Meaning Lab
Date: Fri, Apr 25
Time: 10:00am – 11:20am
Room: THH B9
Kelsey Christensen: “Syntax drives dimensionality in non-canonical adjectival comparatives”
Abstract:
One strand of theorizing in the syntax-semantics of comparatives holds that subtle features of syntax—rather than lexicon—play a significant role in determining which measures people recruit to understand comparative sentences (Wellwood 2015, 2016, 2019). We compare dimensional selections for comparatives in English, probing whether word order predicts differences in dimensionality. In a series of experiments, we presented people with simple scenes involving a square and a circle changing colors different numbers of times and asked them to evaluate the truth of the sentences in (1).
(1) a. The square was more gleeb than the circle was.
b. The square was gleeb more than the circle was.
These parses bias different lexical meanings for the nonce word—state or event—in turn licensing the different dimensions for measurement—intensity of color or number of color-changing events. We found that a higher proportion of participants given a sentence with the form in (1b) tracked number, as the VP-level of attachment supports quantification by events. Our results provide formal experimental evidence for the syntax-oriented analysis, in which the height of more’s attachment fixes dimensional selection. In contrast, theories that require the lexical item alone to supply dimension leave non-canonical adjectival comparatives like (1b) unattested (e.g. Kennedy 1999 and many subsequent).
PhonLunch
Date: Mon, Apr 28
Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Room: GFS 330
Haley Hsu: TBA
Psycholinguistics Lab
Date: Tue, Apr 29
Time: 9:30am – 10:30am
Room: GFS 330
Metehan Oğuz: “Online processing of non-local reflexives in Turkish”
S-Side Story
Date: Wed, Apr 30
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Room: GFS 330
Carolina Fraga: “Determiner Drop in Vernacular English”