News

Alumni

October 3, 2018

The program for this year's LSA annual meeting has been released, and Berkeley linguistics will be represented in 14 talks and posters (plus an organized session) by students, faculty, and very recent alumni: 

Congrats all!

This weekend features two conferences at which Berkeley Linguistics will have a major presence, one each in the east and the west:

  • The Annual Meeting on Phonology, at UC San Diego, features work by faculty Larry Hyman and Jesse Zymet, along with alumni Nik Rolle (PhD 2018, now at Princeton), Hannah Sande (PhD 2017, now at Georgetown),  Gabriela Caballero (PhD 2008, now at UCSD), Alan Yu (PhD 2003, now at Chicago),  and Eugene Buckley (PhD 1992, now at Penn).
  • NELS 49, at Cornell, features presentations by graduate students Emily Clem, Schuyler Laparle, and Tessa Scott, along with alum Maziar Toosarvandani (PhD 2010, now at UC Santa Cruz). 

Congrats all!

Newly published with CSLI is the long-awaited volume Revealing Structure: Papers in Honor of Larry M. Hyman (eds. Eugene Buckley, Thera Crane and Jeff Good)! The book features numerous contributions by alumni, faculty, emeriti, and former visiting scholars, including: 

  • Jeff Good (Ph.D. 2003), Eugene Buckley (Ph.D. 1992)  & Thera Crane (Ph.D. 2011): Revealing Structure in Languages and Grammar
  • Jean-Marie Hombert (PhD 1975) and Rebecca Grollemund: Phylogenetic Classification of Grassfields Languages
  • Sharon Inkelas: Overexponence and Underexponence in Morphology 
  • Joyce T. Mathangwane (Ph.D. 1996): On Tones in Chisubiya (Chiikuhane) 
  • Johanna Nichols: A Direct/Inverse Subsystem in Ingush Deictic Prefixes
  • John J. Ohala: The Aerodynamic Voicing Constraint and its Phonological Implications  
  • Imelda I. Udoh (former visiting scholar): Compounding in Leggbó 
  • Alan C. L. Yu (Ph.D. 2003):  Laryngeal Schizophrenia in Washo Resonants

Congrats, Larry, on the celebratory volume, and congrats to the editors and authors!

The Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21 have just been published, containing four papers by faculty, students, and/or alumni: 

  • Pranav Anand & Maziar Toosarvandani (Ph.D. 2010)
    Unifying the canonical, historical, and play-by-play present. pdf
  • Amy Rose Deal & Julia Nee
    Bare nouns, number, and definiteness in Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec. pdf
  • Peter Jenks, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, & Emmanuel-Moselly Makasso
    On the lexical semantics of property concept nouns in Basaá. pdf
  • Peter Sutton & Hana Filip (Ph.D 1993)
    Restrictions on subkind coercion in object mass nouns. pdf

Congrats all! 

September 28, 2018

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

September 26, 2018

Ian Chen, son of I-Hsuan Chen (PhD '15) and Tim Chen, was born on Sept. 12. Welcome, baby! 

September 20, 2018

A group of students, faculty, alumni, and friends of Berkeley linguistics were on hand this Wednesday evening to cheer the Oakland A's to a 10-0 victory over the visiting LA Angels!

Berkeley linguists at the ballgame

September 18, 2018

Alumna Miriam R. L. Petruck (PhD '86) writes to share news of her edited book MetaNet, recently published by John Benjamins. The book contains contributions by Miriam and fellow alumni Karen Sullivan (PhD '07),  Elise Stickles (PhD '16), Oana David (PhD '16), Ellen Dodge (PhD '10), and Jisup Hong (PhD '12), along with faculty member Eve Sweetser and emeritus faculty member George Lakoff. 

Congrats to alumna Oana David (PhD 2016), who has just taken up a new position as an Analytic Linguist at Google!

September 12, 2018

Taking advantage of the visual possibilities afforded by the new Calques format, we present some recent evidence of Berkeley linguists out and about. Send your photos of linguistics-in-action to Calques!

 Berkeley linguists at LabPhon

The Berkeley Crew at LabPhon16:  Yao Yao (PhD 2011), Charles Bond Chang (PhD 2010), Grant McGuire (former postdoc), Keith JohnsonMatt Faytak (PhD 2018)Myriam Lapierre, Jeremy Steffman (BA 2016), Hannah Sande (PhD 2017), Alice ShenAndrew Cheng and Alan Yu (PhD 2003)

Berkeley semantics at Sinn und Bedeutung

The Berkeley Crew at Sinn und Bedeutung 23: Emily Clem, Virginia Dawson, Amy Rose Deal, Peter Jenks, Rachel RudolphRuyue Agnes Bi

Nik Rolle and Jack Merrill

Two new doctors in celebratory gear: Jack Merrill (PhD 2018) and Nik Rolle (PhD 2018)

September 7, 2018

The annual meeting of Sinn und Bedeutung, taking place this week in Barcelona, features five presentations by Berkeley students, faculty, and very recent alumni:

  • Emily Clem: Attributive adjectives in Tswefap: Vague predicates in a language with degrees
  • Virginia Dawson and Amy Rose Deal: Third readings by semantic scope lowering: prolepsis in Tiwa
  • Amy Rose Deal and Vera Hohaus: Vague predicates, crisp judgments
  • Ruyue Agnes Bi (BA '18) and Peter Jenks : Pronouns, radical pro-drop, and ellipsis in Mandarin
  • Rachel Rudolph (Berkeley philosophy): A Closer Look at the Perceptual Source in Copy Raising Constructions

Keith Johnson and alumna Sarah Bakst (PhD '17) have a new open access paper out this July (published with financial assistance from the University Library for open access publishing): 

September 6, 2018

Alumnus Len Talmy (PhD '72) writes to share news of his book The Targeting System of Language, published earlier this year by MIT Press. 

August 31, 2018

Congrats to newly minted PhD Matt Faytak, who has recently started a post-doc position at UCLA!

Congrats to Jonathan Manker (PhD 2017), who has recently taken up a lecturer position at Rice University!

Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics is a new online working papers series edited by Line Mikkelsen and Amy Rose Deal. Since launching in June, BPFL has published 7 papers by faculty and students (both graduate and undergraduate), representing work in formal linguistics across a number of subdisciplines. We welcome submissions of new research or work in progress in any area of formal linguistics; please contact the editors for submission details!

August 24, 2018

Congrats to alumna Molly Babel (PhD 2009, Associate Professor at UBC) on the August 15 birth of her daughter Zelda Esther! Molly writes: "Zelda kept us in a bit of suspense, joining us in the world 13 days late. She measures in at 3420 grams / 7.5 pounds, 49 cm / 19.25 inches, and 100 metric / 100 imperial units of adorable. She's pretty swell!"