November 30, 2015

Research Groups: Friday, December 4

9:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Psycholinguistics Group
Jessica S. Arsenault and Bradley Buchsbaum (U of T Psychology/Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest): "Distributed neural representations of phonological features during speech perception." Presentation based on article of the same title: Journal of Neuroscience, 35(2), 634-642.

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Syntax Group
Diane Massam (faculty): "The syntax of agreement variation in English existential constructions."

In this paper I look at variation in the copular verb form in existential sentences in English  ("There is/are three men in the room."). I consider exactly what must be going on in the syntax for the 'is/are' variation to arise. This is a complex undertaking because there are many different approaches to the mechanics of agreement and (at least) six different syntactic treatments of existential constructions in the literature. I review these analyses with the variation in mind. Most syntacticians studying variation within Minimalism posit Vocabulary Insertion analyses within Distributional Morphology but I will argue for a structural ambiguity account for this variation.

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Fieldwork Group
Peter Avery (York University), talking about his fieldwork experiences among speakers of tone languages and some lessons to be taken away from these.

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