Publications

2023

1. INVITED TALK

   

   Sociolinguistic assessment in the big picture of language development

   Eric Jackson

   Nov 2023

   Presentation for Cedarville University LING 3090 Sociolinguistics

   Website

2021

1. INVITED TALK

   

   Vowel Space Density as a tool to guide language documentation

   Eric Jackson

   Nov 2021

   Presentation for the UCLA American Indian Seminar

   PDF Website

2019

1. ARTICLE JSEALS

   

   Two-part negation in Yang Zhuang

   Eric Jackson

   Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, Nov 2019

   Abs PDF Website

   "The negation system of Yang Zhuang includes two standard negators and an aspectual negator, all of which occur before the verb; the negator meiz nearly always co-occurs with a clause-final particle nauq, which can also stand as a single-word negative response to a question. Although it is tempting to analyze nauq with a meaning beyond simply negation, this is difficult to do synchronically. Comparison with neighboring Tai languages suggests that this construction represents one stage in Jespersen’s Cycle, whereby a negator is augmented with a second element, after which the second element becomes associated with negation; this element subsequently replaces the historical negator. A Jespersen’s Cycle analysis also explains the occurrence of nauq as a preverbal negator in some neighboring Zhuang languages."

2015

1. CONF TALK

   SEALS

   

   Two-part negation in Yang Zhuang

   Eric Jackson

   May 2015

   Presented at the 25th Annual Conference of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, May 27th – 29th, 2015, Payap University, Chiang Mai

   PDF Website
2. INVITED TALK

   

   语言学田野调查的录音理论, 方法, 与实践 [Audio recording for linguistic fieldwork: Theory, methods, and practice]

   Eric Jackson

   Nov 2015

   Presentation for the Sino-Tibetan Institute’s Linguistics Colloquia series

   Abs Website

   "(In Chinese): This talk outlines the basic concepts and practices for recording audio in the context of linguistic fieldwork. It comprises three sections: Why should high-quality audio recording be a foundational part of linguistic fieldwork? What should be recorded as part of linguistic fieldwork? How should audio recordings in linguistic fieldwork be made? It includes the motivation behind including audio (and sometimes video) recordings as an important component of language documentstion, as well as practical considerations for maintaining high audio fidelity through the entire recording chain, from pressure waves in the are, created by a speaker’s vocal apparatus, to the (digital) representation of those waves as sound that are the essence of an audio recording."

2012

1. ARCHIVED DATA

   

   A Sociolinguistic Survey of the Dejing Zhuang Dialect Area: Survey data

   Eric Jackson

   Nov 2012

   Website
2. ARTICLE SIL-ESR

   

   A sociolinguistic survey of the Dejing Zhuang dialect area

   Eric Jackson, Emily Jackson, and Shuh Huey Lau

   SIL Electronic Survey Reports, Nov 2012

   Abs PDF Website

   "This report presents the results of a dialect intelligibility survey carried out in 2008 in the southwestern part of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China, described by Zhang et al (1999) as the Dejing sub-dialect area of Southern Zhuang. The Zhuang varieties surveyed in this area have been grouped into the Central branch of Taic languages. This survey of nineteen locations across the sub-dialect area found evidence from intelligibility, from similarity of wordlists (as determined by a string edit distance algorithm), and from speaker attitudes for assigning them to at least two distinct ISO 639-3 language codes, zyg “Yang Zhuang” and zgm “Minz Zhuang”. Previous published sources claimed that the variety of Yang spoken in the county seat of Jingxi County is well understood across the region. This survey tested this claim with recorded text tests (RTTs) from the county seat and a nearby rural area, and found them to be well understood across most of the Dejing area. Through comparison with the wordlist similarity results, however, this intelligibility is inherent only for a subset of the surveyed varieties; these varieties represent a cluster that is herein referred to as Yang-Nong, and includes several Zhuang varieties from this area. The high intelligibility of Jingxi Yang by speakers of other varieties is due to acquired ability in Jingxi Yang. Initial intelligibility results indicate another cluster of mutually-intelligible varieties in the area which we refer to as Min-Zong and which appears to correspond to the Minz of Yunnan Province; further fieldwork is needed to verify this in a more representative sample of these varieties. Sociolinguistic questionnaires were administered in order to measure residents’ attitudes toward these language varieties and factors relevant for language planning. The results indicate that Jingxi Yang is viewed very positively over a large area, though in particular areas local sociolinguistically prominent varieties of Zhuang are preferred. Based on the data from wordlist similarity, inherent intelligibility, and sociolinguistic attitudes, a variety of Yang would work very well as a standard or basis for language development efforts among Yang-Nong communities, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the Zhuang in the Dejing sub-dialect area; we propose that documentation of the ISO 639-3 code zyg “Yang Zhuang”, previously taken to apply to most Zhuang varieties in the area, be amended to include only those Zhuang varieties that fall under Yang-Nong. Language development among Min-Zong communities in the area, accounting for another one-sixth of the areas’ Zhuang, would benefit from development based on a variety of Min or Zong; we propose that documentation of the ISO 639-3 code zgm “Minz Zhuang”, previously thought to apply only to a small group of speakers in Yunnan Province, be amended to also include Min-Zong communities in Guangxi. Language development efforts among most of the remaining one-sixth of the Zhuang population of the Dejing area would require other varieties as a basis, but for many of these varieties, Jingxi Yang could likely still be used as a means of widespread communication."

2011

1. INVITED TALK

   

   The sociolinguistic situation of Dejing Zhuang: A case study in what counts as a language

   Eric Jackson

   Jan 2011

   Presentation for the Chinese University of Hong Kong

   PDF
2. INVITED TALK

   

   Essentials of modern linguistic fieldwork

   Eric Jackson

   Jan 2011

   Presentation for the Chinese University of Hong Kong

   PDF
3. CONF TALK

   SEALS

   

   Distinguishing inherent and contact-influenced intelligibility: An example from the Dejing dialect area of Zhuang

   Eric Jackson

   May 2011

   Presented at the 21st Annual Conference of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, May 11th – 13th, 2011, Kasetsart University, Bangkok

   PDF Website

2008

1. ARTICLE SIL-EBR

   

   Review of Beth Levin and Malka Rappaport Hovav, Argument Realization (2005)

   Eric Jackson

   SIL Electronic Book Reviews, May 2008

   Abs PDF Website

   "This book is composed of an introduction which lays out the major questions regarding argument realization: Which elements of meaning are relevant for the mapping from lexical semantics to morphosyntactic expression? What should lexical semantic representations be like in order to encode this information? How is the mapping from lexical semantics to syntax carried out? What effect do factors apart from the semantics of the verb, like semantic weight of an argument (i.e., its grammatical complexity), or information structure and discourse context, have on the realization of a predicate and its arguments? To what extent are semantic determinants of argument structure "lexical", and to what extent not?"

2. ARTICLE UCLA-WPP

   

   Dispersion in the vowel system of Pima

   Eric Jackson

   May 2008

   Abs PDF Website

   "This is a pilot study of the phonetic variation of vowels due to stress and syllable type in Pima, a dialect of O’odham. O’odham, along with several other Uto-Aztecan languages, has a five vowel system which appears unevenly distributed in two ways: its only front vowel is high, and it includes three high-back or high-mid vowels. This arrangement of canonical vowels appears not to reflect the influence of a drive for maximal dispersion of canonical vowels, something which has been argued to account for the frequency and type of vowel inventories cross-linguistically. Several properties of the allophonic variation observed in Pima, however, can be explained by appealing to just such a drive to maximize acoustic distinctness. Factors besides maximal distinctness must also be involved in controlling this distribution, however, as evidenced by the relative stability of this vowel system among Uto-Aztecan languages."

2005

1. CONF TALK SSILA

   

   Derived statives in Pima

   Eric Jackson

   Jan 2005

   Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, January 6th – 9th, 2005
2. INVITED TALK

   

   Pima resultatives

   Eric Jackson

   May 2005

   UCLA colloquium series
3. INVITED TALK

   

   Pima resultatives

   Eric Jackson

   Aug 2005

   Oregon SIL / University of Oregon colloquium series
4. CONF TALK

   

   What do you get when you cross a path verb with a resultative?

   Eric Jackson

   Mar 2005

   UCLA American Indian Seminar

   PDF
5. THESIS

   

   Resultatives, derived statives, and lexical semantic structure

   Eric Jackson

   UCLA, Mar 2005

   Abs PDF

   "This dissertation examines two resultative suffixes in Pima whose properties are relevant for the hypothesis that the meanings of words in natural language have structure. The passive resultative suffix –s is canonically interpreted as a resultative proper; verbs with this suffix typically express the condition which results from an event of the type denoted by the unsuffixed verb. Certain verbs with this suffix, however, receive a derived stative interpretation, where the condition which they express need not be the result of any event at all. The possessive resultative suffix –kc, in contrast, has a more restricted distribution; verbs with this suffix receive either a resultative or derived stative interpretation, where the subject of the suffixed verb is responsible for maintaining this condition. While several analyses of the Pima resultatives are considered here, the most economical analysis of the distribution of interpretations which Pima resultatives receive involves monotonically adding semantic components in order to build the meaning of both eventive verbs and resultatives. This analysis is presented within the framework of Distributed Morphology, where the semantic components of these verbs are associated with a number of abstract syntactic elements. Since these resultatives are temporally stative, an introductory chapter explores what temporal stativity is and what it indicates about a predicate; another introductory chapter discusses published analyses of resultatives in Chichewa and German, which show several quite different ways that a morphologically and semantically derived predicate may be given this property."

6. ARCHIVED DATA

   

   Annotated field notes for Pima (Akimel O’odham): Fieldwork data

   Eric Jackson

   Mar 2005

   Created from 2000-10-30 through 2005-05-16

   Website

2004

1. INVITED TALK

   

   State-deriving suffixes in Pima

   Eric Jackson

   Jun 2004

   Presentation for Stanford University, Syntax Working Group

2003

1. CONF TALK LASSO

   

   Dispersion in the vowel system of Pima

   Eric Jackson

   Oct 2003

   Presentation at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of the Southwest, October 17th – 19th, 2002, University of Texas-Pan American

   PDF

2002

1. INVITED TALK

   

   Distributed Morphology and the Pima s- prefix

   Eric Jackson

   Nov 2002

   Presentation for California State University, Northridge, Linguistics Program student colloquium
2. THESIS

   

   The stative s- morpheme in Pima

   Eric Jackson

   UCLA, Nov 2002

   Abs PDF

   "This thesis describes the behavior of a prefix which occurs on adjectives and verbs in the O’odham languages of Pima and Papago, Tepiman languages of Southern Uto-Aztecan, spoken in Arizona and Mexico. This prefix, whose phonological form is s-, shows a moderate, but not perfect,correlation with stative lexical aspect. This paper models the behavior of the s- prefix within the non-Lexicalist framework of Distributed Morphology, treating the s- as the expression of a grammaticized semantic feature [+ STATIVE ]."

3. CONF TALK WAIL

   

   The ‘s’-ence of Pima

   Eric Jackson

   In Proceedings from the Fifth Workshop on American Indigenous Languages, Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics, Nov 2002

   Abs PDF

   "This paper examines the morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of a verbal and adjectival prefix in Pima. One puzzling morpheme shared by Pima and Tohono O’odham is a prefix with the phonological form [s], which occurs in certain syntactic environments on many adjectives and a small set of verbs. The best generalization in Pima is that this morpheme occurs only on predicates with stative lexical aspect, but is also sensitive to polarity (ie, negation) and shows a significant number of lexical exceptions."