This paper presents an analysis of exceptional prosodification effects, in which exceptional lexical items appear to follow a regular pattern that is found in a different prosodic context. These patterns have been analysed as cases of prosodic prespecification, where morphemes select a non-default prosodic representation. I argue that prespecification approaches should be reconsidered, and that such patterns are predicted without morpheme-specific prosody in Gradient Harmonic Grammar, a weighted constraint system with gradiently active symbols. Exceptional prosodification effects result from the interaction of two influences on constraint penalties: (i) scaling of constraint violations by prosodic context and (ii) contrastive activity values in underlying forms. This interaction is illustrated with the distribution of French nasal vowels and linking [n]. This approach reduces the amount of structure posited for URs, and provides new arguments for a more uniform syntax–prosody mapping.

This paper discusses three basic ways in which loanwords pattern differently than native vocabulary, with a particular focus on the implicational relationships that hold among generalizations that apply at different degrees of nativization. We argue that the overall typology and the effects of the core-periphery structure are best modeled if constraints are weighted as in Harmonic Grammar (Legendre, Miyata & Smolensky 1990), and violation scores are scaled according to degree of nativization. The implicational patterns of repair versus non-repair are predicted from basic patterns of interaction among scalar constraints, obviating the need for the kinds of ranking metaconditions required in ranked-constraint alternatives.

This article focuses on the analysis of verb-second (V2) requirements in light of evidence that the clausal left periphery contains a series of functional projections in a fixed hierarchy (Rizzi 1997;Benincà & Poletto 2004; among many others). I discuss previous approaches to V2, the bottleneck effect and stacked head theories, and argue that they are generally unable to account for a variety of "relaxed" V2 systems that allow V3 or V4 in some contexts. I propose a new analysis of variation in the strictness of V2 in terms of the feature scattering hypothesis (Giorgi & Pianesi 1996); languages can vary in the number of functional category features that are bundled on individual heads. This allows a straightforward account for the attested typology of relaxed V2 systems, and a new explanation for cross-linguistic variation in the instantiation of functional projections.Keywords: syntax; verb-second word order; bottleneck effect; feature scattering The cartographic program and the problem of restricted instantiationFollowing Rizzi (1997) a variety of evidence has emerged to suggest that the left edge of the clause, the traditional complementizer phrase, contains additional internal structure. Numerous works within the cartographic approach propose that rather than a single projection, the left edge of the clause includes a series of distinct functional projections, collectively referred to as the extended left periphery. These functional heads perform the various functions of complementizer-like elements, generally related to clause typing and the encoding of information structure. While the body of research within the approach has given rise to many proposed structures, we will consider for illustrative purposes the "core"

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This paper presents a tactile vision substitution system (TVSS) for the study of active sensing. Two algorithms, namely image processing and trajectory tracking, were developed to enhance the capability of conventional TVSS. Image processing techniques were applied to reduce the artifacts and extract important features from the active camera and effectively converted the information into tactile stimuli with much lower resolution. A fixed camera was used to record the movement of the active camera. A trajectory tracking algorithm was developed to analyze the active sensing strategy of the TVSS users to explore the environment. The image processing subsystem showed advantageous improvement in extracting object's features for superior recognition. The trajectory tracking subsystem, on the other hand, enabled accurately locating the portion of the scene pointed by the active camera and providing profound information for the study of active sensing strategy applied by TVSS users.