Ongoing Projects

Below you can find the projects (both ongoing and completed) that the members of the lab have been undertaking, categorized by the general research area that they fall into.

Ongoing Projects

Argument Structure

How are arguments introduced into syntax? What determines the number, the theta-roles, and the morphosyntactic encoding of arguments that a given verb can combine with? Why are these properties often related to the kind of eventuality that the verb describes? What is the structure of the Lexicon-Syntax interface?

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Causativity, voice and valency in Javanese (James Lee)
Ongoing: Indices in the Voice Domain: A Unified Analysis of Javanese Passives (Jian Cui)
Ongoing: Voice as downwards Agree: adverbial and serial verbs in Formosan (Yvette Wu)
Past: Syntactic vs. morphological verbal concord across Austronesian (Tamisha L. Tan and Yvette Wu, joint work with Giovanni Roversi)
Past: Voice alternations in Kazym Khanty participial relative clauses (Dasha Bikina)
Past: Repetitives in constructions with dative arguments cross-linguistically: distinguishing datives from PPs (Tanya Bondarenko)
Past: Voice Restructuring in Buryat (Tanya Bondarenko)
Past: Syntactic analysis of converbs in Manchu and Mongolian (Jacob Kodner)

Clausal Embedding

What kinds of structures do we find among clausal complements of verbs and nouns? What meanings can be associated with them? How do veridical/factive inferences arise, and what are the sources of veridicality/factivity falternations? Why are predicates often picky in which clauses they can combine with: “where” and how are these restrictions encoded? Why can the broader structural context sometimes affect clausal selection?

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Veridicality mismatches in Javanese (Tanya Bondarenko)
Ongoing: Nominalized and bare CPs in the argument structure of verbs (based on data from Buryat, Korean and Russian) (Tanya Bondarenko).
Ongoing: Embedded Conjunction in Korean (Tanya Bondarenko)
Ongoing: Factivity-alternating attitude verbs in Azeri (Tanya Bondarenko)
Past: Non-finite constructions in Khanty: their unity and diversity (Dasha Bikina, joint work with Denis Rakhman, Vsevolod Potseluev, Aleksey Starchenko and Svetlana Toldova).
Past: Intensional Predicates as Complex Predicates: A Perspective from Restrictions on Intensional Interrogative Complements in Uyghur (Jack Rabinovitch).
Past: Narrow Scoping Content Question Items in Shifty Contexts: A Case of Surprising Non-Quotation in Uyghur (Jack Rabinovitch).
Past: Clausal embedding in Buryat (Tanya Bondarenko): factive inferences, syntax of nominalization, clause size and restructuring, passivization of matrix predicates, subject marking, extraction from embedded clauses.

Complementation, Argument Structure and Event Structure (CASES)

This is an ongoing collaborative project of our lab that seeks to understand how the properties of verbs related to argument structure, event structure, and lexical aspect and the clause-embedding properties of verbs are related. Here are some of our questions:

What roles can clauses play in verbal argument structure? Are clausal arguments the same kinds of arguments as DPs, or are they a separate argument type of their own?
Can argument and event structure of the verb affect the clausal selection (declarative vs. interrogative embedding, nominalized vs. bare clause, presence of factive/veridical inferences, etc.), and vice versa — can the type of the embedded clause affect these verbal properties? Why do the observed correlations hold, and what do they tell us about possible theories of clausal embedding?

Our first step in the project is to study these questions with the data from Georgian (Kartvelian) by creating a lexical database that will help uncover generalizations about how argument/event-structural properties of verbs and their clause-embedding properties are related. In August 2023 we are traveling to Georgia for the initial data collection. The Georgian part of the project is supported by the Georgian Program at Harvard.

Members of the Georgian group within CASES: Tanya Bondarenko, James Lee, Richard Luo, Valerio Pepe, Natasha Thalluri.

The CASES project group: Tanya Bondarenko, Anabelle Caso, Dasha Bikina, James Lee, Richard Luo, Valerio Pepe, Jack Rabinovitch, Yağmur Sağ, Natasha Thalluri, Yvette Wu, Susi Wurmbrand.

Cross-Clausal A-dependencies

Can A-dependencies be established across clausal boundaries? When are such dependencies possible, what is the underlying syntax, and how are they restricted?

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Island Sensitivity and Case Matching in Uyghur Pseudo-Prolepsis (Jack Rabinovitch).
Past: Hyperraising/ECM in Buryat (Tanya Bondarenko).

Cross-Clausal A-bar dependencies

What are restrictions that we find on cross-clausal A-bar dependencies (e.g. scrambling, wh-movement), and why do they hold? What alternative structures and operations can languages employ to create the meaning of a long-distance wh-question in cases where true long-distance wh-movement is banned?

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Long-Distance wh-dependencies in Georgian (Tanya Bondarenko)
Past: Long-Distance scrambling in Balkar (Tanya Bondarenko, joint work with Colin Davis)

Honorifics

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Morphosyntax of Korean subject honorifics (James Lee)
Past: On the Structure and Origin of Honorific Truncation in Sibe (Jack Rabinovitch).

Language Subgrouping and Change

Below are projects that use linguistic fieldwork to answer questions about language change: historical change (and relatedness of languages within a given group) and change related to language contact.

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Morphosyntactic changes in Dakkhini Urdu as a result of Dravidian influence (Natasha Thalluri).
Ongoing: Phylogenetic subgrouping of the Pamir languages (Eastern Iranian) and reconstruction of Proto-Pamir using fieldwork data; languages include Shughni, Roshani, Yazghulami, Sariqoli, Wakhi, Ishkashimi, Munji, Khufi, and Yidgha (Anabelle Caso, joint work with Mark Hale and Kirill Fessenko).

Language Documentation,and Revitalization

Below are projects that contribute to documentation, revitalization and creation of pedagogical and other useful materials for understudied languages.

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Fieldwork and documentation of the Alabama language (Alabama documentation group)
Ongoing: Language Shift and Morphosyntactic change in Seediq (Yvette Wu: Project Launch at NWAV 2023)
Ongoing: A Client-Side Web Application for Advanced Searching of Linguistic Corpora (Jack Rabinovitch).
Ongoing: Applying Adaptations in Pedagogical Materials for Heritage Language Teaching to Language Reclamation (Jack Rabinovitch, joint work with Baoqing Qian).
Ongoing: Itelmen Project: documentation and revitalization (Jonathan Bobaljik)
Past: Online documentation materials for Sibe (Jacob Kodner)
Past: Passamaquoddy Group (Tanya Bondarenko: collaborative project with the MIT Linguistics)
Past: Barguzin dialect of Buryat (Tanya Bondarenko: documentation work with Lomonosov Moscow State University group in 2014—2018).
Past: Balkar (Tanya Bondarenko: documentation work with Lomonosov Moscow State University group in 2013, 2019)
Past: Documentation of Judeo-Iranian languages (Jacob Kodner: Grant from the Wikimedia Community Fund in 2022-2023)

Nominal Phrases

How are definiteness and indefiniteness encoded in natural languages? What cross-linguistic variation in the syntax and semantics of these expressions do we find? Are there prosodic cues to definiteness/indefiniteness?

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Definiteness and prosody in Abduyi (Northwestern Iranian): prosodic cues and indication of definiteness/indefiniteness (Anabelle Caso, joint work with Kirill Fessenko)
Past: Indefinite pronouns in the Moksha (Uralic) language (Dasha Bikina).
Past: Double indefiniteness marking in Hill Mari (Dasha Bikina).

Opacity Effects

How do opacity effects arise, and how should they be analyzed in theories like OT?

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Could self-destructive feeding be a challenge to Richness of the Base (based on data from Javanese (Austronesian) (Melody Wang)

Relativization

What is the syntax and semantics of relativization cross-linguistically? How are correlative structures related to constructions like free relatives and conditionals?

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: The syntax and semantics of correlatives (based on the data from Hindi and Georgian, Natasha Thalluri)
Past: Relative clause or nominalized clause: the evidence from Kazym Khanty (Dasha Bikina, joint work with Aleksey Starchenko).
Past: Possessed relative clauses in Kazym Khanty (Dasha Bikina).

Tense, Aspect, Mood (TAM)

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Tense, aspect, modality, and evidentiality in Korean (James Lee) Past: Tense, Mood, and Indexicals Under Ende Ngonongg/Ngonoe (Jack Rabinovitch).
Past: The Georgian aspectual system (Tanya Bondarenko)

Vowel Harmony

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: Using Phasal Syntax to Make Generalizations in Manchu Vowel Harmony (Jack Rabinovitch, joint work with Baoqing Qian).

Word Order

Why do some languages have flexible word order? What conditions the choice between the possible options? Is one of the orders basic in such cases?

Some projects, past and ongoing, by members of the lab:

Ongoing: OV/VO in Itelmen (Jonathan Bobaljik)