Marjorie Pak I am a Senior Lecturer in the Program in Linguistics at Emory University. I'm also the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Linguistics. My research interests are in syntax, morphology, and the syntax-phonology interface, as well as Huave and Bantu linguistics. OFFICE: Modern Languages 207 PHONE: 404-727-8077 EMAIL: mgpak at emory dot edu ADDRESS: Emory Linguistics, 532 Kilgo Circle Ste. 202C, Atlanta, GA 30322 My CV

DISSERTATION:

The postsyntactic derivation and its phonological reflexes (University of Pennsylvania, 2008)
I examine a set of phrasal phonological rules, which apply across words but not across the board,
and develop a model in which these rules apply to cycles/phases at various points after spell-out.
The proposal is illustrated with first-hand data from Huave, Luganda, and French. [download pdf]


DOWNLOADABLE PAPERS:
See my CV for other papers and presentations; email me if you'd like a copy of a handout or manuscript.

Logoori verb tones and the role of morphophonology
Presented at the Princeton Phonology Forum, March 2021. [slides]

Clause-final negation and the Jespersen cycle in Logoori
Presented at LSA Annual Meeting, 2020, and LCUGA 6, 2019. [paper]

Suprasegmental phenomena in Distributed Morphology [paper]
Draft, to appear in upcoming Handbook of Distributed Morphology,
eds. A. Alexiadou, R. Kramer, A. Marantz, I. Oltra-Massuet. Cambridge.

Logoori grammatical tone: A Distributed Morphology analysis
Presented at the Florida Linguistics Yearly Meeting, 2019. [paper]

The acquisition of English article alternations: Variation, competition and the default
2019. In Variable properties in language: Their nature and acquisition.
Ed. David Lightfoot & Jon Havenhill. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.    [pre-press version]

Head-movement and allomorphy in children's negative questions
Presented at the LSA Annual Meeting, 2018. [poster] | [paper]

Propositional how questions and negation
Presented at the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, April 2016.    [poster] | [paper]

How allomorphic is English article allomorphy?
2016. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 1(1): 20. 1–27. [DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.62]

Optimizing by accident: A/an allomorphy and glottal stop
Presented at the LSA Annual Meeting, Jan. 2016.    [poster] | [paper]

How is contraction not possible here?
Presented at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Jan. 2015.    [handout] | [poster] | [extended abstract]

A/an and the: allomorphy or phonology?
Presented at the LSA Annual Meeting (Jan. 2014), SECOL 81 (March 2014), and
the University of Pennsylvania F-MART group (July 2014).   [handout]

Phonological evidence for the syntax of SVO and VOS in Huave
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Sound Systems of Mexico and Central America, Yale University, 2014.   [paper]

Pre-nominal a in San Mateo Huave
Presented at the I Jornada de Estudios Huaves, UNAM, Mexico City, September 2010.   [paper]

A-movement locality and intervention effects in Luganda
In Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 2008, pp. 361-369.   [paper]

Relative clauses without CPs in Luganda
Presented at the Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL 2007), University of California, San Diego, Dec. 2007   [paper]

Phrasal tone domains in San Mateo Huave (2007)
In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.   [paper] | [about huave]

French phrasal phonology in a derivational model of PF
(M. Pak and M. Friesner) In Proceedings of NELS 36, vol. 2, 2006, pp. 480-491.   [paper] | [poster]

Explaining branchingness effects in phrasal phonology
In Proceedings of the 24th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 2005, pp. 308-316. [paper]

Infinitive marking with for: a diachronic account
Presented at the 29th Penn Linguistics Colloquium. In Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 12.1, 2006, pp. 293-306. [paper]


COURSES I TEACH AT EMORY:


LING-212, Structure of Human Language: Morphology and Syntax

LING-214, Meaning in Human Language: Semantics and Pragmatics

LING-190, Language and Linguistics in Sci-Fi (first-year seminar)

LING-242/ANT-285, Languages of the World

LING-485, Field Methods in Linguistics

LING-485, Negation in Human Language

LING-499, Readings on Morphology, Syntax and Semantics

LING-401, Language, Mind and Society (capstone senior seminar)

LING-201/ANT-203, Foundations of Linguistics


DOWNLOADABLE TEACHING MATERIALS:
Instructors, feel free to use these - all I ask is that you cite me and send me feedback afterwards.

Podcast tutorials on using the IPA: Consonants and Vowels
These are appropriate for beginning linguistics students. Please send feedback if you use them!

Video tutorials on formal semantics
Created in summer 2020. Short (10-minute) videos introducing students to the notation of PropLogic, PredLogic, quantifiers, lambda calculus.
Intended to serve as a bridge between classes; students would receive further, in-depth instruction in class.
Email me for information.

Focusing on evidence in introductory linguistics classes (slides and sample 'mystery language' exercise)
Presented at the 2020 LSA Annual Meeting as part of the Symposium on Teaching Large General Linguistics Classes.
Includes sample assignments and prompts I use to get students thinking about evidence, argumentation and other
'bigger-picture' questions in introductory linguistics classes.

A fieldwork exercise for teaching undergraduate syntax (assignment and description)
This exercise gives students some hands-on experience applying field methods.
Students meet in small groups with a native speaker of Swahili; their task is to find out how relative clauses are formed.
I created this exercise for my Languages of the World class, but it can be adapted to other courses and levels.

Survey on wanna contraction (assignment)
I created this assignment in 2008 and have used it in our intro linguistics class, our syntax class, and our research workshop.
Students conduct a re-study of Karins & Nagy 1993, where participants hear a short story and then answer the question
'Who would you want to (wanna) help?' I pool the class results and have students compare them to Karins & Nagy's
(where contracted wanna did block a subject interpretation, but not 100% of the time).


Last updated March 22, 2021