School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableWhy we need a gradient approach to word order(DE GRUYTER MOUTON, 2023-07-26)Abstract This article argues for a gradient approach to word order, which treats word order preferences, both within and across languages, as a continuous variable. Word order variability should be regarded as a basic assumption, rather than as something exceptional. Although this approach follows naturally from the emergentist usage-based view of language, we argue that it can be beneficial for all frameworks and linguistic domains, including language acquisition, processing, typology, language contact, language evolution and change, and formal approaches. Gradient approaches have been very fruitful in some domains, such as language processing, but their potential is not fully realized yet. This may be due to practical reasons. We discuss the most pressing methodological challenges in corpus-based and experimental research of word order and propose some practical solutions.
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ItemInflectional predictability and prosodic morphology in Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara(SPRINGER, 2021-11)Lexically stipulated suppletive allomorphy, such as that found in inflection class systems, makes wordforms unpredictable because any one of several exponents may be used to express some morphosyntactic property set. However, recent research shows that apparently complex inflectional paradigms can be organised in such a way that knowing one inflected form of a lexeme greatly reduces the uncertainty of other forms (e.g. Ackerman and Malouf 2013). Further typological work is required to investigate the ways in which inflectional interpredictability is achieved, and what aspects of wordforms may be informative. In this paper we present a case study of interpredictability in verbal inflection in Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara (Pama-Nyungan; Australia). We show that a combination of suffix allomorphy, prosodically conditioned stem augmentation, and the prosodic structure of verbal roots all conspire to achieve a paradigm that is totally interpredictable: hearing one inflected verb enables a speaker to produce with certainty any other form of that verb. We also provide a detailed description of metrical structure in the language, clarifying previous analyses.
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ItemThey Talk Muṯumuṯu: Variable Elision of Tense Suffixes in Contemporary Pitjantjatjara(MDPI AG, 2021)Vowel elision is common in Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara connected speech. It also appears to be a locus of language change, with young people extending elision to new contexts; resulting in a distinctive style of speech which speakers refer to as muṯumuṯu (‘short’ speech). This study examines the productions of utterance-final past tense suffixes /-nu, -ɳu, -ŋu/ by four older and four younger Pitjantjatjara speakers in spontaneous speech. This is a context where elision tends not to be sociolinguistically or perceptually salient. We find extensive variance within and between speakers in the realization of both the vowel and nasal segments. We also find evidence of a change in progress, with a mixed effects model showing that among the older speakers, elision is associated with both the place of articulation of the nasal segment and the metrical structure of the verbal stem, while among the younger speakers, elision is associated with place of articulation but metrical structure plays little role. This is in line with a reanalysis of the conditions for elision by younger speakers based on the variability present in the speech of older people. Such a reanalysis would also account for many of the sociolinguistically marked extended contexts of elision.