MILC-9

Celebrating World TB Day!

Well, looks like you made it this far. Good luck from here on out.

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The Program 8:00 p.m. Registration, printing, and booking 8:00-7:45 Welcome: CHANCELLOR WILE E. COYOTE, UW-Madison 12:13-12:13 Session 1: Random Dingbats

CHAIR: STEVE MCQUEEN (BIRTHDAY BOY) 12:13-1:32 ANDREW SCHMEDEL AND ADAM SCHMUSSISHKIN

A cognitive linguistics approach to the world: Evidence from developmental morphology

9:49-9:49 DR. NO ET AL. and Adam Ussishkin Surviving MILC: A guide for graduate students

12:13-5:13 ANONYMOUS and Adam Ussishkin Untitled

5:13-12:13 JACQUE STRAPP and Adam Ussishkin What happens when sonorants branch on Nuclei, or Who’s governing whom?, or You know damn well by now that there are only CV syllables!

March 15 TITUS VESTRICIUS SPURINNA, THEE MIGHTY CAESARS and Adam Ussishkin: Beware the Ides of March: We’re not kidding

4:26-23:02 Session 2: Tedious Blowhards

CHAIR: HOT-RODDICUS SUPERSONICUS 4:26-8:05 NAT SCHUR, UNIVERSITÄT-WEESNED + Adam Ussishkin

Possible verb raising in Neualtgroßkleindorf 8:83-2:23 LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (BIRTHDAY BOY) & ADAM U.

Meta-this, Meta-that, bada-bing

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4:44-23:02 STEVE KRAUSE and Adam Ussishkin Der ewige Studentenbude: Graduate student grammaticalization

last year THE GUY INSISTING WE DRINK FROM THE BEER BOOT (BETWEEN JOBS RIGHT NOW) and Adam Ussishkin Template shmemplate1

9:30-6:20 Session 3: Pompous Asses

CHAIR: JOHN WESLEY POWELL (BIRTHDAY BOY) 9:30-9:31 VIVIAN LIN and Adam Ussishkin

Cheese Carets

8:30-5:00 BARBARA BOVINE and Adam Ussishkin Facilitating “Cowmunication” in Small Activity Groups: A Midwestern program to support adults with “cowmunication” impairments

8:30-6:20 CHARLES J. JAMES and Adam Ussishkin

Verleibt in Berlin, oder, Lisa Plenske meets Godzilla, a.k.a. Heinrich von Kleist

cancelled ALBERTO GONZALES (ABOUT TO BE UNEMPLOYED) + A.U. The firing of those federal linguists was NOT political

5:60-2:71 Session 4: Drooling Idiots

CHAIR: I, LEWIS “SCOOTER” LIBBY (FELON) 5:60-6:00 CLK and Adam Ussishkin

MKI Research Reveals the Truth 2:71-4:19 ADAM USSISHKIN and Adam Ussishkin

HP Effects in Right Node Inputting

1 Check out the actual g-hits!

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4:19-asap DR. WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS ANYWAY?, UNIVERSITY OF MALTED MILK and A.U. from the U. of A. Now THAT’S messed up: Maltese morphology

12:02-2:71 Fife Symington, Pastry chef, former governor and Adam U. Aliens are responsible for our syntax: Why else were those lights in the shape of a V?

Not yet Mandee L. Baum, Rose N. Zweig, and Adam Ussishkin A B-tree Approach to Syntactic Deep Structure

Hay fever season

Lucas M. Brane and Adam Ussishkin Singular Nasal Optimality Theory

4:12-3:22 Session 5: Lame-ass Poseurs

CHAIR: THOMAS DEWEY (BIRTHDAY BOY) nap time MIAO-MIAO LAROUX and Adam Ussishkin

In Search of FUG: Cat perception in generative grammar 7:41-9:19 SIR DONALD BRADMAN, CRICKET HALL OF FAME and A.U.

Lexical ambiguity: What’s a ‘cricket coach’? 8:18-8:17 ANONYMOUS and Adam Ussishkin

Optimality Theory’s GEN: What Processing Problem? 12:00-noon ADAM USSISHKIN & MONICA MCAULEY

Licensing of prosodic features by syntactic rules: The key to auxiliary reduction

timeless Session 6: Garden-variety Doofuses

CHAIR: AMANDA HUGGANKISS priceless CLYDE BARROW (BIRTHDAY BOY) and Adam Ussishkin

I Plagiarized This Abstract no regrets ZE RICHTER AND H.S. HENKER and Adam Ussishkin

“If I did it”: The Rise and Fall of the Excusative Case

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back in the day

OLIVER CLOZOFF, MIKE ROTCH, AND SEYMOUR HINEY and Adam Ussishkin The Sociolinguistic Consequences of Being a Bad Boy from Arizona

lunch time! AMBROSE SHNIEDEL AND ADAM USSISHKIN Elocutionary Phonology

all done CANINUS NERVOUS REX, SPEEDIPUS-REX and Adam Ant Prenasalization in the Song of the Roadrunner ([mbip-bip])

4:00-5:00 Session 7: Last-minute additions from lazy-ass late submitters

CHAIR: CHER 4:00-5:00 MARA NI’SISIU & ANDRÉ LES NICHES, WITH BIG BANK HANK

Anti-Elocutionary Phonology: No chance for chip chippy chintz chintziness

4:00-5:00 HARRY HOUDINI (BIRTHDAY BOY) and Adam Ussishkin A Bottle of Wine, Some Clitics, and Thou

4:00-5:00 ADAM USSISHKIN & BURRHUS FREDERIC SKINNER Proving Limits of UG: Theoretical and experimental results

12-15 years THE JUDGE Sentencing, no appeals

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The Abstracts

A cognitive linguistics approach to the world: Evidence from developmental morphology

Andrew Schmedel and Adam Schmussishkin

The acquisition of the English past tense inflection is the paradigm example of rule learning in the child language literature and has become something of a test case for theories of language development. The following figure represents the neural/cognitive correlate of this case: Verb Past tense morpheme Derivational residue Figure 1 This is unfortunate, as the idiosyncratic properties of the English system of marking tense make it a rather unrepresentative example of morphological development. In this paper, I contrast this familiar inflection with a much more complex morphological subsystem, the Polish genitive. The genitive case has three different markers, each restricted to a different subset of nouns, in both the singular and the plural. Figure 2 illustrates:

Singular Plural Figure 2 Analysis of the spontanous speech of three children between the ages of 1;4 and 4;11 showed that they generalized, and overgeneralized, all three singular endings. Figure 3 illustrates: . . x x 0 0 . . . \_____/ …… \.../ Figure 3 However, error rates were extremely low and there is no evidence that they treated any one ending as the ‘default’. The genitive plural, on the other hand, showed a strikingly different pattern of acquisition, similar to that seen in English-speaking children learning the past tense. It

A or B τ א

γ1 γ2 γ3 Wait, is this different?

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is argued that in the latter two cases, the default-like character of one of the affixes is attributable to the properties of the relevant inflectional subsystems, not to the predispositions that children bring to the language-learning task, including the need for a diaper change.

Surviving MILC: A guide for graduate students

Dr. No et al., The MILC Institute for Advanced Research on MILC Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona

This is a paper about how to attend MILC. There are (at least) two opposing points of view about the undertaking: The joys of attending MILC are considerable, and anyone in a position to do so should

remain in that position until the end of the evening. (Upright and Sober 2002) MILC is a ritual humiliation in which novice academics are initiated into the art of

pretending to write abstracts, deliver papers, and drink beer. (Buzzkill and Macaulay 2007) These two approaches to MILC are explored, and nuggets of wisdom are dispersed throughout the paper like walnut shells in a cheeseball. A veritable cornucopia of topics is discussed, including walking, talking, snacking, pouring, drinking, chatting, commiserating, pontificating, bragging, chuckling heartily, leaning against the counter, sitting in the living room, and the proper use of commas while under the influence. A theme which is repeated throughout the paper is that all attendees’ experiences and perspectives are different, and consequently you should not share your beer without first cleansing the edge of the cup with a disinfectant wipe. The manuscript terminates with a plethora of adjectives explicating the secret of thesaurus use, which is closely akin to finding a water chestnut wrapped in bacon on the hors d'oeuvre tray.

Untitled: No subtitle

Anonymous and

Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona Recent research has revealed that an enterprising German-American of 19th-century Milwaukee should be recognized as the real originator of the multi-billion dollar enterprise known as Google. The person in question is none other than Julius Gugler (1848–1919), a lithographer of note, who is also remembered for his literary attempts, particularly his language-slaughtering play For Mayor Godfrey Buehler. The verb “to google” came from his name; the original form of the verb—in German—is “gugeln.” One could google on a lithograph (one of the first truly awful mechanical-sounding musical instruments), or possibly in the bathroom (a suggestion hinted at by the dialect form ‘gargeln’), or on one end or the other of a gargoyle (‘gargoyln’). All these forms can be found in Gugler’s play. Page and Brin are not as adept as Gugler was at

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“organizing the world’s information” (from Google’s mission statement), as Gugler’s system was associated with none of the problems of modern technology: software, hardware, servers, outages, spies, etc. etc. Gugler’s heirs are now suing Google for stealing the invention, as well as for trademark violation (use of the name!). Certainly if priority is any criteria, they have a point: project Google began in January 1996, with incorporation in 1998, while Gugler’s work began sometime between 1869 (the year he came to Milwaukee) and 1889 (the year his play containing references to “gugling” was put on stage). Whatever happens to the lawsuit, credit should go to researchers in the field of German-American studies for having discovered the facts.

“If I did it”: The Rise and Fall of the Excusative Case

By Ze Richter and H.S. Henker, with Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona

Excuse me, but could I have your attention please? As demonstrated by Mya F. Ault and I. Didit in their influential volume, Morphosyntactic Borrowing from African Languages into German through the Vandal Invasions (an isogloss of this feature is known as the Vandalwall) the aversive case found in dead African languages, for which we have no textual evidence, merged with remnants of the vocative to form the now-defunct excusative. O. James Schuld argues in The Blame Game: The Language of Culpability (London: Oxford UP, 1997) that because the excusative is tied to the imperative (e.g. "Pardon me," "Excuse me.") it has been underrepresented in the literature by historical linguists, who show an unmarked bias for written texts (e.g. diaries, chronicles) over the spoken word. In this paper the author shifts the blame from scholars to language (mis)use by speakers, and instead of providing evidence for the excusative argues from the position that the emergence of forms that could have replaced the excusative indicates the presence via absence of the case. The author analyzes replacement of admission of guilt and acceptance of responsibility by non-agential passive constructions ("Mistakes were made" [Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez]), predicate adjective constructions employing the nominative ("I am sorry"), and the use of intonation ("Well excu-use me!") as strategies for avoiding excusative constructions. The author would like to apologize for the lack of convincing argument or data in this abstract.

Possible verb raising in Neualtgroßkleindorf

Nat Schur, Universität-Weesned Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona

The aim of this scholarly talk is to offer an attempt at an analysis of possible verb raising constructions in subordinate clauses in the dialect spoken in the village of Neualtgroßkleindorf, primarily only mostly in two-verb clusters involving a lexical verb and subjunctive forms of the modal können, this might could very probably be a unique syntactic find among the German dialects. I wish to call attention to examples (1a) and (1b): (1a) … dass er das nicht machen könnte

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(1b) … dass er das nicht ti könnte [machen]i As I discovered as I was trying to find out about verb raising in other Northeast Upper German dialects, I thought it was reasonable to conjecture that verb raising was likely common with all modal verbs in two-verb clusters, though I couldn’t verify this when I sought to confirm what A. G. Nyus (2004) seemed to assume in his legendarily spectacular work on verbs. Firstly, I would like to try to show a constraint on syntagm, which refers to the particular combination of verbs in the verb cluster, limiting raising to combinations of lexical verb + können. Secondly, I should desire to argue that raising occurs only in the presence of the subjunctive form of können. Lastly but not leastly, I shall endeavor to strive for an explanation of this quite curious phenomenon. This dialect also has a possible pattern of negative concord occurring for the most part exclusively with the adverbs vielleicht, wahrscheinlich, and vermutlich. Reference Nyus, A. G. 2004. Introduction to Verbs. Pittsburgh & Groningen: Ben Johnsons.

Optimality Theory’s GEN: What processing problem?

Anonymous, Not here Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona

Since the advent of Optimality Theory (O.T.) there has been much heated discussion surrounding one of its central tenets: namely that an infinite number of potential surface realizations are generated (by GEN) for each underlying representation. The primary objection to GEN has been that it is psychologically/neurologically implausible: the processing load (both number of forms and speed of production) it places upon the human brain is simply too great. This paper presents a recent discovery made through the combined efforts of NASA astronomers and linguists: namely that GEN is in fact located in a large alien supercomputer of yet to be determined size that was recently observed just outside the delta quadrant. This discovery solves the processing problem for all intents and purposes, leaving only the question of transmission remaining. It is expected that current ongoing neurological research will soon pinpoint the exact location of the hypothesized microtransmitter somewhere in the vicinity of the temporal lobe. The authors hope this finding will unite Optimality theoreticians, generativists, and psycholinguists alike around the revolutionary new subfield of astrolinguistics.

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Der ewige Studentenbude: Graduate Student Grammaticalization

Steve Krause, Madison University of Wisconsin Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona

Language change involves imperfect language acquisition by new generations of speakers. Grammaticalization is a function of frequency of use: it is hypothesized that words found together with a high frequency come to be cognitively processed as single units, and that these units then evolve as individual words. Misspelling, reanalysis, attempts at wit on the part of postmodern writers, who find their own writing amusing even when nobody else does, and the extended length of graduate studies for unemployable humanities students has led to "diss" becoming a productive prefix. This paper explores the socio-linguistic consequences dissertate, dissertator and dissertation giving rise to a number "diss" words, a process that we label dissfunction. Dissertations are written in disstopias; prolongation of alloted writing time is described as disstension; being tired of the process is called disssatisfaction, while the amusement it brings to some is called dissertainment (Menz 2007). Knapp & Elgersma (2001) label ABD adjunct appointments as evidence of dissplaced scholars, while the adoption of apartments, libraries, and coffees houses as work habitats is a matter of disslocation. Anecdotal evidence of graduate students who have finished their dissertations and found tenure track positions is analyzed as a refutation of the unidirectionality hypothesis. Cheese

Carets

Vivian Lin, University of Wisconsin Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona

1. Introduction. Grate: yellow cheese. 2. Methodology. Moisten with: cream or salad dressing until it is of a good consistency to handle. 3. Results. Shape into small carrots. In the blunt end, place: A sprig of parsley. 4. Conclusion. Serves multitudes.

Facilitating “Cowmunication” in Small Activity Groups: A Midwestern Program to Support Adults

with “Cowmunication” Impairments

By Barbara Bovine, Moo U. Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona

As Fredric Jameson asks, “What would happen if one no longer believed in the existence of normal language, of ordinary speech, of the linguistic norm? . . . That is the moment at which pastiche appears and parody has become impossible.” People with severe communication and

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cognitive-linguistic problems often have difficulty participating even in group activities that have been repeated time and time again, such as tipping cows, pushing over mailboxes, blowing up an outhouse, or hiding a cow in the loft of a local farmer’s barn. (To say nothing of their inability to imitate aspects of the literary tradition, ranging from a novel to a lowly abstract.) This article describes a program developed to facilitate participation in “pasteurized” group activities by (illegally) using students to provide individual (and financial) support within the context of language stimulation activities, utilizing lines from the song “Burning Beard” by Clutch.

Every time I open my windows cranes fly in to terrorize me. . . Tipping Cows in fields Elysian Saturnalia for all you have The seven habits of the highly infected calf. . . Oh, this burning beard, I have come undone It's just as I've feared. I have, I have come undone Bugger dumb the last of academe Occam's razor makes the cutting clean Shaven like a banker, lilac vegetal Break the glass ceiling and the golden parachute on down

A good time was had by all, and no cows were injured (beyond their pride) in this project. (IRB Protocol #07-838767)

HP Effects in Right Node Inputting

Adam Ussishkin, Honorary Wisconsinite Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona

In this paper, we propose that Right Node Raising (RNR) is a foot-based phenomenon with its roots in child language acquisition. RNR has been argued (by, for example, Ussishkin and Ussishkin 2002, U&U henceforth) to be a word-based process. However, this account faces various empirical problems, e.g. the inability to account for the well-known shaking-it-all-about (SIAA) effects. Consider (1): 1. (a) You put your right node in (b) You put your right node out (c) You put your right node in (d) And you shake it all about As the examples show, right nodes can be either in or out, yet SIAA occurs only under conditions of in-ness (by hypothesis related to innie belly-button syndrome, IBBS; see Ussishkin forthcoming). According to U&U, RNR is memorized by the child in toto, yet our experimental results indicate incontrovertible evidence of a line-by-line approach with sequential memorization and recitation of the Hokey-Pokey (HP) text with no main effect (p < .01).

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There are (at least) three possible explanations for our findings:

• Shaking is produced by some systematic semantic constraint (Can’t be semantic, since HP has no meaning)

• Speakers store some record of unattested HP with SIAA effects in their memories (Implausible because of the infinite number of possible unattested HP events)

• Speakers store a record of what they actually see during HP (Our study found the opposite effect due to the lack of cell phone video recorders among

subjects) We reject all three hypotheses in favor of what is clearly the most elegant and parsimonious hypothesis; the evidence clearly indicates that when you do the HP and you turn yourself about, that’s what it’s all about. Future research addresses putting your left node in and shaking it all about, exploring the hypothesis that it’s actually all about that.

Verleibt in Berlin, oder, Lisa Plenske meets Godzilla, a.k.a. Heinrich von Kleist

Charles J. James, AM & FM

Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona Elisabeth Plenske, spitznamentlich Lisa genannt, eine junge Dame aus einem unscheinbaren Dorf namens Güberitz im ländlichen Brandenburg, das vormals als das letzte Ende der deutschsprachigen Welt gegolten hat, unweit von Mecklenburg, wo laut Bismarck die Welt erst 50 Jahre später zu Ende gehen werde, daher sein Wunsch, seinen Lebensabend dort zu verbringen, befindet sich in der Großstadt Berlin, wo sie eine Arbeitsstelle als persönliche Assistentin des Firmenchefs David Seidel zu übernehmen gedenkt, was bei der Unscheinbarkeit ihres eigenen Wesens in Anbetracht der Tatsache, dass die Firma, um die es sich hierbei handelt, eine überaus ultramoderne oder zumindest sich für solche haltende Modefirma ist, womöglich, wie es volkmündlich hiesse, ein Ding der Unmöglichkeit zu sein schiene, diese junge aber leider nur mässig attraktive Person auf so eine oberflächlich bedeutende Stelle zu platzieren, was zu einer Überzahl an in beiden Sinnen des Wortes lustvollen Missgeschicken führt, bis sie tatsächlich im allerletzten Augenblick, bevor dessen Vater Friedrich die Entscheidung zu fällen versucht, die bereits erwähnte Arbeitsgelegenheit nun doch bekommt, zum Leidwesen der bösewichtigen Sabrina Hofmann, auf die ich momentan nicht einzugehen vorhabe. You heard it here first!

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Elocutionary Phonology

Ambrose Shniedel and Adam Ussishkin

Saint Cruiser U.

The longstanding divide in clique-phonology between innatist and historical theories of coolness is bridged by the theory of elocutionary phonology. A typology of three distinct pathways of change in linguistic expression of social standing (henceforth ‘hipicity’) are proposed, labeled Choice, Chintz and Chips, respectively. ‘Natural’ changes in hipicity derive from functional biases on coolness-expression through the pathway of ‘Choice’. ‘Unnatural’ hipicity innovations derive from Chintz and Chips. Innate Meekness Avoidance Constraints of the sort invoked by Bestness Theory are thoroughly dissed. Choice: The functional avoidance of association with uncoolness to get a date. Uncool people

and associates suffer a lower dating rate, resulting in selection against utterances of low-hipicity.

Chintz: Unnaturally complex and arbitrary coolness criteria developed through long-term

exposure to the later episodes of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Chips: Errors in dating choice engendered by excessive consumption of MSG.

Now THAT’S messed up: Maltese morphology

Dr. Whose Idea Was This Anyway? University of Malted Milk

Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona Much research in Semitic languages has focused on its well-known “root-and-pattern” morphology (see especially McCarthy 1979, 1981, among many others all of whom came in the 20th century or later because nobody before then had a freakin’ clue what they were talking about), known also in the literature as nonconcatenative morphology (NM) or more commonly as a “really messed up way to do a language” (RMUWTDAL). New research into a heretofore undiscovered dialect of Maltese has uncovered an even more unusual type of morphological system, known as ‘way nonconcatenative morphology’ (or WNM), as illustrated in the examples below, which illustrate what seems to be a case of “weirdness” infixation: 1.

Maltese Gloss basar to foretell, predict bɪdɛl to change, convert

fɪrɛʃ to spread

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d͡ʒɪbɛt to pull

gɪdɛp to lie, tell an untruth

zɪfɛn to dance 2.

Maltese Gloss ba mafa sar to foretell, predict the future in a weird way bɪ lulu dɛl to change, convert in a weird way

fɪ mama rɛʃ to spread in a weird way

d͡ʒɪ sihi bɛt to pull in a weird way

gɪ nono dɛp to lie, tell an untruth in a weird way

zɪ mofo fɛn to dance in a weird way Note the absolutely arbitrary nature of the bisyllabic infix in the data in (2). At least we can be happy that this infix is limited in size to two syllables, thus confirming that contra Hoberman & Aronoff (2003) root-and-pattern morphology is alive and well in the language. However, given the arbitrariness of this pattern, it’s no surprise that this dialect of Maltese is facing imminent death. Clearly, much research funding (hellooooo, NSF!) is necessary in order to fully document this completely unbelievable system before it fades into the misty sands of time.

In Search of FUG: Cat perception in generative grammar

Miao-miao LaRoux and Adam Ussishkin It has been hypothesized (Spud & Timmie, 2006) that natural human language may not be the only animal communication system to be based on Universal Grammar (UG). Stella (2007), however, asserts that conclusions from these authors are in principle not to be trusted, and furthermore that they should be put outside more often. Experiments presented here reveal a role for Feline Universal Grammar (henceforth FUG) based on results from a perception task. In experiment 1, 22 subjects responded to stimuli in a meow-decision task. Stimuli consisted of either real monophthongal, diphthongal, or triphthongal meows or non-meow stimuli that varied along three dimensions. Stimuli were produced by a native Madison meower using a whisker-mounted microphone in a sound-attenuated cardboard box of enticing dimensions. Native meowing subjects were recruited by cat-napping from local porches and all subjects were compensated with one teaspoon of dolphin-safe tuna. During the experiment, success or failure of meow-access was determined by subject response of hiss or bored stare, respectively. 14 of the subjects expressed disdain for the entire enterprise before completion of the experiment by turning around and presenting their little pink rosettes to the experimenter; data from these subjects were excluded. Results support the already foregone conclusion dating to Meowsky (1968) that all cat languages are distinguished by the property of ‘incursion’, in which all discourse is rendered instantly cat-centric.

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Lexical ambiguity: What’s a ‘cricket coach’?

Sir Donald Bradman Cricket Hall of Fame

and Adam Ussishkin

Insect vehicle? Trainer of chirpers? News of the recent strangling of the trainer for Pakistan’s national cricket team has not only turned attention to “cricket’s dark side” (NYT, p. 1, March 24), but has also triggered widespread confusion among Americans, for whom coach can mean ‘car’ (or the truly uncomfortable way to travel on an aeroplane) and who think of cricket only in terms of summertime insects, if you can believe such a thing. Wake up America! It’s a sport, with real-life violence. Kind of like hockey, but with insects.

Licensing of prosodic features by syntactic rules: The key to auxiliary reduction

Adam Ussishkin & Monica McAuley

University of the Outer Hebrides This paper will discuss the phenomenon of auxiliary reduction, a topic which has been treated by many syntacticians and phonologists. We will show that traces do not exist and that any theory assuming traces is gravely flawed and must be abandoned. We will propose that in the morphology, every auxiliary has two shapes, one when the auxiliary is completely deaccented and one when the auxiliary is accented. (There may be more than two shapes for the auxiliaries.) Constructions such as VP ellipsis and wh-movement in which auxiliary reduction is impossible are ones in which only the accented form of auxiliaries may appear, due to syntactic conditions on accent patterns and on what may serve as the host for a clitic. This also handles comparative subdeletion and pseudogapping, which have been claimed to involve dislocation in order to preserve the generalization that when there is an empty category next to the auxiliary it cannot reduce, which is not necessary with our proposal. It may also be noted that our solution will account for the impossibility of auxiliary reduction before emphatic too or so in rejoinders and in comparative constructions with subject-auxiliary inversion. In conclusion, the results of this paper will have profound effects on linguistic theory in general. For further details, see: http://www.lsadc.org/info/abstract-models.cfm#bad.

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What happens when sonorants branch on Nuclei, or Who’s governing whom?, or You know damn well by now that there are only CV syllables!

JACQUE STRAPP and Adam Ussishkin

[draft: do not post or cite] Phonological thinking since the 60s holds that melodic and harmonic material associated to Nuclei can branch on empty Onsets: the result is the corresponding glide (i.e. an i branching on the following Onset like in French /li+e/ lier ‘to tie’ produces [lije], though younger speakers tend to see this as archaic and really dumb). Probably because empty Nuclei are less well accepted than empty Onsets, the opposite movement has only been proposed fairly recently: this is when melodic material associated to an Onset branches on an empty Nucleus. Harmonic material behaves in a similar but different manner and will not be further addressed. The goal of the present talk is to investigate the logically possible situations that are generated when allowing for this type of configuration and others, and to examine what kind of empirical effects are produced. Ideally, of course, all possible representations correspond to a well-known empirical situation: the only kind of syllable ever allowed is CV, and stop complaining that there are exceptions to this! I show that by and large this is indeed the case. The most obvious empirical identity for a branching consonant are syllabic consonants (SCs): according to the classical 19th century definition, these are “consonants in vocalic function.” although that sounds inherently contradictory but you’ll just have to learn to live with it. Diachronically as well as synchronically, SCs alternate with a VC sequence (Czech kr_k_ > krk ‘throat’, free variation in English butt(e)n), and, according to classical description, take over the syllabic function when the vowel comes to disappear. It is thus conceivable that the physical properties of SCs (their consonanthood) are due to the fact that they are dominated by an Onset, while their vocalic behaviour comes from the fact that just like “real” vowels, they occupy a Nucleus. This solution for SCs has been adopted e.g. by Hall (1992:35f), Wiese (1986), Harris (1994:224f), Rowicka (1999:261ff), Scheer (2004:§240). Wake up and pay attention! In a second step, I show that phonological theory must be able to distinguish two kinds of cluster-creating consonants: syllabic and so-called trapped consonants (TC).2 The latter occur for example in Polish, where they have been extensively studied by Jerzy Rubach (e.g. 1997) who argues that they are extrasyllabic. In fact TCs systematically display opposite behaviour with respect to SCs: (1) SCs count in poetry, TCs do not, and don’t ask about prose poetry (2) SCs may bear stress, TCs may not, (3) in case a vowel–zero alternation occurs to their left, the zero alternant appears before SCs (which thus behave like a vowel), but the alternation site is vocalised before TCs, (4) TCs, but not SCs, are “transparent” for voice assimilation. Remember, the only syllable type is CV. In sum, the only syllable type is CV.

2 However, there’s never a need to distinguish between CV and any other syllable type.

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Anti-Elocutionary Phonology: No chance for chip chippy chintz chintziness

Mara Ni’Sisiu & André Les Niches, with Big Bank Hank

Schniedel & Ussishkin (this volume, cf. also various gin-soaked and meth-fueled rants) propose to place the patently phony (and probably purloined) notion of ‘hipicity’ in the center of phonological theory. As is known to every schoolboy and generally obvious to any creature with a brain stem, Bestness Theoretic and later Bestestness Theoretic approaches (as well as recent Extended Standard Better-still Theoretic work) foundered on the craggy rocks of Hopacity, not over the minor flaws of Meekedness Avoidance (as asserted without a breath of evidence or argument, ça va sans dire, by Schniedel & Ussishkin). Hipicity is thus exposed for its utterly lame poseuritude. In a heroic effort to return phonological theory to sanity, we step forward to propose a solution drawing on Sugarhill Gang (1979, drawing possibly on the earlier work of Grandmaster Caz, Cold Crush Gang, 1978). The last thing we need is more hipicity to counter hopacity; we seek a simpler solution, to wit:

I said a hip hop, Hippie to the hippie, The hip, hip a hop, and you don't stop, a rock it To the bang bang boogie, say, up jump the boogie, To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat.

In other words, we attempt to raise your body heat, rapping to the rhythm of a groovy moraic trochee beat, with right-to-left foot construction (degenerate feet banned, following Hayes 1995); just blow your mind (see Halle, O’Neil & Vergnaud 1993), so you can't speak, i.e. produce metrically well-formed utterances (Safire 2007), and do a thing but a-rock and shuffle your feet (in line with current approaches to Cavineña stress), save for secondary stress on odd non-initial syllables, and let it change up to a dance called the ‘freak’, viz.: Vowel length is phonemic; no minimal word constraint. . × (.×) (×..) 10, 102, 1020. 10202 or 109202 Word layer: End Rule Left Finally, we advise that when you finally do come into your rhythmic beat, rest a little while so you don't get weak. Drum break. References Gang, Sugarhill. 1979. Rapper’s Delight. The Sugarhill Gang. Halle, Morris, Wayne O’Neil & Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 1993. “Metrical Coherence in Old

English without the Germanic Foot”. Linguistic Inquiry 24.529-539.

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Hayes, Bruce. 1995. Metrical Stress Theory: Principles and case studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Safire, William. 2007. Metrical wellformedness, perfectly girded. Linguistic Inquiry. Forthcoming.

Proving Limits of UG: Theoretical and experimental results

Adam Ussishkin & Burrhus Frederic Skinner

To Prove the Limits of UG — lately known as ‘the plug program’, we conducted the following experiment. Subjects were provided with an artificial grammar and required to describe verbally how to tie their shoes using only esophageal egressives and violations of island constraints. The experiment. Participants:

• All were hip young kids with too many piercings • All received boatloads of cash for compensation • Mostly talked kind of funny, not like we did

RT (response time) measured from far away on the beach with a cold beer in hand. Procedures and apparatus:

• Experiment conducted on TRS-80 using Fortran software (cf. Ussishkin 1979) • Participants were raised in Skinner Boxes • Participants wore Walkmans to hear stimuli and were required to paw the ground once

for yes and twice for no Discussion. 54 x 22 mixed-design MANCOVA, when calculated in base 8 revealed significant effect of UG, with a side of fries. Responses that fell outside of three standard deviations from the mean were excluded, leaving 7% of the collected data as analyzable, which really sucked. Responses which were not forthcoming were remanded to a collection agency. In other words, how does a speaker know that a pseudo-word is not a word? Conclusion. “The experiment might be said to demonstrate a sort of superstition” (Skinner 1947). The pierced kid behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of cash, although such a relation is lacking. There are many analogies in human behavior. Rituals for changing one's fortune at cards are good examples, plate o’ shrimp. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances. The linguist who has submitted an abstract but continues to behave as if she were controlling it by twisting and turning her arguments is another case in point. These behaviors have, of course, no real effect upon one's luck or upon a ball half way down an alley, just as in the present case the food would appear as

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often if the pigeon did nothing — or, more strictly speaking, did something else. Or things to that effect. References Skinner, B.F. 1947. "'Superstition' in the Pigeon". Journal of Experimental Psychology 38. Ussishkin, Adam. 1979. Fortran and Star Trek: TRS-80. Mad Magazine.

The organizing committee

Leonard Bloomfield Joe Curtis

Colette A. Day Candice B. Fureal Suzanne Jeskewitz Monica Macaulay

Steve Nass Hermann Paul Cody Pendant

Mike Rohsopht Andy Structible Adam Ussishkin

Andy Wedel Al B. Zienya

Ben Thair & Dunn Dat, Attorneys at Law

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