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Papers, thesis and talks by Beste Kamali

Theoretical Linguistics, 2020

Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and contrastive topic in assertions f... more Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and contrastive topic in assertions for discourse coherence. However, with few exceptions, it has been neglected that focus and contrastive topic also occur in questions, and have a similar role in establishing coherence. We propose a framework of dynamic interpretation based on the notion of Commitment Spaces that show that a uniform interpretation of focus and contrastive topic is possible. The algebraic representation format is rich enough so that a separate introduction of discourse trees is not necessary. The paper discusses these phenomena for Turkish, a language with an explicit focus marker for polar and alternative questions, which distinguishes focus from contrastive topic.

Pre-print version of paper that appeared in Turkic Languages 18, 2014

It has been claimed and widely assumed that caseless direct objects in Turkish exhibit a sort of ... more It has been claimed and widely assumed that caseless direct objects in Turkish exhibit a sort of syntactic incorporation, and only their cased counterparts are true syntactic arguments Öztürk 2005 among others). Cased and caseless objects are thus widely taken as derivationally related, crystallized in proposal that objects pick up overt accusative as they move out of the VP. In this paper, I would like to revisit both the empirical evidence and the interpretation leading to these claims and propose revisions.

Proceedings of ICTL 16 at METU, D. Zeyrek et al. (eds.), 2015

Proceedings of ICTL 16 at METU, D. Zeyrek et al. (eds.), 2015

1. a. hünkarbeğendi-niz-dén pot roast lamb with eggplant puree-POSS2PL-ABL b. Kandílli Cadde-sin-... more 2) a. hünkarbeğendi-niz-dén pot roast lamb with eggplant puree-POSS2PL-ABL b. Kandílli Cadde-sin-den-dir Kandilli Street-SI-ABL-EVID (Slightly changed from Inkelas & Orgun 1998) A comparison between and shows that this behavior is not specific to compounds. (a) examples show regular final word stress which is transferrable, indicating that compounds of this sort are not treated any differently than words. (b)

Turcology and Linguistics: Eva Csato Festschrift. N. Demir et al. (eds.), 2014

We study the impact of givenness on the position of the direct object in Czech with respect to th... more We study the impact of givenness on the position of the direct object in Czech with respect to three other clause-mate constituents: subject, verb, and a VP-modifying PP. Based on two controlled acceptability judgment experiments, we establish two main observations: (i) objects in all-new clauses are significantly less acceptable in a pre-verbal position than in a post-verbal position; and (ii) given objects are free to occur anywhere (pre-verbally or post-verbally) as long as they do not appear in the linearly final position with default main sentence stress.

Proceedings of WAFL 8, 2013

in proceedings of WCCFL 28, Mary Byram Washburn, Sarah Ouwayda, Chuoying Ouyang, Bin Yin, Canan Ipek, Lisa Marston, Aaron Walker (eds)

Harvard University, ZAS • I would like to thank Michael Becker, Cedric Boeckx, Daniel Büring, Ker... more Harvard University, ZAS • I would like to thank Michael Becker, Cedric Boeckx, Daniel Büring, Kerstin Schwabe, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Malte Zimmermann and audiences at WCCFL 28 for helpful comments and questions. All errors are my own. 1 Underlining indicates default sentential prominence, and capitals indicate narrowly focused constituents. -mI is vowel-harmonic and has four alternants: -mı, -mi, -mu, -mü. These will be in boldface for reading convenience.

This thesis presents new data in Turkish concerning phrasing and accent representation, question ... more This thesis presents new data in Turkish concerning phrasing and accent representation, question particle placement, and scope-sensitive prosodic phrasing. The issues at hand are discussed and analyzed within the perspective of minimalist assumptions to syntax and the interfaces, focusing on the PF interface.

To set the record straight in terms of previous research, Chapter 2 is devoted to a detailed critical review of the relevant literature in word accent, phrase and sentence accent, and phrasing in Turkish.

Chapter 3 amends some of the shortcomings of previous research with an intonation experiment investigating the focus-neutral phrasing and intonation in Turkish. The results are described and analyzed from the perspective of a pitch accent language, and tied to recent proposals of PF mapping of prosodic phrases relying on multiple spellout, where the highest phrase in the spellout domain is phrased as a Major Phrase within another Major Phrase corresponding roughly to the VP .

Chapter 4 introduces new data concerning the placement of the yes/no question particle. After reviewing prosodic, semantic, and syntactic factors at play, it is argued that the wide focus placement of the particle follows main stress. In parallel to the main stress analysis, an analysis relying on multiple spellout is presented where the particle phrase merges with the VP and attracts the closest phrase to its specifier. Moreover, in this chapter it is shown that the landscape of pre-stressing particles including the question particle can be addressed in syntactic terms.

Chapter 5 takes up another interface issue: phrasing-induced scope-taking. It is argued that this phrasing instantiates the IP in Turkish and it is show with various locality effects and a parallelism between Japanese and Turkish that IP phrasing also has its roots in the syntax.

The main tenet in all of these explanations is syntactocentric. This approach is not to be mistaken to invade the territory of other subdisciplines, however. It is instead presented as an overall viable and effective approach to deal with problems at the interfaces to account for phenomena which Phonology or Semantics alone have to have recourse to undesired irregularities and ad hoc adjustments.

The Uppsala Meeting. Eva Csato et al. (eds.), 2016

3rd Conference on Tone & Intonation in …, Jan 1, 2008

This paper provides an instrumental description of the durational properties of Turkish vowels as... more This paper provides an instrumental description of the durational properties of Turkish vowels as part of a larger research project for a fuller acoustic description of the sounds of the language. The basic aim of the paper is to contribute to the very few instrumental phonetic analyses of Turkish. By using audio recording and speech processing tools such as WaveSurfer, HTK, and WavRec, 111 Turkish words uttered by 6 native speakers were recorded and analyzed in terms of mean durations of eight equally distributed Modern Standard Turkish (MST) vowels. It is found that (i) vowels in the initial syllables of multisyllabic words have significantly lower mean durations when compared to vowels in final syllables; (ii) high vowels have lower mean durations than low vowels, confirming the findings of some earlier studies (Şayli 2002), (Şayli & Arslan 2003).

Older versions by Beste Kamali

to appear in Proceedings of ICTL 16, METU

to appear in Proceedings of ICTL 16, METU

Theoretical Linguistics, 2020

Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and contrastive topic in assertions f... more Much recent research has recognized the importance of focus and contrastive topic in assertions for discourse coherence. However, with few exceptions, it has been neglected that focus and contrastive topic also occur in questions, and have a similar role in establishing coherence. We propose a framework of dynamic interpretation based on the notion of Commitment Spaces that show that a uniform interpretation of focus and contrastive topic is possible. The algebraic representation format is rich enough so that a separate introduction of discourse trees is not necessary. The paper discusses these phenomena for Turkish, a language with an explicit focus marker for polar and alternative questions, which distinguishes focus from contrastive topic.

Pre-print version of paper that appeared in Turkic Languages 18, 2014

It has been claimed and widely assumed that caseless direct objects in Turkish exhibit a sort of ... more It has been claimed and widely assumed that caseless direct objects in Turkish exhibit a sort of syntactic incorporation, and only their cased counterparts are true syntactic arguments Öztürk 2005 among others). Cased and caseless objects are thus widely taken as derivationally related, crystallized in proposal that objects pick up overt accusative as they move out of the VP. In this paper, I would like to revisit both the empirical evidence and the interpretation leading to these claims and propose revisions.

Proceedings of ICTL 16 at METU, D. Zeyrek et al. (eds.), 2015

Proceedings of ICTL 16 at METU, D. Zeyrek et al. (eds.), 2015

1. a. hünkarbeğendi-niz-dén pot roast lamb with eggplant puree-POSS2PL-ABL b. Kandílli Cadde-sin-... more 2) a. hünkarbeğendi-niz-dén pot roast lamb with eggplant puree-POSS2PL-ABL b. Kandílli Cadde-sin-den-dir Kandilli Street-SI-ABL-EVID (Slightly changed from Inkelas & Orgun 1998) A comparison between and shows that this behavior is not specific to compounds. (a) examples show regular final word stress which is transferrable, indicating that compounds of this sort are not treated any differently than words. (b)

Turcology and Linguistics: Eva Csato Festschrift. N. Demir et al. (eds.), 2014

We study the impact of givenness on the position of the direct object in Czech with respect to th... more We study the impact of givenness on the position of the direct object in Czech with respect to three other clause-mate constituents: subject, verb, and a VP-modifying PP. Based on two controlled acceptability judgment experiments, we establish two main observations: (i) objects in all-new clauses are significantly less acceptable in a pre-verbal position than in a post-verbal position; and (ii) given objects are free to occur anywhere (pre-verbally or post-verbally) as long as they do not appear in the linearly final position with default main sentence stress.

Proceedings of WAFL 8, 2013

in proceedings of WCCFL 28, Mary Byram Washburn, Sarah Ouwayda, Chuoying Ouyang, Bin Yin, Canan Ipek, Lisa Marston, Aaron Walker (eds)

Harvard University, ZAS • I would like to thank Michael Becker, Cedric Boeckx, Daniel Büring, Ker... more Harvard University, ZAS • I would like to thank Michael Becker, Cedric Boeckx, Daniel Büring, Kerstin Schwabe, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Malte Zimmermann and audiences at WCCFL 28 for helpful comments and questions. All errors are my own. 1 Underlining indicates default sentential prominence, and capitals indicate narrowly focused constituents. -mI is vowel-harmonic and has four alternants: -mı, -mi, -mu, -mü. These will be in boldface for reading convenience.

This thesis presents new data in Turkish concerning phrasing and accent representation, question ... more This thesis presents new data in Turkish concerning phrasing and accent representation, question particle placement, and scope-sensitive prosodic phrasing. The issues at hand are discussed and analyzed within the perspective of minimalist assumptions to syntax and the interfaces, focusing on the PF interface.

To set the record straight in terms of previous research, Chapter 2 is devoted to a detailed critical review of the relevant literature in word accent, phrase and sentence accent, and phrasing in Turkish.

Chapter 3 amends some of the shortcomings of previous research with an intonation experiment investigating the focus-neutral phrasing and intonation in Turkish. The results are described and analyzed from the perspective of a pitch accent language, and tied to recent proposals of PF mapping of prosodic phrases relying on multiple spellout, where the highest phrase in the spellout domain is phrased as a Major Phrase within another Major Phrase corresponding roughly to the VP .

Chapter 4 introduces new data concerning the placement of the yes/no question particle. After reviewing prosodic, semantic, and syntactic factors at play, it is argued that the wide focus placement of the particle follows main stress. In parallel to the main stress analysis, an analysis relying on multiple spellout is presented where the particle phrase merges with the VP and attracts the closest phrase to its specifier. Moreover, in this chapter it is shown that the landscape of pre-stressing particles including the question particle can be addressed in syntactic terms.

Chapter 5 takes up another interface issue: phrasing-induced scope-taking. It is argued that this phrasing instantiates the IP in Turkish and it is show with various locality effects and a parallelism between Japanese and Turkish that IP phrasing also has its roots in the syntax.

The main tenet in all of these explanations is syntactocentric. This approach is not to be mistaken to invade the territory of other subdisciplines, however. It is instead presented as an overall viable and effective approach to deal with problems at the interfaces to account for phenomena which Phonology or Semantics alone have to have recourse to undesired irregularities and ad hoc adjustments.

The Uppsala Meeting. Eva Csato et al. (eds.), 2016

3rd Conference on Tone & Intonation in …, Jan 1, 2008

This paper provides an instrumental description of the durational properties of Turkish vowels as... more This paper provides an instrumental description of the durational properties of Turkish vowels as part of a larger research project for a fuller acoustic description of the sounds of the language. The basic aim of the paper is to contribute to the very few instrumental phonetic analyses of Turkish. By using audio recording and speech processing tools such as WaveSurfer, HTK, and WavRec, 111 Turkish words uttered by 6 native speakers were recorded and analyzed in terms of mean durations of eight equally distributed Modern Standard Turkish (MST) vowels. It is found that (i) vowels in the initial syllables of multisyllabic words have significantly lower mean durations when compared to vowels in final syllables; (ii) high vowels have lower mean durations than low vowels, confirming the findings of some earlier studies (Şayli 2002), (Şayli & Arslan 2003).

to appear in Proceedings of ICTL 16, METU

to appear in Proceedings of ICTL 16, METU

Turkish expresses two distinct plain polar question meanings based on two attachment options of t... more Turkish expresses two distinct plain polar question meanings based on two attachment options of the polar question clitic. The two forms are both neutral interrogatives felicitous in broad focus, and distinct from other question forms. One placement option comes with a cluster of properties including concealed negation and illocutionary force, and the other with positive evidential bias and default main stress. I show that this duality of primary polar question meanings is due to the presence of either polar {φ, ¬φ} or projective focal {φ, ψ, π,. .. } alternatives in the denotation of each of the options. The two meanings arise due to different syntactic outputs, which map to different clitic placement post-syntactically. A singleton-set analysis of polar question meaning such as those by Biezma and Rawlins (2012) and Krifka (2015) can account for the focal reading when amended by focus projection (Selkirk 1995). Not predicted by these accounts, broad focus polar alternatives also need to be part of the grammar. The duality makes predictions connecting the kind of the underlying alternatives to negation, bias, and further nuances evident in usage restrictions.