News

Faculty

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. 

September 12, 2018

Larry Hyman has a new paper out in the latest issue of Language: What tone teaches us about language. The paper reflects his Presidential Address to the LSA in January of this year -- congrats, Larry!

The trio of Claudette Rogers (Karuk Tribe), Dixie Rogers (Karuk Tribe), and Line Mikkelsen (UC Berkeley) have just published a collaborative work entitled "Biography of Julia Starritt". The authors would like to express thanks to Ron Sprouse for help with web implementation!

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

Terry Regier and visiting graduate student Noga Zaslavsky (together with their colleagues) have two new papers out this summer:

The paper Color naming reflects both perceptual structure and communicative need received the conference prize for best paper on computational modeling of language. Congrats, Noga and Terry! 

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): 

This Tuesday's edition of the Daily Cal newspaper contains a letter to the editor by Sharon Inkelas:

August 31, 2018

A hearty congratulations to our emeritus colleague William S-Y. Wang, who was recently one of five world-class scholars to be awarded honorary degrees from the University of Chicago. Described as "a pioneer in the study of language evolution and the emergence of new languages", Wang was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. 

Continuing the news of the summer: Congrats to third-year grad student Myriam Lapierre on winning the Best Student Paper Award for Poster Presentations at this summer's meeting of LabPhon! Myriam's award-winning poster is entited 'Patterns of nasal coarticulation in Panará' and is joint work with Susan Lin. Facebook users can find a photo of Myriam demonstrating a vowel from the poster in question on the Friends of Berkeley Linguistics facebook group. 

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!

A new book on The Language of Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Rich Rhodes together with Tom Güldemann (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and Patrick McConvell (Australian National University), can now be pre-ordered from Cambridge University Press. Congrats, Rich!

August 24, 2018

We're pleased to announce that Jesse Zymet has joined the department as Lecturer in Linguistics, teaching courses in phonology. And we eagerly await the July 2019 arrival of new Assistant Professor Isaac Bleaman, who will be teaching sociolinguistics and computational methods. Welcome, Jesse and Isaac!

Congrats  to three faculty colleagues on their recent journal publications: