Earlier this month, three of our linguists presented at the Lavender Languages 32 Conference hosted by the University of Edinburgh. First, M.A. student Lillianna Lamagna presented a project launch talk entitled, "Analyzing Anti-Trans Legislation in the US."
![Bayleigh Baldwin standing in front of her poster, with the title: Talkin' Country in W[a:]ne Country: Sociolinguistic variation in Napa, California.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3n6ziztviwk4kl2dukpntitl/bafkreigdotdegheislow6uhk6ntfrjuw43rit3gclb5y34txaw73dtgdyi)
![A flyer with a photo of the speaker, Ayumi Nobuki. Title: Comprehension of pragmatic meaning in Japanese-speaking children: Investigating a linguistic factor in the felicity of negation. Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas. Thursday, March 27, 4:00 pm Central Daylight Time, 2092 DHDC (Dole). Zoom link available upon request to: linguistics@ku.edu.
Text of abstract: Research to date has argued that negative sentences are more challenging to comprehend than affirmative sentences. However, a number of recent studies revealed that both children and adults are sensitive to the felicity of negative sentences, and they can comprehend the sentences more easily when they are used felicitously in a given context. In the literature of child language acquisition, what factors determine the felicity of negative sentences is under discussion. In my project, I focused on Japanese because it has a morpheme called Contrastive-marking particle wa, which affects the felicity of negative sentences in a particular context. For example, a negative sentence with Contrastive -wa on the object noun, ringo 'apple,' inu-wa ringo-wa motte-nai-yo, means "The dog doesn't have an apple"; however, it also means that "the dog has something other than an apple." Thus, the sentence with Contrastive -wa is more felicitous when a dog has something other than an apple than when it has nothing. On the other hand, without Contrastive -wa, the sentence simply means that the dog doesn't have an apple, and no implied meaning arises. Crucially, empirical data regarding whether/how much Japanese native speakers (especially children) are aware of the contribution of Contrastive -wa to the felicity of negative sentences remained sparse. Therefore, I addressed this issue by testing the comprehension of negative sentences with this particle in Japanese-speaking adults, preschool-age children, and school- age children. [Text truncated due to character limit]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:3n6ziztviwk4kl2dukpntitl/bafkreifmjmduf6n7tflzjugplrsxgkm7o5wq4rhwbw3kfapbiruqpql7ie)
