Harris, Alice
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Professor, Department of Linguistics
Last Name
Harris
First Name
Alice
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Linguistics
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Historical linguistics
Morphology
Typology
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Publication Metadata only Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Syntactic Change(2003) Harris, Alice CarmichaelPublication Metadata only On the Origins of Circumfixes in Kartvelian(2002) Harris, Alice CarmichaelPublication Metadata only Diachronic Morphological Typology(2006) Harris, Alice CarmichaelPublication Open Access Perception of Exuberant Exponence in Batsbi(2011) Harris, Alice Carmichael; Samuel, Arthur GBatsbi has multiple exponence (redundant marking) in gender-number agreement, and in a series of experiments we explore the question of whether marking of this kind is functional. In a series of three experiments, we compare verbs that have no agreement marker with ones that have a single marker, and we compare verbs with one agreement marker with ones that have two. We find that word recognition is slower with agreement than without it; words with two agreement markers are recognized more slowly and with more errors relative to verbs with a single marker. For grammaticality judgments, subjects were generally slower to respond when the verb carried more markers. For verbs with no marker versus verbs with one marker, this extra cognitive effort yielded improved accuracy; however, this advantage did not extend to multiple exponence, as the extra processing time did not produce much improvement in accuracy. In cued recall, the presence of one marker conferred a clear advantage in accuracy, but the presence of two agreement markers actually resulted in decreased accuracy. Overall, multiple exponence was found not to confer a functional advantage in these experiments.Publication Open Access The Challenge of Typologically Unusual Structures(2003) Harris, Alice CarmichaelPublication Metadata only Syntactic Reconstruction and Demythologizing “Myths and the Prehistory of Grammars”(2002) Harris, Alice CarmichaelPublication Metadata only Origins of Differential Unaccusative/Unergative Case Marking: Implications for Innateness(2010) Harris, Alice CarmichaelPublication Metadata only Exuberant Exponence in Batsbi(2009) Harris, Alice CarmichaelAlthough multiple exponence has long been recognized by some, morpheme-based theories predict that it will not exist. To deal with the existence of double exponence in some languages, a variety of ways have been sought around the restrictions imposed by these theories. In Batsbi, a language of the Nakh-Dagestanian family, in principle as many as six markers may occur in a single verb (five gender-number markers and one person-number marker), each agreeing in many instances with the same argument; in fact, examples presented here have up to four agreement markers. The implications of this for linguistic theory are explored. An analysis is proposed in terms of word-based morphology.Publication Metadata only Preverbs and their Origins in Georgian and Udi(2003) Harris, Alice CarmichaelPublication Metadata only On the Explanation of Typologically Unusual Structures(2008) Harris, Alice CarmichaelThis chapter argues that languages are ‘bundles of historical accidents’. It further argues that unusual or rare features are unusual or rare because they are the accidental result of many different circumstances or conditions that have been lined up in just the right way. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 3.2 discusses the structure of the argument and compares the explanation with other general approaches. Sections 3.3 and 3.4 describe a very rare structure in Georgian and in Udi, respectively, and show that each may be explained by the approach adopted here. Section 3.5 discusses the Uniformitarian Principle in this context, and Section 3.6 presents some conclusions.
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