Larry Hyman will give a virtual keynote speech at the 2024 International Forum on Phonology, held at Tianjin Normal University this weekend. His talk "Milestones in the Development of Generative Phonology" will take place at 5pm Pacific Saturday, November 23 (Sunday morning in China). The conference is being held in honor of Wang Jialing, who introduced optimality theory into China. Congrats, Larry!
Nicole Holliday is quoted in an article on ‘Government by the worst’: why people are calling Trump’s new sidekicks a ‘kakistocracy’ in the Guardian. From the article: “Americans, Holliday says, love labels.
Katherine Russell's paper on "A unified account of grammatical tone and length in Gã", was just published in the ACAL proceedings volume Pushing the boundaries: Selected papers from the 51-52 Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Congrats!
Scott AnderBois and Maksymilian Dąbkowski's new paper "The semantics and expression of apprehensional modality" has appeared in Language and Linguistics Compass 19(1), e70002. The abstract is below. Congrats!
Abstract: Apprehensionality refers to the semantic domain of negative prospective epistemic modality and the formal expressions used to encode it. In this article, we break down the apprehensional situation into five prototypical components: (I) future reference, (II) possibility, (III) negative evaluation, (IV) avertive intent, and (V) a preferred action. In doing so, we propose a framework for comparing synchronic and diachronic aspects of the semantics and expression of apprehensional modality across languages. We discuss several recent formal accounts of three apprehensional morphemes—Francez's account of Biblical Hebrew pen, Dąbkowski and AnderBois's of A'ingae -sa'ne, and Phillips's of Australian Kriol bambai—relate their formalisms to the apprehensional situation schema, and evaluate their predictions. We summarise previous findings on the grammaticalisation pathways towards and among apprehensional morphemes. We find that apprehensionals grammaticalise from a wide range of sources, including components I–IV of the apprehensional schema. Among the apprehensional functions themselves, both subordination and insubordination are commonly encountered.
Erik Hans Maier (Linguistics PhD '22) has started a new staff position here at Berkeley as the Undergraduate Research and Curricular Program Analyst for the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarships in the College of Letters & Science Undergraduate Division.
Zachary O'Hagan is in Palm Springs this week representing the California Language Archive as part of the annual conference of the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM).
Amber Galvano received the COZIL travel grant to support their participation in the LSA 2025 meeting. Congrats!
Gi-ga-miinigoowiz Mamaandaawiziwin (May the Force be With You): A Star Wars Journey Towards Indigenous Language Revitalization
Tuesday, November 19 - 223 Philosophy Hall - 12-1:30pm
UC Berkeley alumnus Charles Chang (PhD 2010) will be joining the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) as Professor of Linguistics, starting September 202
Mairi McLaughlin is co-organizing a book launch on Wednesday, November 6th online from 9-11am Pacific to celebrate the publication of the volume Historical and Sociolinguistic Approaches to French, which she edited with Janice Carruthers and Olivia Walsh. The volume is intended to celebrate the career and many contributions of Wendy Ayres-Bennett so the book launch will include a response to the book by Wendy and some remarks about her career.
There will be six talks by Berkeley linguists at NWAV 52 in Miami, November 7-9, 2024:
Congrats, all!
Richard Rhodes is giving a talk called "The funny medial construction" on Sunday, October 27 at the 56th Algonquian Conference. Congrats!
Gašper Beguš gave two invited talks:
Congrats!
Cancelled for NELS!
Yin Lin Tan (Stanford): Towards an indexical account of English in Singapore: Sociophonetic variation and Singlish
Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:
Kashaya community members and collaborators
Nisenan community members
Alexandra Pfiffner is giving a colloquium talk at the University of Manitoba on October 18, titled "An audiovisual phonetic analysis of the Mandarin sibilant merger." Congrats!