding theoretical issues in the representation of tone, including but not limited to, capturing 5-tone systems, and addressing the under-generation/over-generation issues of existing binary feature systems. On the other hand, the model straightforwardly extends to the representation of intonation (namely in tone languages), where its features are used as parameters in a cross-linguistic intonation-generating algorithm. The model will be explored using both relevant existing tone data, as well as data from original fieldwork on some tone languages of west-Africa.

Dr. Mamadou‘s research focuses on the representation and computation of tone and intonation, which are two of the most widely shared aspects of human languages. From a theoretical standpoint, he is interested in a unified theory of representation for tone and intonation, since both are two usages of pitch, if at two different levels of the grammar. Dr. Mamadou believes that a unified and linguistically adequate representation of tone and intonation is the first step toward a better understanding of the many nuances of tone and intonation interactions. This is where computational and mathematical approaches to tone and intonation prove almost unparalleled, in the sense that they help calculate the exact toll their interactions place on the language speaking mind. Empirically, Deen’s work focuses on understudied languages of sub-saharan Africa, where he conducts fieldworks, collecting experimental data from different languages like Ede Chaabe, Baatonum, Dan, and Zarma, spoken across Benin, Côte-d’Ivoire and Niger.

Dialing into the Past: Alexander Graham Bell, Eugenics, and Shaping Historical Memory
2024-10-23 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | A17 Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building
Alexander Graham Bell is widely celebrated for his invention of the telephone, but his involvement in the American Eugenics movement remains a lesser-known aspect of his legacy. Yet, Bell is vilified in the signing Deaf community for his support for oralism and sought to dissuade Deaf people from marrying each other. This presentation explores the tension between his innovative contributions to science, his involvement with the Deaf community, and his role in the eugenics movement that reveals a complex legacy. By examining Bell’s role in science, eugenics and the Deaf community, we confront the challenge of reconciling these contrasting aspects in shaping our understanding of historical figures.

Brian H. Greenwald, PhD is Professor of History and Director of the Drs. John S. & Betty J. Schuchman Deaf Documentary Center at Gallaudet University. He is co-editor of two books and has presented widely on topics in American Deaf history. Funded by a National Science Foundation grant, the Schuchman Center is currently at work on producing a film about the Deaf test subjects’ participation in the early years of NASA history.

No ASL knowledge required. Interpretation will be provided.

Abstract representations and the phenomenon of incomplete neutralisation
2024-10-24 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
Research over the last few decades has consistently questioned the suﬀiciency of abstract/discrete phonological representations based on putative misalignments between predictions from such representations and observed experimental results. Here, I’ll first suggest that many of the arguments ride on misunderstandings of the original claims from generative phonology, and that the typical evidence furnished is consistent with those claims. I’ll then narrow in on the phenomenon of incomplete neutralisation and show again that it is consistent with the classic generative phonology view. I’ll further point out that extant accounts of the phenomenon do not achieve important desiderata and typically do not provide an explanation for either the phenomenon itself, or why there are actually at least two different kinds of incomplete neutralisation that don’t stem from task confounds. Finally, I present new experimental data and our explanation that the phenomenon is an outcome of planning using abstract/discrete phonological knowledge.

Karthik Durvasula is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies for Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures at Michigan State University. His research is focused primarily on understanding how to interface abstract and categorical linguistic theories with the fine-grained and gradient nature of the observed data in formal experimentation. Over the last 10-15 years, he has used a variety of techniques to probe this question: (a) field-work, (b) formal behavioural and neurolinguistic experimentation, and (c) computational modelling. Most recently, he has been looking at fine-grained effects and timing relationships in speech articulations and gradient sound patterns present in the lexicon of a language to understand the nature of phonological knowledge.

Challenging the Canons of Language Study
2025-03-04 12:30 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Green Hall 0-S-9
Observing language studies for more than a half century has allowed me to view the establishment of topical domains of research, the selection of data, methods of analysis, and ideological and practical concerns of linguistics in the field. I use the term “canon” to refer to principles or doctrines by which a topic is judged as appropriate and acceptable for study, or to a body of written works considered to be authoritarian and representative within a subject area. Linguists need to recognize and, at times, challenge these canons as they develop within the field. In this analysis, I consider several research studies that warrant further scrutiny in terms of their implications on the canons of research within the framework of sociolinguistics.
The first case examines dialect recession in sociolinguistics. The focus of most variationist studies of linguistic change to date has been the emerging and increase in new forms. The opposing process, or the decline and loss of older variants, is less well understood. We framed the question of language obsolescence on the islands of Ocracoke, NC, and Smith Island, MD, (Wolfram & Schilling-Estes (1995); Schilling-Estes & Wolfram (1999)) in terms of recession models in the “endangerment canon” in general linguistics, and found differential models of obsolescence that included both dissipation and concentration trends in our studies of these receding dialects. Ironically, our conclusions were largely ignored or rejected by the “endangerment canon” within general linguists while considered as informative and insightful by sociolinguists.
A second case involves the development and adoption of a holistic measure for the examination of African American Language (AAL) that we applied during a longitudinal study of African American speakers for the first two decades of their lives (Kohn, Wolfram, Farrington, Van Hofwegen, Renn 2021). A “Dialect Density Measure” based on an index of types and tokens of diagnostic structures used in AAL served as the basis for a holistic score of dialect use that showed correlations with social and educational attributes. We thought we demonstrated the quantitative validity of the measure through a series of manipulations that were largely accepted in research in allied fields. But variationist sociolinguists maintained skepticism and largely rejected the basis of our study, influenced by predetermined, normative models for quantitative analysis and a socialized aversion to holistic measurements for measuring language varieties, leaving a gap in sociolinguistic insight.
The final case is the role of social and educational engagement in linguistics. Whereas analysis and application of sociolinguistic knowledge coincided with the advent of the field of sociolinguistics (Labov 1984), some developments within sociolinguistics actually marginalize the role of engagement operationally. By illustrating our sociolinguistic engagement model for the Island of Ocracoke over three decades, we demonstrate how different strands of formal and informal programs can, in fact, radically transform how a community changes its perception of a culturally significant language variety. We demonstrate how the significance of long-term engagement in formal and informal engagement programs locally and nationally can change attitudes about language variation. I conclude with a plea for linguistics never to abandon the moral and ethical commitment to serve the communities we research, and to recognize explicitly the goal of community enlightenment as a central theme in in the field.

Walt Wolfram is William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor at North Carolina State University, where he also directs the Language and Life Project. He has pioneered research on social and ethnic dialects since the 1960s and published 24 books, edited 8 books, and published over 300 articles. Over the last several decades he, his colleagues, and his students have conducted more than 4,000 sociolinguistic interviews with residents of North Carolina and beyond, primarily under funding from the National Science Foundation. In addition to his research interests, Professor Wolfram is particularly interested in the engagement of sociolinguistic information with the public, including the production of television documentaries, the construction of museum exhibits, and the development of an innovative formal and informal materials related to language diversity for different institutions. He has received numerous awards, including the North Carolina Award (the highest award given to a citizen of North Carolina), Caldwell Humanities Laureate from the NC Humanities Council, the Holladay Medal at NC State, the Board of Governor’s Award Holshouser Award for Excellence in Public Service, and the Linguistics, Language and the Public Award from the Linguistic Society of America. He has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and served as President of the Linguistic Society of America, the American Dialect Society, and the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics.

Program in Linguistics Sophomore Open House 2025
2025-03-25 17:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Green Hall 1-C-4C
Join Linguistics faculty, independent majors and minors for a fun and informative gathering where you will learn all about the Program, including course offerings, degree requirements and current projects.
Refreshments will be provided.
We look forward to seeing you there!

Reading James Baldwin through the Lens of Black Deaf and Disability Studies
2025-04-10 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 219 Aaron Burr, Princeton, 08544, United States
Join us for a public conversation with Dr. Rezenet Moges-Riedel on reading Baldwin through a Black Deaf and Disability Studies lens on Thursday, April 10. Dr. Moges-Riedel is an Assistant Professor and Co-Assistant Director of the ASL Linguistics and Deaf Cultures Program at California State University Long Beach. She is a linguistic anthropologist and a leading scholar of D/deaf identity and intersectionality, in particular how D/deaf culture intersects with race and gender in different societies, and has conducted research on the intersectional experiences and retention of deaf faculty of color working at postsecondary institutions. Her concept of “Black Deaf Gain” rethinks the provocative concept of “deaf gain” (rather than hearing loss) from a racialized perspective.
Dr. Moges-Riedel will be in conversation with Dr. Kelsey Henry, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in Race and Ethnicity Studies in the Society of Fellows and Lecturer in the Humanities Council and African American Studies. Dr. Henry is an interdisciplinary historian whose work integrates perspectives from Black studies, histories of science and medicine, and disability studies, and her research focuses on histories of race, antiblackness, and developmental disability within the United States. In this conversation, Dr. Moges-Riedel and Dr. Henry will reflect on their experiences researching and teaching in Black Disability Studies and Black Deaf Studies in dialogue with James Baldwin’s writings, including Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time. In this stimulating discussion, they will focus on how James Baldwin’s ideas might help us think about the building of various Black identities and the state of the civil rights movement today, including the possibly/soon-to-dismantled Section 504 and other Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies—urgent issues of our time. The conversation will be moderated by Dr. Timothy Loh, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Lecturer in the Humanities Council and Anthropology.
This event was organized by Timothy Loh and Noah Buchholz, Senior Lecturer in the Humanities Council and the Program in Linguistics and Director of the American Sign Language Program.

Canonical and non-canonical conversion in Baltic
2025-04-17 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
Conversion is best known from languages like English where nouns may be used as verbs and vice versa without any formal marking, e.g., email (n) – email (v), walk (v) – walk (n). Such pairs can be interpreted either as instances of derivation without overt affixation or as cases of lexical multifunctionality. I pose the question of whether the concept of conversion can be successfully applied to inflectionally rich languages like Latvian and Lithuanian (Baltic, Indo-European), and argue for recognizing a continuum of phenomena based on the canonical typology approach developed by Greville G. Corbett and colleagues. I begin with canonical cases of conversion where the change of word class has no formal expression, and move on to less canonical examples characterized by inflectional class change, vowel, consonant, and tone alternations.

Jurgis Pakerys is a professor of Baltic linguistics at the Department of Baltic Studies, Vilnius University. His recent research includes studies on derivational networks, verbal inflection classes, and onomatopoeia, as well as on transitivity pairs and morphological and periphrastic causative constructions in the Baltic languages. Currently, he focuses on interpreting conversion in Baltic and evaluating derivational productivity in Lithuanian.

Princeton Phonology Forum (PɸF 2025) - Sound Patterns and Human History
2025-04-18 - 2025-04-20 | Friend Center Convocation Room (Rm 113) and via Zoom

Revitalizing Lunaapeew: Bridging Disciplines and Collaborating Efforts for a Vibrant Linguistic Future
2025-09-22 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
This lecture is co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES), Program in Linguistics, and Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

In an era where indigenous languages face the threat of extinction, the revitalization of the Lunaapeew language emerges as a beacon of cultural resilience and linguistic heritage. Exploring innovative approaches to breathe new life into Lunaapeew, a polysynthetic language rich in complexity and expressive capability. By employing the root word method, this study delves into the intricate structure of Lunaapeew, highlighting how its morphemes combine to create meaning. Studying and analyzing key root words reveals the foundation of the language, illustrating the dynamic process of word formation and the cultural narratives embedded within. This revitalization effort not only aims to preserve the Lunaapeew language but also fosters a deeper understanding of its grammatical framework, empowering the community, future generations, and linguists alike. Through collaborative educational initiatives and immersive language programs, we demonstrate that Lunaapeew is not merely a means of communication but a vital link to identity and heritage. This revitalization journey exemplifies the power of language as a living entity that can adapt, thrive, and reconnect future generations to their ancestral roots.

About Velma Noah-Nicholas
I am known as Velma Noah-Nicholas, but my real name is Medweanakwedokwe. I am of the Turkey clan from Eelunaapeewi Lahkeewiit. I currently hold the position of Lunaapeew Language Coordinator for Kinoomadziwin Education Body.
I have been an Ontario-certified Teacher for 17 years and have worked in all areas and levels of Education. I began my language-learning journey as a college student and haven’t looked back. Although I am the daughter of a residential school survivor, my language has been a passion since my children were young.
I graduated from Lakehead University with a Native Language Instructors Diploma in 2009. Following this, I attended Queen’s University to complete a Diploma in Education. I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences, majoring in Indigenous Studies. Currently, I am a Master’s student in the Indigenous Language Revitalization Program at the University of Victoria, and I am looking forward to graduating in 2026.
I am always eager to contribute and learn in this amazing language work that I love, and assist others in their language journeys.

The synchrony, diachrony, and anachrony of Sievers’s Law in Gothic
2025-10-21 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | 0-S-6 Green Hall
Sievers’s Law in Germanic refers to the realization of yod + vowel sequences as nonvocalic after light syllables (*V̆CjV), but vocalic after heavy syllables (*V̄CijV, *VCCijV). The resulting allomorphy has left important traces in the nominal and verbal inflection of Old English and other older Germanic languages, but in Gothic, phonologically the most archaic Germanic language, SL is widely assumed to have still been a synchronic phonological process. Recent studies have analyzed SL in terms of syllable structure or “prosodic optimization”, setting up repair rules or constraints to generate the attested outcomes. However, it is argued from the existence of variant forms and widespread occurrence of superheavy syllables that SL was in fact no longer part of the synchronic grammar of Gothic, and that the relevant alternations were morphologically conditioned just as in the other Germanic languages. This finding not only contributes to our understanding of Gothic phonology, but highlights the importance of clearly distinguishing synchrony from diachrony and taking full account of variation, loanwords, and other often overlooked evidence in premodern languages.
Ronald I. Kim ’96 is Associate Professor in the Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. His research interests include the historical linguistics of Indo-European and Semitic as well as language typology, sociolinguistics, language contact, and dialectology. He is author of two monographs and over 80 articles dealing with all aspects of Indo-European linguistics, and has held research grants from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and Polish National Science Centre. Kim is also coeditor of the journal Indo-European Linguistics and editor of several volumes, including Uriel Weinreich’s Languages in Contact (2011), Diachronic Perspectives on Suppletion (2019), and Hrozný and Hittite: The First Hundred Years (2019).
This lecture is sponsored by the Program in Linguistics and the Department of Classics. Lunch will be provided.

APOLLOPOP
2025-11-06 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | East Pyne 161
It has been clear since the 1890s that some pieces of ancient Greek vocal music display a correlation between the melody that is inherent in the text, on the one hand, and the melody to which is it sung, on the other. The Delphic hymns (127 BCE) provide the fullest picture of that phenomenon. For example, there is good, non-musical evidence that the circumflex accent marked a high-to-low fall in linguistic tone. Correspondingly, in the Delphic hymns, circumflected syllables are usually sung to a two-note falling interval. In other words, linguistic tone and musical melody usually fall in parallel.
Nineteenth century scholars (Crusius, Wackernagel) made three astute generalizations about the correlation, e.g. that the accented syllable of a word is sung at least as high as any of its other syllables. With a few interesting exceptions, little has been added since. Current handbook treatments of the topic essentially consist of those three rules.
Outside of Classics, from the early twentieth century onward, scholars have studied similar phenomena in other traditions of vocal music including Cantonese pop music (Cantopop), Vietnamese “new music,” Tommo So folk song, and many more. Especially in recent decades, that work has yielded valuable insights about the nature of tone-melody matching and raised questions for further study.
My presentation considers tone-melody matching in the Delphic hymns against the typological backdrop provided by those other traditions. I suggest ways in which (a) they can guide us to a more sophisticated understanding of text-setting in ancient Greek vocal music and (b) Greek can contribute to our understanding of how tone-melody matching works in general.

“Articulate” Book Talk with Rachel Kolb
2025-11-07 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 219 Aaron Burr, Princeton, 08544, United States
Join us on November 7 for a book talk and signing by deaf writer and educator, Rachel Kolb, who grew up between signing and speaking worlds as part of the “ADA generation,” people with disabilities whose legal right to accessibility in the United States was guaranteed when the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Act was passed in 1990. In her memoir, Articulate: A Deaf Memoir of Voice (Ecco Press, 2025), Kolb reflects on articulation as an ongoing and relational process. Publishers Weekly calls it “required reading”: “Accessible, fascinating, and heartfelt, this thorough examination of contemporary Deafness moves and edifies in equal measure.”
Kolb will be in conversation with conversation with Noah Buchholz, Senior Lecturer in the Program in Linguistics and the Director of the ASL Program at Princeton. In this conversation, they will discuss what it means to have a voice, how language expresses our humanity, and how to communicate across difference—questions critical to our moment. There will be American Sign Language interpreters, and Labyrinth Books will be on-site to sell copies of the book.
Rachel Kolb is a writer whose work explores communication, language, and disability as central components of human experience. A graduate of Stanford University, she was the first signing deaf Rhodes scholar at Oxford before receiving her Ph.D. in English literature from Emory University and then completing a junior fellowship in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. Her work has been published in The New York Times and The Atlantic, among other venues, and she is the author of the new memoir Articulate (Ecco, 2025).
Noah Buchholz is Senior Lecturer and Director of the American Sign Language (ASL) Program within the Program in Linguistics at Princeton University. Buchholz is a Certified Deaf Interpreter, an ASL-English translator, and an ASL performing artist, as well as a PhD candidate in Religion and Society at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he is pursuing research at the intersections of political theology, disability and Deaf studies, and postcolonial/decolonial studies.
This event is organized by Timothy Loh, Cotsen Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and Anthropology at Princeton University. Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, the Program in Linguistics, the American Sign Language Program, the Humanities Council, and Labyrinth Books.

Why a language may lack productive argument demotion strategies: Zenzontepec Chatino valency patterns in lexicon and discourse
2025-11-13 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Green Hall 0-S-9
Languages display a range of strategies for adding or promoting arguments (e.g. causatives, applicatives) and removing or syntactically demoting them (e.g. passives, antipassives), but not all languages do these things in the same ways or to the same extent. Zenzontepec Chatino, a Zapotecan (Otomanguean) language of Mexico, displays minimal valence reducing strategies that would demote arguments, especially P (object-like) arguments, and this talk addresses the question of why a language might display such a profile. Extensive lexicographic research finds that the verbal lexicon is highly intransitive, and thus there are few P arguments in the syntax to demote in the first place. When we look at language use, people often avoid expressing agents, using patientive intransitive verbs, even when an agent is known from context and a suitable transitive verb is available, or by encoding the understood agent indirectly as the possessor of an S argument or dative oblique. Over time, culturally-grounded discourse patterns shaping language use have likely resulted in and sustained extensive intransitive lexicalization. It is suggested that strongly transitivizing languages may be poised to lack robust argument demotion strategies.

Eric W. Campbell (Ph.D. 2014, University of Texas at Austin) specializes in typological, functional, and community-based approaches to phonology, morphology, syntax, language change, language documentation, and lexicography, especially regarding Otomanguean languages, in collaboration with community members based in Mexico and the California diaspora.

The role of tone in Rere topic and focus constructions
2025-12-04 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 1-S-5 Green Hall, 1-S-5 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, United States
Tonal correlates of topic and focus constructions in African tone languages are often indirect, manifested as restrictions on tone spreading or tone marking on non-focused or non-topic elements. Rere (Koalib) is a Kordofanian language of Sudan that exhibits both of these characteristics. In this talk, I will show how high tone indexes topic and focus of nominals in Rere by marking the verb. In addition, topic determines the grammatical role of pronominal enclitics attached to the verb, indicated by tonal case marking. Two patterns of progressive high tone spreading occur within the verbal complex, bounded and unbounded. These patterns interact with other high tones in different ways. High tone that marks case and topic blocks unbounded spreading and favors bounded. Conversely, high tone that marks aspect-mood-deixis favors unbounded spreading and prevents bounded spreading.

Sharon Rose is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, San Diego. Her research is in phonology, investigated through in-depth fieldwork on African languages. Her main topics of interest are long-distance harmony and tone. Recent projects investigate the prosody of topic and focus, and musical pitch perception by speakers of African tone languages. She has worked primarily on Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea and on Kordofanian languages of Sudan.
