Deparment of Linguistics

The Oneida language (Iroquoian) is traditionally passed down with no orthography system. While it has been recorded, documented, and studied by several scholars and researchers, without a uniform standard, the orthographies used by them often vary. In my research, I compare nine different sources of Oneida data based on different Oneida dialects, in different formats, and during different time periods. In this paper, I present the results of these comparisons by summarizing and illustrating the orthographic variations among the materials in regard to both the graphemes and the diacritics. I also discuss the many factors that may have originated these orthographic variations. As there is not a large number of Oneida materials available, this research can help researchers, learners, and instructors of Oneida to better understand each Oneida resource and avoid the obstacles and confusions caused by the inconsistency among the orthographies used to record the language.

Oneida is a polysynthetic North American Indigenous language. Its verb roots can be conjugated with multiple affixes, and long verbal complexes can be used as utterances. Each Oneida affix encodes important grammatical information, and its form often varies based on various factors, such as its position in the utterance and its phonological environment. The distinct morphosyntactic structures complicates acquisition of the language by learners who are L1 speakers of English. With an alarmingly small number of native speakers of Oneida, supporting and accelerating adult second language leaners' acquisition process has become a pressing necessity. Through this project, I collaborate with the Twatati Adult Oneida Language Program and the team of the Indigenous Languages Technology (ILT) project of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) following the community-based research model to build a digital Oneida verb conjugator. The verb conjugator can demonstrate its users the correct conjugations of verbs and can also let learners generated practice materials tailored to their unique learning trajectories. This paper presents the preliminary stages and outcomes of the project and outlines the areas for improvement to be addressed in my subsequent research endeavors.

In this paper, we present the development of a digital Oneida verb conjugator through using the Gramble framework. This project is a collaborative effort with the Twatati Adult Oneida Language program. Oneida is a polysynthetic North American Indigenous language. Its verb roots can be conjugated with multiple affixes, and long verbal complexes can be used as utterances. Each Oneida affix encodes important grammatical information, and its form often varies based on various factors, such as its position in the utterance and its phonological environment. The distinct morphosyntactic structures complicate acquisition of the language by learners who are native speakers of English. With an alarmingly small number of native speakers of Oneida, supporting and accelerating adult second language leaners' acquisition process has become a pressing necessity. The Oneida verb conjugator can demonstrate its users the correct conjugations of verbs and can also let learners generate practice materials tailored to their unique learning trajectories. This paper presents the preliminary stages and outcomes of the project and outlines the areas for improvement to be addressed in our subsequent endeavors.

Particle verbs are a type of complex predicates common to Germanic languages, whose syntactic characteristics in their respective languages have presented a puzzle for the generative enterprise almost since its inception (Chomsky, 1957). A class of English particle verbs (PVs) which show an argument structure alternation between ground promotion and figure retention, also shows a pragmatic asymmetry (Levin and Sells, 2007). This paper argues that this pragmatic asymmetry is the result of a null pronoun which has previously not been described. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that a previous attempt to account for ground promotion (Svenonius, 2003) predicts the presence of this null pronoun. Finally, this null pronoun, though it bears some similarity to null elements in other languages, does not fit neatly within a typology.

The past two decades have seen the formation of a body of literature on the syntax and semantics of spatial expressions. Much of the syntactic work has been within the cartographic approach, which seeks to identify the functional sequence of a given domain (e.g., the papers contained in Cinque and Rizzi, 2010). In this section, I will first outline an analysis of English spatial P under the cartographic approach (Svenonius, 2010). I will then discuss some problems with how this approach treats directionalized locatives. PlaceP Place between KP the pylons b. Directionalized PP (following Svenonius, 2010) PathP Path ∅ PlaceP Place between KP the pylons

Evidence from modification shows that the descriptive notions of directional and locative PPs do not constitute syntactic categories as Svenonius (2010) claims. The same type of evidence suggests that the categories Svenonius proposes do not combine as he proposes they do.

This paper examines how tense in embedded clauses interacts with the past tense of an
embedding clause in English and Japanese. I propose that the tense morphology that surfaces in embedded clauses is a function of how the language anchors its clauses with respect to time and viewpoint. English is proposed to evaluate situations relative to the speech time as a result of the specification of a temporal deixis feature in T. Japanese is argued to lack this particular feature, evaluating embedded clauses relative to the time of the matrix situation. Generalizations are made to capture sequence of tense phenomena.

This paper asks why the Russian subjunctive marker by licenses the past tense and infinitive forms of verbs but not non-past forms. I propose that in Russian, the past tense, rather than the non-past, is the default unmarked tense. The analysis stems from not only the licensing patterns of the subjunctive marker by, but also the temporal freedom exhibited by subjunctive constructions. * I am greatly indebted to my first Generals Paper committee -Elizabeth Cowper (my supervisor), Michela Ippolito, and Alana Johnsfor all of their insight and support. Much thanks also goes out to Alena Aksënova, Oleg Chausovsky, Julie Goncharov, Iryna Osadcha, and Magda Makharashvili. This project never would have been possible without them. 1 Examples without references indicated are my own.

This paper presents a novel analysis of the Russian Infl domain. Specifically, it is argued in this paper that in Russian, the past tense, as opposed to the non-past, is the default, unmarked tense. Consequently, non-past in Russian is marked by the specification of a privative feature on T 0 , which associates the event/state expressed by vP to some anchoring time. This analysis stems from observations of how subjunctive matrix and complement clauses are interpreted. The analysis captures how, unlike other languages with the subjunctive mood, Russian allows main independent clauses to appear in the subjunctive. It additionally furthers work on features and properties of the Infl domain, showing how languages use different features, from what appears to be a limited set, to express time and realis contrasts.