prosodylab

Resolving symmetry without constraining alternatives

Early access publication available now:

Schwarz, Bernhard and Michael Wagner(2026). Resolving symmetry without constraining alternatives. Semantics & Pragmatics, 8:EA. DOI: 10.3765/sp.19.8

Abstract:

In cases where an assertion could in principle lead to several, mutually incompatible quantity implicatures, some of these implicatures seem systematically unavailable. Katzir (2007) and Fox & Katzir (2011) aim to solve this so-called ‘symmetry problem’ by preventing implicatures that are based on the exclusion of alternatives that are syntactically more complex than the assertion itself. We argue that this complexity filter on alternatives falls short of solving the symmetry problem completely, and is in fact incompatible with the full range of observed implicatures. We propose a solution to the symmetry problem that, in addition to context, appeals to a blocking condition: enriching the meaning of an utterance φ with an implicature is blocked if the same meaning can be expressed without this implicature, by an utterance that is no more complex than φ. In making our case, we also argue against a central auxiliary assumption that Katzir and Fox’s account appeals to, namely the assumption that symmetry cannot be resolved by context.

Adjunctive Coordination

Online poster presentation at ELM 4 2026, UPenn:

Wagner, Michael (2016). Adjunctive Coordination: The case of German samt. Poster presentation at the 4th conference on Experiments in Linguistic Meaning (ELM 4) [Slides]

Adjectival agreement is interpretable

Poster at WCCFL 44 2026, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México:

Almeida, Anna Carolina Cox-Casals, Raimundo and Wagner, Michael (2026). Adjectival agreement is interpretable: Evidence from summative agreement in Mexican Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Poster presentation at the 44th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. [Poster] [OSF]

Labphon 2024 in Seoul

Session on Labphon of sentences at Labphon 2024 in Seoul:

Invited Speaker: Fernanda Ferreira (UC Davis, USA). Prosody, Syntax, and Conversational Language

Buhan Guo, Nino Grillo, Sven Mattys, Andrea Santi, Shayne Sloggett, Giuseppina Turco (U of York; U of York; U of York; U College London; U of York; Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle, UMR 7110, CNRS/Université Paris Cité) The Garden Path Leading to Intonational Phonology

Nele Ots (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt). Cross-linguistic survey of intonation planning: a cognitive approach

Slides from my discussant presentation

The iambic trochaic law without iambs or trochees

New paper in JASA:

Moghiseh, E., Sonderegger, M., and Wagner, M. (2023). The iambic-trochaic law without iambs or trochees: Parsing speech for grouping and prominence. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 153(2):1108–1129. [doi] [osf]

Listeners parse the speech signal effortlessly into words and phrases, but many questions remain about how. One classic idea is that rhythm-related auditory principles play a role, in particular, that a psycho-acoustic “iambic-trochaic law” (ITL) ensures that alternating sounds varying in intensity are perceived as recurrent binary groups with initial prominence (trochees), while alternating sounds varying in duration are perceived as binary groups with final prominence (iambs). We test the hypothesis that the ITL is in fact an indirect consequence of the parsing of speech along two in-principle orthogonal dimensions: prominence and grouping. Results from several perception experiments show that the two dimensions, prominence and grouping, are each reliably cued by both intensity and duration, while foot type is not associated with consistent cues. The ITL emerges only when one manipulates either intensity or duration in an extreme way. Overall, the results suggest that foot perception is derivative of the cognitively more basic decisions of grouping and prominence, and the notions of trochee and iamb may not play any direct role in speech parsing. A task manipulation furthermore gives new insight into how these decisions mutually inform each other.

The iambic trochaic law revisited

Slides from workshop Pertinacity pertains in honor of Aditi Lahiri, at University of Konstanz

Toward an alternative(s) syntax

Wagner, Michael (2021). Toward an alternative(s) syntax: Projecting and operating over syntactic alternatives. Colloqium Talk at Michigan State University, October 14 2021 [handout]

Abstract: Many grammatical phenomena have been analyzed based on the assumption that constituents can introduce semantic alternatives, and that these alternatives can project by point-wise semantic composition, following Hamblin’s 1973 analysis of questions. This talk presents arguments that linguistics expressions can also introduce syntactic alternatives, that these alternatives can “project” in a point-wise fashion to create larger linguistic expressions, and that grammar can operate over sets of linguistic expressions. This syntactic view of alternatives is compatible with Katzir’s 2007 independent arguments that alternatives are, at least sometimes, structural. The evidence comes from data involving prosodic focus, association with focus, disjunction, and coordination.

gender gaps @ amlap

Wagner, Michael (2021). The syntax and prosody associated with German gender gaps. Short talk at Amlap 2021 September 3 [abstract] [slides] [osf]

at least @ amlap

Göbel, Alexander & Michael Wagner (2021). Syntactic and Prosodic Factors in the Interpretation of Ambiguous ‘at Least’. Talk at Amlap 2021, September 2rd. [slides]

predictability

Wagner, Michael (2021). Why predictability is not predictive without a linguistic theory and a theory of processing. The case of external sandhi. Talk presented at Universität des Saarlandes, July 15 2021. Reporting on joint work with Oriana Kilbourn-Ceron and others [slides]

(I updated the title after the talk to add ‘and a theory of processing’ to better reflect the content)