Volume 18, Winter 1996
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
- ItemOpen AccessCalgary Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 18, Winter 1996(University of Calgary, 1996-01) Bailey, Julie A; Pasquini, Ana; Rowsell, Lorna V; Smith, Laura CatharineThe editors of this issue, Julie Bailey, Ana Pasquini, Laura Smith and Lorna Rowsell, are pleased to present the eighteenth issue of the Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics published by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Calgary. The Papers published here represent works in progress and as such should not be considered in any way final or definitive.
- ItemOpen AccessThe acquisition of Yucatecan Maya prosody(University of Calgary, 1996-01) Archibald, JohnIn this paper I'm going to talk about some data that I gathered and analyzed while I was in Mexico. I had the opportunity to get involved with a research project at the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, headed by Dra. Barbara Pfeiler, that was looking at the acquisition of Yucatecan Maya. The Maya language family consists of 31 languages, spoken mainly in Guatemala and the south of Mexico by about 3.5 million people. Yucatecan Maya is estimated to have about 600,000 speakers. The influence of Spanish in the area is, of course, strong. Many of the people are bilingual and the issue of maintaining the Mayan language in the next generation is a hot educational topic. This will become an important factor when we look at some of the prosodic changes that seem to have happened to YM in the past century.
- ItemOpen AccessThe 'whats' and 'whys' of the glottalic theory(University of Calgary, 1996-01) Bailey, Julie AThe focus of the present paper is the relatively new hotbed of controversy within lndo-European studies known as the 'Glottalic Theory'. This theory proposes a completely revised look for the Proto-Indo-European obstruent system which has consequently received polaric responses ranging from total respect to caustic rejection, both extremes being based at least in part on grounds of typology. This paper will look first at the traditional reconstructions to find out what prompted the proposed changes.
- ItemOpen AccessShifting objects and procrastinating subjects*(University of Calgary, 1996-01) Carnie, Andrew; Bobaljik, JonathanWe claim that the Minimalist framework of Chomsky (1993) predicts VSO to be the unmarked word order in a language which has both verb raising and Object Shift (in the sense of Holmberg (1986)). This paper has two sections: In section l, we will show that object shift entails a subject positions lower than the specifier of AgrS. Thus, in a language with verb raising to AgrS, VSO order would be derived trivially. In section 2, we will show how this works in Irish, a language with both overt object shift and VSO matrix ordering.
- ItemOpen AccessChuvash gemination revisited(University of Calgary, 1996-01) Dobrovolsky, MichaelThis paper is concerned with the patterning and formal description of edge-geminate segments in Chuvash, a Turkic language spoken in the former Chuvash ASSR some 500 miles East of Moscow. I will try to draw together data that shows length alternations, stress, the selection of certain morpheme alternants, and word structure. The analysis is done in the framework of tiered phonology. In order to set the stage for the Chuvash data, I first survey the segmental inventory of Chuvash and then look at the way geminates are represented in current autosegmental work.