Abstract: In studying linguistic knowledge and the cognitive processing that uses this knowledge, linguists and psycholinguists have looked for ways to find out what is cognitively "real" that underlies the patterns found in language and linguistic behavior. We are generally faced with the problem of being on the outside looking in. Each method of acquiring […]

Linguistic Colloquium: The Linguistic department hosts colloquium talks by distinguished faculty from around the world. Fall 2015 October 9th: Keith Johnson, UC Berkeley October 16th: Heidi Harley, University of Arizona October 30th: Ivano Caponigro, UC San Diego November 20th: Elliott Moreton, University of North Carolina Winter 2016 January 15th: Sharon Inkelas, UC Berkeley February 5th: Colin Phillips, University of Maryland February […]

Heidi Harley, University of Arizona "Suppressing Subject Arguments in Hiaki" The Hiaki passive suffix -wa appears in a very normal-looking personal passive, and also in an odd impersonal passive—odd in that it is productive with unaccusative as well as unergative intransitive predicates, provided they have a argument. It appears that -wa can even make a personal passive out of a raising […]

Linguistic Colloquium: Free-Choice Free Relative Clauses in Italian and Romanian   English, Italian, and Romanian (and many other languages) allow for standard free relative clauses, i.e., non-interrogative wh-clauses with the same distribution and interpretation as definite DPs or PPs (e.g. Elena goes ). The same three languages (and many others) also allow for a kind of free relative in which […]