Showing papers on "Plural published in 2020"

Plural valuation of nature for equity and sustainability: Insights from the Global South

Abstract: Plural valuation is about eliciting the diverse values of nature articulated by different stakeholders in order to inform decision making and thus achieve more equitable and sustainable outcomes. We explore what approaches align with plural valuation on the ground, as well as how different social-ecological contexts play a role in translating plural valuation into decisions and outcomes. Based on a co-constructed analytical approach relying on empirical information from ten cases from the Global South, we find that plural valuation contributes to equitable and sustainable outcomes if the valuation process: 1) is based on participatory value elicitation approaches; 2) is framed with a clear action-oriented purpose; 3) provides space for marginalized stakeholders to articulate their values in ways that can be included in decisions; 4) is used as a tool to identify and help reconcile different cognitive models about human-nature relations; and 5) fosters open communication and collaboration among stakeholders. We also find that power asymmetries can hinder plural valuation. As interest and support for undertaking plural valuation grows, a deeper understanding is needed regarding how it can be adapted to different purposes, approaches, and social-ecological contexts in order to contribute to social equity and sustainability.

Nothing to disconnect from? Being singular plural in an age of machine learning:

Abstract: This essay makes the claim that there is nothing to disconnect from in the digital world, and that the logic of machine learning provides the most obvious empirical case for this. Drawing on Jean-L...

Inclusive Plurals and the Theory of Number

Abstract: I argue that an account of both inclusive plurals and the crosslinguistic typology of grammatical number requires postulating a [−atomic] feature (or something very much like it) in the structure of exclusive-plural DPs. When combined with the only theory we currently have that accounts for the crosslinguistic typology of number (Harbour 2014), theories in which the exclusive-plural DPs of a language with inclusive plurals are [−atomic]-less under- or overgenerate with respect to that typology. These problems disappear as soon as the structure of exclusive plural DPs contains a component that generates exclusive-plural interpretations, either Harbour’s [−atomic] feature (added to a system with a second, [−atomic]-less structure, a proposal compatible with, e.g., Farkas and de Swart 2010) or a predicate-level exhaustivity operator (from Mayr 2015).

Public Capacity, Plural Forms of Collaboration, and the Performance of Public Initiatives: A Configurational Approach

Abstract: We assess conditions that explain plural forms of public and private action using a comparative study of 24 public initiatives in Brazil, India, and South Africa. Measuring performance as evidence of positive outcomes to their target populations, we compare cases of high and low performance. Our configurational approach examines combinations of conditions leading to positive outcomes: public operational capacity, diverse collaborations nurtured by public units (with for-profit firms, with nonprofit organizations, and with other units in the public bureaucracy), and stakeholder orientation (permeability to multiple sources of input to design and adjust the project). We apply fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to unveil configurations consistent with high performance. Our configurational analysis reveals two distinct paths to high performance. A path with higher private engagement involves concurrent collaborations with for-profit and nonprofit actors, whereas an alternative path with higher internal (public) engagement relies on collaborations within the public bureaucracy complemented by high permeability to inputs from multiple stakeholders. Our results also confirm that strong public capacity is necessary in all high-performance configurations. An important implication is that externalization and multiple forms of collaboration are not substitutes for weak governments. Furthermore, our configurational perspective contributes to the literature by operationalizing a multiple-actor, multiple-logic perspective describing alternative paths to high performance.

The radical account of bare plural generics

Abstract: Bare plural generic sentences pervade ordinary talk. And yet it is extremely controversial what semantics to assign to such sentences. In this paper, I achieve two tasks. First, I develop a novel classification of the various standard uses to which bare plurals may be put. This “variety data” is important—it gives rise to much of the difficulty in systematically theorizing about bare plurals. Second, I develop a novel account of bare plurals, the radical account. On this account, all bare plurals fail to express propositions. The content of a bare plural has to be pragmatically “completed” by a speaker in order for her to make an assertion. At least the content of a quantifier expression has to be supplied. But sometimes, the content of a sentential operator or modal verb is also supplied. The radical account straightforwardly explains the variety data: Speakers’ communicative intentions vary wildly across different contexts. The radical account should be taken seriously in the literature on generics.

Language and Trauma: An Introduction.

Abstract: This paper introduces the conceptual framing of studies of trauma. It considers how, on the one hand, applied linguistics may contribute to this study, responding to the suggestion that trauma ‘can be best understood through plural, multi-disciplinary perspectives’ (Luckhurst 2008: 214), and, on the other hand, the extent to which linguistic studies of trauma can contribute to a better understanding of what Coupland and Coupland (1997: 117) have called ‘discourses of the unsayable’. It argues that the tools of linguistic analysis may be used to understand the role of language in how individuals may experience, recount, and potentially recover from psychological trauma, in personal, literary, and institutional contexts, as exemplified by the papers in this volume.

Analysis of Higher Education Students' Errors in English Writing Tasks.

Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyse the errors of higher education students in English writing tasks. In the study, the paragraphs in the exam papers of 57 preparatory class students, studying at a state university in Turkey in 2017-2018 academic year, were analysed. The study was conducted using qualitative research method. Case study was used in the research. Document analysis was used to collect data. The collected data were analysed in line with Surface Strategy Taxonomy and errors were identified and classified. As a result of the error analysis process, it was observed that the students made a total of 381 errors on 57 exam papers; 192 of them were misformation errors, 113 were omission errors, 65 were addition errors and only 11 were misordering errors. Misformation was the most frequent error among the students with a percentage of 50.39. In addition, the percentage of omission errors was 29.66%, that of addition errors was 17.06% and misordering errors was 2.89%. The professionals teaching English as a foreign language should focus more on prepositions, verb “to be”, spelling, articles, singular/plural forms of nouns, word formation, tenses, word choice and subject-verb agreement, which were the most problematic areas of language listed under the four main categories by developing efficient instructional techniques and materials. They should also respect learners’ errors and set up a positive atmosphere where learners can easily express themselves in the target language without the fear of committing errors. INTRODUCTION There are lots of languages in the world and some of them have come to the fore due to the fact that they are spoken by millions and even billions of people. People generally learn the language spoken where they are born, however; the developments in the fields such as communication, transportation, tourism and trade forced people to learn the languages that they didn’t need to learn in the past. English is the most popular one of those languages and for some it is the lingua franca (Modiano, 2004; Becker and Kluge, 2014) of our age. Millions of people in the world speak English as their mother tongue while others must learn it as a second (ESL) or foreign language (EFL). Learning English as second or foreign language differs with respect to learners’ attitudes towards English and the people who speak it as their native language, exposure to English, their sources of motivation and so on. The main focus of this study is learning English as a foreign language as English is not the primary language in the country where the study was carried out. A considerable

Promoting and Problematizing Multi/Plural Approaches in Language Pedagogy

Abstract: Today’s increased scholarly attention to linguistic multiplicity, plurality, and hybridity for educating learners of English as an additional language is represented by notions of translanguaging and plurilingualism. However, without critical awareness of power and neoliberal complicity of diversity, this liberal orientation may not solve aggravating real-world problems that undermine human and linguistic diversity. This chapter critically examines both possibilities and potential problems of translanguaging and plurilingualism with a focus on writing in an additional language. Through critically examining (1) discrepancies between the multi/plural ideal and real-world challenges, (2) paradoxes of reality and ideology contained in multi/plural linguistic practices and linguistic normativity, and (3) ideological synergy with liberal multiculturalism and neoliberal multiculturalism, I will advocate critical engagement in multi/plural approaches with a vision of transforming not only the conceptualization of language but also structural barriers and language ideologies in relation to race, class, nationality, and other social identities.

Numeral classifiers and number marking in Indo-Iranian: A phylogenetic approach

Abstract: This paper investigates the origins of sortal numeral classifiers in the Indo-Iranian languages. While these are often assumed to result from contact with non-Indo-European languages, an alternative possibility is that classifiers developed as a response to the rise of optional plural marking. This alternative is in line with the so-called Greenberg-Sanches-Slobin (henceforth GSS) generalization. The GSS generalization holds that the presence of sortal numeral classifiers across languages is negatively correlated with obligatory plural marking on nouns. We assess the extent to which Indo-Iranian classifier development is influenced by loosening of restrictions on plural marking using a sample of 65 languages and a Bayesian phylogenetic model, inferring posterior distributions over evolutionary transition rates between typological states and using these rates to reconstruct the history of classifiers and number marking throughout Indo-Iranian, constrained by historically attested states. We find broad support for a diachronically oriented construal of the GSS generalization, but find no evidence for a strong bias against the synchronic co-occurrence of classifiers and obligatory plural marking. Inspection of the most likely diachronic trajectories in individual lineages in the tree shows a stronger effect of the GSS among Iranian languages than Indo-Aryan languages. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that the association of classifiers and optional number marking in Indo-Iranian is neither solely the effect of universal mechanisms nor of the contingency of local contact histories.

Inflecting when there's no majority: Limitations of encoder-decoder neural networks as cognitive models for German plurals

Abstract: Can artificial neural networks learn to represent inflectional morphology and generalize to new words as human speakers do? Kirov and Cotterell (2018) argue that the answer is yes: modern Encoder-Decoder (ED) architectures learn human-like behavior when inflecting English verbs, such as extending the regular past tense form -(e)d to novel words. However, their work does not address the criticism raised by Marcus et al. (1995): that neural models may learn to extend not the regular, but the most frequent class -- and thus fail on tasks like German number inflection, where infrequent suffixes like -s can still be productively generalized. To investigate this question, we first collect a new dataset from German speakers (production and ratings of plural forms for novel nouns) that is designed to avoid sources of information unavailable to the ED model. The speaker data show high variability, and two suffixes evince 'regular' behavior, appearing more often with phonologically atypical inputs. Encoder-decoder models do generalize the most frequently produced plural class, but do not show human-like variability or 'regular' extension of these other plural markers. We conclude that modern neural models may still struggle with minority-class generalization.

The Deity in the Definite Article: lassaw' and related terms for Ba'al in Jeremiah

Abstract: The general consensus is that the abstract noun sāwʼ (שוא) in the HB/OT, with the basic meaning of worthlessness, inefficacy, deceit, emptiness, falsehood, lie, could refer either to these qualities in general (typically translated in the English as “in vain”), or could refer to anti-Yahweh idolatry. The choice has been rather arbitrary and inconsistent, relying on the reader’s view of what the text would want to convey. This study builds on the assumption that the definiteness of the noun determines its semantic value, and should be a major factor in determining the general versus polemic meaning of sāwʼ (שוא), although this grammatico-semantic distinction is unaccounted for in standard lexicons and most commentaries. The study limits itself to the book of Jeremiah, where sāwʼ only appears in its definite form, as lassāwʼ. Remarkably three other similarly defined nouns are located in the same text blocks in Jeremiah, namely hasseqer, habboset and hahebel (mostly with prefixed prepositions). The fact that they all have indefinite counterparts in Jeremiah, strengthens the argument that the presence or absence of the definite article is not arbitrary, but noteworthy and meaningful. The fact that these four determined nouns (hassāwʼ, hasseqer, habboset and hahebel) all function in the same broader text in Jeremiah, with the deity Baʻal also mentioned consistently and exclusively in the definite form (mostly singular habbaʻal, rarely plural habbeʻalim) leads to the hypothesis that the defined nouns under discussion are all references to Baʻal, with a suggested rhetorical function of disparagement of the deity. The plausibility of the hypothesis is tested in this particular study by means of an exegetical exercise which zooms in on the interface of the nouns under discussion in a selected range of texts. The exegetical approach is obviously launched from the mentioned theoretical stance, seeking to discover features of the text that support interpretation in line with the hypothesis.

A Statistical Explanation of the Distribution of Sortal Classifiers in Languages of the World via Computational Classifiers

Abstract: Previous studies demonstrate that morphosyntactic plural markers and the structure of numeral systems have individually strong predictive power with regard to the usage of sortal classifiers in lan ...

Salience-weighted agreement feature hierarchy modulates language comprehension

Abstract: The brain establishes relations between elements of an unfolding sentence in order to incrementally build a representation of who is doing what based on various linguistic cues. Many languages systematically mark the verb and/or its arguments to imply the manner in which they are related. A common mechanism to this end is subject-verb agreement, whereby the marking on the verb covaries with one or more of the features such as person, number and gender of the subject argument in a sentence. The cross-linguistic variability of these features would suggest that they may modulate language comprehension differentially based on their relative weightings in a given language. To test this, we investigated the processing of subject-verb agreement in simple intransitive Arabic sentences in a visual event-related brain potential (ERP) study. Specifically, we examined the differences, if any, that ensue in the processing of person, number and gender features during online comprehension, employing sentences in which the verb either showed full agreement with the subject noun (singular or plural) or did not agree in one of the features. ERP responses were measured at the post-nominal verb. Results showed a biphasic negativity−late-positivity effect when the verb did not agree with its subject noun in one of the features, in line with similar findings from other languages. Crucially however, the biphasic effect for agreement violations was systematically graded based on the feature that was violated, which is a novel finding in view of results from other languages. Furthermore, this graded effect was qualitatively different for singular and plural subjects based on the differing salience of the features for each subject-type. These results suggest that agreement features, varying in their salience due to their language-specific weightings, differentially modulate language comprehension. We postulate a Salience-weighted Feature Hierarchy based on our findings and argue that this parsimoniously accounts for the diversity of existing cross-linguistic neurophysiological results on verb agreement processing.

Examining the how of Plural Policing: Moving from Normative Debate to Empirical Enquiry

Abstract: The networked and plural nature of policing suggests that agencies are often involved in extensive exchanges of expertise, resources and knowledge. However, the network structure and distribution of power between various policing actors can vary considerably. This highlights the importance of developing sound analytical perspectives that can help unpack the complexities behind the linkages. Applying the network perspective, this article underlines the value of utilizing analytical tools and approaches drawn from social network analysis, such as brokerage and homophily, to empirically assess the roles of agencies and their contribution to plural policing. This, in turn, shows how, in the mixed economy of policing, as well as being understood in terms of the normative debates that often figure in the current literature, relational phenomena also require more sophisticated empirical approaches.

Production of Morphosyntax Within and Across Different Dialects of American English.

Abstract: Purpose This study examined the production of morphosyntactic markers by school-age children with and without developmental language disorder Comparisons were made between students who speak mainstream American English (MAE) dialects and nonmainstream American English (NMAE) dialects Method First- and second-grade students (N = 82) completed assessments of dialect use and language ability, which are designed for students who speak NMAE dialects Students also completed an experimental production task targeting three morphosyntactic features: past tense -ed marking, third-person singular -s marking, and plural -s marking Past tense marking and third-person singular are produced differently across MAE and NMAE dialects, whereas plural marking is produced more similarly across dialects Results When comparing across dialects, children with typical language skills who spoke NMAE dialects overtly marked past tense and third-person singular less often compared to MAE peers However, when comparing to same-dialect peers with language disorders, children with typical language skills who spoke NMAE dialects overtly marked these morphosyntactic markers more often than peers with developmental language disorder Conclusion The results underscore the importance of considering a child's dialect use when assessing language ability, in particular with measures that include features that are variable in NMAE dialects At the same time, within-dialect comparisons suggest that a broader set of morphosyntactic features may provide useful information for evaluations of language ability Future research should investigate the source of these differences, including the extent to which students with language disorders have acquired the social and linguistic factors that condition the use of variable features

Explaining the May 9th Regime Change in Malaysia: Ethnic Boundary, Social Differentiation, National Ethos and Political Changes

Abstract: Malaysia is a product of a post-colonial plural society. However, under the influences of development, migration and technological changes, the plural society characters of the nation have undergone social transformation from one of a compartmentalized society by language, culture, religion and economic vocation into a diverse society. However, the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of the tradition of Furnivall’s plural society may not be able to explain the fluidity and dynamism of contemporary Malaysia. Ethnic and religious dimensions may define the ethnicised society but to argue that such a society is a plural society may not do justice to explain the shift from ethno-religious concerned are being embedded with civic spaces of justice, inclusivity and participative democracy of the Malaysian diverse society. This article grapples with the constraints of the Furnivall tradition by introducing the conceptual framework of ethnic boundary in the tradition of Barth and the theoretical framework of the sociology of modernization and development in understanding and explaining the social changes taking place in Malaysia. Ethnic identity still prevails but it has thinned as an influence on social action. Studies show that social cohesion dominates the relationship of the diverse ethnic groups that shared a common norm, showing greater similarities rather than differences and under such social differentiation in the society, they relate to one another horizontally and least vertically.

We Shall Fight: Speaker-Exclusive We as a Grammatical Metaphor

Abstract: The first person plural pronoun cannot be considered as an expression of pluralization of the first. Its semantic boundaries are defined in context, and this inherent vagueness an be pragmatically exploited for communicative purposes. Beyond the frequently investigated opposition between (addressee-) inclusive vs exclusive forms, this paper explores non-prototypical uses of the first person plural pronoun, focusing on the conflicts that arise when it is used in contexts that semantically exclude the speaker. Speaker-exclusive forms can occur in different situations, ranging from interpersonal exchanges to public discourse. The paper investigates their different semantic implications, highlighting their common traits as well as their crucial peculiarities. Both the review of the literature and the analysis of actual examples bring forth the different values and functions of various speaker-exclusive occurrences of the first person plural. A more systematic categorization of the forms can be obtained adopting a metaphorical interpretation, which on the one hand emphasises their common denominator (i.e. speaker-exclusiveness) and, on the other, sheds light on their varying communicative potential.

The effect of developmentally moderated focus on form instruction in Indonesian kindergarten children learning English as a foreign language

Abstract: This short report summarises a current quasi-experimental investigation into the effect of developmentally moderated focus on form instruction (DMFonF; Di Biase 2002, 2008) in an EFL classroom in an Indonesian kindergarten. DMFonF is an instructional approach which combines Pienemann's (1984) teachability hypothesis within Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998, 2011) with Long's (1991) focus on form (FonF) feedback. Specifically, the current study focuses on the acquisition of English plural marking on nouns. One first-year Indonesian kindergarten class (K1) and one second-year kindergarten class (K2) participated in the study. Children in both K1 and K2 were assessed at the beginning of the study and all of them, bar one exception, were found to be at the lexical stage; that is, they produced only single words and formulaic expressions in English without any grammatical markings. Analyses for K1 after one semester of instruction with DMFonF indicated that all the children acquired lexical plural marking and nine out of ten children also acquired phrasal agreement between quantifiers and nouns. A comparison of these results with K2 children (who were one year ahead in their meaning-based instruction) suggests that DMFonF instruction is effective in promoting grammatical development in the second language acquisition of kindergarten children.

On the Syntax of Number in Romance

Abstract: Inflectional languages, and Romance languages in particular, display morphological variation in plural marking within the nominal domain. While standard varieties show plural inflection on all the constituents within the DP, other varieties show this plural marking only on some of its constituents. We investigate a set of puzzling data and propose that Number in Romance is not a head, but an adjunct, an optional and bi‐valent morphosyntactic feature. We single out the hypothesis that, within the nominal domain, the pluralizer is in unmarked cases adjoined to D (i.e., a categorized d root), and in marked cases it is adjoined to a noun or an adjective (i.e., a categorized n/a root). We also discuss that instantiations of plural marking within the nominal domain should be conceived as the output of morphophonological concord, a post‐syntactic operation that is sensitive to c‐command.

Supralocalisation Processes in Early Modern English Urban Vernaculars: New Manuscript Evidence from Bristol, Coventry and York

Abstract: This article contributes to existing studies that are concerned with standardisation and supralocalisation processes in the development of written English during the Early Modern English period. By focussing on and comparing civic records and letter data from important regional urban centres, notably Bristol, Coventry and York, from the period 1500–1700, this study provides new insight into the gradual emergence of supralocal forms. More precisely, the linguistic variables under investigation are third person indicative present tense markers (singular and plural). The findings of this study reveal that each urban centre shows a unique distribution pattern in the adoption of supralocal -(V)s singular and plural zero. Furthermore, verb type as well as text type appear to be important language internal and external factors respectively.

Plural Governance for the Management of Local Public Services: An Empirical Investigation on the French Car Park Industry

Abstract: This paper investigates the use of plural governance for the provision of local public services. Most of the studies conducted on local data compare direct public provision (i.e., in-house provision where governments produce public services themselves, using their own equipment and employees) to contracting out. But governments actually face a more complex set of choices than the simple make-or-buy dichotomy. In par ticular, cities can simultaneously opt for the ‘make’ and ‘buy’ alternatives for the provision of the same public service, and thus produce a portion of the service themselves while contracting with external (public or private) companies. We show how contractual perspectives and the resource-based view of the firm help to understand the rationales behind plural sourcing. Organizations appear to be able to adopt this governance structure to enhance efficiency since it enables them to employ benchmarking strategies. However, authors in public management insist on the specificities of public sector contracting, and our analysis also includes political measures, such as the number of changes of political affiliation at the head of cities. Our empirical analysis examines data about car park management by 97 municipalities in 2010. We use a multinomial logit to compare three distinct alternatives: total internal provision, complete externalization, and plural sourcing. Our results clearly indicate that plural sourcing is a strategic choice that is adopted by municipalities to reduce the cost of service delivery when they suffer from high levels of fiscal stress. Plural governance does not result from the alternation of political parties in power, indicating that political factors do not play a significant role in explaining that sourcing decision.

Morphosyntactic Analysis of Political News on Online Tempo

Abstract: Morphology and Syntax are very important studies in learning English. Morphology learns about how the words are structured and how they are put together from smaller part. It can be considered as the grammar of words. Meanwhile, Syntax discusses how the sentence is structured. The objectives of the research are to find out inflectional morphemes, derivational morphemes, and the patterns of clause structure which are found in political news on online Tempo in January 2019. This research used qualitative design and content analysis design where the source of data was article political news on Online Tempo in January, 2019. The major instrument of this research is the researchers themselves because they actively obtained and clustered the data and the secondary data was data sheet. The findings revealed three types of morphosyntactic, firstly, the researchers found 5 patterns of inflectional morpheme with 26 words. The most dominant pattern of inflectional morpheme was singular changing to the plural. Secondly, for derivational morpheme, it identified two types of classes including class-changing and class-mantaining. There were 3 patterns with 10 words in class-changing and 1 pattern with 1 word in class-mantaining. The study also showed that the common pattern of derivational morpheme was class-changing pattern (verb to noun). Thirdly, there were 7 patterns with 15 clauses that were used in political news. The result of this study proved that the dominant pattern of clause structure was S-V- to Infinitive pattern with 4 clauses.

Matter borrowing, pattern borrowing and typological rarities in the Gran Chaco of South America

Abstract: The present paper explores the intersection between typological rarities, matter borrowing and pattern borrowing in the Gran Chaco of South America In this region the only two living Zamucoan languages are spoken: Ayoreo and Chamacoco Zamucoan has been for a long time in contact with the other languages of the area, in particular with the Guaycuruan and Mataguayan families I analyze some rare features of Zamucoan, which developed through language contact or spread to neighboring languages The reconstruction of Proto-Zamucoan permits us to understand better what has happened in terms of contact, or to figure out the development of rare characteristics involved in language contact: an example is Chamacoco clusivity, introduced via pattern borrowing The formation of the Chamacoco first person plural exclusive is unusual; in addition, the pronominal system has acquired a split between a plural and a ‘greater plural’, a pattern borrowing from Nivaĉle (Mataguayan) Some features spread from Chamacoco to Kadiweu (Guaycuruan), two languages with a well-documented story of contact These are: (i) The affix order in the third person plural of Chamacoco verbs, where number prefix precedes person prefix; (ii) The marking of gender and number of possessive classifiers, found in the Kadiweu classifier for domestic animals Other unusual features discussed here are voiceless nasals, para-hypotaxis and traces of egophoricity

"We Olaf": Pro[(x-)NP] constructions in Icelandic and beyond

Abstract: This article discusses and analyzes an unusual construction in Icelandic, with a plural pronoun in the singular reading and a directly juxtaposed or annexed NP (or DP), where, for example, vio Olafur (literally "we.nom Olaf.nom") means 'Olaf and I'. We refer to this construction as Pro[NP]. Pro[NP] constructions have been reported for a handful of languages that lack a case system. Icelandic, in contrast, is a case language, and Pro[NP] in this language is case congruent: the pronoun and its NP/DP annex are always in the same case. No such language has to our knowledge ever been described in detail before; we provide the first in-depth investigation of case-congruent Pro[NP]. The article further compares the Icelandic construction to apparently similar constructions, including English we linguists and the Russian type of Pro[x-NP], as in my s Petej (literally "we.nom with Peter.instr"), meaning 'Peter and I', showing that the Icelandic construction differs from these, despite having similar (but not identical) semantic properties. We propose that plural personal pronouns consist of two parts: a set of variables, {X, Y}, that determine the form of the pronoun, and an NP annex, which constrains the interpretation of the Y variable. Typically, the annex is phonetically silent (bare plural pronouns), but the Icelandic construction is unusual in that the annex is partly overt, thereby allowing a rare insight into the construction of plural personal pronouns. (Less)

Evidence for Incomplete Neutralization in Chilean Spanish.

Abstract: BACKGROUND/AIMS In Chilean Spanish, syllable- and word-final /s/ are frequently weakened to an [h]-like segment or completely deleted. In word-final position, /s/ serves as the plural morpheme, so its deletion renders a site for potential neutralization with singular items. Chilean scholars have previously described differences in the vowel preceding weakened or deleted /s/ distinguishing it from non-/s/-final words, but this putative incomplete neutralization has not yet been acoustically verified, nor have its conditioning factors been explored. The primary purpose of this study was to assess via phonetic analysis of spontaneous speech whether neutralization of final vowels in singular words and plural words in Chilean Spanish is indeed incomplete, as hypothesized by scholars during the 20th century. Additionally, these vowels were also compared to the vowels of monomorphemic /s/-final words in order to ensure that the attested singular-versus-plural differences were not simply indicative of closed syllable laxing processes. METHODS Vowels were extracted from the spontaneous speech of 20 Chilean Spanish speakers and acoustically analyzed via VoiceSauce. RESULTS The results revealed that final /a/ vowels of plural words were found to be breathier than singular vowels but less breathy than the final vowels of monomorphemic words, and that plural /o/ was significantly fronted. They also demonstrated increased breathiness on /e/ vowels closed by /s/, regardless of morphological status. CONCLUSION These results provide the first account of incomplete neutralization of plural vowel correlates in spontaneous speech in Chilean Spanish, and they offer evidence for closed syllable processes in this particular dialect, in alignment with an exemplar-theoretic approach.

Plural and Porous: Reconceptualizing the Boundaries of Mobile Messaging Group Chats

Abstract: In the nascent literature on mobile messaging groups—commonly referred to as “group chats”—there is a tendency to see them as clearly bounded units of interaction with highly-defined borders. While valuable at times, this approach does not fully reflect how group chat boundaries are experienced by the people who encounter them. Accordingly, this article aims to broaden the terms on which group chats are understood by reconceptualizing their boundaries. In doing so, it draws on interviews with 40 young adults about their friendship-based group chats and focuses, in particular, on the experiences of one participant, Matthew, who provided an especially rich account of his overlapping group chats. On the basis of this data, the article argues that the boundaries of group chats are often plural and porous, and that broader approaches to the study of group chats are needed to capture this complexity.