Working Papers in Linguistics - 2005
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
1 - 9 of 9
-
ItemHigh Rising Intonation in Japanese Discourse(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-12-01)This paper discusses high-rising terminals (HRTs) in Japanese discourse. A HRT is an upward intonation like that which occurs at the end of an interrogative phrase, yet an utterance with HRT is not an interrogative. The popular notion of HRT is that it is used by young women; I show that some people use HRT regardless of age. Instead of focusing on the speaker who produces HRTs, the study looks at the discourse environment in which it occurs. Using natural conversation data, I show that HRTs have multiple functions in Japanese discourse: to highlight repairs, to mark the boundary of a discourse topic, and to mark lists. HRT is shown to be one of many mechanisms that the speaker has at his/her disposal to contexualize the utterance.
-
ItemLF Representation in Scope Ambiguity Between Numeral Quantifier and Negation in Korean(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-12-01)This paper reports on an experiment on the interpretation of scope ambiguity with data from adult Korean speakers. The particular area under investigation involves the relation between numeral quantified nouns (floated vs. determinative quantified nouns) and negation (postverbal negation). Twenty eight subjects participated in the experiment using the Truth Value Judgement Task (Crain and Thornton 1998). The main finding is that Korean-speaking adults display a strong preference for negation wide scope (Neg > Two), and that the difference between floated and determinative quantified nouns in terms of scope ambiguity is not statistically meaningful. The results are discussed cross-linguistically, and I suggest several avenues for future research.
-
ItemNominative Case-Marker Omission and A-Chain Deficit in Child Language Acquisition of Korean(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-12-01)The present study investigates the account of the A-Chain Deficit Hypothesis (ACDH) on the omission of the NOM(inative) case marker in child Korean, which argues that children omit NOM frequently in unaccusative constructions due to the unavailability of A-movement.1 Overall, the results of this study confirm previous results on the rate of NOM omission used to support the ACDH (Borer and Wexler 1987, Miyamoto et al. 1999, Lee and Wexler 2001, Machida et al. 2004). Previous studies used a bi.nary distinction between verb categories, i.e., unaccusatives vs. the others (unergatives/transitives). Once the various subclasses of unaccusatives are considered individually (adjectival, copular, existen.tial, psych, and lexical unaccusative verbs), the unaccusativity effect is found not to hold across all un.accusative verb types. The results of detailed analyses appear not to support the ACDH in that not all verb subcategories follow the pattern among verb types suggested by the simple binary categorization.
-
ItemProsodic Resolution of a Syntactic Ambiguity in Korean Learners of English(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-12-01)This study investigates how native Korean-speaking second language learners of English (L2ers) use prosody for syntactic disambiguation. Korean L2ers with different English-proficiency levels and na.tive English speakers participated in morpho-syntax and prosody experiments. The morpho-syntax ex.periment assessed interference of Korean morpho-syntactic features in the prosody experiment and verified the subjects’ proficiency levels. In the prosody experiment, participants heard the syntactically ambiguous beginning portion of a sentence and then chose the most likely of two visually presented continuations. The results show that (1) Korean L2ers at all levels used the relative strength of prosodic boundaries to correctly disambiguate syntactically ambiguous utterances; (2) correct continuation se.lection increased significantly as proficiency increased; and (3) late closure bias was not completely suppressed in L2.
-
ItemA Sketch Grammar of Tindal Dusun(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-10-01)This article attempts to give a broad overview of the synchronic grammar of Tindal Dusun, a language spoken in Sabah, Borneo (Malaysia), with occasional reference to historical data where relevant. Phonologically, Tindal has a constraint on vowel combinations within a word, which has been discussed in other Dusunic languages as “vowel harmony” (Kroeger 1992, Hurlbut 1981, Harris and Chapple 1993, Boutin 1993), and this constraint is examined in some detail here. Moreover, the language is moving from a four-vowel system to a symmetrical five-vowel system, with the introduction of a mid-front vowel [..]. The phonological and sociological conditions for this switch are addressed. Syntactically, Tindal has the remnants of a Philippine-type focus system, and this system will be explored with numerous examples. Finally, the language is quite complex morphologically. This paper gives a brief description of every affix known to the author, with a more extensive discussion of the most common affixes.
-
ItemAn Analysis of English Loanwords in Korean(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-10-01)This paper investigates sound substitutions that occur in English loanwords in Korean within the the.ory of Natural Phonology (NP). In NP, phonological phenomena are accounted for in terms of two types of phonological processes: fortition and lenition. The crucial part of the present analysis can be found in how an insertion phenomenon is viewed compared to other theories. Specifically, vowel insertion is seen as re.sulting from maintaining a certain length of moras under Broselow and Park’s (1995) mora conservation law. However, Broselow and Park’s analysis turns out to be limited because of counterexamples that vio.late the law of moras. Vowel insertion is hard to see as a result of certain universal principles; rather it can be seen as occurring from an interaction of a set of natural phonological processes.
-
ItemThe Effect of Mora-Timing on the Duration of Vowels Preceding Geminate Consonants(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-04-01)This paper investigates the relationship among geminate consonants, preceding vowels, and timing in different types of languages. While it has generally been assumed that a predictable relationship between the geminates and preceding vowels exists only in syllable-timed languages, I show that the relationship is also (to a certain degree) predictable in mora-timed languages. However, while in syllable-timed languages vowels are shortened before geminate consonants, in mora-timed languages they are lengthened. I argue that this lengthening is due to the presence of a bimoraic foot in the mora.timed languages investigated here.
-
ItemWord Order and Verb Inflection in English-Speaking Children’s L2 Acquisition of German V2(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-03-01)L1 acquisition data indicate that children know very early the German position-form contingency for verbs: finite verbs in verb second (V2) position; nonfinite verbs in verb-final position (e.g., Poeppel and Wexler 1993). The present paper investigates whether child L2 learners pattern like child L1 learners, reporting on young English speakers’ acquisition of (nonsubject-initial) V2 in German. Fourteen L1 English-speaking child L2 learners of German completed two elicited-production tasks, one targeting topicalized-DO (direct object) sentences, the other targeting topicalized-PP (prepositional phrase) sentences. The age at testing ranged from 8;11 to 14;0 (age at onset: 4;0–5;0). The results (i) contest Prévost’s (1997a, b) extension of the Truncation Hypothesis (Rizzi 1993/1994) to child L2 acquisition, (ii) are more compatible with the Missing Inflection Hypothesis (Haznedar and Schwartz 1997), and (iii) suggest that (unlike in L1 acquisition but like in adult L2 acquisition) finiteness and V2 are not developmentally interdependent in child L2 acquisition.
-
ItemWhere Is the Hawaiian Language Headed? A Phonetic Study(University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics, 2005-03-01)The struggle for the revitalization of the Hawaiian language, although valuable and necessary, has so far either neglected or insufficiently taken into account one important issue: the existence of various dialects of Hawaiian. The aim of the present study is to characterize the vowels of two of these dialects, Ni‘ihauan and the University of Hawai‘i (UH), on the basis of phonetic evidence. The first dialect is a natural continuation of the variety spoken on the island of Ni‘ihau, in that the Hawaiian language was never banned there, as opposed to the rest of the islands, where it was. The latter dialect evolved from that spoken on the Big Island. Although both dialects have native and non-native speakers, most of the speakers of UH Hawaiian are non non-native speakers whose first language is English. The present study compares the pronunciation of Hawaiian vowels by a native speaker of the Ni‘ihauan dialect with that of a fluent (but non-native) speaker of UH Hawaiian whose first language is English. Phonetic charts of the vowels of both varieties of the language are compared to show the possible influence of English on the UH form.