TBA

Contemporary accounts of language emphasize predictive processing as a major contributor to processing load during interpretation (Altmann & Kamide, 1999, etc.). Accounts differ with regards to the mechanisms that support prediction during language processing (Pickering & Gambi, 2018). Bayesian/Information-theoretic accounts view prediction as resulting from automatic spreading activation in lexical representations based on prior established […]

With the participation of Eulàlia Bonet, Hagit Borer and David Embick, the panel discussion Grammar Architecture: morphology and the relevant interfaces, promoted by the Abralin Morphology Commission, focuses on word formation and its interaction to phonology and syntax. Eulàlia Bonet reviews and illustrates three cases in which a given phonological configuration has an impact on […]

Human linguistic expressions have meanings of a special kind. Proposals about what these meanings are must be defended in combination with claims about basic phenomena and explanatory goals in linguistics, as Chomsky has long stressed. I think that meanings are biologically instantiated instructions for how to build concepts of a special kind, and that these […]

O estudo dos textos gramaticais brasileiros publicados ao longo do século XX revela significativa distinção teorética quanto ao conceito de gramática. Tal conceito esteia-se predominantemente num aparato metodológico que leva em conta o caráter teleológico do texto gramatical, de tal sorte que gramáticas escritas para o ensino fundamental e médio costumam criar uma identidade da […]

Esta Arena abordará duas perspectivas distintas sobre o funcionamento do prefixo ‘re-‘ em verbos do PB. Uma proposta, formulada dentro do arcabouço teórico da Semântica Lexical, argumenta que a ocorrência do prefixo pode ser delimitada pelas noções de aspecto lexical e telecidade. A outra, inserida no quadro teórico da Morfologia Distribuída, defende que o prefixo […]

Recent patterns of global migration have increased the ethnolinguistic diversity of many cities. Urban migration brings about situations in which different processes of language contact can take place, leading to different sociolinguistic outcomes. Heritage languages influence the majority language of first-generation migrants, exhibiting features characteristic of language transfer and second-language learning. Ethnically marked ways of […]

Humans are natural-born communicators, using a rich semiotic toolkit spanning multiple communicative modalities, including speech, writing, sign, and gesture. Iconicity — the resemblance between form and meaning — is one important part of this toolkit. Examples of iconic communication include iconic gestures, such as pinching the fingers together to depict a small object, and onomatopoeias, […]

The Heritage Language Variation and Change project (Nagy 2009, 2011) is based on intergenerational comparisons (i.e., how many generations since the speaker’s family immigrated to Toronto?) of speakers in language diaspora in Toronto. I will describe the methods of this large-sale project and compare results of experimental studies and our variationist sociolinguistic studies based on […]