This presentation investigates the order of objects as well as the order of  certain adjuncts in the VOS language Malagasy. Objects located in the area between the verb and the right-peripheral structural subject show the order D(irect) O(bject) > I(ndirect) O(bject) > P(repositional) O(object) in Malagasy. Furthermore, focus precedes background, and indefinites precede definites in the unmarked postverbal word order of arguments. SOV languages such as German display the exact opposite order (i.e., IO before DO, background before focus, definite before indefinite). The presentation will focus on the relevance of these findings for different analyses deriving linear order.

For over 120 years the study of linguistic subgrouping has been concerned with an issue that can be characterized roughly as one of quantity vs. quality.  This has taken two distinct forms.  The most familiar one is the use of quantitative methods vs. qualitative methods in inferring branching order within a collection of genetically related languages, whether this be characterized in terms of lexicostatistics vs. the Comparative Method, or in terms of the more recent use of ‘Markov chain-Monte Carlo’ (MCMC) methods as developed in biological phylogenetics.  Less familiar is the distinction between quantity and quality in the application of the Comparative Method.  This talk presents some unusual types of evidence that have been used for purposes of subgrouping within the Austronesian language family.  The most spectacular of these makes use of an accident of geological history, the well-known ‘Wallace Line’, distinguishing the Asiatic and Australian faunal zones within the Indonesian archipelago, to determine the position of the languages of eastern Indonesia.

1:30 PM Session
"Rhythmic timing in speech: new phonetic measures and comparisons to music"
Aniruddh D. Patel

Within linguistics there is an old tradition of classifying languages into different rhythmic classes based on the regular timing of some phonological unit (e.g. stress, syllable, or mora). Although the original notion of isochrony has not been upheld by empirical research, new measures of timing (based on variability or durational contrast) are revealing systematic difference between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages.  At the same time, these measures are advancing the study of speech rhythm in a number of ways, two of which will be discussed in this talk.  First, the measures are raising questions about whether languages really fall into distinct rhythmic classes or fall along a rhythmic continuum. Second, the measures are permitting speech rhythm and musical rhythm to be compared in an empirical framework.  Such cross-domain comparison can help inform which rhythmic timing measures of speech might be the most perceptually relevant for listeners, and lead to novel ideas for quantifying non-native prosody.

6:00 PM Session
"Laryngeal contrasts in American Indian languages"
Heriberto Avelino

Does language processing engage specialized brain functions or a shared brain network with other cognitive operations such as musical or mathematical processing, or with primary sensory modalities such as vision and audition? How do brain functions change in the process of learning a new language, and what is the role of linguistic or nonlinguistic experience? This talk will address these issues through discussions of a series of neuro-imaging and behavioral studies examining the processing and learning of second language speech sounds.  

"An acoustic look at retroflex in Taiwanese and mainland Chinese speakers of Mandarin"
Zoe Madden-Wood

This study focuses on the dialectal differences of Mandarin speakers' retroflex consonants. Taiwanese and mainland Chinese Mandarin speakers' degree of retroflex can be different if the retroflex is pronounced at all. This study surveys small groups of speakers from Taiwan and China and compares their pronunciation of various words that would contain retroflex in certain dialects. Speakers were instructed to speak carefully, but naturally.   Acoustic differences between the two groups are measured through Praat.