The 34th Annual Northwest Linguistics Conference

Abstract Booklet

April 28-29, 2018 Simon Fraser University

Harbour Centre Campus

Vancouver, BC

Located on the traditional ancestral territories of Tsleil-Waututh,

Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam)

peoples

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Northwest Linguistics Conference 34 Program

Saturday, April 28, 2018 HC 2270 HC 1510

8:30-9:30 Registration

9:30-10:00 Welcome Aaron Williams Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Nation

10:00-11:00 Plenary Talk I Phonetics and the Public Good Dr. Murray Munro (Professor, Simon Fraser University) Chair: Noortje de Weers

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break Session I: Phonetics

Chair: Yue Chen Session I: Syntax I

Chair: Quince Sholberg

11:15-11:45 Filipinos in Toronto are speak[ɪng] like this, not talk[ɪn] like that Pocholo Umbal, Jean-Francois Juneau, Clara Dubber, and Anthony Cheung (University of Toronto)

Might should we consider this?: Double modal inversion in Southern United States English Sara Williamson (Simon Fraser University)

11:45-12:15 The entrainment of creaky voice in a conversation corpus Courtney Mansfield (University of Washington)

Constructional Constraints in English Syntactic Amalgams: A Corpus-based Perspective Rok Sim and Jong-Bok Kim (Kyung Hee University)

12:15-1:45 Lunch (not provided)

1:45-2:45 Plenary Talk II Investigating the use of articulatory information in auditory speech perception: How listening is shaped by talking Dr. Henny Yeung (Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University) Chair: Quince Sholberg

2:45-3:00 Coffee Break Session II: Language Acquisition I

Chair: Olga Vasileva Session II: First Nations Languages

Chair: Kelli Finney

3:00-3:30 The perception and production of intervocalic [θ] by Mandarin ESL learners Junyu Wu and Hua Lin (University of Victoria)

Pragmatics meets Prosodics: Nominal Lists in Hul'q'umi'num' Salish Zachary Gilkison (Simon Fraser University)

3:30-4:00 Korean Learners' Individual Networks of Practice Kellianne Bennett (University of Washington)

Plain velars in the Skwxwu7mesh language Ethan Pincott (Simon Fraser University)

4:00-4:30 Fluency in the EFL Chilean Classroom Astrid Morrison (Universidad Autonoma de Chile)

The (Predictable) Effect of Environment on Vowel Quality in ʔayʔajuθəm Gloria Mellesmoen and Marianne Huijsmans (University of British Columbia)

5:00-7:00 Social (drinks and appetizers at Malone’s)

Sunday, April 29, 2018 HC 2270 HC 1510

9:30-10:00 Registration

10:00-11:00 Plenary Talk III Internally Headed Relatives: From Japanese to the Dene Languages Dr. Keir Moulton (Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University) Chair: Anisa Dhanji

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break Session III: Syntax II

Chair: Sara Williamson Session III: Sociolinguistics

Chair: Zack Gilkison

11:15-11:45 Gender Identity and the Naturalness of Referential Singular They Trevor Block (Simon Fraser University)

First Nations Language Revitalization in British Columbia: The case of the Tŝilhqot’in language in Yuneŝit’in Paula Laita Pallares (University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU)

11:45-12:15 Reflector: another potential interpretation of the Mandarin reflexive ziji Peng Han (University of Calgary)

Language Contact in Amdo and Kham Nathan Loggins (University of Washington)

12:15-1:45 Lunch (not provided) Session IV: Language Acquisition II

Chair: Dasha Gluhareva

1:45-2:15 Investigating Language Asymmetry and Handedness in Participants with Diverse Language Background Olga Vasileva (Simon Fraser University)

2:15-2:45 Instructed SLA of English articles and noun types by L1 Chinese international students Dakota Thomas-Wilhelm (University of Iowa/Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

2:45-3:15 Investigating Acquisition of L2 Articles: Evidence from Japanese-speaking and English-speaking learners of Standard Arabic Albandary Aldossari (Western University)

Plenary Talks

*All plenary talks will be in HC 2270*

Saturday, April 28

Plenary #1: 10:00-11:00 am

Phonetics and the Public Good

Dr. Murray Munro

(Professor, Simon Fraser University)

In its strict sense “Applied Linguistics” refers to a field of study that places value on the practical uses of

linguistic research. Of course, one application of such work is in language teaching, which benefitted both in the

early 20th century and again more recently from a close engagement with phonetics. In addition, the influence

of the speech sciences in the public sphere has expanded in the past few decades, with consequences for

accessibility, the arts, business, and even criminal prosecution. Using examples drawn from my own empirical

work and that of other researchers I will discuss the ways in which phonetics can shed light on several current

issues relating to education, public policy, and dishonest practices.

Plenary #2: 1:45-2:45pm

Investigating the use of articulatory information in auditory speech perception: How listening is shaped by

talking

Dr. Henny Yeung

(Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University)

Phonetics and phonology assume similar representations in production and perception, yet we still understand

relatively little about how cognitive and neural systems for speech perception and production are linked. Here I

examine the role that sensorimotor information about production has in speech perception, and how this

sensorimotor information is formatted. The first part of this talk will focus on production information as

supplementary source of information that is useful for the resolution of ambiguous auditory speech, just like

seeing a visual face aids with understanding speech. However, I will also show that visual and sensorimotor

information tap into different cognitive representations of speech. The second part of this talk will explore the

format of sensorimotor information, and results will indicate that low level articulatory cues are incorporated

into auditory perception. Together, these findings have several implications for theories of gestural phonetics

and phonology.

Sunday, April 29

Plenary #3: 10:00-11:00 am

Internally Headed Relatives: From Japanese to the Dene Languages

Dr. Keir Moulton

(Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University)

Relativization strategies in the world’s languages vary in a number of ways. One prominent source of variation

is the location of the head noun of the relative. Languages like English place the head externally to the relative

clause (EHRCs). In contrast, a range of (unrelated) languages place the head internal to the relative clause—so

called internally headed relatives (IHRCs). A major question in the study of IHRCs is whether they have an

underlying or abstract syntactic structure that is similar to EHRCs. Erlewine and Gould (2014) have recently

argued for a unification of Japanese EHRCs and IHRCs; Platero 1974 and Grosu 2012 have claimed that IHRCs

in the Dene language Navajo are also, at an abstract syntactic level, externally headed. In this talk I report joint

work with Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten that argues against Grosu’s claim about Navajo based on novel fieldwork

elicitation; I then report joint work with Junko Shimoyama refuting Erlewine and Gould's analysis. I present an

account of the variation in IHRCs that does not cast them as derivationally related to externally headed

relatives.

Filipinos in Toronto are speak[ɪng] like this, not talk[ɪn] like that Pocholo Umbal, Jean-Francois Juneau, Clara Dubber, and Anthony Cheung

University of Toronto

The variable realization of the English ending –ing (walk[ɪn] vs. walk[ɪng]), known also as the variable (ING), has been studied extensively within the variationist framework (e.g., Fisher 1958, Houston 1985, Labov 1966, Trudgill 1972, 1974). However, studies on the ethnic patterns of (ING) remain underwhelming (e.g., Drummond 2012, Walker 2012, 2015). Walker (2012), for instance, showed that Chinese speakers of Canadian English in Toronto show low rates of [ɪn] use. In addition, Drummond (2012) found that for Polish immigrants in Manchester, identity played a role in their choice of (ING), such that those aligned with Polish identities favour [ɪŋk]. It is in this intersection of ethnicity and identity that this study is situated. This study explores the patterns of (ING) among Filipinos in Toronto, an important but understudied speech community. Focusing on the use of [ɪn], we examine the role of linguistic and social factors in the patterning of (ING), and also investigate the possible influence of ethnic orientation (perceived degree of ethnic group affiliation; Hoffman & Walker 2010:46) on the pattern of variability.

Spontaneous speech data from 8 second-generation and 1 first-generation Filipino immigrants (stratified by sex and age) were taken from Hoffman and Walker’s (2010) corpus of Toronto English. In ELAN (2017), 728 tokens of (ING) in word-final unstressed positions were extracted and coded impressionistically as either [ɪn] or [ɪng]. Previous studies have demonstrated that more verbal categories and two-syllable words favour the use of [ɪn] (Tagliamonte 2004); the same applies to males, members of the lower classes, and in casual speech (Fisher 1958, Trudgill 1972). (ING) may also be sensitive to age (Horvath 1985). As such, we also coded for the following factors: PART OF SPEECH, SYLLABLE, SEX and AGE. To operationalize ETHNICORIENTATION (EO), each speaker response to the Ethnic Orientation Questionnaire (Hoffman & Walker 2010) was assigned a score: 1 corresponded to low degree of ethnic affiliation; a 3 indicated high degree of participation; and 2 was in-between. Apart from computing each speaker’s overall mean EO score (EO_ALL), mean scores for questions relating only to social network (EO_SN), ethnic identity (EO_ETHNICID), language use (EO_LG), and language choice (EO_LGCH) were calculated. Following previous findings, we predicted the same patterns, and that those with higher EO scores will also favour the nonstandard form [ɪn].

We conducted a mixed-effect regression analysis in Rbrul (Johnson 2009) using the linguistic and social factors as fixed effects and SPEAKER as a random effect. In line with previous studies, our results revealed significant effects of SYLLABLE NUMBER, AGE, SEX, and EO_SN: words with more than two syllables, younger speakers and males in general favour the use of [ɪn]. PARTOF SPEECH did not come out as significant. Furthermore, those with a more Filipino social network also favour [ɪn]. These results demonstrate that Filipinos also show similar linguistic and social conditioning as compared to other groups, but perhaps (ING) is driven more by social factors. Finally, this study provides evidence that differences in how speakers construct ethnic identities may affect the degree to which sociolinguistic variants are used.

References

Drummond, Rob. 2012. Aspects of identity in a second language: ING variation in the speech of Polish migrants living in Manchester, UK. Language Variation and Change 24.107-33.

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ELAN [computer software]. 2017. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Retrieved from https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/.

Fisher, John L. 1958. Social influence on the choice of a linguistic variant. Word 14.47-56. Hoffman, Michol F. and James A. Walker. 2010. Ethnolects in the city: Ethnic orientation and

linguistic variation in Toronto English. Language Variation and Change 22.37-67. Horvath, Barbara M. 1985. Variation in Australian English. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press. Houston, Ann Celeste. 1985. Continuity and change in English morphology: The variable (ING).

Unpublished PhD Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania. Johnson, Daniel Ezra. 2009. Getting off the GoldVarb standard: Introducing Rbrul for mixed-

effects variable rule analysis. Language and Linguistics Compass 3.359-83. Labov, William. 1966. The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC:

Center for Applied Linguistics. Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2004. Someth[n]’s goi[g] on! Variable (ING) at ground zero. Language

Variation in Europe: Papers from the Second International Conference on Language Variation in Europe, ICLaVE 2, ed. by Britt-Louise Gunnarsson, Lena Bergström, Gerd Eklund, Staffan Fidell, Lise H. Hansen, Angela Karstadt, Bengt Nordberg, Eva Sundergren and Mats Thelander, 390-403. Uppsala: Uppsala University Department of Scandinavian Languages.

Trudgill, Peter. 1972. Sex, covert prestige, and linguistic change in urban British English. Language and Society 1.179-195.

Trudgill, Peter. 1974. The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Walker, James A. 2012. Velar nasals in Toronto English. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 41, Indiana University.

Walker, James A. 2015. Canadian English: A sociolinguistic perspective. New York: Routledge.

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The entrainment of creaky voice in a conversational corpusCourtney Mansfield

University of Washington

Speakers naturally adapt their speaking style to that of their interlocutor to promote pro-ficientcommunication and to maintain a positive social identity. This process is described as linguisticentrainment or accommodation in the literature and is often grounded in Com-municationAccommodation Theory (Giles, 2007), which suggests that speakers converge and diverge totheir partner’s speech features to signal social identity and affect. Lexical items (Brennan,1996) and phonetic features such as intensity have been shown to entrain in cooperativeconversation while other features such as pitch are idiosyncratic in speakers in some contexts(Levitan and Hirschberg, 2011).

The entrainment of phonation has not been examined and the question of whether speak-ers adapt this feature towards their interlocutor remains unanswered. Creaky voice has beenshown to index social meaning in some populations (Henton, 1986) and signify traits such as‘intimacy’ or ‘friendliness’ in perceptual studies (Gobl and Chasaide, 2003). I hypothesizethat creaky voice will entrain in a cooperative dialog, supported by its status as a socialmarker. Previous literature suggests that creak is utilized more often in female AmericanEnglish speakers (Abdelli-Beruh, Wolk, and Slavin, 2014), and further studies suggest thatwomen entrain to a higher degree than men in conversation (Namy, Nygaard, and Sauerteig,2002). For these reasons, I hypothesize that women will both use proportionally higheramounts of creak and adapt to their partners more than men.

Entrainment studies require a significant amount of data, but manual annotations areresource-intensive. While automatic approaches to creak classification allow for the explo-ration of larger datasets, phonation classifiers are relatively new and have not been testedwidely on a diverse range of datasets. Therefore, I approach the problem using a combination ofmanual annotations of phonation from Panfili (2016) and automated creak classifications fromthe state-of-the-art Recursive Neural Network of Drugman, Kane, and Gobl (2012). I use theATAROS corpus, which includes Pacific Northwest speakers engaged in cooperative tasksdesigned to elicit various levels of engagement and stance-taking (Freeman et al., 2014).

Posterier probabilities of creak are automatically extracted over a set of 16 dyads, where asubset of 11 dyads contain both automatic and human-annotated creak measures. Two di-mensions of entrainment are considered, following the methodologies of Levitan and Hirschberg(2011); these are referred to as proximity and convergence measures. Proximity is a measure ofthe similarity of speech patterns of a speaker to an interlocuter across an entire conver-sation.Proximity is expressed as the difference between the negative absolute difference of the speakerand interlocuter’s creak rate versus the negative absolute difference of the mean differencebetween speaker and all other participants. Convergence is indicated through a comparison ofthe mean absolute difference of the speaker and interlocuter’s creak rate at an early and latewindow in the conversation.

Dyads are grouped by speaker and interlocuter gender, and four groups are examined: malespeakers with male partners, male speakers with female partners, female speakers with femalepartners, and female speakers with male partners. Men showed significant proximity withfemale partners (p<0.05) and male partners (p<0.01) on both system and human-annotatedcreak rates. Women showed significant proximity with male partners on the human-annotatedsubset only (p<0.05). Convergence across the conversation (measured over the first and last160-second segment of conversation) did not show significant effects

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and was extremely variable across dyads. Additionally, in the case of male speakers, partnergender was found to be significantly correlated with creak rate (p<0.01). Men with femalepartners were on average creakier than men with male partners, with average creak rates of18.7% and 6.8% respectively. Overall average creak rates were higher for women than men,at 22.7% and 14% respectively.

This study demonstrates linguistic entrainment of creak as shown by the significant prox-imity of speakers across most groups. Interestingly, my findings diverge from previous lit-erature which suggests that women entrain at higher rates than men (Namy, Nygaard, andSauerteig, 2002). While convergence or divergence of speakers was not significant at thegroup level, the timeline for convergence is not well understood, and it is possible that theduration of the creak rate measured does not capture the reality of speakers who may accom-modate very rapidly or over a longer window of time. While main effects for entrainment werefound, proximity and convergence varied across individuals. Understanding the variation ofentrainment and the linguistic features involved in the entrainment process has importantimplications on both understanding natural conversation and designing automatic dialogsystems, where a one-size-fits-all approach to modeling voice quality or speaker entrainmentwould not capture the subtleties of social context.

References

Abdelli-Beruh, Nassima B, Lesley Wolk, and Dianne Slavin (2014). “Prevalence of vocal fryin young adult male American English speakers”. In: Journal of Voice 28.2, pp. 185–190.

Brennan, Susan E (1996). “Lexical entrainment in spontaneous dialog”. In: Proceedings ofISSD 96, pp. 41–44.

Drugman, Thomas, John Kane, and Christer Gobl (2012). “Resonator-based creaky voicedetection”. In: Thirteenth Annual Conference of the International Speech CommunicationAssociation.

Freeman, V. et al. (2014). ATAROS Technical Report 1: Corpus collection and initial taskvalidation. Tech. rep. Linguistics Phonetics Lab, University of Washington, Departmentof Linguistics.

Giles, Howard (2007). Communication accommodation theory. Wiley Online Library.Gobl, Christer and Nı Ailbhe Chasaide (2003). “The role of voice quality in communicating

emotion, mood and attitude”. In: Speech communication 40.1, pp. 189–212.Henton, Caroline G (1986). “Creak as a sociophonetic marker”. In: The Journal of the

Acoustical Society of America 80.S1, S50–S50.Levitan, Rivka and Julia Hirschberg (2011). “Measuring acoustic-prosodic entrainment with

respect to multiple levels and dimensions”. In: Twelfth Annual Conference of the Inter-national Speech Communication Association.

Namy, Laura L, Lynne C Nygaard, and Denise Sauerteig (2002). “Gender differences in vocalaccommodation: The role of perception”. In: Journal of Language and Social Psychology21.4, pp. 422–432.

Panfili, L. (2016). “The Physiological Underpinnings of Vowel Height and Creaky Voice”. In:The Acoustical Society of America. Salt Lake City, UT.

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Might should we consider this?: Double modal inversion in Southern United States EnglishSara Williamson

Simon Fraser University

Introduction. Southern United States English (SUSE) is among the dialects of English thatpermit a double modal construction, e.g. might could or might should. While elicitation studieshave tested double modal inversion in questions in SUSE (Di Paolo et al., 1979; Di Paolo, 1986;Hasty, 2012), the experimental results are mixed. Di Paolo et al. (1979) found joint double modalinversion, as in (1a), to be acceptable in Texas English, whereas Di Paolo (1986) found it to bemarginal as compared to inversion of the second modal, as in (1c). Hasty (2012) suggested thatonly second-modal inversion is possible in Tennessee English. These studies used differing meth-ods in different varieties of SUSE, impeding a cross-study comparison. This work addresses twoquestions: (i) is joint inversion of double modals acceptable in SUSE? And (ii) are there regionaldifferences in inversion patterns within SUSE? Results from an experiment conducted with speak-ers of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas Englishes show that joint inversion is preferred in somevarieties of SUSE. However, at least in Tennessee, second-modal inversion is also viable.

The experiment. 108 native English speakers whose local dialects permitted double modalsparticipated in a web-based acceptability judgment task. 44 of the participants were born andraised, at least to age 12, in Kentucky; 27 were born and raised in Tennessee; and 37 were bornand raised in Texas. The task tested the relative acceptability of three levels of INVERTED MODAL

(joint inversion (1a), first-modal inversion (1b), and second-modal inversion (1c)) in each of thethree levels of REGION for the common double modals might could and might should (Hasty,2011). All target items (32 test item sets, 32 fillers) were given as informal dialogues to encourageparticipants to give accurate judgments for non-standard constructions (Henry, 2005).

(1) Billy is at the park with his mother. He says to her:a. “Might could I play on the monkey bars?”b. “Might I could play on the monkey bars?”c. “Could I might play on the monkey bars?”

Raw ratings (1–7) were z-score transformed prior to analysis. A main effect of INVERTED MODAL

and an interaction between INVERTED MODAL and REGION (p < .01) were found (Fig. 1). Jointinversion was rated significantly higher than first-modal inversion overall (mean −.47 vs. −.62,p < .001), as well as in Kentucky (−.39 vs. −.55, p < .001), Tennessee (−.55 vs. −.65, p < .05),and Texas (−.51 vs. −.68, p < .001). Since Di Paolo (1986) and Hasty (2012) consistently foundfirst-modal inversion to be unacceptable in SUSE, these results suggest that joint inversion, by con-trast, is at least marginally acceptable in SUSE. Joint inversion was also rated significantly higherthan second-modal inversion in Kentucky (−.39 vs. −.65, p < .001) and in Texas (−.51 vs. −.67,p < .001). However, no significant difference between these conditions was found in Tennessee(−.55 vs. −.59, p = .44), suggesting that both forms of inversion are acceptable in this region.

Implications. These results provide a means of evaluating theoretical approaches to the SUSEdouble modal construction. Previous analyses predict either the availability of joint inversion (e.g.Di Paolo, 1989) or the availability of second-modal inversion (e.g. Battistella, 1995; Close, 2004;Hasty, 2012), but cannot readily account for variable patterns. Yet these results show that while

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joint inversion is at least marginally acceptable in some varieties of SUSE, second-modal inversionis also acceptable, at least in Tennessee English. Therefore, an adequate theoretical analysis of theSUSE double modal construction must not only allow joint inversion in questions, but must alsoaccount for regional variations in the accepted patterns of inversion.

Figure 1: Mean (raw) acceptability rating of test conditions

Selected ReferencesBattistella, Edwin. 1995. The syntax of the double modal construction. Linguistica Atlantica

17:19–44.Close, Joanne. 2004. English auxiliaries: A syntactic study of contraction and variation. Doctoral

Dissertation, University of York.Di Paolo, Marianna. 1986. A study of double modals in Texas English. Doctoral Dissertation,

University of Texas at Austin.Di Paolo, Marianna. 1989. Double modals as single lexical items. American Speech 64:195–224.Di Paolo, Marianna, Charles McClenon, and Kenneth Ranson. 1979. A survey of double modals

in Texas. Texas Linguistic Forum 13:40–49.Hasty, J. Daniel. 2011. I might not would say that: A sociolinguistic investigation of double modal

acceptance. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 17:91–98.Hasty, J. Daniel. 2012. This might could help us better understand syntactic variation: The double

modal construction in Tennessee English. Doctoral Dissertation, Michigan State University.Henry, Alison. 2005. Non-standard dialects and linguistic data. Lingua 115:1599–1617.

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Constructional Constraints in English Syntactic Amalgams: A Corpus-based PerspectiveRok Sim and Jong-Bok Kim

Kyung Hee University

The so-called cleft-syntactic amalgamation construction (Cleft-Syn-Amal) involves two independent clauses (main clause (MC) and interrupting amalgam clause (AC)), while sharing a constituent named the‘content kernel’.

(1) [MC He gives a speech in�� ��

[AC I think it wasOO OOFlorida.]]

The ‘content kernel’ Florida in (1) functions as both the object of the preposition in as well as the predicateof the verb was.

The construction can occur in various syntactic positions, as illustrated by the COCA (Corpus ofContemporary American) examples:

(2) a. Verb object: This president has answered [I think it’s like 4,200 questions]. (COCA: 1992SPOK)

b. Prepositional object: On [I believe it was Thursday morning], less than ninety-six hoursafter the event I actually saw a building going back up. (COCA: 2011 SPOK)

c. Predicational: And the ingredients are, [I thought it was Cachaca], but no it’s Cachaca.(COCA: 2015 SPOK)

d. Adjunct: It almost sank [I believe it was Monday or Tuesday of this week]. (COCA: 1990SPOK)

For example, the ‘content kernel’ 4,200 questions in (2a) functions as both the object of the verb answeredas well as predicate of the verb is. Meanwhile, the content kernel in the other examples function asthe object of a preposition, a predicative complement, and an adjunct. The construction displays manyidiosyncracies challenging any form-function matching account. In terms of meaning, (2a) means that thepresident has answered ‘x’, and the value of ‘x’ is, at least to the speaker’s knowledge, 4,200 questions, andalso accompanies a ‘hedge’ reading (Lakoff 1974, Kluck 2009).

Most of the existing analyses adopt Lakoff’s (1974) deletion-based account (Kluck 2011b). For example,(1) is derived from the combination of two clauses, ellipsis of the empty element, and then elide the clause:

(3) [He gives a speech in [Florida]] [I think it was Florida that He gives a speech in.] (NP-ellipsis andclausal-ellipsis)

Such a deletion-based analysis leaves many peculiar properties of the construction unaccounted for (Tsub-omoto and Whitman 2000, Grosu 2006). For example, the Lakoff-style analysis requires the mandatoryapplication of the ellipsis as seen from He gives a speech in I think it was Florida (*that he gives a speechin.), and needs to limit the type of possible subject as well as introducing verb.

In addressing the unusual mapping between form and function in the construction, this paper first triesto investigate the authentic uses of the construction, by performing an extensive investigation of the corpusCOCA. Some of the corpus findings we have found indicate that the dominant subject of the AC is thepronoun I. The verb type introducing the AC is also limited to non-factive verbs like think, believe, guess toallow a hedge reading. Based on this kind of corpus search, we sketch a base-generation approach, couchedupon the framework of Construction Grammar (CxG) where constructions, pairings of form with meaning,are the basic units of language and linked as form or inheritance hierarchies (network) (see Goldberg 2006

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and references therein). Our supposition is that English employs a special clausal-level construction wherethe content kernel is in-situ (e.g., Thursday morning in (2b), Cachaca in (2c), and Monday or Tuesday ofthis week in (2d)) and introduced by a non-factive embedding verb.

The present analysis factors out generalizations of Cleft-Syn-Amal constructions. This factorizationallows us to capture generalizations as well as idiosyncracies about English Cleft-Syn-Amal constructionin a systematic way.

Selected References

Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at work: Constructionist approaches in context. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

Grosu, Alexander. 2006. An amalgam and its puzzles. In Hans-Martin Gartner, Sigrid Beck, RegineEckhardt, Renate Musan, and Barbara Stiebels (eds.), Between 40 and 60 puzzles for Krifka.

Kluck, Marlies. 2009. Intertwined clauses, interacting propositions: A note on the interpretive aspects ofsentence amalgamation. Conference of the Student Organisation of Linguistics in Europe (ConSOLE)XVI : 77-101.

Kluck, Marlies. 2011b. Sentence amalgamation. Ph.D dissertation, University of Groningen. LOT Disser-tation Series 285. (Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap, the Netherlands National GraduateSchool of Linguistics.)

Lakoff, George. 1974. Syntactic amalgams. Berkeley Studies in Syntax and Semantics 1(9): 1-24.

Tsubomoto, Atsuro and John Whitman. 2000. A type of head-in-situ construction in English. LinguisticInquiry 31, 176-182.

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The perception and production of intervocalic [θ] by Mandarin ESL learnersJunyu Wu and Hua LinUniversity of Victoria

junyuwoo@gmail.com hualin@uvic.ca

English voiceless interdental [θ] in words such as thank and method is among the most difficult

consonants for ESL learners to acquire. This has been demonstrated in many studies with

participants from a variety of first language backgrounds including German, Dutch, French,

Polish, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese (Brannen, 2011; Hanulíková & Weber,

2010; Rau, Chang & Tarone, 2009; Gonet and Pietroń, 2010; Schmidt, 1987; Dubois & Horvath,

1999). Even highly proficient ESL speakers have been found to regularly substitute [θ] with

other sounds which are, most often, [s], [t], or [f] (Brannen, 2011; Hanulíková & Weber, 2010).

Preference for one or another of the three substitutions seems to vary from one L1 to another and

sometimes, from one speaker to another of the same L1. ESL learners of L1 Mandarin, for

instance, have been found to strongly favor [s] as a substitute in word-initial or word-final

position (Rau, Chang & Tarone, 2009), while L1 Cantonese speakers of Hong Kong English opt

for [f] as a substitute (Peust, 1996). One gap in the literature on L1 Mandarin learners is [θ] in

word-medial, intervocalic position--all previous studies have focused on the onset or coda

position. This research aims to find out if the intervocalic environment plays a role in the

substitution by examining the production and perception of English voiceless interdental in

word-medial intervocalic position by L1 Mandarin speakers.

An experiment was conducted. Three adult Mandarin ESL learners were recruited.

Production and perception data were collected via an identification type of perception task and

two word-reading production tasks, respectively. The production task recorded the L2

participants reading six real words with [θ] in word-medial position (e.g., method [ˈmɛθəd] and

nothing [ˈnʌθɪŋ]) both in isolation and in a carrier sentence. The perception task has 24 words

including the above-mentioned six real words and 18 pseudo words constructed with the real

words but having the voiceless interdental replaced by [s], [f], or [ð] (e.g., [ˈmɛsəd] or [ˈnʌfɪŋ]).

The pseudo words are meant to be distractors. As well we are curious to know if the participants

can tell that [θ] is not in these non-words

The results show that the production accuracy rate at 91% is high. Four substitutions are

found among the 9% errors: [s], [ð], [θs], [fθ]. The latter two substitutions are surprises since to

our knowledge they have never been reported in the literature on this matter. To be sure that our

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auditory judgement is correct, a measurement of the center of gravity in five locations of each of

the surprises is taken, which confirms the auditory impression.

The overall perception accuracy rate at 96% is also high, and the errors constitute two

substitutions [f] and [ð]. The vowel environment also seems to play a role in the perception. A

prior low-mid back vowel and a following high-front vowel (sample word: nothing) and a prior

high-back vowel and a following high-mid front vowel (sample word: toothache), for instance,

yield different results; the accuracy rates are 33% and 67%, respectively. It was also interesting

to see that perception of the three distractors all incorrectly contain [θ].

Finally, our study reveals no clear relationship between the L2 production and perception

of the intervocalic [θ].

Reference

Brannen, Kathleen J. 2011. The perception and production of interdental fricatives in second

language acquisition. McGill University Press.

Dubois, S., & Horvath, B. 1999. Let’s tink about dat: inter-dental fricative in Cajun English.

Language Variation and Change, 10, 245–261.

Hanulikova,Adriana & Weber,Andrea. 2010. Production of English interdental fricatives by

Dutch, German, and English speakers. Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on the

Acquisition of Second Language Speech, New Sounds 2010, Poland, 1-3 May 2010. pp. 173-178.

Gonet, Wiktor & Pietron, Grzegorz. 2010. English interdental fricatives in the speech of Polish

learners of English. A 2003-2006 KBN Project “Nauczanie fonetyki jezyka angielskiego w

Polsce– diagnoza i terapia”.

Peust, C. 1996. Sum: th-substitution. The Linguist List 7.1108. Available from

http://linguistlist.org/issues/7/7-1108.html

Rau, D. Victoria, Chang, Hui-Huan Ann, and Tarone, Elaine E. 2009. Think or sink: Chinese

learners’ acquisition of the English voiceless interdental fricative. Language Learning 59(3):

581-621.

Schmidt, R. W. 1987. Sociolinguistic variation and language transfer in phonology. In G. Ioup &

S. H. Weinberger (Eds.), Interlanguage phonology: The acquisition of a second language sound

system. (pp. 365–377). Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.

14

Korean Learners’ Individual Networks of Practice

Kellianne Bennett

University of Washington

Background. Social networks in second language acquisition give an overall pictures of the

learner in their many various social contexts. Therefore, investigating learners’ social networks

has the potential to reveal crucial information about the learner, including how they sustain the

motivation to learn, who they elect to socialize with and use the language with, how they choose

to learn, how they formulate their identity as a language learner, and so on. Research on social

networks in second language acquisition has mostly focused on the effectiveness of study abroad

programs (e.g., Isabelli-García, 2006) and on which types of networks facilitate language

learning or literacy skills (e.g., Kurata, 2004; Ferenz, 2005). Recently, Zappa-Hollman (2007)

and Zappa-Hollman and Duff (2015) developed the concept of an individual network of practice

(INoP), which is based in the theoretical concept of a community of practice (CoP) (Lave and

Wenger, 1991) but maps all of the social connections of one learner at the center of the network,

as opposed to mapping the network connections within a set group of people. The research

focused on the second language socialization (e.g., Duff, 2012) of Mexican students studying at

an English-speaking university in Canada (second language context). By diagramming the social

connections from the learner’s perspective and supplementing the diagram with qualitative

interviewing, a complete picture of the learner’s social context emerges.

Current study. The goal of the current study is to expand on the concept of INoPs. First, it

introduces INoPs into the language socialization context of foreign and heritage languages

(Korean; KFL and KHL). Second, material resources such as websites and textbooks are

considered and mapped along with the social contacts of the learner in the INoP. Third, the ties

between the learner and their social contacts and material resources are quantified; the learner

reported estimates of both time spent with each social contact or material resource as well as the

percentage of the target language the learner used with each social contact or material resource.

Research questions. (1) How many social contacts and material resources are there in

KFL/KHL learners’ INoPs? What is the nature of the learner’s ties to these resources? (Native or

nonnative interlocutors, number of in-class vs. out-of-class contacts, etc.) (2) How do the social

contacts and material resources in a learner’s INoP promote the KFL/KHL socialization of the

learner? (3) Which social contacts or material resources do learners report as more or less

helpful, either for overall language proficiency or for sustaining motivation to study Korean?

What are the characteristics of those social contacts or material resources that make them more

or less helpful from the learner’s perspective?

Methodology and participants. 6 KFL and 7 KHL learners (all but one currently enrolled in

2nd-4th year Korean classes at the University of Washington) responded to an initial online survey

and reported the social contacts and material resources in their INoPs. The five respondents with

the most overall nodes in their INoPs were selected for hour-long semi-structured qualitative

interviews (audio recorded and transcribed). The researcher diagrammed each interviewee’s

INoP from their survey responses and discussed it with the learner during the interview. Based

on the interview, the diagrams were revised and further qualitative comments on the language

socialization of the learner were gathered.

Results. The 13 survey respondents reported an average of 4 contacts in in-class networks and

spent 1.78 hrs/wk (total) with this group. A similar number of average contacts, 3.62, were

reported as out-of-class contacts but respondents spent much more time with their out-of-class

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network contacts, an average of 4.22 hrs/wk. The natures of the learners’ overall INoP varied;

groups of friends, language exchange partners, family, roommates, and coworkers all appeared in

respondents’ networks. Respondents reported an average of 2.85 material resources used to study

Korean or engage in Korean culture, and each respondent spent on average 8.74 hrs/wk using

their material resources, which included, e.g., podcasts, news, books, TV, music, websites, etc.

Of the five respondents selected for interviews, one’ respondent’s diagrammed INoP is shown

below (social contacts only). Extended results, including the learners’ comments on how helpful

or motivating particular contacts or groups of contacts were, are not included here due to space

constraints. This study of KFL/KHL INoPs provides insight into social networks in the foreign

and heritage language learning contexts by combining quantitative and qualitative results.

Selected references.

Duff, P. (2012). Second language socialization. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. Schieffelin (Eds.),

Handbook of language socialization (pp. 564-586). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Ferenz, O. (2005). EFL writers’ social networks: Impact on advanced academic literacy development. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 4, 339-51.

Isabelli-García, C. (2006). Study abroad social networks, motivation, and attitudes: Implications for

second language acquisition. In M.A. Dufon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language learners in study

abroad contexts (pp. 231-258). Cleveland, OH: Multilingual Matters. Kurata, N. (2004). Communication networks of Japanese language learners in their home country.

Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 14 (1), 153-179.

Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Zappa-Hollman, S. (2007b). The academic literacy socialization of Mexican exchange students at a

Canadian university. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia,

Vancouver, Canada. Zappa-Hollman, S. & Duff, P. (2015). Academic English socialization through individual networks of

practice. TESOL Quarterly, 49, 2: 333-368.

16

Fluency in the EFL Chilean ClassroomsAstrid Morrison

Universidad Autonoma de Chile Speech fluency in second language (L2) learning has for long been considered an

important factor in developing knowledge and skills in an L2 and a key construct in

assessing L2 ability, as such, fluency is regarded as one of the main goals for L2

learning. When defining the concept, fluency is usually associated with the idea of

“flow” and “smoothness of speech”. Fillmore (1979) provided one of the earlier

definitions of fluency, describing it as “the ability to talk at length, with few pauses, the

ability to fill time with talk” (Fillmore, 1979 p. 93). Given the importance of fluency in

communicating with speakers of different languages in the globalised world, studying

it has gained currency from research and pedagogy perspectives, and it is also

highlighted in language benchmarks and policy documents, including the national

curricula in different countries and the Common European Framework of Reference

for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe,2001). However, despite this attention,

fluency is neither clearly represented nor promoted in L2 teaching curricula, material

or classroom practices. Recent research in this area suggests that fluency is not

promoted in textbooks (Rossiter et al., 2010), not clearly known by L2 teachers, and

not actively promoted in L2 classrooms (Tavakoli & Hunter, 2017).

This presentation reports a research conducted as part of an MA dissertation, which

aimed at investigating both teachers’ and textbooks’ role in the promotion of fluency

in the EFL classrooms. On one hand, it aimed at exploring the extent to which the oral

activities from EFL textbooks, used in state and semi-private schools in Chile, focus

on promoting fluency. On the other hand, the study was interested in investigating

Chilean teachers’ perceptions, both in terms of what fluency is, and to what extent

they promote it in their classrooms. While there are a few studies investigating fluency

(e.g. Rossiter et al., 2010; Tavakoli & Hunter, 2017), to the best of my knowledge there

are no studies that have exanimated fluency from a multi-practice perspective. This

study is therefore the first to examine fluency from two interrelated but different

aspects of a lessons: teachers and textbooks.

Data for the textbook analysis of the study was collected from two EFL textbooks used

in state and semi-private schools in Chile. The oral activities from both textbooks were

analysed using a framework for evaluating fluency-focused activities, which combined

both Rossiter et al. (2010) and Tavakoli & Hunter’s (2017) frameworks. Using this

framework, all speaking activities from both textbooks were analysed by the

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researcher. To ensure reliability of the analysis, 20% of the activities were second

rated by a more experienced researcher.

In order to investigate teachers’ understanding of the concept and classroom practices

in promoting it, self-reported questionnaire used in Tavakoli & Hunter (2017) was

adapted. The new questionnaire was then used to collect data from sixty Chilean EFL

teachers, investigating their understanding of fluency, fluency-promoting activities and

the extent to which they feel confident about promoting it in their classrooms.

The findings suggest that both teachers and textbooks prioritise general-speaking to

fluency-focused activities, with little attention to and focus on promoting fluency. The

results also highlight a misinterpretation of fluency-focused activities among teachers,

with many considering fluency activities equal to general speaking ones. Even though

teachers report high levels of confidence in their knowledge and skills for promoting

fluency in classroom, they appear to have limited knowledge of what fluency is, or

what activities can be used to promote it.

These findings could have significant implications for classroom teaching both in terms

of suitability of material and preparedness of teachers of this context. The results

clearly suggest that despite the significant role fluency plays in L2 learning, teaching

practices, whether textbooks or teachers, are not up to the challenge or cannot

prepare learners for the fluent communication that is needed from them outside class.

Finally, the lack of connection between research and teaching practice discovered in

the Chilean context agreed with similar studies conducted in other countries (Rossiter

et al., 2010; Tavakoli & Hunter, 2017), which suggests that this might be a global issue

among language teachers.

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References:

Council of Europe. (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Council of Europe.

Fillmore, C. J. (1979). On fluency. In C. J. Fillmore, D. Kempler, & W. S. Y. Wang (Eds.), Individual differences in language ability and language behavior (pp. 85-102). New York: Academic Press.

Kormos, J., & Denes, M. (2004). Exploring measures and perceptions of fluency in the speech of second language learners. System, 32(2), 145-164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2004.01.001

Rossiter, M., Derwing, T., Manimtim, L., & Thomson, R. (2010). Oral Fluency: The Neglected Component in the Communicative Language Classroom. Canadian Modern Language Review, 66(4), 583-606. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.66.4.583

Tavakoli, P., & Hunter, A. (2017). Is fluency being ‘neglected’ in the classroom? Teacher understanding of fluency and related classroom practices. Language Teaching Research, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1362168817708462

19

Pragmatics meets Prosodics: Nominal Lists in Hul’q’umi’num’ SalishZachary Gilkison

Simon Fraser University

Halkomelem (ISO code: hur) is a Salish language, of the Central Salish branch, spoken as a first language by around 40 elders in southwestern British Columbia, along the shores of the Salish sea. Data for this research are from the Island dialect — Hul’q’umi’num’— drawn from our text corpus of transcriptions and translations of recordings of over twenty different speakers and dating back to 1962. This is part of a larger project studying the pragmatics and prosodics of performance of stories, with the goal of understanding the devices Elders use to convey information and add interest to their narratives. In particular, this paper focuses on the use of lists of NPs as a vehicle for expressing and categorizing nominals based on 100 examples gleaned from the corpus. Lists in argument position are quite rare in Hul’q’umi’num’ but lists appearing outside of the clausal syntax, for example as an elaboration in sentence-final position (1) or sandwiched between the clause and a summation (2) or addition comment (3), arecommon.(1) m;˚ø.stem s÷i÷®t;∫-s— sm;y;ƒ, køewe÷;c, spe÷;ƒ.

all.what food-3POS deer elk bear They have everything to eat—deer, elk, bear. (ST)

(2) m;˚ø.÷;¬.stem— s˙u:m, ÷ap;l, pes— m;˚ø.stem ni÷ ÷;Σ all.what— berries, apples, pears— all.what AUX LNK

÷a¬;≈t;t. gather-PROG

Everything—berries, apples, pears—we picked them all. (EW)

(3)... hay ÷;Σ yaƒ ÷;¬ ÷;Σ s÷i÷®t;∫-s— very LNKalways QLF LNK N.eating-3POS

... there’s really always food—

©; s÷a≈øa÷, s√;¬a÷;m ÷i÷ ©; swe:m— ÷;Σ ÷;¥-s. DT butter.clam cockles CONJ DT horse.clam LNK good-3POS butter clams, cockles, and the horseclams—they’re good. (ST)

What do lists sound like? Pitch —not pauses— is what sets off lists from the clauses to which they are attached.

List intonation (we will play some examples) is quite distinctive. Pitch is reset for each NP; this contrasts with normal clausal pitch, which shows declination throughout, including in questions. The length of the pauses before an item reflects the cognitive load of remembering it.

What’s on the list? Lists are infrequently closed, where the included NPs denote the set, but usually lists are

open. Open and closed lists differ prosodically (cf. Couper-Kuhlen (1986), Selting (2007), according to the pitch at the end of each NP, especially the upturn on the last NP on an open list.

Including an NP as an explicit entry on a list conveys two concepts: the NP is intended to be a member of a set and it is also representative or an exemplar of a larger set, categorizing the . Lists play an important semantic role in a language like Hul’q’umi’num’ that lacks higher-level generic terms (‘animals’, ‘mammal’, ‘seafood’, ‘fruit’).

20

Sometimes a speaker comes back to a list and adds more items if they feel that more examples are needed to convey the scope of the concept underlying the list. Even lists with closed intonation can allow additional entries added afterwards, i.e. presuppositions are easily cancellable (cf. Matthewson (2006) and Davis, Matthewson, & Shank (2004)).

What’s the order of the NPs on the list? The order of the list reflects the semantic salience of the item, i.e. as an NP that pops into the

mind of the speaker it is added to the list. Thus, lists give us a look into the cognitive and cultural world of the speaker. The best exemplars—most common items or favorite items— come before more unusual items. In (1-3) deer, berries, and butter clams are “keystone” species; bear, pears, and horseclams are treasured rarities.

Are lists like other supplemental information? We see some similarity with supplemental appositives (Potts 2004), i.e. COMMA intonation

and Hul’q’umi’num’ list intonation. Appositives are seen as supplemental updates that are anaphorically connected to a head noun (Martin 2016). The sentence lacks some information without the appositive, but is truth-conditionally complete. In our cases, the argument NP 'priming' the list is usually broad, e.g. m;˚ø÷ ;¬ stem ‘everything’ or s÷i÷®t;∫-s ‘what is eaten’, so cannot be evaluated without a list.

Why are lists so common in Hul’q’umi’num’? Hul’q’umi’num’ is claimed to have a low referential density (Gerdts and Hukari 2008),

that is NP arguments are often omitted. Expressing NPs in lists is an efficient way of conveying nominal information while keeping the load off of the argument structure. A description of a language will need to address not only clausal syntax but also have NPs in non-arguments are constructed and how they relate to the clausal syntax. Prosodic information allows the speaker to toggle in between the clause syntax and list. We see that lists are not “extra” information, but convey important insights into Hul’q’umi’num’ categorization and cognition. Carefully placed and constructed lists are an important way that Elders convey world view.

Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1986). An introduction to English prosody. Tübingen; London: Max Niemeyer : Edward Arnold.

Davis, H., Matthewson, L., & Shank, S. (2004). Clefts vs. nominal predicates in two Salish languages. In Studes in Salish Linguistics in Honor of M. Dale Kinkade. Missoula, Montana: University of Montana Press.

Gerdts, D. B. & Hukari, T. E. (2008). The expression of noun phrases in Halkomelem texts. Anthropological Lingusitics 50 (3/4), 1–41.

Martin, S. (2016). Supplemental update. Semantics and Pragmatics, 9(0), 5-1–61. Matthewson, L. (2006). Presuppositions and Cross-Linguistic Variation. In Proceedings of NELS

26. Potts, C. (2004). The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford University Press.

https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273829.001.0001 Selting, M. (2007). Lists as embedded structures and the prosody of list construction as an

interactional resource. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(3), 483–526. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.07.008

21

Plain velars in the Skwx wu7mesh language Ethan Pincott

Simon Fraser University

The Skwx wu7mesh language is a Central Salish language spoken from Burrard Inlet,

north through Howe Sound, and up the Squamish and Cheakamus River valleys. Like other

Salish languages, Skwx wu7mesh has a large consonant inventory, including four series of dorsal

phonemes (both velars and uvulars contrasting plain versus labialized). However, the plain k–

series is significantly rarer than the rest (Kuipers, 1967), which is surprising considering that

plain velars are some of the most frequent sounds in the world’s languages, and that they are

unmarked relative to other dorsals (De Lacy, 2006). The scarcity of the k–series is due to the fact

that earlier *k k’ x have fronted to palato-alveolar č č’ š in Skwx wu7mesh and other Central

Salish languages (Galloway, 1988), leaving a gap in the phonological system. In fact, this same

sound change has occurred in the neighbouring Wakashan and Chimakuan language families as

well, indicating that the shift has diffused between related and unrelated languages across the

entire Salish Sea area.

Despite their marginal status, plain velars do occur in a handful of words in

Skwx wu7mesh. This situation is true throughout the Central Salish branch (Galloway, 1988),

which raises the issue of where these plain velars come from. Montler (1997) discusses the

origins of plain k in the Straits languages, finding that all cases are loans from English or

Chinook Jargon. Suttles (2004) identifies most Musqueam words with k k’ as loans as well, with

a couple being “baby-talk” substitutes for the uvulars q q’. The purpose of this research is to

determine the origins of the plain velars in the Skwx wu7mesh language, and compare the

occurrence of the k–series in Skwx wu7mesh with other Central Salish languages.

Around forty roots occur with plain velars in Skwx wu7mesh, far more than in Musqueam

and the Straits languages. Of these, around half are clear borrowings from a European language

or Chinook Jargon. In the case of words that have a French origin, it is difficult to tell whether

they were borrowed via Chinook Jargon, or whether they were borrowed directly from French. In

contrast, borrowings from English are relatively rare. Borrowing from another indigenous

language accounts for a few more of the forms, but it is not always clear which language is the

source.

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Some occurrences of the k–series in Skwxwu7mesh have cognates with labio-velars or

uvulars in other languages. The semantics of some of these words suggest that they may be

children’s language substitutions for the more difficult to pronounce sounds. Others suggest

sound symbolic shifts of q > k, perhaps having a diminutive function. The most difficult to

explain category of plain velars are those which appear to be archaisms which failed to undergo

the *k > č shift. These roots have cognates in other Central Salish languages with the expected

fronted reflexes of the Proto-Salish k–series, which raises interesting questions about the

chronology of this shift in the evolution of the Central Salish branch. Finally, there are several

words which do not fall neatly into any of these categories and remain unexplained. Further

research, especially examining non-Salish languages for related forms, may be able to account

for these roots in Skwxwu7mesh. Whatever their origin, the occurrence of plain velars in

Skwxwu7mesh speaks to a complex history, both phonological and sociolinguistic, that remains

largely unexplored.

References

De Lacy, P. (2006). Markedness: Reduction and preservation in phonology (Vol. 112).

Cambridge University Press.

Galloway, B. D. (1988). Some Proto-Central Salish sound correspondences. In In honor of Mary

Haas, from the Haas Festival Conference on Native American Linguistics (pp. 293-343).

Kuipers, A. H. (1967). The Squamish language: Grammar, texts, dictionary (Vol. 73). Walter de

Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

Montler, T. (1997). On the Origins of š in the Straits Salishan Languages. International journal

of American linguistics, 63(3), 289-301.

Suttles, W. P. (2004). Musqueam reference grammar (Vol. 2). UBC Press.

23

The (Predictable) Effect of Environment on Vowel Quality in ʔayʔaǰuθəm Gloria Mellesmoen and Marianne Huijsmans

University of British Columbia

A practical question in the documentation of endangered languages is whether the orthography privileges transparency in surface forms, aiding pronunciation, or phoneme forms, aiding the identification of morphemes. The mapping between underlying and surface forms, and its predictability in either direction, is central to this discussion. In many Salish languages, the vowels are represented phonemically in the orthography and pronunciation is highly predictable from adjacent consonants (e.g. Kinkade 1967, Gibson 1973, Mattina 1973, Kuipers 1974, 1989, Thompson & Thompson 1992, van Eijk 1985; Bessell 1998a,b; Bird & Leonard 2009, Nolan 2017).

Similar conditioning effects have been reported in ʔayʔaǰuθəm, a Central Salish language, such that the surface forms of the four underlying vowels are heavily influenced by adjacent consonants (e.g. Blake, 2000; Watanabe, 2003; Huijsmans, Mellesmoen, & Urbanczyk, 2018). Previous descriptions suggest that adjacent back (uvular) or palatal consonants are associated with lowered or raised vowels, respectively. This shown in (1), where the preceding and following uvular cause the high front vowel /i/ to retract to [ɛ] in (1a) and the low back vowel /a/ fronts to [ɛ] following a palatal, obscuring the underlying distinction between /a/ and /i/.

(1) a. /qiχ/ [qɛχ] ‘younger sibling’ b. /čagat/ [čɛgat] ‘to help someone’

The effect of the back and palatal consonants is currently reflected in the orthographic representation, which matches the broad phonetic transcription in (1). Though the literature suggests that vowel quality is sensitive to adjacent consonants, the only acoustic description of vowels in ʔayʔaǰuθəm is Blake and Shahin (2008), which compares the vowels in stressed and unstressed positions, without accounting for adjacent consonants. The degree and directionality of conditioning effects has not been quantified.

We aim to confirm the previously reported conditioning effects of consonants on vowel quality and measure these effects at different places of articulation for each of the four phonemic vowels (/a,ə,i,u/). We used a total of 489 tokens elicited from two fluent speakers of ʔayʔaǰuθəm. For each vowel, we considered the effect of preceding and following palatal and uvular consonant. These are compared to the same vowel in a neutral environment (where the preceding and following consonants were neither palatals or uvulars). This yielded a total of five conditions: back-vowel-neutral (97 tokens), neutral-vowel-back (94 tokens), palatal-vowel-neutral (105 tokens), neutral-vowel-palatal (89 tokens), and neutral-vowel-neutral (104 tokens). F1 and F2 measurements were taken at six points over the duration of the vowel. We find the anticipated effects of back and palatal consonants on vowel quality in both directions, with palatal consonants having a greater effect on following vowels and a greater effect on /a/ and /ə/ than the high vowels. For all vowels, there is raising and fronting next to palatal consonants and lowering and backing next to uvular consonants.

24

We conclude, based on the acoustic evidence, that surface forms in ʔayʔaǰuθəm are largely predictable from environment, as suggested by previous impressionistic work. This phonetic description of the effect of consonant place of articulation on vowel quality can be used in future for discussions about representing vowels orthographically and has a practical application for identifying underlying morphological forms.

References Bessell, N. 1998a. Phonetic aspects of retraction in Interior Salish. In E. Czaykowska-Higgins & M. D. Kinkade

(eds.), Salish Languages and Linguistics: Theoretical and Descriptive Perspectives. Berlin: de Gruyter. Bessell, N. 1998b. Local and non-local consonant-vowel interaction in Interior Salish. Phonology 15: 1–40. Bird, S., & Leonard, J. 2009. Universality of articulatory conflict resolution: Evidence from Salish languages.

Northwest Journal of Linguistics, 3(2), 1–29. Kinkade, M. Dale 1967. Uvular-pharyngeal resonants in Interior Salish. IJAL 33. 228–234. Kuipers, A. H. 1974. The Shuswap language. The Hague: Mouton. Kuipers, A. H. 1989. A report on Shuswap with a Squamish lexical appendix. Paris: Peeters/SELAF. Gibson, J. 1973. Shuswap grammatical structure. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 5(5). Huijsmans, M., Mellesmoen, G., & Urbancyzk, S. (2018). To copy or not to copy, that is the question:

Regarding consonant-vowel interactions in ʔayʔaǰuθəm imperfective reduplication. In Matthewson L., Guntly, E., & Rochemont, M. (Eds.), Wa7 xweysás i nqwal’utteníha i ucwalmícwa: He loves the people’s languages: Essays in honour of Henry Davis (659–674). Vancouver, BC:UBC Working Paper in Linguistics.

Mattina, Anthony. 1973. Colville grammatical structure. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 5(4).

Nolan, T. 2017. A phonetic investigation of vowel variation in Lekwungen. MA thesis, University of Victoria. Thompson, L. C. & M. T. Thompson. 1992. The Thompson language. University of Montana Occasional

Papers in Linguistics 8. van Eijk, J. 1985. The Lillooet Language. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.

25

Gender-Identity and the Naturalness of Referential Singular They Trevor Block

Simon Fraser UniversityResearch Question.

There are two questions investigated in this study. First, I look at whether referential singular

they requires that its antecedent is genderless (e.g. someone, cyclist), or if it may also refer to

antecedents with expected gender (e.g. mechanic, secretary). Second, I investigate whether there

are differences between non-binary and cisgender people when judging the naturalness of

referential singular they, given the previously mentioned contexts.

Background.

Singular they is commonly used to refer to genderless, generic singular antecedents, while he/

she is used to refer to gendered singular antecedents (Bodine, 1975; MacKay, 1980). Gender-

neutral they has become more prominent in recent years, frequently used by individuals who

identify as non-binary. Although attitude studies towards gender-neutral language have been

conducted

(Sarrasin et al, 2012), no studies have looked at naturalness ratings across various genders for

singular they.

A study conducted via paper questionnaire by Doherty and Conklin (2017) shows that when

them refers to low gender-expectancy antecedents, as in (1), speakers find those particular

constructions acceptable and rate them similarly to constructions with him/her. However, when

them refers to high gender-expectancy antecedents, as in (2), speakers find those constructions

highly unacceptable, rating them worse than gender-mismatch cases (e.g. mechanic… she),

suggesting that them cannot refer to antecedents with expected or known gender.

(1) …he hit a cyclisti and knocked themi straight off the bike.

(2) He saw a mechanici there and asked themi warily if there were any problems.

The current study investigates singular they instead of singular them for two reasons. First, the

third person singular pronoun is used more commonly as a subject than as an object in speech

and writing. Second, they will always be pronounced and heard as /ðeɪ/ in speech. In contrast, the

first consonant of them may be dropped in fast speech, and the following vowel may be

neutralized to sound similar to him, resulting in /əm/. The latter possibility may cause lower

ratings for singular them since speakers may frequently misinterpret them as him in fast speech,

influencing their judgment in written context. In addition, the current study prevents participants

from re-reading sentences while making judgments, and also prevents participants from re-rating

older sentences to make their judgments consistent. Experimental items were also modified to

include only one antecedent.

Current Study.

30 non-binary and 50 cisgender participants were recruited. All recruited non-binary participants

use they/them/their as their preferred pronouns, instead of he/him/his, she/her/hers, or others.

Participants were instructed to fill out a pre-experiment demographic survey. Participants then

read sentences in a word-by-word self-paced reading paradigm. Following each sentence,

participants were asked to answer a yes-no comprehension question, or give a naturalness rating

about the previous sentence on a scale of 1 (unnatural) to 7 (natural). Following the 60 trials,

participants completed a post-experiment demographic survey.

26

In addition to test sentences based on Doherty and Conklin’s (2017) experiment, sentences with

proper names were included and paired with either the gendered pronouns he/she, or gender-

neutral they, as shown in (3).

(3) Nataliei was birdwatching alone in the park. After seeing an exotic bird, shei/theyi

decided to write a journal entry.

Results.

Non-binary participants tended to rate all sentence types higher than cisgender participants. For

both gender groups, sentences with they were rated as the most unnatural compared to he/she

matches and mismatches. For both gender groups, gender-mismatch (high-marked) cases were

rated as more natural than sentences with they. Non-binary participants rated sentences with

proper names and they higher than cisgender participants. Judgments within gender groups are

consistent whether they refers to low gender-expected antecedents or high gender-expected

antecedents.

Example Cisgender Non-binary

Control mechanic – he 6.09 6.33

High-Marked mechanic – she 5.90 6.27

High-They mechanic – they 5.52 5.93

Low-Marked cyclist – he 6.15 6.32

Low-They cyclist – they 5.55 5.95

Name-Match Sarah - she 6.03 6.28

Name-They Sarah - they 4.65 5.64

Table 1. Naturalness Ratings (1-7)

Implications.

The results suggest that they may refer to antecedents with or without expected gender, but that

cisgender participants find it less natural than non-binary participants. The differences are likely

due to usage and familiarity, since people who identify with the pronouns they/them/their are

more likely to encounter and use them on a daily basis. Usage and familiarity also explains the

case where they refers to proper names, suggesting that non-binary participants have less

restrictions in their usage of referential singular they than cisgender participants. The results also

suggest that, theoretically, singular they does not consider gender agreement with its antecedent.

A self-paced reading study is currently in the works to investigate any differences in online

processing.

Selected References.

Bodine, A., (1975). Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar: Singular ‘they’, sex-indefinite ‘he’,

and ‘he or she’. Language in Society, 4(02), 129-146.

Doherty, A. & Conklin, K., (2017). How gender-expectancy affects the processing of “them”.

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70(4), 718-735.

MacKay, D. G. (1980). On the goals, principles, and procedures for prescriptive grammar:

Singular they. Language in society, 9(3), 349-367.

Sarrasin, O., Gabriel, U., & Gygax, P. (2012). Sexism and attitudes toward gender-neutral

language. Swiss Journal of Psychology.

27

Reflector: another potential interpretation of the Mandarin reflexive zijiPeng(Benjamin)Han

University of CalgaryIntroduction The Mandarin reflexive ziji can refer to antecedents in local or higher clauses (Huang and Tang, 1991; Pan, 2001), as demonstrated in sentence (1). Not only that, if sentence (1) is situated in a text narrating one’s thoughts, ziji can also refer to the reflector, i.e. the agent ofthinking (Li, 1991). Ziji of this use is temporarily termed self-reflective ziji.

(1) Johni

Johnshuosay

Billj

Billchangoften

pipingcriticize

zijii/j.self

‘Johni said that Billj often criticized {himi, himselfj}.’Self-reflective ziji is different from local or long-distance binding in that its antecedent is notnecessarily (overtly) represented in the sentence containing ziji. Ziji’s reference to a reflector(especially an extra-sentential one) serves as another potential interpretation, complicating thestudies of ziji as a long-distance anaphor. Careful studies of self-reflective ziji are thus necessaryto gain a comprehensive understanding of ziji and tease apart its different uses. The current studyexplores the distribution of self-reflective ziji through a corpus study, which indicates two types ofself-reflective ziji with distinct properties and licensing conditions. Moreover, an attempt is madeto account for self-reflective uses of ziji as logophoricity.Background Self-reflective ziji requires an account that allows both intra-sentential and extra-sentential reflectors. Zijis referring to intra-sentential antecedents are mostly instances of long-distance anaphors embedded in clausal arguments of thinking verbs; these instances are explainedby logophoricity (Huang and Liu, 2001; Anand, 2006). Actually, logophoricity can explain ziji’sextra-sentential coreference as well. For instance, Anand and Hsieh (2005) propose that logophoricziji is bound by a covert referentially denoting element: perspective center, representing thepsychological perspective from which a sentence is articulated. The value of a perspective centercan be discourse-dependent, thus allowing extra-sentential coreference. Charnavel (2017) has asimilar account, claiming that there is a syntactic projection high in the left periphery, headed byan empty operator OPLOG, with a clause as complement and a silent pronoun (pro) as specifier. Zijiis locally bound by pro, and discourse coreference ensures that pro is anteceded by a correspondingperspective center. Two types of perspective centers are distinguished, attitude holders andempathy loci, corresponding to intellectual and emotional perspective centers respectively. Fora text narrating a reflector’s thoughts, the reflector is the intellectual perspective center. It seemspromising to take a logophoric approach to self-reflective ziji.Main Research In order to learn about the linguistic facts of self-reflective ziji, I collect allsentence-initial zijis in the corpus of Center for Chinese Linguistics of Peking University; thecorpus covers 509,913,489 Chinese characters. Sentence-initial zijis can help exclude interferencefrom intra-sentential binding, as they are generally unbound for lacking c-commanding elements.In the corpus, 590 tokens of sentence-initial ziji are found to refer to reflectors, with 141 (23.9%)tokens anteceded by 1st-person speakers/writers, 1 (0.17%) token by 2nd-person pronouns and 448(75.93%) tokens by 3rd-person referents. Among all 1st-person oriented tokens, 61 tokens occurin monologues or texts produced for the purpose of self-reflection. The quoted sentences in (2)exemplify reflective monologues. Ziji in reflective monologues or texts refers to reflectors, whichcoincide with speakers/writers, forming ziji’s 1st-person reference.

(2) JohnJohn

kaishibegin

zi-yan-zi-yu,self-talk-self-say

“mingtiantomorrow

yaowill

kaoshi.exam

zijiself

nengcan

kaoguopass

ma?”Q

‘John began to talk to himself, “there will be an exam tomorrow. can I pass it?”. ’Self-reflective ziji also occurs in narratives of one’s thoughts. Actually, the text in (2) can berephrased as (3), with the protagonist John’s monologue presented as a narrative of his thought. Itseems the third sentence in (3) is an indirect quotation or report of John’s monologue in (2).

28

(3) JohnJohn

fanchou-le.worry-PERF

mingtiantomorrow

yaowill

kaoshi.exam

zijiself

nengcan

kaoguopass

ma?Q

‘John became worried. There would be an exam tomorrow. Can I pass it?’Most of the self-reflective zijis appear in narratives of protagonists’ thoughts, including all 2ndand 3rd-person oriented tokens, and 80 first-person oriented tokens with narrators coinciding withprotagonists. Narratives of thoughts are embedded in discourses where narrators consciouslyrelate protagonists’ innate thoughts. That is, co-texts with overt realization of the protagonists(i.e. reflectors) are necessary, e.g. John in the first sentence of (3), although co-texts may notexplicitly indicate the protagonists’ entering thinking status. As for self-reflective ziji in reflectivemonologues or texts, ziji invariably refers to 1st-person speakers/writers (also reflectors), and noco-text is necessary. Self-reflective zijis in (2) and (3) are characterized as context-dependent anddiscourse-dependent respectively.

Following Charnavel (2017), self-reflective ziji is bound by a covert perspective center pro.In context-dependent cases, speakers/writers are permanently available perspective centers (i.e.reflectors) co-referring with pro. For discourse-dependent cases, narratives of thoughts are relatedfrom the perspective of protagonists, and pro is coreferential with the protagonists.Conclusions Based on the corpus data, self-reflective ziji comes in two types. Context-dependent ones occur when people write texts or talk to themselves as a means of self-reflection,whereas discourse-dependent ones occur when narrators relate protagonists’ thoughts from theprotagonists’ perspectives. The two types differ in their purposes (communicative v.s. reflective)and the necessity of co-texts. Logophoricity can well capture the properties of each type. It isanticipated that ziji in discourse-dependent cases are more subject to potential ambiguity and rulesgoverning discourse coherence. This study enriches the knowledge on self-reflective ziji and alertsfuture research to the interference brought by ziji’s potential to be interpreted as a reflector.

ReferencesAnand, Pranav. 2006. De de se. Doctoral Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Anand, Pranav, and Feng-fan Hsieh. 2005. LDR in Perspective. In WCCFL 24.

Charnavel, Isabelle. 2017. Logophorcity and locality: the view from French anaphors. URLHttp://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002683.

Huang, C.-T. James, and C.-S. Luther Liu. 2001. Logophoricity, Attitudes and ziji at the interface.In Long-Distance Reflexives, ed. Peter Cole, Gabriella Hermon, and C.-T. James Huang, volumeSyntax and Semantics 33, 141–195. New York: Academic Press.

Huang, C.-T. James, and C.C. Jane Tang. 1991. The Local Nature of the Long-Distance Reflexivein Chinese. In Long-distance anaphora, ed. Jan Koster and Eric Reuland, 263–282. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Li, Naicong. 1991. Perspective-taking in Mandarin discourse. Doctoral Dissertation, StateUniversity of New York at Buffalo.

Pan, Haihua. 2001. Why the Blocking Effect? In Long-Distance Reflexives, ed. Peter Cole,Gabriella Hermon, and C.-T. James Huang, volume Syntax and Semantics 33, 279–316. NewYork: Academic Press.

29

First Nations Language Revitalization in British Columbia: The case of the Tŝilhqot’in

language in Yuneŝit’in

Paula Laita PallaresUniversity of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

This presentation will share the main results obtained from the research on revitalization of the

Tŝilhqot’in language in the Yuneŝit’in community. Tŝilhqot’in is a Dene language (Athapascan family)

located in the interior of British Columbia. This province is the home of 34 indigenous languages, 61

dialects, and 8 language families (FPCC 2014). Like most of those languages, Tŝilhqot’in is in danger

of disappearing since the number of speakers continues to decrease every year. This is because of a

combination of historical and current socio-economic reasons that stem from European contact in the

early 1800s. Colonization, wars, epidemics, the historical policies of assimilation carried out by the

Canadian Government and the Residential School System (where children were removed from their

homes and forbidden to speak their mother tongue) have all contributed to the decline of the language.

The linguistic vitality of Tŝilhqot’in is one of the highest in the province. This First Nation

language presents a large number of speakers: 19.9% of the total population are fluent; around 866 out

of 4,352 people (FPCC 2014). However, Tŝilhqot’in can still be classified as Stage 7 ‘Shifting’ on the

Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (Fishman 1991) as the language is rarely learned now as the

mother tongue by children. Language revitalization through re-establishing home transmission may still

be possible since grandparents and some of the parents learned Tŝilhqot’in as their first language.

Traditionally an oral language, the first Tŝilhqot’in documentation efforts started in the early 60s

when the alphabet was created. A decade later, the orthography and grammar were developed and

recordings, transcriptions and translations of traditional knowledge and stories started to be produced,

together with language teaching materials and other resources.

In the last decade, many Tŝilhqot’in language revitalization efforts have been taken in Yuneŝit’in,

one of the six Tŝilhqot’in communities. In 2015, Yuneŝit’in Government together with other two

Tŝilhqot’in communities, Tl’esqox and Xeni Gwet’in First Nation, developed a Strategic Language

Revitalization Plan and since then community priorities towards language revitalization have been

addressed in the form of language immersion and culture camps, language immersion preschool

programs, language immersion mentorship programs and development of new language resources.

This research aims to advance the ongoing Tŝilhqot’in language revitalization work in Yuneŝit’in.

It is a collaborative project run by Yuneŝit’in Government and myself and the main purpose is to

explore community needs and priorities on Tŝilhqot’in language revitalization in Yuneŝit’in by

gathering and sharing community perspectives on language knowledge and usage, language

teaching/learning strategies and language resources. The research follows indigenous methodologies to

ensure the work is not only respectful and culturally responsive, but also based on approaches and

processes that fit with indigenous cultures, worldviews and ways of being (Absolon and Willett 2005,

Graveline 2000, King 2013, Kovach 2010, Sinclair 2003, Tuhiwai Smith 1999). Participatory and

community-based research principles are also applied (Strand et al. 2003). This work follows a mixed

method approach, as both qualitative and quantitative data have been collected and analyzed (Cresswell

2013); however, the qualitative analysis prevails in this study in order to gain deep understanding of

community perceptions and underlying reasons of the research topic (Mayan 2009). Aspects of the

grounded theory methodology are also present, owing to the inductive nature of the research process

(Glaser and Strauss 1967). Data collection methods are participant observation, semi-structured

30

conversation, sharing circle and document analysis of meeting minutes, language materials and other

related documents. To ensure a representation of the community perspectives, all Yuneŝit’in families

and different generations have been engaged in the project. Tŝilhqot’in Language Committee members,

language teachers and experts, Yuneŝit’in Chief and Council members and Band office staff have also

participated because of the influence of their roles in the community.

Results will represent Yuneŝit’in community perspectives on the following: Tŝilhqot’in language

knowledge and usage; main reasons and consequences of the language loss; importance of keeping the

language alive; strategies to promote language use; priorities, challenges and strategies to

teach/learn/acquire the language; and development of language resources.

References

Absolon, K. and Willett, C. (2005) “Putting ourselves forward: Location in Aboriginal Research”, in

Brown, L. and Strega, S. (2005) Research as Resistance Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive

Approaches. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press

Cook, E.D. (2013) A Tsilhqút’in Gammar. Vancouver: UBC Press

Creswell, J.W. (2013) Research Design Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches.

Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications

Fishman, J. (1991) Reversing the language shift. Clevendon, UK: Multilingual Matters

First Peoples’ Cultural Council (FPCC) (2014) Report on the Status of B.C. First Nation Languages,

Brentwood Bay, BC: First Peoples’ Cultural Council, retrieved from:

http://www.fpcc.ca/files/PDF/Language/FPCC-LanguageReport-141016-WEB.pdf

Glaser, B. G. and Strauss, A. L. (1967) The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative

research. Chicago, IL: Aldine

Graveline, F. J. (2000) “Circle as Methodology: Enacting an Aboriginal Paradigm”, in Qualitative

Studies in Education, 200, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 361-367. Manitoba, CA: Brandon University

King, J. (2013) “Sisters in Spirit Research Framework: Reflecting on Methodology and Process”, in

Jerry P. White, Peters, J., Beavon, D. and Dinsdale, P. (Eds.) (2013) Aboriginal Policy Research,

Volume 10. Voting, Governance, and Research Methodology. Thompson Educational Publishing,

Inc., pp. 269-285

Kovach, M. (2010) “Conversational Method in Indigenous Research”, in First Peoples Child & Family

Review, Volume 5, Number 1, pp.40-48

Mayan, M. J. (2009) Essentials on Qualitative Inquiry. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Inc.

Sinclair, R. P. (2003) “Indigenous Research in social work: the challenge of operationalizing

worldview” in Native Social Work Journal. Articulating Aboriginal Paradigms: Implications for

Aboriginal Social Work Practice. Sudbury, ON: Lauretian University

Strand, K., Cutforth, N., Stocker, R., Marullo, S. and Donohue, P. (2003) Community-Based Research

in Higher Education: Principles and Practices. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999) Decolonizing Methodologies, Research and Indigenous Peoples. London,

UK: Zed Books.

31

Contact Languages of West China: The Relationship Between History and Linguistic Theory Nathan Loggins

University of Washington

China’s centuries-long incursion into ethnic regions along its historic borders with cultural Tibet has left many language varieties as emblems of cultural contact between the inward bound Han ethnic group and local groups speaking Tibeto-Burman or Mongolic languages. Specifically, languages spoken in Qinghai and southern Gansu provinces and the western half of Sichuan show the results of language contact between the various groups: typically an SVO language, with largely analytic morphology, the Chinese spoken around the Qinghai capital of Xining exhibits SOV word order and post-positional case markers; the languages Wutun, spoken on the Qinghai/Gansu border, and Daohua, spoken in central Sichuan, are also SOV, post-positional case-marking, with ergative alignment, but also a primarily Sinitic lexicon. The origins of these languages are murky, and explanations for the language mixing have followed from the grammar alone or have been left unexplored. While Wutun and Daohua are considered by Janhunen, et al. (2008) and Atshogs (2004), respectively, to be mixed languages, the Xining dialect has been claimed by Dede (1999, 2007) to be restructured Chinese, the result of language shift, possibly among local Monguor people, to the language of the encroaching Chinese state. However, nominal control of the region by China before the mid-20th century does not necessarily entail a motivation for language shift, nor is it obvious how the newly arrived Han Chinese would have sustained contact with local Tibetans to lead to the mixed languages of Wutun and Daohua. Chinese control of much of the region was scant at best prior to the 1950s, and the state presence was largely in the form of military campaigns directed at central Tibet. Dede’s position on Xining seems to be largely motivated by grammatical data alone, assuming an inevitable adoption of Chinese culture by local peoples, the resulting contact-induced changes following from substratal interference of the shifting population as explained programmatically by Thomason and Kaufman (1992). The following paper examines the historical record to consider what sort of contact situation may have been plausible, given the means of Chinese-speakers’ arrival in the region, and how it compares with the settings of other languages whose development has been largely influenced by contact-induced change. It considers the possibilities of education systems and the areal monastic complex as factors. However, more promising explanations lie in the areas of trade and intermarriage, two phenomena common to the region. Such factors are more plausible means for the kind of intimate contact needed for language contact to have occurred. Employing a comparative methodology, the remainder of the study is an attempt to contextualize the languages of the region among different types of contact-heavy languages discussed in the literature. Comparisons are drawn between the settings of the languages in question, and mixed languages such as Michif, spoken along the northern U.S.-Canadian

32

border, where French hunters and trappers married local Cree women, and Mednyj Aleut, spoken in the Copper Islands stretching between Alaska and Russian Siberia, the result of Russian Men and local Aleutian women intermarrying, both situations similar to that of central western China. Such languages, as analyzed by Bakker and Muysken (1994) and Vellupillai (2015) bear a stronger resemblance to Wutun and Daohua, and to some extent the Xining dialect, than either do to more traditional creoles, such as those spoken in the Carribbean or the South Pacific. Languages arising from trade settings tend to have simpler grammatical structures, as described by McWhorter (2001, 2007), and gravitate towards the least marked features available in the community (see Mufwene 1991, 2008). Other cases of presumed language shift tend to leave similarly simplified grammars in place, as explained in McWhorter (2007) and Trudgill (2011). Such does not seem to be an accurate description of the languages analyzed here, lending credit to the interpretation of language mixing as the product of bilingual, multi-ethnic communities formed through intermarriage, a process referred to as language-intertwining, rather than language shift or creolization via trade settings.

阿错意西微萨 [Atshogs, Yeshes Vodgsal = Yīxīwēisà Ācuò], Dǎohuà yánjiū 倒话研究 [Research on Daohua], Běijīng:Mínzú 民族出版社, 2004. Bakker, Peter and Muysken, P.C. "Mixed languages and language intertwining." In Arends et al. (1994) 41-52. Dede, K. R. S. (1999). Language contact, variation and change: the locative in Xining, Qinghai (Doctoral dissertation, University of Washington). Dede, K. (2007). The deep end of the feature pool: syntactic hybridization in Chinese dialects. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 35(1), 58. Janhunen, Juha & Marja Peltomaa & Erika Sandman & Xiawu Dongzhou (2008). Wutun. Languages of the World / Materials, vol. 466. Muenchen: LINCOM Europa. McWhorter, John. "The world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars." Linguistic typology 5.2/3 (2001): 125-166. McWhorter, John. Language interrupted: Signs of non-native acquisition in standard language grammars. Oxford University Press, 2007. Mufwene, Salikoko S. "Pidgins, creoles, typology, and markedness." Development and structures of creole languages (1991): 123-143.Thomason and Kaufman Mufwene, Salikoko S. Language evolution: Contact, competition and change. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008. Thomason, Sarah Grey, and Terrence Kaufman. Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Univ of California Press, 1992. Trudgill, Peter. Sociolinguistic typology: Social determinants of linguistic complexity. Oxford University Press, 2011. Velupillai, Viveka. Pidgins, Creoles and mixed languages: an introduction. Vol. 48. John benjamins publishing Company, 2015.

33

Investigating Language Asymmetry and Handedness in Participants with Diverse Language Background

Olga VasilevaSimon Fraser University

Right-handedness and language are considered unique humans abilities. Despite the fact,

that other animals demonstrate various communicative abilities and motor preferences, no

other species demonstrates such profound population-wide linguistic and manual asymmetries

(Fitch & Braccini, 2013). As both handedness and language are unique to humans and are

strongly lateralized, various researchers hypothesised these abilities are interdependent in

individual development and possibly evolution (e.g. Corballis, 2003). Consequently, research

investigating handedness and language relationship became a field of studies in its own right.

Despite the fact that handedness – language relationship have attracted researchers attention for a

long time, the exact nature of this relationship is far from being understood with

some researchers (e.g. Fagard, 2013) expressing serious concerns regarding our level of

understanding of these relations. Although handedness and language asymmetry are presumably

related in both evolutionary and individual development, more research is necessary to test this

assumption.

One of the reasons research in handedness and language results in inconsistent findings and does

not allow drawing firm conclusions is that studies addressing handedness or language asymmetry

in adults frequently rely on quite homogeneous samples. That is, participants in such studies tend

to be monolinguals in a given language, and most often this language is English. This situation

raises the question, to which extent can such studies findings be extrapolated to humans in

general, and how informative are they for understanding language-handedness relationship.

An integrative approach to the problem of language and handedness in humans requires more

comprehensive approach to research. Specifically, it is necessary to examine handedness

– language relations in more linguistically diverse samples. That is, participants with

varied language background (depending on the type of language), and bi/multilinguals in

addition to monolinguals.

The current submission discusses a project attempting to implement such integrative

approach. The purpose of the project is to investigate handedness – language relations in a

sample of participants with diverse linguistic background. Specifically, language

asymmetry and handedness are investigated in participants having proficiency in various

languages, with a number of participants being bilinguals.

34

According to two recent meta-analyses bilinguals exhibit a more balanced asymmetry in language processing with the right hemisphere being significantly involved in language processing (Vaid & Hull, 2006; Vaid & Hull, 2007). Moreover, the results indicate that overall monolinguals (MG) and late bilinguals (LB) (individuals acquiring a second language after the age of six) demonstrate a more left-lateralized pattern of language processing, while the early bilinguals (EB) (individuals acquiring a second language before the age of six) are less lateralized in that respect. Consequently, since BL differ from ML in language asymmetry, and since there is

a presumed connection between handedness and language asymmetry in the adults (Cochet &

Vauclair, 2012), it might be expected that bilinguals also differ from monolinguals in

handedness.

No previous research has addressed the question of handedness – language asymmetry in relation

to bilingualism. Additionally, while many previous studies have employed indirect measures of

language asymmetry (e.g. asymmetry of a communicative gesture), in the present study

participants are taking a dichotic listening test to determine their actual linguistic asymmetry

profile (Hugdal, 2003). If language asymmetry and handedness is associated in the adults, we

can expect congruent relationship between these parameters in each of the groups (EB, LB, ML)

and significant differences between groups.

Finally, in order to capture the relationship between handedness and language more

effectively, the study employs additional measures allowing separating these relationships from

potential co-founding parameters, such as general motor asymmetry (footedness) and cognitive

factors. The research team is currently working on data collection and coding; findings are

planned to be reported at the conference.

References

Cochet, H., & Vauclair, J. (2012). Hand preferences in human adults: Non-communicative

actions versus communicative gestures. cortex, 48(8), 1017-1026.

Corballis, M. C. (2003). From hand to mouth: The origins of language. Princeton University

Press.

Fagard, J. (2013). Early development of hand preference and language lateralization: are they

linked, and if so, how?. Developmental psychobiology, 55(6), 596-607.

Fitch, W., & Braccini, S. N. (2013). Primate laterality and the biology and evolution of human

handedness: a review and synthesis. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1288(1),

70-85.

Hugdahl, K. (2003). Dichotic listening: an experimental tool in clinical neuropsychology. In

Experimental methods in neuropsychology (pp. 29-46). Springer US.

Hull, R., & Vaid, J. (2007). Bilingual language lateralization: A meta-analytic tale of two

hemispheres. Neuropsychologia, 45(9), 1987-2008.

Vaid, J., & Hull, R. (2006). Laterality and language experience. Laterality, 11(5), 436-464

35

Instructed SLA of English articles and noun types by L1 Chinese international studentsDakota Thomas-Wilhelm

University of Iowa/Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Abstract:

In the field of SLA, much research has been done on either the acquisition/recognition of English

countable/uncountable noun distinctions (Choo & Slabakova, 2014; Choi & Ionin, 2017) or English

articles (Ionin, Ko, & Wexler, 2004), little research has been done on how the presence or absence

of articles might relate to the acquisition of English noun types. This project seeks to fill this gap by

looking at the acquisition of English countable/uncountable noun distinctions and articles by

Chinese ESL learners. Under particular investigation is how learners of an "article-free" language

(e.g., Chinese) acquire English articles in combination with different noun types. Using two different

data collection tasks, a self-paced reading task (SPRT) and an acceptability judgment task (AJT), the

study investigates the acquisition of English article and noun type distinctions after explicit

instruction using linguistically-informed teaching materials (Lopez, 2017; Snape & Yusa, 2013),

which are materials that have been designed to use metalinguistic explanations and L1 comparisons

to teach linguistic concepts. Analyses of the results show that there may be an effect of instruction

on explicit knowledge, but not implicit knowledge. Implications of the study may provide a new

teaching pedagogy ESL grammar.

References:

Cho, J. & Slabakova, R. (2014). Interpreting definiteness in a second language without articles: The

case of l2 Russian. Second Language Research, 30(2), 159-190.

Choi, S. H. & Ionin, T. (2017). Acquisition and processing of mass nouns in L2-English by L2

learners from generalized classifier languages: Evidence for the role of atomicity. In M.

LaMendola & J. Scott (eds.), Proceedings of the 41st annual Boston University Conference on Language

Development, 154-167. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

Ionin, T., Ko, H., & Wexler, K. (2004). Article semantics in L2 acquisition: The Role of Specificity.

Language Acquisition, 12(1), 3–69.

Lopez, E. (2017). Teaching the English article system: Definiteness and specificity in linguistically-

informed instruction. Language Teaching Research, 00(0), 1-18. doi: 10.1177/1362168817739649

Snape, N., & Yusa, N. (2013). Explicit article instruction in definiteness, specificity, genericity and

perception. In M. Whong, K. Gil, & H. Marsden (Eds.), Universal Grammar and the second

language classroom (pp. 161–183). Dordrecht: Springer.

36

Investigating Acquisition of L2 Articles:Evidence from Japanese-speaking and English-speaking learners of Standard Arabic

Albandary AldossariWestern University

The present study examines the Fluctuation Hypothesis of Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004) and the role of transfer in L2 learners of Arabic whose first language is Japanese, a language that lacks articles and English, a language that encodes definiteness and indefiniteness. According to Ionin et al, L2 learners fluctuate between definiteness and specify when the L1 does not have articles. However, transfer from an L1 with articles will override fluctuation.

As Arabic is a language with a marker for definiteness, but not for indefiniteness, this may create difficulties for L2 learners. The Arabic definite article is -al-, which is a bound morpheme, but there is no explicit indefinite article (Jaensch & Ghisseh, 2009). The Arabic definite article is a prefix and it has to be attached to the noun it modifies. For example, the sentence /katabtu al-dars/, which means 'I wrote the lesson' is definite. In contrast, /katabtu dars/ means 'I wrote a lesson', with no explicit marker for indefiniteness.

I will report an empirical study that examined the acquisition of Arabic articles by learners of English, a language that encodes definiteness and indefiniteness, and Japanese that lacks articles. This study tries to answer three questions concerning L2-Arabic article use: (1) does the absence of L1 articles lead to fluctuation in the acquisition of Arabic; (2) does knowledge of English overcome fluctuation in interpretation of Arabic definite contrast; and (3) does the lack of indefinite articles in Arabic complicate the acquisition process.

There are two groups of participants: the first group consists of 10 English native speakers of Arabic at the advanced level who are living in Saudi Arabia; the second group consists of 10 Japanese native speakers learning Arabic at the advanced level living in Japan. There is also a control group of 10 native Arabic speakers.

There are two experimental tasks: a preference task in which the learner reads a short scenario and then decides between two sentences, one with an article (definite interpretation), and one without (indefinite interpretation). The second is a sentence completion task in which participants are asked to complete a sentence in Arabic with definite or indefinite interpretation. Distractors will include numbers and demonstratives.

This study will contribute to our understanding of the acquisition of articles in general and the acquisition of Arabic as an L2, a language that has not been studied sufficiently leading to inadequate and limited knowledge (but see Aldeeky, 2014). This study is on-going and preliminary results will be presented.

ReferencesAldeeky, M. (2014). The non-native speakers errors in the use of the Arabic definite article.

Studies in Literature and Language 9, (3), 40-46.Jaensch, C., & Sarko, G. (2009). Sources of fluctuation in article choice in English and

German by Syrian Arabic and Japanese native speakers. EUROSLA Yearbook, 9(1), 33-55.

Ionin, T., Ko, H., & Wexler, K. (2004). Article semantics in L2 acquisition: The role of

specificity. Language Acquisition, 12(1), 3-69.

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