Wearing his characteristic last-day-of-the-term coat and tie, John Lawler gave the last classroom lecture of his 35 year career at the University of Michigan on Dec. 9,2008.

Later, the Department celebrated his long-career and especially his long-standing commitment to undergraduate teaching.

Please visit the John Lawler wiki and leave your thoughts and best wishes for his well-deserved retirement.  We’ll miss you, John!

Lauren Squires’ Qualifying Research Paper, “Language ideology and the enregisterment of ‘Netspeak’ has been approved by her readers and she now advances to doctoral candidacy.

Congratulations Lauren!

Abstract

This paper investigates the enregisterment (Agha 2003, 2005, 2007) of “Netspeak,” characterized as a unique variety of language used on the internet. Two types of metadiscursive data about language and the internet are presented: print media discourse and online comment threads. These discourses represent “Netspeak” as an identifiable set of linguistic and orthographic forms such as abbreviations, phonetically-based spellings, and a general lack of standard English writing practices. Yet instant messaging conversations, a third type of data, show that few of these features are consistently found in online discourse. Consequently, the paper highlights differences between “Netspeak” and other cases of enregisterment (e.g., Agha 2003; Johnstone et al. 2006), namely that the enregisterment of “Netspeak” features does not presuppose their sociodemographic distribution. Rather, “Netspeak” is enregistered centrally through its ideologically-grounded construal as a variety in contradistinction to “Standard English.” I introduce “Netspeak” as a conceptual artifact of a language variety, arguing that such artifacts can play key roles in processes of enregisterment, carrying primacy over what have typically been considered first-order indexical properties such as sociodemographic distributions or pragmatic functions (cf. Silverstein 2003).

Vera Irwin successfully defended her dissertation, “More than just ethnic. Negotiation of ethnicity through language among Russian German Re-settlers and Jewish Refugees from the former Soviet Union in Germany,” on Dec. 17.

Committee
Deborah Keller-Cohen, Robert Kyes, Robin Queen (chair), Sarah Thomason

Abstract
This dissertation examines processes of ethnic identity negotiation between two Russian-speaking migrant communities that share their linguistic background but differ in their understanding of their ethnicity. By analyzing reports of language use and language attitudes this ethnographically-based research investigates how ethnic identity can be negotiated even without speakers’ reliance on a designated “ethnic” language.

The analysis is based on sociolinguistic interviews with 38 Russian-German re-settlers (Spätaussiedler, SA) and 40 Jewish contingent refugees from the former Soviet Union (Kontingentflüchtlinge, KF), supplemented by a quantitative survey. The study demonstrates that in the absence of a distinct in-group code, the negotiation of ethnic positioning in a migrant environment is achieved by routinely utilizing contrasting ideologies about the linguistic resources shared by both communities.

This dissertation adds to an existing body of research on ethnic identity in migration (Bailey 2000; Giampapa 2001; Lo 1999; Zentella 1997) by uncovering rich dynamics of such negotiations not only with respect to the local majority, but even more so between migrant groups. The SA community is shown to negotiate its positioning towards the host majority, which becomes especially noteworthy due to this group’s historically German ethnic background. Simultaneously, as a minority within a minority, the KF community strives to situate itself not only in relation to the host community, but more so in relation to the “other” Russian-speaking migrant group. In doing so, KF migrants demonstrate an understanding of ethnicity that is tied to characteristics, which are not traditionally seen as ethnic (such as social and educational status), but obtain ethnic meaning in this community. In the process of identity negotiation, such understanding of ethnicity is applied by the KF minority to interpretation of observed and assumed linguistic behaviors and language attitudes of the SA group, particularly with respect to issues of language shift, language maintenance and code-mixing practices.

By uncovering ideologies that link beliefs about language to locally salient ethnic categorization, this dissertation demonstrates how ethnic distinctiveness is established through the use of subtle and arbitrary mechanisms, which are not universally tied to ethnicity, but acquire their “ethnic” meaning in local negotiations of social positioning.

Miki Obata and Sam Epstein presented their paper, “Building (Proper) Improper Movement Structures,” at the Ways of Building Structure conference held at the University of Basque Country, Nov. 13-14.

Abstract (.pdf)

Carmel O’Shannessey presented a colloquium talk entitled “Can child-directed speech lead to a new language?” at the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at Syracuse University on Dec. 5.
Abstract
Code-switching practices between Warlpiri and English have led to a new mixed code, Light Warlpiri, in a remote community in northern Australia. Elements from two typologically dissimilar languages are combined systematically in the new language, with verbal and nominal structures derived from different sources. Code-switching patterns used most often when addressing children appear to be the patterns that have become entrenched as the new way of speaking.

Sally Thomason published “Pidgins/creoles and historical linguistics” in John
Victor Singler & Silvia Kouwenberg, eds., The handbook of pidgins and creoles, 242-262.  Oxford: Blackwell. 2008.

Edward Flemming, Peter Ladefoged and Sally Thomason.  Phonetic structures of Montana Salish Journal of Phonetics 36:465-491. 2008.

Abstract

Montana Salish is an Interior Salishan language spoken on the Flathead Reservation in Northwest Montana by an estimated population of about 40 speakers. This paper describes the basic phonetic characteristics of the language based on data from five speakers. Montana Salish contains a number of typologically unusual consonant types. Including glottalized sonorants, pre-stopped laterals, and a series of pharyngeals distinguished by secondary articulations of glottalization and/or labialization. The language also allows long sequences of obstruent consonants. These and more familiar phonetic characteristics are described through analysis of acoustic, electroglottographic, and aerodynamic data, and compared with related characteristics in other languages of the world.

Marlyse Baptista and Miki Obata presented their paper, “The Vacuous Movement Hypothesis:  On Complementizers and Extraction Patterns in Creoles” at the Formal Approaches to Creole Studies conference in Tromsoe, Norway.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the lack of ‘that-trace’ effects in creoles and non-creoles in an attempt to fine-tune minimalist accounts that rely on the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) and the Vacuous Movement Hypothesis (VMH), (i.e., Ishii, 2004).  We argue against the VMH and propose that in some of the languages under consideration, we have empirical evidence that in subject wh-extractions, the subject does not remain in situ but raises to Spec of C.  If correct, this is a challenge to theory-internal considerations such as the economy condition that stipulates that simpler operations are more optimal, thus chosen over more complex ones.  The implications are also important for creole languages, as those under study are clearly opting for more complex operations involving both Agree and Move over Agree alone.   We study extraction patterns and complementizer behavior in both matrix and embedded wh-questions, as shown in (1) and (2).  For the latter, assuming that derivations are evaluated locally, our analysis that the subject wh-phrase raises to Spec-C entails that it is the edge of C in the embedded phase and accessible to operations at the matrix vP phase and higher.  This analysis makes the correct prediction that in the languages under study, the complementizer may be overt in the case of subject extraction. Our proposal for languages such as Cape Verdean Creole (CVC) in which no that-trace effects are observed, we argue that several steps in the derivation must be stipulated:  First, we stipulate that the P-feature of C in such languages are specific and that both the C probe and the wh-phrase goal are specified with a topic feature that upon agreeing, match.  This operation accounts for the Agree phase of the derivation.  To account for the fact that the wh-subject phrase does not remain in situ in Spec of T but raises, we propose that the wh-phrase being the edge of CP, it is accessible to operations at the matrix vP phase.  This allows us to predict that the type of utterances exemplified in (2) are acceptable in CVC.
Given the empirical evidence laid out above, what we argue for CVC is that in this particular language as well as in a number of other creole and non-creole languages, the Q-feature and EPP feature of C and the wh-feature of the wh-phrase are both strong: We assume that that C[Q] obligatorily carries a strong [uwh] feature which checks with the wh-expression it c-commands.  Since [uwh] on C is strong, the wh-phrase must move to a local position with C and given the phrasal nature of who, this local position is Spec of C.  Ki could be argued to be a reflex of the Move operation and to be a non-defective P feature.
This paper is organized as follows: In the first section, we review the pre-minimalist accounts of the ECP approach to that-trace effects.  In the second section, we present the recent minimalist proposals based on the PIC and VMH.  In the third section, we introduce empirical evidence from several creole and non-creole languages against VMH. In the fourth section, we offer a parametric model of extraction variation observable in the languages under study that is reducible to the presence versus absence of overt complementizers.  The fifth and last section synthesizes our findings.
Examples:

(1)    a. Kuze ki bu   odja?  (Cape Verdean Creole)
what  ki you saw
‘What did you see?’
b. Kuze ki maria-bu?
what  ki upset+you
‘What upset you?’

(2)    Kenhi ki bu   kuda  ki kaza   ku    Maria?
who    ki you  think ki marry with Maria
‘Who do you think married Maria?’