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thesis and monograph work back to the top ↑

Ahn, Byron, Nanette Veilleux, Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel & Alejna Brugos. Accepted. Embarking on PoLaR Explorations: A Framework for Intonational Annotation and Analysis.
abstract Monograph Bib

This monograph lays out an extensive set of guidelines that define the PoLaR framework for prosodic labelling, whose name is based on Points, Levels, and Ranges. The aim of this system is to provide a means of annotating the core components of prosody (especially with respect to intonation) on separate tiers. This includes information such as pitch turning points, pitch ranges, prominence and phrases. A hallmark of PoLaR is that these features can be annotated separately from one another and systematically, in a way that is not offered by other popular systems of intonational annotation; at the same time, PoLaR also provides advanced labellers with optional labels that can annotate analyses of how these features are related to one another. PoLaR’s shallow learning curve, its flexibility, and its extensibility make PoLaR useful and accessible to a wide variety of researchers, from a wide variety of backgrounds, working on a wide variety of languages and varieties. The structure of this monograph is as follows. After providing background context for PoLaR in Chapter 1, Chapters 2 and 3 comprise the annotation guidelines. After the official guidelines, we discuss details about how PoLaR has been explicitly designed to be customized or expanded upon (Chapter 4), as well as some usage cases for PoLaR and some of its advantages (Chapter 5).
@book{Ahn-Veilleux-Shattuck-Hufnagel-Brugos-PoLaR-explorations-ms, author = {Ahn, Byron and Veilleux, Nanette and {Shattuck-Hufnagel}, Stefanie and Brugos, Alejna}, monograph = {https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/006269}, title = {Embarking on {P}o{L}a{R} Explorations: A Framework for Intonational Annotation and Analysis}, year = {Accepted} }

Ahn, Byron. 2015. Giving Reflexivity a Voice: Twin Reflexives in English. UCLA dissertation.
abstract Thesis Bib

Across languages, there is variability in the surface realization of reflexivity, according to various sets of properties. For example, there are languages (e.g. Greek, Lakhota) that seem to treat some of their reflexive clauses as being in a non-active voice, similar to a passive. There are also languages (e.g. French, Kannada) in which reflexivity is encoded differently depending on whether the antecedent is the subject or not. In this way, English seems to be different: reflexivity is apparently realized in a homogeneous way – filling an argument position with an anaphoric expression like themselves – regardless of clausal voice or grammatical role of the antecedent.

This homogeneity is an illusion. Despite using a single set of anaphoric expressions for reflexivity in various situations, reflexive anaphors in English fall into two classes: those that exhibit exceptional prosodic behaviors, and those that do not.

This exceptionality can be directly observed in two domains: the distribution of "default" phrasal stress, and the distribution of a certain focal accent. From the results of investigations on these issues, I show that the distribution of exceptionally behaving reflexive anaphors is structurally constrained. This implicates that there must a be syntactic account for these prosodic properties.

Assuming that syntactic structure plays a near deterministic role in prosody (an assumption going back to even the earliest generative work on phrasal stress; Chomsky and Halle 1968:25), I argue for a more refined syntactic structure of reflexivity. Briefly, I demonstrate a sub-class of reflexive anaphors in English undergo a syntactic movement (to a reflexive VoiceP). This movement, along with independently motivated mechanisms for placement of phrasal stress and focal accents, derives the heterogeneous prosodic behaviors of reflexives in English. Crucially, this analysis does not require the prosodic component to have any stipulations for specific (classes of) words, in line with a Minimalist approach to the Syntax-Prosody Interface.

This model of reflexivity simultaneously reduces the amount of theoretical machinery necessary to achieve descriptive adequacy, while also enhancing the model’s predictive power. Moreover, this research has broad theoretical implications, beyond just reflexives in English. This theory is able to unify the various morpho-syntactic instantiations of reflexivizing functions – across languages – as being related to the Reflexive VoiceP. It also establishes a core set of properties that define clausal reflexivity, each of which are the result of the formal properties of the reflexive Voice head. Finally, it provides direct support for the hypothesis that syntactic and prosodic structures are maximally isomorphic, with prosodic cues in the signal giving direct evidence for otherwise invisible in syntactic structure.
@phdthesis{Ahn-PhDThesis, author = {Ahn, Byron}, school = {UCLA}, thesis = {https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002359}, title = {Giving Reflexivity a Voice: Twin Reflexives in {E}nglish}, year = {2015} }
Ahn, Byron. 2010. Not Just Emphatic Reflexives Themselves: Their Prosody, Semantics and Syntax. UCLA dissertation.
abstract Thesis Bib

Emphatic Reflexives is the term used to describe the use of reflexive pronouns in an emphatic, adjunct-like way, as in "Sayoko drove to LA herself." Emphatic Reflexives (ERs) have been investigated by many in the course of generative linguistics (Moravcsik 1972, Edmondson and Plank 1978, Browning 1993, Eckardt 2001, Hole 2002, Konig and Gast 2002, Bergeton 2004, Konig and Siemund 2005, and Tavano 2006, to name a few), but past analyses leave some questions inadequately or not at all answered.

I endeavor to explain as many of the phenomena as possible, focusing on three main points. First, there are exactly two readings of ERs, each with its own felicity conditions, syntactic licensing and semantic properties. Second, ERs are indeed instances of reflexive pronouns that are subject to the Binding Conditions; and though some ERs may appear linearly disjoint from their associate DP, they are always (extremely locally) bound. Thirdly, all ERs are obligatorily contrastively focused under both readings, and they exhibit prosodic properties related to this.

In making these arguments, I also find evidence for hypotheses that may have broader impact, such as the fact that the Voice head must be the licenser of volitional agents and that the MAE ToBI model of English intonational structure needs modification.
@mastersthesis{Ahn-MAThesis, author = {Ahn, Byron}, school = {UCLA}, thesis = {Ahn-MA.pdf}, title = {Not Just Emphatic Reflexives Themselves: Their Prosody, Semantics and Syntax}, year = {2010} }

papers and manuscripts back to the top ↑

Ahn, Byron, Sunwoo Jeong & Craig Sailor. In Press. Systematic ‘stray’ focus stress in English? ApparentLY! In WCCFL 39 Proceedings, Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
abstract Paper Bib

In certain responsive contexts, English allows normally prosodically‑weak syllables to exceptionally bear focus marking: “apparentLÝ,” “mayBÉ,” “looks LÍKE,” etc. This is striking for at least two reasons: (i) English prosody is otherwise robust in requiring focus accents to arise on the head of a prosodic category (and not on a weak position, as here), and (ii) the focus accent here arises on an expression that is not even part of the semantically‑focused domain—that is, this phenomenon involves a semantics‑prosody misalignment. As this “stray” focal stress (SFS) phenomenon has received almost no attention in the literature, we begin by describing its distributional, phonological, and semantic properties. We then propose an analysis whereby SFS arises as a side effect of a syntactic derivation in which the domain of F‑marking happens not to map to any segmentally‑overt material at PF. As a result of this, the focus prosody must look for a host elsewhere, only finding an optimal host on PF material corresponding to a position outside the F‑marked domain. In the SFS data we analyze in this paper, the null F‑marked element sits in the low left periphery and contributes meaning relating to the speaker’s beliefs, encoding their degree of certainty about the assertion. However, our analysis also predicts that SFS should arise in various other configurations where null operators are under semantic focus. By characterizing these general conditions for SFS, we hope to provide a blueprint for the identification and analysis of other such semantics‑prosody misalignments.
@incollection{Ahn-Jeong-Sailor-WCCFL39, author = {Ahn, Byron and Jeong, Sunwoo and Sailor, Craig}, booktitle = {{WCCFL} 39 Proceedings}, publisher = {Cascadilla Proceedings Project}, title = {Systematic ‘stray’ focus stress in {E}nglish? Apparent{LY}!}, year = {In Press} }
Conrod, Kirby, Ruth Schultz & Byron Ahn. In Press. How many selves for them? In NELS 52: Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society,
abstract Paper Materials Bib

This work investigates the syntactic and semantic distribution of reflexive forms themself vs. themselves. We focus on whether the use of -self vs -selves is affected by specificity of the antecedent, distinguishing seven levels for a singular antecedent: quantified indefinites (some/any), quantified universals (each/every/no), generic kind definites, specific indefinites, specific definites, unknown specific person, named person. We administered an online acceptability judgment survey to 1,127 participants, recruited on Twitter and Prolific, who rated sentences on a 5-point Likert scale from “very natural” to “very unnatural,” in a randomized order, and then completed a short demographic survey. We find that antecedent type, -self/-selves form of the anaphor, and social variables including age, gender, and endorsement of prescriptive language ideology all affected how participants rated the sentences; themself was generally rated higher than themselves for most antecedents, contra previous findings. Our results seem to indicate that themself is preferred by many English speakers for singular antecedents, and also that the singular use of themself/themselves is a sociosyntactically active and salient variable across those speakers.
@incollection{Conrod-Schultz-Ahn-NELS52, author = {Conrod, Kirby and Schultz, Ruth and Ahn, Byron}, booktitle = {{NELS} 52: Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the {N}orth {E}ast {L}inguistics {S}ociety}, title = {How many selves for them?}, year = {In Press} }
Ahn, Byron. 2022. Mapping OUT- Argument Structure. Syntax 25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/synt.12241
abstract Paper Bib

This paper explores a phenomenon of English in which out- combines with a predicate to form a complex predicate (e.g., outsing, outdo, outrun, outsmart, ...), here called "out-PRED". A thorough investigation uncovers several new generalizations, leading to analyses (i) that out-PRED formation is a productive syntactic process, which build upon the structure for PRED, and (ii) that out- is the core of the out-PRED clause’s extended verbal projection. These findings are derived through a structure in which out- merges with PRED before any argument(s) can merge. This will be further supported by exploring domains in which out-PRED is unavailable; though these domains appear unrelated at the surface, they share deep derivational properties that are incompatible with this sort of out-PRED derivation. The findings of this work have implications for the representation of argument structure more generally, supporting analyses where all arguments of a verb are syntactically severed from it.
@article{Ahn-Syntax-outPRED, author = {Ahn, Byron}, date-modified = {2022-03-26 07:29:34 -0400}, journal = {Syntax}, volume = {25}, title = {Mapping \emph{{OUT}-} Argument Structure}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1111/synt.12241} }
Ahn, Byron, Nanette Veilleux, Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel & Alejna Brugos. 2021. PoLaR Annotation Guidelines (version 1.0). Retrieved from https://osf.io/usbx5/
abstract Materials Bib

This document lays out an extensive set of guidelines that define the PoLaR framework for prosodic labelling, which is based on Points, Levels, and Ranges. The aim of this system is to provide a means of annotating (both separately and more explicitly) information such as f0 scaling and alignment, that is already taken into account by labellers using other intonational annotation systems, but in less explicit ways.
@misc{Ahn-Veilleux-Shattuck-Hufnagel-Brugos-PoLaR-v1.0, author = {Ahn, Byron and Veilleux, Nanette and {Shattuck-Hufnagel}, Stefanie and Brugos, Alejna}, howpublished = {Guidelines and materials available at \url{https://osf.io/usbx5/}}, title = {{P}o{L}a{R} Annotation Guidelines (version 1.0)}, year = {2021} }
Ahn, Byron, Nanette Veilleux & Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel. 2019. Annotating Prosody with PoLaR: Conventions for a Decompositional Annotation System. In Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain, & Paul Warren (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, 1302–1306. Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.
abstract Paper Bib

An utterance’s intonational characteristics vary according to linguistic meaning; even controlling for meaning, they may vary across speakers, and even across utterances for a given speaker. Phonological annotation systems typically bundle together disparate characteristics, such as f0 scaling, alignment, and prominence (e.g., labels like H*). This can make it difficult to document variation, and also to determine which aspects of the signal (i) result from the phonology-phonetics interface, (ii) vary according to abstract linguistic features, (iii) depend on dialect, social context, or emotional state, or (iv) may be simply noise. This has motivated a new annotation system: Points, Levels, and Ranges (PoLaR). PoLaR takes inspiration from (and can be used alongside) existing theoretical (AM theory) and transcriptional (IPO, IViE, RPT) systems, but is neither a phonological/cognitive model, nor an acoustic/physical model. It isolates individual prosodic characteristics, using labels that transparently correspond to aspects of the acoustics and/or native speaker perception.
@incollection{Ahn-Veilleux-Shattuck-Hufnagel-ICPhS2019-PoLaR, address = {Canberra, Australia}, author = {Ahn, Byron and Veilleux, Nanette and Shattuck-Hufnagel, Stefanie}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 19th {I}nternational {C}ongress of {P}honetic {S}ciences, {M}elbourne, {A}ustralia 2019}, editor = {Calhoun, Sasha and Escudero, Paola and Tabain, Marija and Warren, Paul}, pages = {1302--1306}, publisher = {Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.}, title = {Annotating Prosody with {P}o{L}a{R}: Conventions for a Decompositional Annotation System}, year = {2019} }
Zhou, Z.L. & Byron Ahn. 2019. Is this in the phonology? Examining the intonational phonetics-phonology interface with American English polar questions. In Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain, & Paul Warren (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, 2450–2454. Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.
abstract Paper Bib

In this paper, we discuss a priori unexpected pitch movements (spurious pitch movements; SPMs) preceding the L* in rising MAE polar questions. In experimental data, we find two non-canonical contours: a rise-fall SPM with a peak, and a steady-high-and-fall SPM with a plateau. In both, the alignment and scaling of SPMs is more variable than might be predictable with MAE_ToBI as currently defined.

We present a linear mixed effects model which shows that SPMs reflect fine-grained detail related to fluency and emotional state, but also the semantico-pragmatics of the discourse context: they appear to be correlated with fewer expectations about possible answers. Our results necessitate a model in which this type of phonetic variation can be understood as linguistically structured and motivated.
@incollection{Zhou-Ahn-ICPhS2019-PQ, address = {Canberra, Australia}, author = {Zhou, Z.L. and Ahn, Byron}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 19th {I}nternational {C}ongress of {P}honetic {S}ciences, {M}elbourne, {A}ustralia 2019}, editor = {Calhoun, Sasha and Escudero, Paola and Tabain, Marija and Warren, Paul}, pages = {2450--2454}, publisher = {Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.}, title = {Is this in the phonology? Examining the intonational phonetics-phonology interface with {A}merican {E}nglish polar questions}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron. 2019. Features, Identity, and ‘Yourself.’ In Maggie Baird & Jonathan Pesetsky (eds.), NELS 49: Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society, Vol. 1, 15–24.
abstract Paper Handout Bib

It has been widely assumed that the φ-features of bound pronouns must φ-match their antecedents. (We behave ourselves/*themselves.) While generally true, φ-mismatches are regularly (and commonly) attested, e.g.,:

Each of us behaves ourselves/themselves. (3sg antecedent; 1pl/3pl anaphor)

I wouldn’t blame yourself.1em (1sg antecedent; 2sg anaphor)

However, mismatch is constrained in informative ways. The patterns indicate that there are two derivational pathways for bound pronouns, such that 3.sg bound pronouns necessarily involve extra derivational machinery.
@incollection{Ahn-NELS49, author = {Ahn, Byron}, booktitle = {{NELS} 49: Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the {N}orth {E}ast {L}inguistics {S}ociety}, editor = {Baird, Maggie and Pesetsky, Jonathan}, pages = {15--24}, title = {Features, Identity, and `Yourself'}, volume = {1}, year = {2019} }
Gasser, Emily, Byron Ahn, Donna Jo Napoli & Z.L. Zhou. 2019. Production, perception, and communicative goals of American newscaster speech. Language in Society 48(2). 233–259.
abstract Paper Bib

Listeners often have the intuition that the speech of broadcast news reporters somehow ‘sounds different’; previous literature supports this observation and has described some distinctive aspects of newscaster register. This article presents two studies further describing the characteristic properties and functions of American English newscaster speech, focusing specifically on prosody. In the first, we investigate the production of newscaster speech. We describe the measurable differences in pitch, speed, intensity, and melodic features between newscaster and conversational speech, and connect those traits to perceptions of authority, credibility, charisma, and related characteristics. In the second, we investigate the perception of newscaster speech. Our experiments demonstrate that listeners can distinguish newscaster from conversational speech given only prosodic information, and that they use a subset of the newscasters’ distinguishing features to do so.
@article{Gasser-Ahn-Napoli-Zhou-news-attitudes, author = {Gasser, Emily and Ahn, Byron and Napoli, Donna Jo and Zhou, Z.L.}, journal = {Language in Society}, number = {2}, pages = {233--259}, title = {Production, perception, and communicative goals of {A}merican newscaster speech}, volume = {48}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron & Laura Kalin. 2018. What’s in a (English) Reflexive? In NELS 48: Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society, Vol. 1, 1–13.
abstract Paper Handout Bib

In this paper, we investigate the internal structure of English reflexive anaphors. While it is clear that English Reflexive anaphors consist of a pronoun and a form of “self”, any questions of how their internal structure is derived have been largely ignored. We take up two puzzles the explore this more deeply.

First, the case puzzle: the pronominal components are genitive in 1st/2nd person (myself, yourselves) but accusative in 3rd person (himself, themselves).

Second, the modifier puzzle: modifiers are possible between the pronoun and “self”, but only some of them still permit the expression to occur in reflexive positions (Behave your annoying/*tired self!, She her brilliant/*caffeinated selfsolved a Millennium Problem.).

We show that the solutions to these puzzles are inter-related, and collude to lead us towards a precise syntactic analysis. In particular, our investigations into these puzzles have led us to make several conclusions: (i) they are syntactically complex, (ii) their reflexivity emerges through the derivation, and (iii) at least some morphological processes must ordered after syntax. Moreover, this work may have serious implications for many other areas, such as the analysis of exempt reflexives, what varies across dialects, and what varies across languages.
@incollection{Ahn-Kalin-NELS48, author = {Ahn, Byron and Kalin, Laura}, booktitle = {{NELS} 48: Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the {N}orth {E}ast {L}inguistics {S}ociety}, pages = {1--13}, title = {What's in a ({E}nglish) Reflexive?}, volume = {1}, year = {2018} }
Ahn, Byron. 2016. Reflexes of Reflexivity: Locality and the Interfaces. Proceedings from the 50th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society.
abstract Paper Bib

When a reflexive argument is bound by a local subject (Local Subject-Oriented Reflexivity, LSOR), many languages employ a distinct morphosyntactic configuration for marking reflexivity, including: Dogrib (Na-Dené) ede, Italian (Romance) si, Japanese (Altaic) zibunzisin, Kannada (Dravidian) -koND, Russian (Slavic) sebe, and Shona (Niger-Congo) zvi.

This raises an important and naive question: what is it about local subjects that gives them a privileged ability to license LSOR-marking? Upon further investigation, a second more informed question arises: why do only some local subjects (specifically, non-derived subjects) license LSOR-marking?

I argue that reflexive anaphors move to a position near the subject, and this movement is done to locally satisfy the syntactic and semantic demands of a reflexive Voice⁰, REFL, which ensures (without stipulation) that the subject is not a derived one. With only REFL, its syntactic/semantic properties, and constraints on locality, we thus derive how the grammatical role of the antecedent may effect LSOR-marking.

Additionally, this analysis derives the range of possibilities for morphosyntactic exponents of LSOR: including a unique anaphor, verbal affix, and/or special word-order. Specifically, REFL Voice⁰ can be realized (or not), it induces a (covert) movement that can result in a special word-order (or not), and anything it selects (including an anaphor) can be featurally-distinct and can thus have a unique form (or not). These are all purely instances of surface variation with the same formal underpinnings.

As such, the subject-orientation puzzles presented by LSOR, as well as its possible morphosyntactic instantiations, are reduced to issues of locality and surface variation.
@article{Ahn-CLS50, author = {Ahn, Byron}, journal = {Proceedings from the 50th Annual Meeting of the {C}hicago {L}inguistic {S}ociety}, title = {Reflexes of Reflexivity: Locality and the Interfaces}, year = {2016} }
Ahn, Byron, Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel & Nanette Veilleux. 2016. Evidence and Intonational Contours: An Experimental Approach to Meaning in Intonation. Proceedings of the Sixteenth Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology 189–192.
abstract Paper Bib

One proposed function of prosody is conveying speakers’ stances on the evidence for their statements and assessments of listeners’ beliefs. Testing this is challenging - specifying evidential status is difficult, and speakers vary intonationally for a given context. A novel task of reading lines from comic strips elicits relatively consistent intonation, suggesting both the method’s usefulness, and the efficacy of speaker beliefs in governing prosodic contours. Preliminary results suggest H* accents are used when speakers believe they have evidence the hearer lacks, and L* accents for the flipped situation.
@article{Ahn-Shattuck-Hufnagel-Veilleux-SST2016, author = {Ahn, Byron and Shattuck-Hufnagel, Stefanie and Veilleux, Nanette}, journal = {Proceedings of the Sixteenth {A}ustralasian International Conference on {S}peech {S}cience and {T}echnology}, pages = {189--192}, title = {Evidence and Intonational Contours: An Experimental Approach to Meaning in Intonation}, year = {2016} }
Ahn, Byron. 2016. The Role of Syntax in the Nuclear Stress Rule. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016, 203–206. International Speech Communication Association.
abstract Paper Bib

How directly the operation of phrasal stress placement refers to syntax is theory-dependent: directly in some (e.g., Truckenbrodt 1995, Kahnemuyipour 2009), indirectly in others (e.g., Chomsky & Halle 1968, Halle & Vergnaud 1987). Adequately evaluating this issue requires knowing both the relevant syntactic structure(s) as well as how syntax interacts with phonology - neither is trivial. This paper argues that syntax transparently feeds prosody at regular sub-intervals of structure building (e.g., Uriagereka 1999, Chomsky 2001), and the phrasal stress placement operation refers directly to syntactic hierarchy, without exception. As such, wherever the NSR’s predictions are "incorrect", the syntactic representation must be amended (e.g., Steedman 2000, Wagner 2005). The major contribution of this work is not in its speciﬁc findings, but rather in its demonstration of a methodology by which phrasal stress data are used to understand syntax and not vice versa.
@incollection{Ahn-SP8phrasalstress, author = {Ahn, Byron}, booktitle = {Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016}, pages = {203--206}, publisher = {International Speech Communication Association}, title = {The Role of Syntax in the {N}uclear {S}tress {R}ule}, year = {2016} }
Ahn, Byron. 2016. Syntax-phonology mapping and the Tongan DP. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 1(1). 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.39
abstract Paper Bib

Tongan, a Polynesian language, is almost entirely head-initial. There are some exceptions to this: Demonstrative enclitics and the so-called Definitive Accent (Churchward 1953), which appears to be a stress-shift operation, typically in the rightmost word of the DP. This leads to an important question: where does the morphophonological status of being an enclitic come from - especially in a radically head-initial language?

By investigating the distributional properties of the Definitive Accent, it will become clear that this is the result of syntactic and phonological structures proceeding without any direct appeal to morphophonological properties. Instead, the syntactic and phonological analyses will derive the positions of the Definitive Accent and possible prosodic phrasings, appealing to independently motivated phonological constraints applying to structures with three cross-linguistically supported movement operations. It is shown that achieving this requires neither including morpheme-indexed constraints, nor having lexemes marked in the lexicon with morphophonological properties such as "enclitic" or "prefix".

Finally, Tongan Definitive Accents raise important issues about the immutability of phases. Specifically, it must be that Phonology may access and manipulate previously spelled out material in a way that Syntax cannot, which is in fact exactly what a Minimalist architecture predicts.
@article{Ahn-TonganMorphophonology, author = {Ahn, Byron}, doi = {10.5334/gjgl.39}, journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics}, number = {1}, pages = {4}, title = {Syntax-phonology mapping and the {T}ongan {DP}}, volume = {1}, year = {2016} }
Ahn, Byron. 2015. There’s Nothing Exceptional about the Phrasal Stress Rule. lingBuzz/002458.
abstract Paper Bib

Since the beginning of generative work on phrasal stress, it has been convincingly argued that syntax generates structure, and the phrasal-stress assignment operation takes syntactic output as its input. In addition, it has long been assumed that there are exceptions to the phrasal-stress assignment operation, caused by certain lexical or interpretive properties. This paper demonstrates that having such exceptions to the rule is not only undesirable on purely theoretical grounds, but is also unsuccessful on empirical grounds.

Instead, this paper argues that putative examples of exceptionality are in fact produced by an exceptionless model, extending logic in Wagner 2006 and Ahn 2015. Specifically, the model rethinks the nature of the system that predicts phrasal stress placement. Instead of a linear-based rule with exceptions, evidence is found in favor of an exceptionless and structure-based phrasal stress assignment operation in the vein of Cinque 1993 and subsequent works such as Zubizarreta 1998. The proposed theory allows phrasal-stress assignment to conform to Minimalist assumptions, simplifies the task of language acquisition, and provides theoreticians and the learner with evidence for a more articulated syntax that is transparently interpreted at the interfaces.
@unpublished{Ahn-PhrasalStressSyntax, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {{lingBuzz/002458}}, title = {There's Nothing Exceptional about the Phrasal Stress Rule}, year = {2015} }
Ahn, Byron & Dominique Sportiche. 2014. Bind Locally Indeed. In Carson T. Schütze & Linnaea Stockall (eds.), Connectedness: Papers by and for Sarah VanWagenen, Vol. 18, 61–69.
abstract Paper Bib

We present new evidence supporting the generalization encoded in rule H, a rule defended in Fox (2000): this rule encodes an economy principle on pronominal binding according to which a closer binder bleeds binding by a more distant one if both would yield the same semantic representa- tion. The evidence we discuss is based on how English reflexive pronouns behave in two different cases: one involving focus and one involving the (non)availability of phrasal stress.
@incollection{Ahn-Sportiche-BindLocally, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sportiche, Dominique}, booktitle = {Connectedness: Papers by and for {S}arah {V}an{W}agenen}, editor = {Sch\"utze, Carson T. and Stockall, Linnaea}, pages = {61--69}, series = {UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics}, title = {Bind Locally Indeed}, volume = {18}, year = {2014} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2014. The Emerging Middle Class. In Proceedings from the 46th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS 46),
abstract Paper Bib

We introduce the accommodation construction (My car seats four people) and the make construction (Clowns make good fathers), and show that, despite their superficial differences, these constructions belong to a previously unrecognized class of middle voice clauses: ones which retain a surface object, unlike canonical middles (Bureaucrats bribe easily, Keyser and Roeper 1984). We offer a Minimalist syntactic analysis of all middle voice clauses, not unlike analyses of passives (Collins 2005, Gerke and Grillo 2009). To do so, we exploit Kratzer’s (1996) VoiceP, and extend the definition of the Voice head so that it is the locus of all featural and structural differences among active, passive, and middle clauses.
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@inproceedings{Ahn-Sailor-CLS46, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, booktitle = {Proceedings from the 46th Annual Meeting of the {C}hicago {L}inguistic {S}ociety (CLS 46)}, title = {The Emerging Middle Class}, year = {2014} }
Ahn, Byron. 2012. Tongan Relative Clauses at the Syntax-Prosody Interface. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association,
abstract Paper Bib

Though Tongan, a Polynesian language, is almost entirely head-initial, there are some exceptions to this: Demonstratives and the so-called Definitive Accent (Churchward 1953). Relative clauses in Tongan are also post-nominal and can be variably ordered with respect to the Definitive Accent, but not Demonstratives. To derive these facts, I argue for a promotion analysis of relative clauses (Schachter 1973, Vergnaud 1974, Kayne 1994) and invoke three independently motivated movements, for each of which I bring crosslinguistic support. Each of these movements directly feeds the prosodic component – even when the movement that distinguishes these structures is string-vacuous. I employ only three Optimality Theory style constraints (Prince and Smolensky 1993) to derive this, supporting a strong syntax-prosody connection.
@inproceedings{Ahn-AFLA18, author = {Ahn, Byron}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the {A}ustronesian {F}ormal {L}inguistics {A}ssociation}, title = {Tongan Relative Clauses at the Syntax-Prosody Interface}, year = {2012} }
Ahn, Byron. 2012. External Argument Focus and the Syntax of Reflexivity. Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics, Linguistic Theory at the University of Arizona 20.
abstract Paper Bib

A sentence like Johnny burned himself, with the sole focal stress on the reflexive anaphor, can be felicitously interpreted as a response to a subject-question like Who burned Johnny?. This is unexpectedly felicitous, given previous accounts of focus in question-answer pairs. Critically, this phenomenon is limited to a subclass of reflexive anaphors. Though commonly accepted theories of focus and reflexivity would not predict this to be possible, by amending the syntactic representation of reflexivity, this phenomenon and its particular constraints are entirely predictable on the basis of normal rules of syntax-prosody mapping. This analysis gains independent support from the distribution of phrasal stress with regard to reflexive anaphors, as well as from the realization of reflexivity of other languages.
@article{Ahn-WCCFL29, author = {Ahn, Byron}, journal = {Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics, Linguistic Theory at the University of Arizona}, title = {External Argument Focus and the Syntax of Reflexivity}, volume = {20}, year = {2012} }
Ahn, Byron. 2008. A Case of OCP Effects in Intonational Phonology. ms., UCLA.
abstract Paper Bib

Assuming a set of tone-meaning mappings for English intonational phonology such as Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg (1990), there are clear expectations as to which tones should surface in a given situation: e.g. focus in a yes/no question is predicted to bear a L* tone. Seemingly contradictory to this, I find surface representations in which the focus of a yes/no question bears two tone targets: a H and a L. I use pilot data to show that, augmenting the tone inventory of English to include a H+L* is insufficient for capturing the full range of data. I also use that data to show that, by modeling intonational phonology with a system of Optimality Theoretic constraints, we can derive these seemingly aberrant surface representations as simple cases of OCP effects.
@unpublished{Ahn-OCPintonation, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {ms., UCLA}, title = {A Case of {O}{C}{P} Effects in Intonational Phonology}, year = {2008} }

some other presentations and handouts back to the top ↑

Conrod, Kirby & Byron Ahn. 2023, January. Who accepts themself? Sociosyntactic variation in English -self reflexives. Talk presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the LSA. Denver, CO.
abstract Bib

Though sg. they has been recently undergoing a change with respect to the types of antecedents it can take, it has been well attested throughout the history of English (Bjorkman 2017, Conrod 2019, Konnelly and Cowper 2020, Whitley 1978). Also well attested throughout the history of English, there are two reflexive forms for sg. they: themself and themselves (as noted in Whitley 1978). The present study explores what factors (social, ideological, and linguistic) influence acceptability of these forms. While preceding work has found themselves to be more acceptable in sg. they contexts (Ackerman et al. 2018), the present study uncovers more nuanced patterns. We find three patterns of acceptability, which we infer to represent different dialects. The parameters underlying these dialects have to do with how feature matching in binding can vary across English grammars.
@misc{conrodahn23, author = {Conrod, Kirby and Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the LSA. Denver, CO}, title = {Who accepts \emph{themself}? Sociosyntactic variation in English \emph{-self} reflexives}, year = {2023} }
Ahn, Byron, Kirby Conrod, Ameena Faruki, Steven Foley, Xander Guidry & Ruth Schultz. 2022, October. Acceptability, production, and comprehension of definite singular they. Talk presented at NWAV 50. Stanford Universiy.
abstract Materials Slides Bib

Acceptance and usage of they pronouns in English is known to vary along both social and linguistic dimensions, but there are gaps in work from psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and formal theoretic angles. This “project launch” presentation describes the three studies we will carry out to further explore this domain. Two socio-pragmatic studies (an acceptability rating task and a sentence completion task) will explore the impact of the pragmatics of shared/concealed knowledge on pronoun choice, and one socio-syntactic study (a self-paced reading task) will explore comprehension of cataphoric usages of they to explore reader expectations. In addition, all studies will collect robust social data, on demographics and ideological beliefs.
@unpublished{ahnEtAl22-NWAV, author = {Ahn, Byron and Conrod, Kirby and Faruki, Ameena and Foley, Steven and Guidry, Xander and Schultz, Ruth}, howpublished = {Talk presented at NWAV 50. Stanford Universiy}, title = {Acceptability, production, and comprehension of definite singular \emph{they}}, year = {2022} }
Ahn, Byron & Kirby Conrod. 2022, March. Three ways to rate themself. Talk presented at 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (formerly the ‘CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing’). University of California, Santa Cruz.
abstract Slides Bib

Speakers’ acceptance of they referring to a singular antecedent (“singular they”) correlates with linguistic and social factors (e.g., antecedent type, or speaker age, gender, and ideology). The present study (i) investigates how themselves/themself are rated with different syntactically singular antecedent types and (ii) identifies three distinct dialect groups based solely on those ratings.

Importantly, the variation in ratings is not only impacted by factors like social variables and linguistic ideologies, but it is more greatly impacted by dialect groups that do not reduce to these factors. These results help document language variation/change, inform understanding of the variable grammar(s) of singular they, and furnish further evidence that the phi-features in English reflexive nominals do not need to fully match those of their anteceden.
@unpublished{Ahn-Conrod-2022-themself, author = {Ahn, Byron and Conrod, Kirby}, howpublished = {Talk presented at 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (formerly the ‘CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing’). University of California, Santa Cruz}, title = {Three ways to rate themself}, year = {2022} }
Ahn, Byron, Nanette Veilleux, Beth Sturman, Alejna Brugos, Sunwoo Jeong & Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel. 2022, March. How Meaningful These Intonational Contours Are! Poster presented at 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (formerly the ‘CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing’). University of California, Santa Cruz.
abstract Slides Bib

As noted in works like Rett and Sturman 2021, exclamative expressions in English can take on a variety of specialized syntactic forms, which have been argued to share a syntactic core (responsible for word-order effects) and a semantic core (a mirativity operator). Like Rett and Sturman, this work aims to identify an intonational core for exclamatives, and successfully replicates their results using an entirely different methodology: a non-phonological annotation system (PoLaR) alongside statistical analysis and machine learning techniques facilitated by those labels.

Constructing a grammatical analysis this way has advantages (including practical ones like PoLaR’s ease of use). Moreover, developing these models can serve as a stepping stone towards computationally identifying more complex models of other sem-prag and/or paralinguistic meanings.
@unpublished{Ahn-Veilleux-Sturman-Brugos-Jeong-Shattuck-Hufnagel-HSP-exclamatives, author = {Ahn, Byron and Veilleux, Nanette and Sturman, Beth and Brugos, Alejna and Jeong, Sunwoo and Shattuck-Hufnagel, Stefanie}, howpublished = {Poster presented at 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (formerly the ‘CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing’). University of California, Santa Cruz}, title = {How Meaningful These Intonational Contours Are!}, year = {2022} }
Ahn, Byron, Sunwoo Jeong & Craig Sailor. 2021, March. Emphatic weak certainty in English: focus at the syntax-semantics/-phonology interfaces. Talk presented at Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory 2021. Princeton University.
abstract Handout Bib
In the vast majority of cases across English, syllables marked with focus prosody must be the most prominent syllable within the semantic focus domain (Jackendoff 1972, inter alia). This essentially precludes lexically unstressed syllables from bearing prosodic focus. Despite this, particular linguistic contexts regularly allow lexically unstressed syllables to bear prosodic focus:

   [A and B wait impatiently for their train, which is very late]
   A: It looks like we’ll be late to the party.
   B1: Yeah, appàrentLÝ.
   B2: Yeah, pròbabLÝ.
   B3: Yeah, màyBÉ.
   B4: Yeah, lòoks LÍKE.
   B5: Yeah, còuld BÉ.
   B6: Yeah, sèems SÓ.
   B7: # Yeah, dèfiniteLÝ.

Note that in all cases, the most prominent syllable could also be one where stress falls on a lexical stress (apPÁrently, PRÓbably, MÁYbe, LÓOKS like, CÓULD be, SÉEMS so), however, the cases where the stress is on the final syllable convey a particular meaning. Moreover, the availability of this pattern is constrained by syntactic and semantico-pragmatic factors. Across utterances where this focus phenomenon is acceptable, the following properties are shared:
- There is clausal ellipsis of a proposition, p;
- The speaker agrees with the interlocutor(s) that they cannot fully commit to adding p to the Common Ground (cf. B7).
This talk explores how to derive these facts, on the basis of:
- A clearer distinction made between syntactic, semantic, and prosodic notions of “Focus”;
- A silent morpheme under semantic focus;
- A process by which certain focus-marked silent morphemes can be realized as a prosodic enclitic.
This is part of a larger project that considers where focus pheonemona result in “surprising” prosodic patterns, typologically.
@unpublished{Ahn-Jeong-Sailor-PSST21, author = {Ahn, Byron and Jeong, Sunwoo and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory 2021. Princeton University}, title = {Emphatic weak certainty in {E}nglish: focus at the syntax-semantics/-phonology interfaces}, year = {2021} }
Ahn, Byron. 2019, April. Anaphor Binding and Phi-(Mis)Matches in English. Talk presented at DISCO (Dependency in Syntactic Covariance): Phi-agreement, reference and case. Universiy of Leipzig.
abstract Handout Bib

English reflexive anaphors, such as ourselves, are derived syntactic objects, with internal structure paralleling possessives (and are not statically listed as morphosyntactically simplex [+reflexive] objects in the lexicon; Ahn and Kalin 2018, also Postal 1966). The pronominal component of the English anaphor is widely described (cf. discussion in Sundaresan 2018) as needing to φ-match the antecedent of binding. In other words, the generalization in (1) is seen as describing the fact that ourselves must be used in (2), and not themselves. (Features of the binder are diagnosed by, e.g., nominal and verbal morphology.)

(1) Generalization about φ-matching in English reflexive anaphors
Pronouns in a reflexive anaphor φ-match the local antecedent of binding

(2) We will not embarrass ourselves / *themselves

While (1) is generally true, φ-mismatch is possible between the binder and bound pronoun: two contexts where mismatch is possible are given in (3).

(3) a. The U.N. finds themselves / itself in a difficult position
b. Does Your Honor doubt yourself / herself?

At the same time, there are cases where mismatch is ruled out; two such cases are in (4), which are minimal pairs with those in (3).

(4) a. The U.N. countries find themselves / *itself in a difficult position
b. Do you doubt yourself / *herself?

This talk explores two questions. First, empirically, in what contexts can φ-mismatches (not) occur? Using data from informal judgments, corpus searches, and a new experiment, we will find that φ-mismatches are constrained in generalizable ways. Second, theoretically, what types of theory reflexive binding are plausible, in light of these generalizations? Some have argued that English reflexive anaphors are φ-deficient, requiring φ-valuation by the local antecedent of binding (perhaps mediated by a functional head, Krazter 2009); however, these findings suggest that English pronouns in reflexives exhibit a split in this area, between 3.sg and others. I suggest this is related to 3.sg pronouns being the only ones in English that mark gender.
@unpublished{Ahn-DISCO, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at DISCO (Dependency in Syntactic Covariance): Phi-agreement, reference and case. Universiy of Leipzig}, title = {Anaphor Binding and Phi-(Mis)Matches in {E}nglish}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2019, April. The Role of Syntax in Semantics-Prosody Misalignments. Talk presented at PSST 2019. Princeton University.
abstract Handout Bib

Prosodic marking of focus (p-Focus) and focus semantics (s-Focus) are known to be deeply related. In a stress-based language like English, the general maxim is understood to be that p-Focus must manifest within the domain of semantic focus (e.g., Halliday 1967, Rooth 1992, Selkirk 1995, Truckenbrodt 1995, Krifka 2004, Büring 2016). It is for this reason that “dogs CHASED cats”, with p-Focus on “chased”, cannot have an interpretation where alternatives to “dogs” are considered (i.e., with s-Focus on “dogs”). In this way, the location of p-Focus and s-Focus “align”. This sort of alignment data has been used to argue for the syntactic representation of focus (e.g., Jackendoff 1972, Selkirk 1984).

This talk explores a set of counterexamples to this maxim: cases of semantics-prosody focus misalignments, where p-Focus manifests outside the domain of s-Focus. An English example of this is “BOY can she sing beautifully”, where the s-Focus concerns degree of beauty but p-Focus is on “boy”. Misalignment cases like this can be found regularly and across languages.

We argue that these misalignments furnish a new argument in favor of syntactic representation of focus, and an architecture where semantics and phonology do not interface directly with one another. Misalignments can arise because phonology generates p-Focus, semantics generates s-Focus, and they do so independently of one another on the basis of syntactic Focus marking. In making this argument, we will see data from a range of languages, argue that there cannot be a single operation/constraint that determines the placement of p-Focus, and demonstrate that syntactic factors must be considered for p-Focus placement.
@unpublished{Ahn-Sailor-PSST19, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at PSST 2019. Princeton University}, title = {The Role of Syntax in Semantics-Prosody Misalignments}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron. 2019, January. Reflexive Binding Without Phi-Feature Matching. Poster presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the LSA. New York, NY.
abstract Handout Bib

English reflexive nominals are structurally complex, composed of pronoun and √SELF components, and the φ-features of both generally match the anaphor’s local antecedent of binding. This has been presented pervasively as a matter of fact and a generalization to be derived. For bound pronouns in reflexive anaphors (e.g., him in himself), some do not allow φ-mismatch from the local antecedent of binding, while some do indeed allow such φ-mismatch. This is demonstrated with corpus data, native-speaker intuitions, and results of a mechanical turk experiment.

This work concludes that all that matters for (most) reflexive anaphors in English is the ability of the bound pronoun to be construed as referring to the antecedent (enforced at LF). However, for 3.SG bound pronouns in reflexive anaphors, φ-match is indeed required, suggesting a different derivational pathway for 3.SG reflexive anaphors as opposed to 1st/2nd/3.PL reflexives anaphors in English. This data suggests a more nuanced view on the generalizations that theories of English reflexives ought to be aiming to derive.
@unpublished{Ahn-LSA19-refl, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the LSA. New York, NY}, title = {Reflexive Binding Without Phi-Feature Matching}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2019, January. The landscape of semantics-prosody mismatches. Talk presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the LSA. New York, NY.
abstract Handout Bib

In languages where focus marking is implemented prosodically, there are at least two types of constraints. First, focus alignment constraints influence where prosodic focus marking is realized, in relation to the domain of semantic focus (cf. Question-Answer Congruence). Second, there are minimal size constraints, which require prosodic structure of a certain size to support focus marking (cf. English syllables).

This naturally leads to a theory-driven question: What happens when a semantically focused element (driving alignment) is not prosodically sufficient to support focus marking (blocking optimal alignment)? This question is especially relevant, given the standard assumption that semantic content (which can be put under semantic focus) need not map onto an element that can support prosodic focus. (For example, when the semanticallly focused element is a silent operator or silent functional head.)

In this talk, we argue that this sort of context leads to (surface-level) mismatches of focus between semantics and prosody, one which is rooted in the syntactic marking of focus. We explore some examples of these sorts of mismatch phenomena from a range of languages, as well some of the mechanisms used to resolve this tension (leading to the attested mismatch).
@unpublished{Ahn-Sailor-LSA19-focus, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the LSA. New York, NY}, title = {The landscape of semantics-prosody mismatches}, year = {2019} }
Gasser, Emily, Byron Ahn, Donna Jo Napoli & Z.L. Zhou. 2018, October. Prosodic features of newscaster intonation: production, perception, and communicative use. Talk presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody 4, UMass Amherst.
abstract Slides Bib

Listeners often have the intuition that the speech of broadcast news reporters somehow ‘sounds different’; previous literature supports this observation and has described some distinctive aspects of newscaster register. We present two studies further describing the characteristic properties and functions of American English newscaster speech, focusing specifically on prosody. In the first, we investigate the production of newscaster speech. We describe the measurable differences in pitch, speed, intensity, and melodic features between newscaster and conversational speech, and connect those traits to perceptions of authority, credibility, charisma, and related characteristics. In the second, we investigate the perception of newscaster speech. Our experiments demonstrate that listeners can distinguish newscaster from conversational speech given only prosodic information, and that they use a subset of the newscasters’ distinguishing features to do so.

Our results raise important questions about speech features, their conversational functions, and their perceived relationship to traits such as credibility and authority. In a follow-up survey, we asked radio newscasters about their priorities and intentions in crafting their on-air voice; their responses conflicted with our findings, indicating that the prosodic features characteristic of newscaster speech are likely instantiated on a subconscious level as a feature of the speech genre. Further, listeners appear to be paying attention to sub-phonemic features to identify it. When characterizing a prosodic genre, we must look past phonological representations to the phonetic level.
@unpublished{Gasser-Ahn-Napoli-Zhou-ETAP4-news, author = {Gasser, Emily and Ahn, Byron and Napoli, Donna Jo and Zhou, Z.L.}, howpublished = {Talk presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody 4, UMass Amherst}, title = {Prosodic features of newscaster intonation: production, perception, and communicative use}, year = {2018} }
Ahn, Byron, Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel & Nanette Veilleux. 2018, October. PoLaR Annotation Conventions: A Tool for Annotating Prosodic Variation. Poster presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody 4, UMass Amherst.
abstract Materials Bib

A core function of many phonological theories is to map between (cognitive) phonemic categories and (acoustic) phonetic cues. For intonational phonology, progress has been hindered by the lack of a tool to explore this mapping. In particular, it is difficult to determine which aspects of surface variation are potentially phonologically categorical, and which are not (i.e. are phonetic). Relatedly, annotators sometimes struggle to decide whether variants are instances of the same category (Fig.1). Here we present a new annotation system, drawing on both previous theoretical (AM theory) and transcriptional (IPO, IViE, RPT) proposals to address this issue, to test the adequacy of existing models of intonational phonology (and to amend it, where appropriate).
@unpublished{Ahn-Shattuck-Hufnagel-Veilleux-ETAP4-PoLaR, author = {Ahn, Byron and Shattuck-Hufnagel, Stefanie and Veilleux, Nanette}, howpublished = {Poster presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody 4, UMass Amherst}, title = {{P}o{L}a{R} Annotation Conventions: A Tool for Annotating Prosodic Variation}, year = {2018} }
Ahn, Byron & Z.L. Zhou. 2018, October. Spurious Pitch Movements in American English Polar Questions. Poster presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody 4, UMass Amherst.
abstract Materials Bib

An intonational contour may exhibit variation in scaling/alignment (up to a certain point) without affecting the linguistic interpretation (e.g., Barnes et al. 2012; Dilley and Heffner 2013; Barnes et al. 2014). Building on this, the key question for this work is: How different can f0 contours for a particular phonological representation be? A phonological model like MAE_ToBI, which is presented as involving a direct phonology-to-phonetics mapping, makes strong predictions about the set of f0 contours we can expect to find in MAE — is this system sufficient? This paper explores this quesion by examining productions of polar questions in MAE; we find that the attested variation in polar question intonation suggests a less direct mapping in the phonetics-phonology interface for intonation.
@unpublished{Ahn-Zhou-ETAP4-PQ, author = {Ahn, Byron and Zhou, Z.L.}, howpublished = {Poster presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody 4, UMass Amherst}, title = {Spurious Pitch Movements in {A}merican {E}nglish Polar Questions}, year = {2018} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2018, September. Principled mismatches in the mapping from semantics to prosody. Talk presented at 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Sheffield, UK.
abstract Handout Bib

In languages where focus marking is implemented prosodically, there are at least two types of constraints. First, focus alignment constraints influence where prosodic focus marking is realized, in relation to the domain of semantic focus (cf. Question-Answer Congruence). Second, there are minimal size constraints, which require prosodic structure of a certain size to support focus marking (cf. English syllables).

This naturally leads to a theory-driven question: What happens when a semantically focused element (driving alignment) is not prosodically sufficient to support focus marking (blocking optimal alignment)? This question is especially relevant, given the standard assumption that semantic content (which can be put under semantic focus) need not map onto an element that can support prosodic focus. (For example, when the semanticallly focused element is a silent operator or silent functional head.)

In this talk, we argue that this sort of context leads to (surface-level) mismatches of focus between semantics and prosody, one which is rooted in the syntactic marking of focus. We explore some examples of these sorts of mismatch phenomena from a range of languages, as well some of the mechanisms used to resolve this tension (leading to the attested mismatch).
@unpublished{Ahn-Sailor-LAGB18-focus, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Sheffield, UK}, title = {Principled mismatches in the mapping from semantics to prosody}, year = {2018} }
Ahn, Byron. 2018, September. How to ‘Suppress’ an Internal Argument. Talk presented at 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Sheffield, UK.
abstract Handout Bib

This talk explores the productive ’out-PRED’ phenomenon in English (e.g. out-sing, out-do, out-run, out-smart), in which a prefix ’out-’ can affix to (a sub-class of) predicates (’PRED’s), interacting with PRED’s argument structure in a surprising way. I draw the following novel generalizations about this phenomenon:

(1) out-PRED inherits all of PRED’s morphophonological irregularities
(2) none of PRED’s internal arguments can surface in out-PRED
(3) if the interpretation of PRED depends on its internal argument, out-PRED is impossible
(4) out-PRED can always be passivized, even when PRED cannot be

Together, these indicate that out- prefixation creates an argument structure that is syntactically distinct from that of PRED. I pursue an analysis in which out- merges with PRED before any of its internal argument(s) can merge, and the newly formed out-PRED projects its own argument structure with its own Voice-related properties such as passivizability. A core component of this analysis is that internal arguments of PRED-type predicates must be severed from the lexical predicate (i.e., introduced in a syntactic position outside of √P/VP). This adds to a growing literature that converges on the result that syntax transparently encodes Neo-Davidsonian semantic argument structure; i.e., all arguments in a predicate are introduced by individual semantic functions, which each in turn map onto individual functional projections in the syntax.
@unpublished{Ahn-LAGB18-out, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Sheffield, UK}, title = {How to ‘Suppress’ an Internal Argument}, year = {2018} }
Ahn, Byron. 2017, May. (In Search of) Universals in Reflexive Syntax. Talk presented at Cambridge Comparative Syntax 6.
abstract Handout Bib

Given that “reflexivity” is known to be a heterogeneous class (local vs. long-distance; exempt vs. bound; subject-oriented vs. non-subject oriented; etc.), what are the prospects for true universals in reflexivity? In this talk, I focus on Local Subject-Oriented Reflexivity (LSOR), its properties, and how to derive them.

By studying the formal constraints on LSOR markers, as well as their varied crosslinguistic realization, I argue that: (i) for an LSOR derivation that involves a reflexive functional head on the clausal spine, (ii) an argument-saturating nominal moves to the specifier of that projection in LSOR derivations, and (iii) languages can vary in which of these components are observable.

Given the apparently wide cross-lingusitic applicability of this derivation, this suggests that binding in LSOR is not simply a special type of normal binding conditions, but a separate phenomenon which is available across languages, due to what is made available by a shared universal linguistic competence.

The question remains, then, what is the nature of precisely what it is that is made available by UG, and why children acquiring language in so many contexts readily acquire the same (or very similar) LSOR structures. In the context of the ReCoS research group, I engage with the idea of emergent parameters and suggest that we need to reconsider “reflexive” patterns as the result of a single learning path.
@unpublished{Ahn-CamCoS6, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at Cambridge Comparative Syntax 6}, title = {(In Search of) Universals in Reflexive Syntax}, year = {2017} }
Ahn, Byron. 2016, January. Severing Internal Arguments from their Predicates: An English Case Study. (Note: The WCCFL33 handout below is more comprehensive in some ways). Poster presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the LSA, Washington, DC.
abstract Handout Bib

In neo-Davidsonian semantics (Parsons 1990, Schein 1993), all thematic arguments of a predicate are introduced by a function that is distinct from the lexical predicate. Common approaches to the syntax of external arguments partially mirror this, with the external argument being syntactically introduced in a projection outside of VP/√P (e.g., Chomsky 1995, von Stechow 1996, Kratzer 1996, Pylkkanen 2002, among many others). However, internal arguments are not generally severed from the lexical predicate, in many of these same approaches, at least outside of change-of-state predicates (Harley 2014 and replies).

Exploring the grammatical properties of out-PREDs (such as outdo, outnumber, outthink) leads to several generalizations: (i) root properties of the predicate are contributed by PRED, (ii) syntactically higher properties of the predicate are contributed by out-PRED, (iii) the internal argument of the clause is controlled by out-PRED, and (iv) none of PRED’s internal arguments are syntactically present. This will lead to the conclusion that syntax more closely mirrors a neo-Davidsonian semantics for internal arguments as well.
@unpublished{Ahn-LSA16, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the LSA, Washington, DC}, title = {Severing Internal Arguments from their Predicates: An {E}nglish Case Study. (\emph{Note: The WCCFL33 handout below is more comprehensive in some ways})}, year = {2016} }
Ahn, Byron. 2015, March. Out-Sourcing Internal Arguments. Talk presented at WCCFL 33, Simon Fraser University.
abstract Handout Bib
This talk provides new evidence that internal arguments are severed from the lexical predicate. Data come from the productive English verbal-prefix, out-. Crucially, verbs like out-drink, out-think, out-bounce, out-weigh, etc. (henceforth out-PRED) never appear with the internal arguments of PRED without out- (i.e., drink, think, bounce, weigh):

(1) a. My book club can drink (a lot of beer).
b. My book club can out-drink (*a lot of beer) your book club (*a lot of beer).
c. My book club can out-drink *(your book club).

(2) a. James weighs *(180lbs).
b. James out-weighs (*180lbs) Josh (*180lbs).
c. James out-weighs *(Josh).

Exploring the grammatical properties of out-PRED reveals at least four generalizations:
- PRED is syntactically active
- out-PRED has an entirely distinct extended verbal projection, compared to PRED
- out-PRED selects a PRED complement, which contains none of PRED’s internal arguments
- If a PRED and its internal argument must be interpreted together, out-PRED is impossible
These generalizations lead to the conclusion that syntax more closely mirrors a neo-Davidsonian semantics: PRED and its internal arguments are each introduced by unique semantic functions, which correspond with unique syntactic positions, outside of the lexical predicate.
@unpublished{Ahn-WCCFL33, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at WCCFL 33, Simon Fraser University}, title = {Out-Sourcing Internal Arguments}, year = {2015} }
Ahn, Byron. 2014, May. Modeling “Exceptional” Phrasal Stress. Poster presented at Exploring the Interfaces 3, McGill University.
abstract Handout Bib

Since the beginning of generative work on phrasal stress, it has been convincingly argued that syntax generates structure, and phrasal-stress assignment operation takes syntactic output as its input. In addition, it has long been assumed that constituents with certain lexical or interpretive properties are exceptions of this phrasal-stress assignment. This paper demonstrates that this idea of there being exceptions to the rule is not only undesirable on purely theoretical grounds, but is also unsuccessful on empirical grounds. Using logic similar to Wagner 2006 and Ahn 2012, this paper argues that there are no phrasal-stress exceptions, and that putative examples are expected from the model. Specifically, the model employ single simple phrasal stress assignment rule operation in the vein of Cinque 1993, but with more more highly articulated syntactic structures (independently motivated) as the input. Such a theory is consistent with a richer clausal structure, simplifies the task of language acquisition, allows phrasal-stress assignment to conform to Minimalist assumptions, and renders putative exceptions to phrasal stress as non-exceptional.
@unpublished{Ahn-ETI3-phrasal-stress, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at Exploring the Interfaces 3, McGill University}, title = {Modeling ``Exceptional'' Phrasal Stress}, year = {2014} }
Ahn, Byron. 2014, April. Reflexes of Reflexivity: Locality and the Interfaces. Talk presented at CLS 50, University of Chicago.
abstract Handout Bib

When a reflexive argument is bound by a local subject (Local Subject-Oriented Reflexivity, LSOR), many languages employ a distinct morphosyntactic configuration for marking reflexivity, including: Dogrib (Na-Dené) ede, Italian (Romance) si, Japanese (Altaic) zibunzisin, Kannada (Dravidian) -koND, Russian (Slavic) sebe, and Shona (Niger-Congo) zvi.

This raises an important and naive question: what is it about local subjects that gives them a privileged ability to license LSOR-marking? Upon further investigation, a second more informed puzzle arises: only some local subjects (specifically, non-derived subjects) license LSOR-marking.

I argue that reflexive anaphors move to a position near the subject, and this movement is done to locally satisfy the syntactic and semantic demands of a reflexive Voice⁰, REFL, which ensures (without stipulation) that the subject is not a derived one. With only REFL, its syntactic/semantic properties, and constraints on locality, we thus derive how the grammatical role of the antecedent may effect LSOR-marking.

Additionally, this analysis derives the range of possibilities for morphosyntactic exponents of LSOR: including a unique anaphor, verbal affix, and/or special word-order. Specifically, REFL Voice⁰ can be realized (or not), it induces a (covert) movement that can result in a special word-order (or not), and anything it selects (including an anaphor) can be featurally-distinct and can thus have a unique form (or not). These are all purely instances of surface variation with the same formal underpinnings.

As such, the subject-orientation puzzles presented by LSOR, as well as its possible morphosyntactic instantiations, are reduced to issues of locality and surface variation.
@unpublished{Ahn-cls50-refl, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at CLS 50, University of Chicago}, title = {Reflexes of Reflexivity: Locality and the Interfaces}, year = {2014} }
Ahn, Byron. 2014, January. The Syntax of Phrasal Stress “Exceptions.” Poster presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the LSA, Minneapolis, MN.
abstract Poster Handout Bib

Since SPE, many works on assigning phrasal-stress based on syntactic structures have assumed that certain word classes are exceptions to the phrasal-stress-assigning mechanism. Some of these purported exceptions include given elements, reflexive anaphors, indefinite pronouns, and verb particles.

This paper argues that there are no exceptions to the phrasal-stress-assigning mechanism.

Firstly, these are only exceptions with certain syntactic assumptions. Secondly, systematic investigation shows that these purported exceptions are not consistently exceptional; manipulating (only) syntactic context results in unexceptional behavior by these elements. Thus, with the correct syntactic approach to these elements, an exception-less phrasal-stress rule is entirely sufficient.
@unpublished{Ahn-lsa2014-phrasal-stress, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the LSA, Minneapolis, MN}, title = {The Syntax of Phrasal Stress ``Exceptions''}, year = {2014} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2014, January. Obligatory Object Gaps in Infintival Clauses. Talk presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the LSA, Minneapolis, MN.
abstract Handout Bib

In English non-finite clauses, every obligatory empty category (e.c.) occurs in subject position (e.g. raising-to-subject/object, subject/object control, etc.), with two apparent exceptions: tough constructions (TCs), (1), and object-gap ’too’ (OGTs) constructions, (2):

(1) They are easy for Mary to intimidate e.c..
(2) John was too ugly for Mary to date e.c..

We argue that these are not exceptional: they too involve a subject e.c., because TC and OGT predicates obligatorily select for Middle voice clausal complements. The thematic object e.c. moves to subject-position of the infinitival:

(3) They are easy/too smart [TP e.c. to [VoiceP middle [vP intimidate e.c. ]]]
@unpublished{Ahn-Sailor-lsa2014-object-gaps, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the LSA, Minneapolis, MN}, title = {Obligatory Object Gaps in Infintival Clauses}, year = {2014} }
Ahn, Byron. 2013, July. Universality and Subject-Oriented Reflexivity. Talk presented at the ICL 19, Geneva, Switzerland.
abstract Handout Bib

Reflexive anaphors are not a homogeneous class – there are local, long-distance, exempt, subject-oriented, non-subject oriented (perhaps among others) – and each different subtype exhibits different properties. I focus on Local Subject-Oriented Reflexivity (LSOR), its properties, and how to derive them. In approaching LSOR, I pose two puzzles.

First, a naive one: why do subjects license LSOR? Second, a more informed one: why only some subjects (i.e. non-derived subjects) possible licensers of LSOR?

I propose a novel solution to these puzzles which has two main components: (i) a semantic reflexivizer (associated with a unique grammatical Voice head, REFL), and syntactic movement of the anaphor (triggered by that same semantic reflexivizer in REFL).

In addition to solving these puzzles, this analysis correctly predicts the variation one finds in LSOR marking across languages. It also suggests that binding in LSOR is not simply a special type of normal binding conditions, but a separate phenomenon which is universally grammatically active, due to what UG makes available to all languages.
@unpublished{Ahn-icl19, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the ICL 19, Geneva, Switzerland}, title = {Universality and Subject-Oriented Reflexivity}, year = {2013} }
Ahn, Byron. 2013, January. Deriving Subject-Oriented Reflexivity. Poster presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the LSA, Boston, MA.
abstract Handout Bib

I focus on two puzzles concerning local subject-oriented reflexivity (LSOR): first, why subjects are relevant for binding, and second, why some subjects (e.g. passive-subjects) are not possible binders. I argue that both puzzles are solved by a Reflexive Voice⁰ which attracts anaphors to its specifier, and which encodes a semantic function that co-identifies the anaphor-specifier and the NP merged next (i.e. the subject at the phase edge). Moreover, since Reflexive and Passive Voice⁰s are in complementary distribution, passive-subjects cannot participate in LSOR. Additionally, I provide evidence from English implicating all languages grammatically encode LSOR, even when not (morphologically) apparent.
@unpublished{Ahn-lsa2013, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the LSA, Boston, MA}, title = {Deriving Subject-Oriented Reflexivity}, year = {2013} }
Ahn, Byron. 2012, January. The Prosody of Binding: Reflexive Voice and Default Sentential Stress. Talk presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the LSA, Portland, OR.
abstract Handout Bib

Syntactic structure has long been recognized as playing a crucial role in calculating Default Sentential Stress (DSS). Reflexive pronouns introduce an apparent problem: they tend not to bear DSS where other DPs would ("Remy SAW himself"/"Remy saw MARIE"). However, reflexives do not always avoid DSS; manipulating syntactic context, a reflexive can bear DSS (e.g., "Remy saw Marie and HIMSELF"). Based on such data, I argue against a string-positional account of DSS (e.g. SPE’s Nuclear Stress Rule). Moreover, I present evidence for the existence of subject-oriented reflexives in English, and motivate substantial revisions to Binding Theory.
@unpublished{Ahn-lsa2012, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the LSA, Portland, OR}, title = {The Prosody of Binding: Reflexive Voice and Default Sentential Stress}, year = {2012} }
Ahn, Byron. 2011, November. Giving Reflexivity a Voice: Twin Reflexives in English. Poster presented at NELS 42, University of Toronto.
abstract Handout Bib

I explore two seemingly unrelated prosodic phenomena related to reflexive anaphors in English: "avoidance" of sentential stress in focus-neutral contexts (1), and seemingly misplaced focus prosody in answers to wh-questions (2):

(1) What happened at the party?
a. Jenna tried to embarrass her bóss.
b. Jenna tried to embárrass herself.

(2) Who introduced Moira to Charles?
a. CHÁRLES introduced Moira to Charles.
b. Charles introduced Moira to HIMSÉLF.

I show that these "exceptional" prosodic behaviors (i) are both constrained by the same set of syntactic factors, (ii) require movement to a reflexive VoiceP, and (iii) are in fact the predicted prosodic contours, given general principles of syntax-prosody mapping.

This data in this paper shows that English has subject-oriented anaphors, that are further syntactically constrained. Not coincidentally, these syntactic constraints match those that have been independently motivated for Romance se/si.
@unpublished{Ahn-nels42, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at NELS 42, University of Toronto}, title = {Giving Reflexivity a Voice: Twin Reflexives in {E}nglish}, year = {2011} }
Ahn, Byron. 2011, September. Default Sentential Stress and Non-Exceptional Reflexives. Poster presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody, McGill University.
abstract Handout Bib

In out-of-the-blue contexts, it has been well established that the object of a simple SVO sentence (e.g. John saw Máry) will bear the nuclear stress of the sentence (Default Sentential Stress, DSS) in English. Despite this, reflexives often seem to flout this rule for matching the syntax and prosody, and tend not to bear DSS (e.g. John sáw himself). However, contra stipulations in the literature (e.g. Bresnan 1971, Zubizarreta 1998), reflexives do sometimes follow the normal DSS rules (e.g. I showed John himsélf). I investigate when reflexives do and do not flout the normal DSS rules, and derive the range of data syntactically: through movement of the anaphor to a reflexive VoiceP. This analysis finds support in the distribution of certain focus accents, as well as in crosslinguistic data.
@unpublished{Ahn-etap2, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody, McGill University}, title = {Default Sentential Stress and Non-Exceptional Reflexives}, year = {2011} }
Ahn, Byron. 2011, May. Explorations of Voice, Identity and the Self. Poster presented at Parallel Domains: A workshop in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, University of Southern California.
abstract Handout Bib

In earlier research, reflexive anaphors (unlike bound pronominals) have been said to lack a strict interpretation in VP Ellipsis (e.g. Williams 1977, Kitagawa 1991). However, more recent work (e.g. Fox 1993, Fiengo & May 1994) have shown that strict interpretations are indeed possible. I explore when strict interpretations are available, and show that they are restricted in just the same ways that Active/Passive voice-mismatch is constrained (Kelher 2002, Merchant 2007). To account for this, I propose an analysis that involves a special VoiceP for reflexives, so that strict interpretations are a type of voice-mismatch: Reflexive/Active mismatch. This analysis finds support in the distribution of default sentential stress, in the distribution of certain focus accents, as well as in crosslinguistic data from Romance and Finnish.
@unpublished{Ahn-wpd2011, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at Parallel Domains: A workshop in honor of Jean-Roger Vergnaud, University of Southern California}, title = {Explorations of Voice, Identity and the Self}, year = {2011} }
Ahn, Byron. 2011, April. External Argument Focus and Clausal Reflexivity. Poster presented at the 29th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, University of Arizona.
abstract Handout Bib
A sentence like (1) is ambiguous, with the relevant meanings in (a) and (b):

(1) Johnny burned HIMSÉLF.
a. ROBéRTO didn’t burn Johnny; Johnny burned HIMSÉLF.
b. Johnny didn’t burn ROBÉRTO; Johnny burned HIMSÉLF.

\(→\) (1a) is generally unpredicted, under widely-accepted theories for focus or reflexivity.

Data like (1a) are instantiations of what I term Realizing External Argument Focus on a Reflexive (REAFR) phenomenon, which is characterized by:
- the external argument being focused information, without a pitch accent
- a pitch accent on the clausal reflexive, without being focused information
Only a certain subclass of reflexive anaphors – clausal reflexives – are able to participate in this phenomenon.
- A clausal reflexive’s antecedent must be the external argument of a transitive clause
- he clausal reflexive and its antecedent must be syntactically local to one another
I argue that the clausal reflexives properties and ability to participate in the REAFR phenomenon is explained by obligatory movement to a reflexive VoiceP.
@unpublished{Ahn-wccfl29-reafr, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at the 29th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, University of Arizona}, title = {External Argument Focus and Clausal Reflexivity}, year = {2011} }
Ahn, Byron. 2010, September. Syntactic Configurations of Emphatic Reflexives. Talk presented at the workshop on Peculiar Binding Configurations, University of Stuttgart.
abstract Handout Bib
Many languages seem to allow reflexive pronouns to function either as arguments (1) or as adjuncts (2). The adjunct-type is called an Emphatic Reflexive (ER).

(1) a. Kenneth injured himself.
b. They bought themselves some time.
(2) a. No boy ate all the Cheezy Blasters himself.
b. Liz herself grew up in White Haven.

There are exactly two lexically differentiated ERs:
- ^vpER, loosely paraphrasable as ‘without help’ (2a)
- ^dpER, loosely paraphrasable as ‘X, not Y’ (2b)
Each has its own syntactic configuration, as well as its own felicity conditions that sensitive to:
- The type of the associate DP, or
- the argument structure of the predicate.
The ER reflexive pronoun is bound within a very local domain, even when the associate DP appears rather distant/disjoint
- ^dpERs adjoin to the DP and may be stranded by A-movement, as was argued for Floated Quantifiers in Sportiche (1988)
- ^vpERs are right-adjoined in the near-immediate c-command domain of the associate DP’s merge position
Languages in which ERs do not involve reflexive pronouns (e.g. German) are only minimally different from languages which do (e.g. English)
- Reflexive pronouns represent a syntactically obligatory, semantically null argument (similar to cases like perjure oneself) of an ER⁰
- a. German-type: [erP [er⁰ selbst ]]
  b. English-type: [erP [er⁰ Ø ] [DP himself ]]
@unpublished{Ahn-pbc-er, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the workshop on Peculiar Binding Configurations, University of Stuttgart}, title = {Syntactic Configurations of Emphatic Reflexives}, year = {2010} }
Sailor, Craig & Byron Ahn. 2010, June. The Voices in our Heads: The VoiceP in English. Talk presented at the workshop on Morphological Voice and its Grammatical Interfaces, University of Vienna.
abstract Handout Bib

A great deal of work is devoted to grammatical voice and its syntactic/semantic effects (esp. valency changes, theta assignment, implicit argumenthood, etc.) But how these voices are syntactically derived, and why they are so cross-linguistically widespread is less well-understood.
We observe that the “core” voices (active, middle, and passive) are, within a single clause, in complementary distribution. This strongly indicates a correlation between them; yet no unified syntactic analysis currently exists, to our knowledge.
As an explanation of these and other facts, we argue that the syntax of these voices can be unified under a single functional head, Voice⁰, which can be defined by only two features. In this way, voices are not syntactic transformations, and there is no notion of ‘default‘ voice.
Under this analysis, Voice⁰ is responsible for any and all syntactic differences distinguishing the grammatical voices. We accomplish this using only existing syntactic machinery: external argument selection (Kratzer 1996) and predicate fronting (Collins 2005). There are several consequences of this analysis. First, this analysis finally does away with the notion that non-active voices are transformations on actives. Second, a clause’s voice is simply the result of feature-checking on Voice⁰. Third, it greatly constrains the range of derivational possibilities, easing the acquisitional burden. Finally, it establishes unaccusativity as a voice-related phenomenon.
@unpublished{Sailor-Ahn-voiceworkshop-voicep, author = {Sailor, Craig and Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the workshop on Morphological Voice and its Grammatical Interfaces, University of Vienna}, title = {The Voices in our Heads: The Voice{P} in {E}nglish}, year = {2010} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2010, April. The Emerging Middle Class. Talk presented at the 46th annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago.
abstract Handout Bib

Accommodation (1a) and make (1b) constructions in English exhibit several properties familiar to the middle voice (1c):

(1) a. This bed sleeps two people. Accommodation
b. Clowns make good fathers. Make
c. Illinois governors bribe easily. Canonical middle

We argue that the accommodation and make constructions are in the middle voice, which we will provide a clear definition for.

We propose a complete reduction of the structural properties of middles to the features of a [Middle] Voice⁰. This analysis captures the similarities of (1a-c), and appeals only to existing syntactic machinery: VoiceP (Kratzer 1996) and smuggling (Collins 2005a).

As a consequence, Middles (along with passives) are no longer seen as being derived from actives. As such, there is no middle “transformation.” Distinct structures among the voices arise from distinct features among the Voice⁰s.
@unpublished{Ahn-Sailor-cls46-middle, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the 46th annual meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago}, title = {The Emerging Middle Class}, year = {2010} }
Ahn, Byron. 2008, April. The Prosody of Emphatic Reflexives in English. Poster presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody, Cornell University.
abstract Handout Bib

English, as with many other languages, uses the same word/morpheme for a reflexive use and an emphatic use. This is demonstrated with a small, yet typologically diverse, sample of languages below, with the simple reflexive use given in (a) and the emphatic use given in the (b).

(1) English
a. John hit himself.
b. John read the book himself.
(2) Mandarin Chinese
a. Laǒwáng bù xǐhuan zìjǐ
Laowang not like self
’Laowang does not like himself’
b. nǐ wèishénme bu zìjǐ xǐ ne?
you why not self wash PRT
’Why don’t you do your washing yourself?’
(3) Arabic
a. baʕti nafs-i furŧa li n-najaaħ
I.will.give self-POSS.1SG chance for ART-success
’I will give myself a chance to succeed.’
b. al-mudīr-u nafs-u-hu sayastaqbilunā
ART-director-NOM self-NOM-POSS.3.SG he.will.welcome.us.
’The director himself will welcome us.’
(4) Turkish
a. Paul ve Maria kendi-ler-i-ne hayran
Paul and Mary self-3PL-POSS-DAT admire
’Paul and Mary admire themselves.’
b. müdür-ün kendi-si bizim-le konusacak
Director-GEN self-POSS.3SG us-with will.talk
’The director himself will talk to us.’

When used emphatically as in (b) above, the reflexive is termed an Emphatic Reflexive. This paper will explore the prosodic realization of English Emphatic Reflexives.
@unpublished{Ahn-etap-pros, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Poster presented at Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody, Cornell University}, title = {The Prosody of Emphatic Reflexives in {E}nglish}, year = {2008} }

repositories of research materials back to the top ↑

Ahn, Byron, Kirby Conrod, Ameena Faruki, Steven Foley, Xander Guidry & Ruth Schultz. 2022. Acceptability, production, and comprehension of definite singular they. Respository hosted on the Open Science Framework. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5MVPZ

Website Bib

@unpublished{ahnEtAl22-OSF,
  author = {Ahn, Byron and Conrod, Kirby and Faruki, Ameena and Foley, Steven and Guidry, Xander and Schultz, Ruth},
  howpublished = {Respository hosted on the Open Science Framework},
  website = {https://osf.io/5mvpz/},
  doi = {10.17605/OSF.IO/5MVPZ},
  title = {Acceptability, production, and comprehension of definite singular \emph{they}},
  year = {2022}
}

Ahn, Byron, Nanette Veilleux, Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel & Alejna Brugos. 2021. PoLaR Annotation Guidelines. Respository hosted on the Open Science Framework. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/USBX5

Website Bib

@unpublished{Ahn-Veilleux-Shattuck-Hufnagel-Brugos-PoLaR-OSF,
  author = {Ahn, Byron and Veilleux, Nanette and {Shattuck-Hufnagel}, Stefanie and Brugos, Alejna},
  howpublished = {Respository hosted on the Open Science Framework},
  website = {https://osf.io/usbx5/},
  doi = {10.17605/OSF.IO/USBX5},
  title = {{P}o{L}a{R} Annotation Guidelines},
  year = {2021}
}

	Each of us behaves ourselves/themselves.	(3sg antecedent; 1pl/3pl anaphor)
	I wouldn’t blame yourself.1em	(1sg antecedent; 2sg anaphor)