Research
Projects
Dative subjects and case-marking in Faroese
Spring 2015—
Advisor: Paul Kiparsky.
In this project I examine case-marking patterns which occur with Faroese psych verbs. The puzzle presented is that unlike Icelandic, in the presence of a non-nominative subject, the lower object argument will be marked with accusative case, not nominative. I aim to offer a theoretical account for this dative-accusative pattern and also for the observed change in progress towards a nominative-accusative system across the board.
Faroese ballad meter
Spring 2014—Summer 2015
Video from Dansifelagið í Havn (Tórshavn Dance Society)
Advisor: Paul Kiparsky.
The Faroese kvæði, a tradition of sung ballads accompanied by a ringdance, provide an excellent opportunity for examining the relation between meter and rhythm, and hence for refining current metrical theory. In a study of a sample of ballad texts and recordings, I argue that:
- the Faroese data are best accounted for by a correspondence constraint-based metrical grammar, whilst an iterative rule-based account (Fabb and Halle 2008) misses generalisations and overgenerates;
- while evidence from the ringdance indicates a general alignment between metrical and musical rhythm, there is not always a one-to-one mapping; whenever such a mismatch occurs, a rhythmic principle of binarity nonetheless applies in performance.
US Presidential Speeches Project
Summer 2016-Winter 2017
Worked with Arto Anttila, Tim Dozat and Naomi Shapiro on project to annotate US Presidents' inaugural addresses for metrical stress.
Fieldwork
- Two and a half month research trip to the Faroe Islands for gathering syntactic data, April-June 2017.
- Video and audio recordings of ballad performances by Vága dansifelag conducted on September 6 2014 at Miðvágur, Faroe Islands.
Sociogrammar: Relative clauses
Spring 2015
Class project investigating social and grammatical factors influencing choice of variant introducing relative clauses, under instructors John Rickford and Tom Wasow.
Sociophonetics: Bakersfield, CA
Spring 2014
Class project investigating the social meaning of /l/-quality among Anglo- and Hispanic speakers of English in Bakersfield, California under instructor Rob Podesva.
Stanford Dependencies
Winter 2014
Worked on annotations on the output of a dependency parser under advisor Chris Manning.
Manuscripts
Galbraith, Daniel. 2016. Dative subjects and case-marking in Faroese. Qualifying paper, Stanford University.
Galbraith, Daniel. 2015. Faroese ballad meter. Qualifying paper, Stanford University.
Galbraith, Daniel. 2013. Positional and morphological case in Faroese. MPhil thesis, Cambridge University.