Linguistics Department News (Calques)

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

• We have accessioned the first series of the Katherine Turner Collection of Indigenous Language Materials (PhD 1987), consisting of a rich set of 23 boxes of file slips of words and phrases in Chimariko (isolate; California), many organizing the knowledge provided by Chimariko elder Sally Noble to linguist J.P. Harrington, based on his notes held by the National Anthropological Archives.
• This semester the CLA was fortunate to have a larger-than-normal group of eight student, alum, and other staff and volunteers supporting cataloging and digitization (left to right): Ronald Sprouse (IT Specialist), Tyler Lee-Wynant, Julian Vargo, Zachary O'Hagan (Manager), Nyssa Combs, Priyanka Samant, Sebastian Clendenning Jiménez, Fiona Murphy, Andrew Garrett (Director), Sophia Hsu, and Michaela Richter.

Congratulations to the Berkeley linguists who will be presenting at the 2026 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New Orleans:

• Riley VanMeter: "Translation and Grammaticalization in Neapolitan: A Comparative Romance Analysis"
• Ben Papadopoulos: "Reimagining the Canon of Linguistic Theory"
• Jordan J. Tudisco: "For a Truly Sexy Linguistics: Centering Transness and Rejecting Anti-Trans Antagonism"
• Jennifer Kaplan: "Going Local: Category Violence and the Provincialization of Identity"
• Katherine Russell: "The typology of contrastive nasality: The case of Kwa"
• Akil Ismael: "Ternary Vowel Length Alternations in Shilluk"
• Eve Fleisig, Nikolai Schwarz, Veronica Grajeda, Abigail Roberts, Rhosean Asmah, and Nicole Holliday: "Identity and Personality in Social Perception of OpenAI's Synthesized Voices"
• Naomi Schroeter and Julian Vargo: "Suprasegmental and Vocalic Variation in Ladino"
• Anna Knall, Deborah Foucault (UMass Amherst), and Adina Camelia Bleotu (UBucharest): "Anaphora Resolution of Romanian One in Early Child Language: The Role of Morphosyntactic Gender"
• Line Mikkelsen, Ellen Thrane (Umiaq, Kalaallit Illuutaat), and Grethe Schmidt (Umiaq, Kalaallit Illuutaat): "Focus, Q-particles and prosodic inversion"
• Line Mikkelsen, Emily Clem (UC San Diego), Grethe Schmidt (Umiaq, Kalaallit Illuutaat), and Ellen Thrane (Umiaq, Kalaallit Illuutaat): "Reverse prolepsis in Kalaallisut"
• Kai Schenck and Alexandra M. Pfiffner: "PHOIBLE inventories suggest that diachrony contributes to the appearance of feature economy"
• Julian Vargo: "Anticipatory Vowel Nasalization in Catalan"

Please let us know if any presentations are missing from this list, so that we can update this story on our departmental website.

On Friday, December 5, Maksymilian Dąbkowski presented his dissertation (filed in October) on "Metrical stress and glottal stops in A'ingae," which shows based on data collected during fieldwork in A'ingae-speaking communities in Ecuador that phonology must by cyclic and morpheme-sensitive, and that phonological domains correspond to morphosyntactic domains. In January, Maks is starting a position as a Research Assistant Professor at The University of Hong Kong. Congrats, Maks! Maks is pictured below in front of his presentation slides with committee members Darya Kavitskaya, Peter Kasuga-Jenks, and Hannah Sande. Not pictured: Committee member Lev Michael.

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

• We have accessioned several new recordings to Berkeley Linguistics Lectures, a collection of sound recordings of linguistics-related lectures on campus from 1960 to 1985, including but not limited to:
• Paul Garvin, 1961, The Structure of Kutenai
• Mary Haas, 1965 Faculty Research Lecture, The Prehistory of Languages
• William Shipley, 1966, Orientation to the Survey of California Indian Languages and Cultural and Genetic Relationships
• Björn Lindblom, 1975, The Phonetic Cost Benefit Analysis of Phonological Facts: Possibilities and Limitations
• Madison Beeler, 1977, Thirty-Six Years of Linguistics at Berkeley
• Wendy López Márquez has accessioned Documentación Colaborativa del Nuntajɨɨyi (Mixe-Zoquean; Mexico), consisting of video recordings with complete transcriptions and translations in ELAN of 30 texts. Her project has been carried out with Antonio Victoria Sebastián, Carolina González González, Jennifer López Márquez, Acasio Ramírez Hernández, Erasmo Rodríguez López, Lorenzo Rodríguez López, and Emmanuel Rodríguez Ramírez.
• We have accessioned 14 boxes of file slips into Jane Hill's collection of Cupeño (Uto-Aztecan; California) materials (see items HillJ.006.001 thru HillJ.006.014 here).
• We have accessioned the first two series of the William Weigel Collection of Yokutsan Language Materials (California), including sound recordings, original notes, and other paper documents related primarily to Yowlumne, with elders Jane Flippo and Agnes Vera, and Wukchumni, with Eddie Sartuche. Dr. Weigel received his PhD from this department in 2005 with a dissertation titled Yowlumne in the Twentieth Century and passed away in 2023.