This article examines the distribution of gender in arguments in example sentences in contemporary linguistics publications. Prior studies have shown that example sentences in syntax textbooks systematically underrepresent women and perpetuate gender stereotypes (Macaulay & Brice 1994, 1997, Pabst et al. 2018). Here we examine example sentences in articles published over the past twenty years in Language, Linguistic Inquiry, and Natural Language & Linguistic Theory and find striking similarities to this prior work. Among our findings, we show a stark imbalance of male (N = 12,117) to female (N = 5,571) arguments, where male-gendered arguments are more likely to be subjects, and female-gendered arguments nonsubjects. We show that female-gendered arguments are more likely to be referred to using a kinship term, to exhibit positive emotions, and to be the object of affection, whereas male-gendered arguments are more likely to have occupations, to exhibit negative emotions, and to perpetrate violence. We show that this pattern has remained stable, with little change, over the course of the twenty years that we examine, leading up to the present day. We conclude with a brief discussion of possible remedies and suggestions for improvement.

Macaulay and Brice (1997:798) surveyed example sentences in eleven syntax textbooks published from 1969–1994 and found that virtually all of the authors ‘favor male-gendered NPs as subjects and agents, and regularly stereotype both genders’. In this article, we address the question of whether constructed example sentences in more recent textbooks show similar gender bias. We present an analysis of six syntax textbooks published from 2005–2017, from which we randomly sampled 200 example sentences each. We find that the gender skew and stereotypes reported in 1997 are still present today. Male-gendered arguments are almost twice as frequent as female-gendered ones, and more likely to occur as subjects and agents. In addition, example sentences often perpetuate gender stereotypes. We discuss some broader implications and potential interventions to prevent the implicit perpetuation of gender biases in linguistic materials.

Current theories of optionality often take a gradient view of grammaticality: unattested variants are not categorically excluded but rather highly improbable. Vowel harmony in Eastern Andalusian challenges this view. Unstressed vowels optionally harmonize in a coordinated fashion. For example, if one posttonic vowel harmonizes, they all must. Different implementations of NOISY HARMONIC GRAMMAR are tested for their ability to account for this pattern. Only the implementation that categorically excludes forms with uncoordinated harmony succeeds; other implementations, which can only make such forms unlikely outputs, provide inferior models. This contrast indicates that there remains a need for a categorical approach to (un)grammaticality alongside a gradient approach.

The field of linguistic typology has made great strides in mapping the structures to be found across languages. We can now ask whether speakers of all languages distribute their ideas over such structures in the same ways. This question is explored here by examining complement constructions in three genealogically and areally unrelated languages. Each offers glimpses into some factors that shape grammar over time. Crosslinguistic differences in grammar arise from what speakers have chosen to say over millennia, but even languages spoken today can provide snapshots of moments in such processes, if we care to listen to their speakers.

A bilingual's two languages can interact in their mind, but the mechanism of this interaction is still open to debate. In this article we employ a variant of GRADIENT SYMBOLIC COMPUTATION (GSC; Smolensky et al. 2014) to model the code-switched utterances of unbalanced Dutch-English bilinguals. We aimed to evaluate GSC as an appropriate architecture to model bilingual code-switching grammars, and to explore the extent of variability within and across individual bilingual speakers. The results indicate that the structure of individual grammars can vary widely from the structure of the grammar that emerges when the population is studied as a whole. We interpret these results as evidence that individual variation characterizes not only language processing (e.g. Fricke et al. 2019, Kidd et al. 2018), but also the structure of bilingual grammar itself.

In many Indigenous languages of the Americas, demonstratives are said to encode whether the referent is visible. Some scholars, however, argue that all visibility meanings in demonstratives are epiphenomenal on spatial, epistemic modal, or nonvision evidential content. Drawing on elicitation, experimental data, and corpus data collected in fieldwork, I argue that two demonstratives of Ticuna (isolate; Brazil, Colombia, Peru) do display visibility meanings. These meanings are encoded and concern the SENSE OF VISION—not space, epistemic modality, or nonvisual forms of evidentiality. These findings support a view of demonstrative meaning as grounded in the perceptual capacities of the human body.

Drawing from decolonizing and Indigenous research methodologies, I examine field linguistic training in US linguistics programs and how it approaches collaborative language research. I argue that the current praxis still reflects a linguist-focused model resulting in linguistic extraction (Davis 2017). I provide three recommendations for transforming linguistic field methods training: (i) the recognition of linguistics as a discipline rooted in colonization and the implications of this for speakers/community members, (ii) the incorporation and explicit discussion of language research frameworks that include Indigenous research methodologies, and (iii) the recognition and valorization of Indigenous epistemologies via decolonizing ‘language’ (Leonard 2017).

In Japanese linguistics and elsewhere, the particle wa in its thematic use has been widely regarded as a paradigmatic instance of a ‘topic marker’. This work aims to demonstrate that, contrary to this received wisdom, most often thematic wa merely indicates the groundhood (the status as a nonfocus) rather than the topichood (the status as a topic) of the marked constituent, although it serves as a marker of contrastive topic in some configurations. In a root clause, as a rule, an explicit argument must be marked by thematic wa if it (i) is nonfocal and (ii) does not cooccur with an explicit, nonfocal sister argument less oblique than it. This implies that an explicit, nonfocal subject must be wa-marked, given that a subject is by definition the least oblique argument. Arguments marked by thematic wa despite not meeting this condition (e.g. a wa-marked object cooccurring with a wa-marked subject), as well as at least some instances of wa-marked adjuncts, are interpreted as contrastive topics. It is further pointed out, based on corpus data, that it is much more common for wa to indicate mere groundhood than topichood.

An issue that is actively explored in the contemporary linguistics literature is how to account for probabilistic generalizations, for which there are currently various competing theories. To bear on this debate, Hayes (2021) proposes that we examine a grammatical framework in terms of its QUANTITATIVE SIGNATURE, typical probabilistic patterns that the framework is predicted to generate. In this research report, I zoom in on the quantitative signature of MAXIMUM ENTROPY HARMONIC GRAMMAR (MaxEnt HG), because this framework has proven useful in modeling probabilistic generalizations across different linguistic domains. Given a linear scale of violations of one constraint, MaxEnt yields a sigmoid curve. When another constraint is relevant and can be violated multiple times, this sigmoid curve can be shifted, yielding multiple sigmoid curves, which results in a STRIPY WUG-SHAPED CURVE. Expanding upon a previous study (Kawahara 2020b), the current experiment demonstrates that we observe a stripy wug-shaped curve in a particularly clear manner in patterns of sound symbolism, systematic associations between sounds and meanings. Concretely, the experiment with Japanese speakers shows that the judgment of Pokémons' evolution status is affected by the mora counts of nonce names, resulting in a sigmoid curve, and that this sigmoid curve is shifted according to the number of voiced obstruents contained in the names. The overall results suggest that MaxEnt is a useful tool for modeling systematic sound-meaning correspondences.

Because of restrictions on in-person research due to COVID-19, researchers are now relying on remotely recorded data to a much greater extent than in the past. Given the change in methodology, it is important to know how remote recording might affect acoustic measurements, either because of different recording devices used by participants and consultants or because of the software used to make recordings. This study investigates audio signal fidelity across different inperson recording equipment and remote recording software when compared to solid-state digital audio. We show that equipment choice and software can have a large effect on acoustic measurements, including those of frequency, duration, and noise. The issues do not just reflect decreased reliability; some measurements are systematically shifted in particular recording conditions. These results show the importance of carefully considering and documenting equipment choices, particularly for crosslinguistic or cross-speaker comparisons. We close with a framework for researchers to use in deciding what types of recording may be most appropriate.

We present new data on peer review practices in linguistics journals, reporting the results of an online survey of editors. This paper aims to increase understanding of the processes and practices of peer review for everyone involved—editors, authors, reviewers, and readers. Apprehending concretely how peer review happens from beginning to end and how editors think about it should help to demystify the process, especially for graduate students and early career researchers, and make the experience somewhat less stressful across the board. Editors, authors, and reviewers all share, we trust, a desire for high professional standards and best practices. We hope to stimulate further discussion of these issues in the field and development of field-wide standards.