The Even Yearbook 15 (2022)

Attila Starčević
Early Modern English pronunciation — The evidence from Hungarian
The Even Yearbook 15: 1–15 ⟨#115⟩
⟨abstract⟩ György Komáromi Csipkés wrote the first grammar of (then contemporary) Early Modern English in Latin in 1664 under the title Anglicvm Spicilegium for his students of theology in Debrecen. The book contains a rather well-written and developed chapter on English pronunciation. The article looks at some of the remarks and comments made by Komáromi in his comparison of English and Hungarian vowels in this closing period of the Great Vowel Shift.
⟨keywords⟩ Early Modern English, Great Vowel Shift, English-Hungarian comparative phonetics/phonology, long monophthongs, early grammars in Hungary
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Zoltán G. Kiss
The effect of homophony avoidance in voicing
The Even Yearbook 15: 16–39 ⟨#116⟩
⟨abstract⟩ The present study seeks to explore to what extent a particular lexical factor, homophony avoidance, i.e., whether or not a word forms a minimal pair with another word in the lexicon (“minimal pairhood”), aﬀects the realisation of the primary laryngeal feature, the amount of phonation, in the word-ﬁnal alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ and the fricatives /s/ and /z/ in potentially neutralising and non-neutralising contexts in the speech of Hungarian native speakers. We show with the help of production experiments that the underlyingly voiced obstruents contain more voicing in the case of minimal pairs than in the case of non-minimal pairs, and consequently, minimal pairs are less likely to completely neutralise in speech production. Similarly, the underlyingly voiceless obstruents in minimal pairs were shown to be less voiced before voiced obstruents than in non-minimal pairs, thus the former group is more likely to preserve the voicing contrast. All this suggests that lexical factors, such as homophony avoidance, can override the aerodynamically based phonetic effect of devoicing in utterrance-final position, as well as (de)voicing before a voiceless or a voiced obstruent.
⟨keywords⟩ voicing contrast, neutralisation, regressive voicing assimilation, minimal pairs, homophony avoidance, Hungarian
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Marcel den Dikken
‘They are what define us’, ‘You are what make us great’: Plural-agreeing what in free relatives serving as predicates
The Even Yearbook 15: 40–49 ⟨#117⟩
⟨abstract⟩ This paper explores the syntax of number agreement in sentences of the type They are what define us, in which a free relative serves as the predicate of a plural subject and the what introducing the relative controls plural agreement with the finite verb of the relative clause (something that what cannot do elsewhere in English). The key to the explanation for the number agreement facts is the postulation of a plural silent noun ‘THINGS’ as the head of the relative clause. The fact that this silent noun is subject to licensing requirements accommodates the distributional restrictions imposed on the construction. The hypothesis that plural-agreeing what is the exponent of the combination of the silent noun and the operator in the relative clause accounts for the fact that plural-agreeing what relatives exist in English but not in closely related Dutch.
⟨keywords⟩ free relative, headless relative, what, plural agreement, silent noun, licensing
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Mark Newson and Krisztina Szécsényi
Not so exceptional case marking in English
The Even Yearbook 15: 50–69 ⟨#118⟩
⟨abstract⟩ In this paper, we argue that what is standardly seen as an exceptional phenomenon in English, the accusative subject of certain infinitival clauses, is in fact quite normal. The standard view assumes that English has a nominative-accusative system, where these cases are canonically associated with subject and object position respectively. The accusative subject therefore seems to have object-like properties, entering into a relationship with the verbal system of the higher clause. On the contrary, we argue that English has a neutral system at clause level and that only one case is assigned to all DPs: unmarked case. It is the behaviour of some of the pronouns of the language, five lexical items in total, which give the appearance that a different case is assigned to subjects and objects. All other nominal elements, however, indicate that no such distinction is made. Adopting a Dependent Case Theory perspective, we show that the assumption that no dependent case is assigned at clause level offers a much simpler theory and therefore that distinctions in pronoun forms should be delt with differently. Our claim is that the pronoun forms that realise the single case assigned to them is contextually determined. In fact, the ‘accusative’ realisation is the general one, ‘nominative’ being restricted to the context of a finite tense. Therefore, the ‘accusative’ subject of non-finite clauses turns out to be not only not exceptional but more normal that the ‘nominative’ subject of finite clauses.
⟨keywords⟩ unmarked case, dependent case theory, exceptional case marking, pronoun realisation
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