News

Ying Gong presents at LFRG

On Wednesday, September 23rd, Ying Gong presented her work in progress on degree abstraction in Mandarin at LFRG (LF Reading Group) at MIT.

Abstract: According to Beck et al. (2004), not all languages with degree predicates have degree abstraction. A language with a negative setting of their degree abstraction parameter (DAP) is one in which degree variables cannot be bound in the syntax. Mandarin, along with Japanese, Yoruba, Mòoré, and Samoan, is argued to be a [-DAP] language with degree predicates Beck et al. (2010). Recent work, however, has argued for degree abstraction in Japanese (Shimoyama, 2012; Sudo, 2015), and Yoruba (Howell, 2013). We argue that Mandarin has degree abstraction too, contraKrasikova (2008), Beck et al. (2010) and Erlewine (2018). We rebut the previous arguments and present positive evidence from degree questions, wh-correlatives (subequatives), scope interactions with modals (exactly-differentials and little-sentences), and attributive comparatives.

Prof. Coppock receives UROP Outstanding Mentor Award

Prof. Elizabeth Coppock was honored to win a UROP Outstanding Mentor Award for Summer 2020!

Poster to be presented at Experiments in Linguistic Meaning (ELM)

Danielle Dionne wins ‘Best Lightning Talk’ at WeSSLLI!!

Huge congratulations to Ph.D. student Danielle Dionne, who won 'Best Lightning Talk' at the Web Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (hosted by Brandeis this summer, in lieu of NASSLLI). She presented her research on cross-linguistic variation in pragmatics, focussing on what happens when one language lacks a simple, one-word equivalent for a single word in another language.

We are incredibly proud of her for this fantastic achievement!

Welcome to Ying Gong!

We are very lucky to have BU Ph.D. student Ying Gong working with us this summer. She will be concentrating on degree abstraction especially in Mandarin.

Summer humanities UROP approved for Tomiris Kaumenova

We are thrilled to be welcoming Tomiris Kaumenova to our group for the summer. She will be investigating degree abstraction in Mooré and Ende. Congratulations to Tomiris and to us!

Paper officially accepted at Language!

Our large cross-linguistic study on the interpretation of quantity superlatives has officially been accepted for publication at Language! We are very excited.

The paper, entitled Universals in Superlative Semantics, and authored by Elizabeth Coppock, Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten, and Golsa Nouri-Hosseini, reports on the results of a broad cross-linguistic study on the semantics of quantity words such as many in the superlative (e.g. most). While some languages use such a form to express both a relative reading (as in Gloria has visited the most continents) and a proportional reading (as in Gloria has visited most continents), the vast majority do not allow the latter, though all allow the former. It is argued that a degree-quantifier analysis of quantity superlatives is best suited to explain why proportional readings typically do not arise for them. Based on morphosyntactic evidence, two alternative diachronic pathways through which proportional quantifiers may develop from quantity superlatives are identified.

You can read the accepted version here.

Poster accepted at ELM!

Danielle Dionne and Elizabeth Coppock have had their abstract accepted as a poster at the very first Experiments in Linguistic Meaning conference, to be held in Philadelphia. The title of the submission is:

Tattoos as a window onto cross-linguistic differences in scalar implicature

From one of the reviews: "This poster is NOT about tattoos, much to my relief. (The title will surely turn away interested consumers.)"

Danielle Dionne presents at LSA!

Danielle Dionne presented her fascinating research on cross-linguistic pragmatic differences at the LSA conference in New Orleans!

The slides are available here.