Papers by Alec Sugar
Languages, 2017
This paper explores the pattern by which Mandarin Chinese verbs are used in Uyghur-Mandarin code-... more This paper explores the pattern by which Mandarin Chinese verbs are used in Uyghur-Mandarin code-switching by native Uyghur speakers. In a number of language contact situations with similar verb mixing, foreign verbal items have been argued to be treated as nominal in the host language. However, I argue based on examples from personal communications with Uyghur speakers and my own elicitations that Mandarin verbs are still treated as a verbal category by Uyghur speakers for four reasons: (1) Mandarin verbs project their argument structure in Uyghur; (2) the Mandarin perfective aspectual particle le is uniquely included with a subset of Mandarin verbs; (3) the Uyghur verbalizing marker-la cannot attach to Mandarin verbs; and (4) the Uyghur accusative case marker-ni cannot attach to Mandarin verbs. The paper also discusses why it is not possible for Mandarin verbs to inflect with Uyghur morphology, and proposes a specific constraint on inflecting foreign verbs embedded in rich inflectional languages. The paper also poses the question of whether the availability of multiple light verbs to combine with foreign verbs correlates with the verbal status of foreign verbs in the host language.
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2019
This paper discusses case marking in mixed verbs in Uyghur-Chinese code switching, where a lexica... more This paper discusses case marking in mixed verbs in Uyghur-Chinese code switching, where a lexical verb from Mandarin Chinese is combined with a light verb from Uyghur. In mixed verbs containing a Chinese verb whose Uyghur translational equivalent idiosyncratically selects a dative object, the mixed verb also selects a dative object. We analyze this fact by proposing that dative arguments are introduced by an applicative head (Cuervo 2003) whose presence is required by a v head selecting for certain types of roots along the lines of Merchant (2018).
Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Turkish, Turkic and the Languages of Turkey; UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, 2018
This paper examines multi-verb constructions in which the final verb has been semantically bleach... more This paper examines multi-verb constructions in which the final verb has been semantically bleached in the Turkic language Uyghur. Along the lines of Cinque (2003) and Fukuda (2012), I use passivization data to provide a monoclausal analysis in which the final bleached may realize one of two different functional heads along the same clausal spine: the little v head which introduces external arguments, or a higher Aux head. Depending on the position of the bleached verb, the -(i)p suffix which follows the lexical verb in lieu of finite inflection realizes either an Inner Aspect head within the verbal domain or an Event head outside the verbal domain.
This paper analyzes resultative constructions in Uyghur as an adjunction relationship between two... more This paper analyzes resultative constructions in Uyghur as an adjunction relationship between two verbal projections. Uyghur resultatives differ from many previously analyzed resultatives, including those in typologically related Altaic languages (see Shibagaki 2011), in that both predicates must match share a subject. One verb encodes a resultative meaning while the other elaborates the manner of achieving the result state, but the ordering is flexible. The only ordering requirement is that the final verb and the object form a telic verb constellation. The unique structure of this construction points to the conclusion that the notion of ‘resultative construction’ does not correspond to any specific syntactic structure crosslinguistically.
Uyghur grammars and linguistic works have traditionally described the-ip morpheme as a suffix tha... more Uyghur grammars and linguistic works have traditionally described the-ip morpheme as a suffix that derives adverbs from verbs (Tömür 2003, Tohti 2012). This paper uses structural diagnostics involving passive morphology, single negation and NPI licensing to argue that-ip is a functional head with multiple syntactically distinct roles in different structures. The distinct properties of these structures, according to the types of verbs that are linked by-ip, provide evidence against a uniform derivational process of adverb formation. In some case-ip allows for adjunction of a TP-sized constituent, suggesting it may be a non-finite T head. In other cases it allows for adjunction of a verb phrase, and in yet another case it creates a lexical verb + auxiliary sequence in a monoclausal structure. I suggest that-ip in the latter two cases may be an event head.
This paper explores the pattern by which Mandarin Chinese verbs are used in Uyghur-Mandarin code-... more This paper explores the pattern by which Mandarin Chinese verbs are used in Uyghur-Mandarin code-switching by native Uyghur speakers. In a number of language contact situations with similar verb mixing, foreign verbal items have been argued to be treated as nominal in the host language. However, I argue based on examples from personal communications with Uyghur speakers and my own elicitations that Mandarin verbs are still treated as a verbal category by Uyghur speakers for four reasons: (1) Mandarin verbs project their argument structure in Uyghur; (2) the Mandarin perfective aspectual particle le is uniquely included with a subset of Mandarin verbs; (3) the Uyghur verbalizing marker-la cannot attach to Mandarin verbs; and (4) the Uyghur accusative case marker-ni cannot attach to Mandarin verbs. The paper also discusses why it is not possible for Mandarin verbs to inflect with Uyghur morphology, and proposes a specific constraint on inflecting foreign verbs embedded in rich inflectional languages. The paper also poses the question of whether the availability of multiple light verbs to combine with foreign verbs correlates with the verbal status of foreign verbs in the host language.
25th Annual North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics
Morphological headedness in Chinese compounding has been subject to theoretical debate (Huang 199... more Morphological headedness in Chinese compounding has been subject to theoretical debate (Huang 1998, Packard 2000, Ceccagno 2009 and many others). This study intends to contribute to this debate with insight from recent research on the linguistic phenomenon of “Word Length Flexibility” in Chinese (Duanmu 2012, Huang & Duanmu 2013). The main hypothesis of this study is that the preserved syllables in truncation are either the morphological heads of “flexible” words or the morphological non-heads of “inflexible” words. This hypothesis is empirically tested on a 2,922 item corpus of Chinese abbreviations (commonly referred to as suōlüèyǔ 缩 略 语 in Chinese) extracted from a specialized dictionary – Xiàndài Hànyǔ Suōlüèyǔ Cídiǎn 现代汉语缩略语词典 [Dictionary of Modern Chinese Abbreviations] (Yuan & Ruan 2002).
Conference Presentations by Alec Sugar
This paper uses data from passivized Uyghur auxiliary constructions to provide morphosyntactic ev... more This paper uses data from passivized Uyghur auxiliary constructions to provide morphosyntactic evidence for the existence of an inner aspect head between v and V, and for an event head selecting v. The former head has been widely championed as the site for determining telicity in a predicate (Travis 1991, MacDonald 2008 among others), while the latter head was proposed by Travis (2010) but is less widely adopted. This paper argues that the -ip suffix that attaches to non-finite verbs in Uyghur auxiliary constructions can be an overt realization of either head.
Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics
Creating a machine-readable grammar for the Uyghur language presents various challenges. The port... more Creating a machine-readable grammar for the Uyghur language presents various challenges. The portion of Uyghur grammar under discussion was based on code provided by the LinGO Grammar Matrix, which uses a syntactic formalism based on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). HPSG sentences are considered " well formed " when they satisfy a series of phrasal and lexical constraints. Most information about a word—its semantic properties, potential for morphological changes, and the types of words or phrases with which it combines—is stored in lexical entries. A test suite based on authentic Uyghur texts and native speaker judgments led to the formulation of lexical types and lexical and phrasal rules, all organized into type hierarchies. Specific grammatical properties of Uyghur, including case marking and verb morphology, were modeled using HPSG.
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Papers by Alec Sugar
Conference Presentations by Alec Sugar