Mythili Menon

Wichita State University, English, Faculty Member

University of Southern California, Linguistics, Alumna

The English and Foreign Languages University, Linguistics, Alumna

Followers

621

Following

Co-authors

Public Views

Supervisors: Roumyana Pancheva

less

Zheng Shen

University of Connecticut

Lyn Tieu

University of Toronto

Katrin Axel-Tober

David-Étienne Bouchard

Ottawa University

Oliver Bott

James Whang

Seoul National University

V. Zu

Anna Szabolcsi

New York University

Amrit Amritavalli

The English and Foreign Languages University

Ora Matushansky

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research

InterestsView All (31)

Uploads

Books by Mythili Menon

Universals and Variation. Proceedings of the 7 GLOW in Asia

Download

Talks by Mythili Menon

Decomposing color expressions in Malayalam

Priming from Music to Language: Effects of Number Marking on the Priming of Relative Clause Attachment in Spanish.

Theoretical linguists have debated the relationship between language and music (Jackendoff'06, Pa... more Theoretical linguists have debated the relationship between language and music (Jackendoff'06, Patel'08, Katz/Pesetsky'11), but few psycholinguistic studies have tested whether structural aspects of music prime structural aspects of language. If music and language have shared representations, we expect priming from music to language. Initial evidence comes from Van de Cavey/Hartsuiker'11, who used sequences of sine tones differing in pitch, and found priming on Dutch relative clause (RC) attachment, and Menon/Kaiser'13, who used piano notes and found priming of English RC attachment.

Download

Non-adjacent lexical dependencies in an artificial language prime relative clause attachment biases

Download

The grammatical life of property concepts in Malayalam

We provide an account of the morpho-syntax and semantics of property concept denoting expressions... more We provide an account of the morpho-syntax and semantics of property concept denoting expressions in Malayalam. We suggest that property concepts are lexicalized as uncategorized roots. Depending on the category of the functional heads they merge with, they participate in two types of predication. Both types are based on possession, overtly or covertly expressed. Our results add to recent work by Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2013) concerning variation in the lexicalization and grammar of property concepts cross-linguistically.

Download

Consequences of 'music to one's ears': Structural Integration Priming from Music to Language

Download

The Apparent Lack of Adjectival Category in Malayalam and Other Related Languages

Download

Revisiting infinitives: The need for tense in Malayalam

Two ways of forming comparatives in Malayalam

Papers by Mythili Menon

Building superlatives from property concept expressions

Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America

Although the relative versus absolute ambiguity in superlatives is well established, there is no ... more Although the relative versus absolute ambiguity in superlatives is well established, there is no consensus regarding how the comparison classes which gives rise to these ambiguities are determined. Two factors, the LF syntax of –est and focus, have been said to determine the comparison classes. In this paper, I provide novel data from Malayalam, a language without adjectives, which require both a movement theory of superlatives and focus to derive the readings.

Download

The Aspectual Structure of the Adjective: Spanish Ser and Estar

by Alfredo Garcia-Pardo and Mythili Menon

The aspectual structure of the adjective. Spanish ser and estar (joint work with Mythili Menon). Hispanic Linguistics: Current issues and new directions, Alfonso Morales-Front, Michael J. Ferreira, Ronald P. Leow and Cristina Sanz (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins., 2020

This paper argues that the stage-level and individual-level distinctions for adjectival predicate... more This paper argues that the stage-level and individual-level distinctions for adjectival predicates, diagnosed in Spanish by the copulas ser and estar, can be derived by positing a sortal distinction in the temporal arguments in the syntax: the temporal argument of individual-level adjectives denotes time intervals, whereas the time argument of stage-level adjectives denotes time instants. We provide evidence from the (un-)acceptability of certain temporal modifiers, the progressive, and lifetime effects. We furthermore show how our account can also explain other instances of the ser and estar distribution beyond adjectives, such as verbal and adjectival passives and locative constructions with and without eventive subjects.

Download

Open Letter to The American Association for the Advancement of Science

by Mythili Menon and Zen Faulkes

The Winnower, 2014

Property concepts and the apparent lack of adjectives in Dravidian

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 2014

Open letter to the Society for Neuroscience

The Winnower, 2014

Download

Argument ellipsis and the licensing of covert nominals in Bangla, Hindi and Malayalam

Lingua, 2013

This paper investigates the licensing of Argument Ellipsis/AE in three major languages of South A... more This paper investigates the licensing of Argument Ellipsis/AE in three major languages of South Asia: Bangla, Malayalam and Hindi and a recent claim made in Ş ener and Takahashi (2011, in press) that the critical factor responsible for AE in null argument languages is the absence of verbal agreement. Observing and manipulating patterns of subject and object agreement in these languages, it is concluded that agreement does not appear to play a role in restricting AE. The paper then considers two other alternatives to the anti-agreement approach to AE , which instead relate the occurrence of AE to various interpretative and morphological properties of nominal elements, and emphasizes the important facilitating role that the use of anaphors frequently plays in the licensing of AE. A. Simpson et al. / Lingua 134 (2013) 103--128 104 1 The following abbreviations are made use of use in glosses in the paper: ERG = ergative; NOM = nominative; ACC = accusative; DAT = dative; UM = the Malayalam marker um; GEN = genitive; TOP = topic; P = plural; INF = infinitive; LOC = locative; NZL = nominalizer; COP = copula; C = complementizer; CL = classifier; DE = the Chinese linking element de; PRES = present; CONJ = conjunction; PST = past tense; PRF = perfect; CNT = continuous; FUT = future; HAB = habitual; DAT = dative; M = masculine; F = feminine; 3 = third person Sg = Singular.

Download

Statistical Structures in Artificial languages Prime Relative Clause Attachment Biases in English

The phenomenon of syntactic priming is well studied in the literature, but the mechanisms behind ... more The phenomenon of syntactic priming is well studied in the literature, but the mechanisms behind it are still unclear. In this study, we trained English-speaking participants in artificial language sequences with dependencies which are either adjacent or non-adjacent. The participants then wrote completions to relative clause (RC) fragments. We found that participants, who learn non-adjacent dependencies in the artificial language, exhibit a bias to write high-attachment (non-adjacent) continuations for RCs, when compared to participants in a control condition who exhibit low-attachment (adjacent) biases in RCs. The implications for theories of syntactic priming and its relations to implicit learning are discussed.

Download