[PLing] Talk by Kinjal Joshi on December 12, 13:15 CET

[Madeleine Butschety]

Dear colleagues, 

we cordially invite you to a talk by Kinjal Joshi as part of the Jezik & Linguistics Colloquia series. His talk entitled "Negation in Surati Gujarati: Towards eliminating φ/Ā probes" (abstract: see below) will take place next week on Thursday, December 12, at 13:15 CET at lecture room P7 at the University of Nova Gorica (Kompas building), and online. 

To attend the talk via Zoom, please use the following link: 
[ https://ungsi.zoom.us/j/68842192466?pwd=VezXGkT663a5lxh3CkFboM5aHIcmt1.1 ] https://ungsi.zoom.us/j/68842192466?pwd=VezXGkT663a5lxh3CkFboM5aHIcmt1.1 

We hope to see many of you there! 

Best, 
Madeleine Butschety, on behalf of the Center for Cognitive Science of Language 

>>ABSTRACT: Kinjal Joshi 
"Negation in Surati Gujarati: Towards eliminating φ/Ā probes" 



In this talk, I will present original fieldwork data from Negation in Surati Gujarati (Indo-Aryan). Negation in this dialect of Gujarati shows agreement. Moreover, this agreement tracks contrastive focus. So, the negation marker can agree either with the subject or with the object depending on what is contrastively focused. This can lead to a pattern where the negation marker can agree independently of the main verb. 




Typically, in a Probe-Goal approach, the features that are copied back are those that narrowly match the probe (Chomsky 2000, 2001). I build on works by Deal (2015 & 2019) and extend Baier’s (2018) line of research where he argues that a ϕ-probe can copy both ϕ-features and Ā-features. By examining agreement patterns in negation, I demonstrate that even an Ā-probe can copy both ϕ-features and Ā-features from its goal, thereby blurring the distinction between Ā- and ϕ-probes. Consequently, I argue that narrow syntax does not differentiate between Ā-probes and ϕ-probes but instead focuses on the Satisfaction conditions on the probe, as conceptualized in Deal (2015). This I argue, leads to a unified theory of probes, emphasizing a singular mechanism for fulfilling the Satisfaction conditions. 





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