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1. Lexico-syntactic constraints influence verbal working memory in sentence-like lists

   https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-023-01496-2  

   Schwering, Steven C.; Jacobs, Cassandra L.; Montemayor, Janelle; MacDonald, Maryellen C. (December 2023, Memory & Cognition)

   We test predictions from the language emergent perspective on verbal working memory that lexico-syntactic constraints should support both item and order memory. In natural language, long-term knowledge of lexico-syntactic patterns involving part of speech, verb biases, and noun animacy support language comprehension and production. In three experiments, participants were presented with randomly generated dative-like sentences or lists in which part of speech, verb biases, and animacy of a single word were manipulated. Participants were more likely to recall words in the correct position when presented with a verb over a noun in the verb position, a good dative verb over an intransitive verb in the verb position, and an animate noun over an inanimate noun in the subject noun position. These results demonstrate that interactions between words and their context in the form of lexico-syntactic constraints influence verbal working memory. 

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2. M-merger and copy spell-out in Inuktitut noun incorporation

   Yuan, Michelle (October 2018, Proceedings of the Forty-eighth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society)

   A long-standing issue in the analysis of noun incorporation (NI) concerns whether the noun-verb complex is derived by syntactic movement of the object or postsyntactic merger of the verb and an in situ object. The same question pervades the literature on word formation and affixation more generally. This paper investigates these questions from the point of view of Inuktitut, an Inuit language of Northern Canada, and argues that both NI and polysynthetic word formation in Inuit are postsyntactic phenomena, derived by successive m-merger between adjacent elements along the clausal spine. I argue that incorporated nominals in Inuktitut are syntactically active, in that they remain accessible for case, agreement, and even phrasal movement operations, despite being overtly realized within the verb complex. These patterns follow straightforwardly from interactions between postsyntactic m-merger and general conditions on copy spell-out. M-merger of a nominal copy in a movement chain prevents that copy from being deleted, in accordance to morphological well-formedness conditions on word formation. 

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3. Language control in bilingual production: Insights from error rate and error type in sentence production

   https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000590  

   Martin, Clara D.; Nozari, Nazbanou (March 2021, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition)

   Abstract Most research showing that cognates are named faster than non-cognates has focused on isolated word production which might not realistically reflect cognitive demands in sentence production. Here, we explored whether cognates elicit interference by examining error rates during sentence production, and how this interference is resolved by language control mechanisms. Twenty highly proficient Spanish–English bilinguals described visual scenes with sentence structures ‘NP1-verb-NP2’ (NP = noun-phrase). Half the nouns and half the verbs were cognates and two manipulations created high control demands. Both situations that demanded higher inhibitory control pushed the cognate effect from facilitation towards interference. These findings suggest that cognates, similar to phonologically similar words within a language, can induce not only facilitation but robust interference. 

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4. Mediating functions and the semantics of noun incorporation

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09511-4  

   McKenzie, Andrew (April 2021, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Noun incorporation is commonly thought to avoid the weak compositionality of compounds because it involves conjunction of an argument noun with the incorporating verb. However, it is weakly compositional in two ways. First, the noun’s entity argument needs to be bound or saturated, but previous accounts fail to adequately ensure that it is. Second, non-arguments are often incorporated in many languages, and their thematic role is available for contextual selection. We show that these two weaknesses are actually linked. We focus on the Kiowa language, which generally bars objects from incorporation but allows non-arguments. We show that a mediating relation is required to semantically link the noun to the verb. Absent a relation, the noun’s entity argument is not saturated, and the entire expression is uninterpretable. The mediating relation for non-objects also assigns it a thematic role instead of a postposition. Speakers can choose this role freely, subject to independent constraints from the pragmatics, syntax, and semantics. Objects in Kiowa are in fact allowed to incorporate in certain environments, but we show that these all independently involve a mediating relation. The mediating relation for objects quantifies over the noun and links the noun+verb construction to the rest of the clause. The head that introduces this relation re-categorizes the verb in the syntactic derivation. Essentially, we demonstrate two distinct mechanisms for noun incorporation. Having derived the distribution of Kiowa, we apply the same relations to derive constraints on English complex verbs and synthetic compounds, which exhibit most of the same constraints as Kiowa noun incorporation. We also look at languages with routine object incorporation, and show how the transitivity of the verb depends on whether the v° head introducing the external argument assigns case to the re-categorized verb. 

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5. Abstract ergative Case without morphological case

   Drummond, Emily (December 2022, Proceedings of NELS)

   Bakay, Özge; Pratley, Breanna; Neu, Eva; Deal, Peyton (Ed.)

   The existence and nature of abstract Case has been debated in recent years (McFadden 2004, Landau 2006, Markman 2009), particularly in languages that show no morphological case marking (Diercks 2012, Sheehan & van der Wal 2016). Using data from original fieldwork, I argue that Nukuoro (Polynesian-Outlier) instantiates abstract ergative Case without morphological case or agreement. Nukuoro shows a range of syntactic phenomena indicative of abstract Case, including object shift and pseudo noun incorporation (e.g., Massam 2001), syntactic ergativity in A'-movement, and alternative licensing in tenseless clauses. This pattern provides support for modern theories of Case (Legate 2008), which cleave the assignment of abstract Case from its realization in the morphology; additionally, this pattern differs from other documented examples of unrealized abstract Case by having an ergative alignment, rather than a nominative one (Halpert 2016, Sheehan & van der Wal 2016). 

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