Farrell Ackerman
Dept.
of Linguistics
UC
San Diego
9500
Gilman Drive
La
Jolla, Ca. 92093-0108
Office
Phone 858-534-1158
Email: fackerman at ucsd dot edu
I work
on a broad range of issues relating to Lexicalism construed generously: lexical
semantics, morphology, and syntax. I'm concerned with cross-linguistic and
typological matters in these domains, especially within the Uralic family.
Following up on research from my book with Webelhuth (see below) I am exploring
ways of applying Word & Paradigm (alternatively,
inferential-realizational ) models of morphology to constraint based lexicalist
theories. This work focuses on the relevance of paradigms and periphrasis
for theory construction within a view of grammar referred to as Realization-based
Lexicalism (Blevins 2001).
In collaboration with J. P. Blevins http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/jpb39/
and Rob Malouf http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~malouf/
this research on morphology has broadened into explorations of morphology as a
complex adaptive system (following research in Ecological Developmental Biology
(Gilbert and Epers 2009)). We utilize information-theoretic measures to study
cross-linguistic paradigm organization in terms of implicational relations
among related wordforms. Related work is being done by Gregory Stump and Rafael
Finkel http://www.cs.uky.edu/~gstump/
and Andrew Wedel http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~wedel/
.
Recently,
I have been working on the description and theoretical analysis of an
underdocumented Kordofanian language, Moro, spoken in Sudan. This is collaborative work with my
co-PI Sharon Rose and several graduate and undergraduate students under the
auspices of an NSF grant (BCS-0745973).
This research can be seen at http://moro.ucsd.edu/.
I have also worked on correspondence-based mapping theories with John Moore
(see below) and we are presently developing this work.
Recent Invited
Presentations
Construction-theoretic
morphology.
14th International
Morphology Meeting, Budapest Hungary, May 2010.
Affix ordering and the morphosyntax of object marking in Moro.
Lexical Functional Grammar 09,
Cambridge University. July 2009.
A construction-theoretic
approach to possessive relatives. UC Davis, Linguistics Colloquium. November 2009.
A construction-theoretic
approach to part-whole relations in grammar.
University of Oregon,
Linguistics Colloquium. April 2009.
Language as a complex
system (with
Jim Blevins, Rob Malouf, and Andrew Wedel).
Biology-Linguistics Nexus: MLK 2009 Workshop, Ohio State University
Inflectional
morphology as a complex adaptive system. (with Robert Malouf and James Blevins)
First
Annual Complex Systems and Language Workshop, Tucson, April 2008.
Construction-theoretic
approaches to grammar: Lessons from syntax and word-based (Word and Paradigm)
morphology.
Seminar Course, Linguistics
Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
June 4-8 2007.
Patterns
of relatedness in complex morphological systems and why they matter. (with Rob Malouf)
Workshop
on Analogy in Grammar: Form and Acquisition. Department of Linguistics, Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, 2006.
Paradigm
organization in the nominal declension system of Tundra Nenets. (With Rob Malouf)
Words and
Paradigms: Perspectives on Uralic, 12th International Morphology Meeting, Budapest, Hungary, May 2006.
Recent Workshops &
Symposia Organized
2nd
Language as a complex adaptive system workshop.
UC San
Diego, Center for Human Development.
February 2010.
Four dimensions in
evolution.
Human
Development Colloquium Series. Winter 2009.
Organizer
for the Syntax Sessions.
18th International
Congress of Linguists, Seoul Korea.
July 21st-26th 2008.
Applications of Biological
Models to Behavioral Science (with Nick Spitzer).
Human
Development Colloquium Series.
Fall 2008.
1st Language as
a complex adaptive system workshop. (with
Andrew Wedel)
University of Arizona, Tuscon. April 2008.
Recent Presentations
Paradigm entropy as a
measure of morphological simplicity.
(with
Rob Malouf)
Morphological complexity: Implications for the theory of language,
Harvard University, January 2010.
An evolutionary explanation
for the Paradigm Economy Principle.
(with
Rob Malouf)
Linguistic
Society Meeting January 2010.
Proto-properties and
obliqueness. (with
John Moore).
Conference on Case In and Across Languages. Helsinki, Finland. August 2009.
A construction-theoretic
approach to possessive relatives (with Irina Nikolaeva)
Frames
and Constructions: A Tribute to
Charles Fillmore. UC Berkeley,
July 2009.
The Morphosyntax of Filler-Gap
Constructions in Moro. (with George Gibbard, Peter
Jenks, Laura
Kertz & Sharon Rose.)
ACAL,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne. April, 2009.
Balancing description,
typology, and theory in Thetogovela Moro. (with George Gibbard, Peter
Jenks, Laura
Kertz & Sharon Rose)
ACAL,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne. April, 2009.
A construction-theoretic
approach to lexical periphrasis in Hungarian complex predicates. (with
Robert Malouf,
and Gert Webelhuth)
18th
International Congress of Linguists, Seoul, Korea. July 2008.
An
entropy-based measure of morphological information. (with James Blevins and Rob
Malouf.)
3rd
Workshop on Quantitative Investigations in Theoretical Linguistics (QITL - 3),
Helsinki, Finland.
July 2008.
Some
older downloadable stuff:
From
a weeklong mini-course at the Hungarian Academy of Science in 2007: On contruction-theoretic morphology and
syntax
1.
Lexical Semantics and Linking
I have
published a book with John Moore which develops a theory of
semantically-induced argument selection based on Dowty's 1991 proto-role
proposal. This book is titled Proto-properties and Argument Encoding: a
Correspondence Theory of Argument Selection. CSLI
Publications. Click on the book cover for further information.
Another
paper related to this topic is listed below:
Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic Dimensions of Causee Encoding (co-authored with John Moore). Linguistics and Philosophy
22:1-44 1999.
2. Typology
of Relatives
I am completing
a book with Irina Nikolaeva titled
Descriptive typology and
grammatical theory: A construction-theoretic study in morphosyntax. This focuses on the typology of
prenominal relative constructions in the languages of Eurasia: these relatives bear close relations to possessive
constructions. In this work we develop a construction-based multiple
inheritance hierarchy treatment of this type of relative. A variant of
this analysis presebted at the 2nd International Conferences on Construction in
Helsinki Sept. 3-6 2002 id downloadable below, as is an earilier paper from LFG
98:
Here is
a paper is on this topic downloadable in ps and pdf formats: (talk presented at
LFG98 Brisbane, Australia)
Constructions and Mixed Categories:
Determining the Semantic Interpretation of Person/Number Marking
pdf format
ps format
Another paper is
obtainable from the LFG on-line volume collection at:
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/publications/miscpubsonline.html
3. Syntax,
Morphology, and the Lexicon: A
precursor to word-based construction-theoretic morphology
I have developed
a lexicalist analysis of periphrastic predicate constructions with Gert
Webelhuth. This represents a synthesis of work within Lexical Functional
Grammar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar and
word-based theories of morphology. The research defines an alternative
conceptualization of Lexicalism referred to as Realization-based Lexicalism
(Blevins 2001). My work with John Moore on argument selection provides
additional evidence for the need to recognize the expanded notion of predicate
assumed within Realization-based Lexicalism. Work based on this view has led to
collaborative research with Greg Stump. This work focuses on periphrastic
constructions in both inflection and derivation and draws out
their consequences for developing an interface between syntax and the type of
inferential-realizational model which permits multi-word expressions.
Here is
the book Gert and I co-authored:
Webelhuth, Gert and Farrell Ackerman. (1998). A Theory of
Predicates.
Stanford:
CSLI Publications. Distributed by Cambridge University Press.
(Erratum)
Click
on the book for a description of what it's about.
Here is
a paper relating to this work in ps and pdf formats. The paper develops a
notion of "Lexical Blocking" to replace the notion of
"Morphological Blocking" standardly appealed to in the lexicalist
literature. We argue that synthetically expressed entities with lexical
representations block analytically expressed entities with lexical
representations.
The Composition of (Dis)continuous
Predicates (co-authored with Gert Webelhuth).
In Acta
Linguistica Hungarica special volume edited by Katalin E. Kiss. 1998.
ps format
pdf format
Another paper
relating to this work provides syntactic evidence for the claim that there is
broad class of constructions, including certain VP idioms, whose behavioral
profile suggests that they are all interpretable as predicates, irrespective of
their surface expression by single words or multiple independent words.
A Lexical-Functional Analysis of
Predicate Topicalization in German (co-authored with Gert Webelhuth).
1999. The American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literature Vol. 11 No. 1
pdf format
As an extension
of work in the book, I've been exploring alternative ways to embed Word &
Paradigm models of
morphology
into constraint based lexicalist frameworks. Here's two pieces of work in
this line of research. The CLS paper identifies two types of effects that can
be used to distinguish between syntactic composition approaches to complex
predicates versus lexicalist approaches: constructional effects and paradigm
effects. These effects are illustrated by briefly examining the SUBJ/OBJ
predicate agreement paradigms in Mordvin and the SUBJ predicate agreement
paradigm in Udmurt (Votyak). The Berkeley Formal Grammar talk develops the
theme in the CLS talk by closely examining the SUBJ agreement paradigm in
Udmurt.
Syntactic
expression as morphological exponence. Talk given at
Chicago Lingustics Society Meeting,
2000.
pdf format
Lexical
Constructions: Paradigms and Periphrastic Expression. Talk given at
the Berkeley Formal
Grammar Conferenence 2000.
pdf format
Some of
the data and proposals covered in the preceding handouts are worked out
in detail for the Uralic
language
Mari (Cheremis) in the following paper co-authored with Greg Stump.
Paradigms and Syntactic
Expression: A study in realization-based lexicalism.
pdf format