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November 21, 2024

Holliday quoted in the Guardian

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.

Linguistics events this week (November 22-December 2)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:
  • Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley (SLaB) – Friday, November 22 - Spanish & Portuguese Library (Dwinelle 5125) - 3-4pm
    Research updates
  • SSCircle – Friday, November 22 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
    Abby Roberts (UC Berkeley): Characterizing Nukuoro Copulas: Analysis and Implications
  • Phorum – Friday, November 22 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
    Suyuan Liu (University of British Columbia): TBA
  • Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group – Monday, Nov. 25 - Dwinelle 1229 - 3-4pm
    Ora de echar lashon (beginner-friendly conversation hour) on what we are grateful for and Ladino folk music. Delicious snacks provided as always!
  • Linguistics Department Colloquium – Monday, December 2 - Dwinelle 370 and on zoom (lx-colloq) - 3-5pm
    Gabriella Licata (UC Riverside), Brian Asey Gonsoulin, Mesro Coles, Rob Tyler, and Habib Watkins (Mount Tamalpais College): "The Sociolinguistic Labor of Incarcerated People"
CLA Updates

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

  • This week we host the fourth visit supported by the new CLA Community Research Grant: Kawaiisu community members and collaborating linguists (left to right) Merlene Everson, Laura Grant, Sophia Kendrick, and Brandi Kendrick. They are consulting on the cataloging of the forthcoming Maurice L. Zigmond Collection of Uto-Aztecan Language Materials acquired in April of last year. The CLA has previously collaborated with Grant, Everson, and others to archive the born-digital collection Kawaiisu Conversations and Landscapes Project, which features the voices of Everson's mother, the late Betty Girado Hernandez, her aunt, and uncle.

Kawaiisu CLA visit

Hyman presents keynote on "Milestones in the Development of Generative Phonology"

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!

Presentation announcement for the 2024 International Forum on Phonology

Russell publishes in ACAL 51-52 proceedings

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!

November 17, 2024

Dąbkowski publishes in Language and Linguistics Compass

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.

November 15, 2024

Maier starts staff position at Berkeley

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.

November 14, 2024

Linguistics events this week (November 15-22)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:
Galvano receives COZIL travel grant

Amber Galvano received the COZIL travel grant to support their participation in the LSA 2025 meeting. Congrats!

O'Hagan gives conference talk

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).

Bleaman gives three colloquia in Toronto
Isaac Bleaman will be traveling to Toronto next week to give three research colloquia: one in Yiddish for the Jewish Studies program at the University of Toronto (Nov. 20), and two in English for the linguistics programs at York University (Nov. 21) and the University of Toronto (Nov. 22). Congrats!

November 7, 2024

Chang to join City University of Hong Kong

UC Berkeley alumnus Charles Chang (PhD 2010) will be joining the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) as Professor of Linguistics, starting September 202

Linguistics events this week (November 8-15)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:
  • SSCircle– Friday, November 15 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
    Franco Liu (UC Berkeley): TBA
  • Phorum – Friday, November 15 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
    Maya Wax-Cavallaro (UCSC): TBA

October 31, 2024

Book launch for "Historical and Sociolinguistic Approaches to French"

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.

Linguistics events this week (November 1-8)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:
  • SSCircle & Fforum – Friday, November 1 - Dwinelle 1303 -- 3-4:30pm
    Zachary O'Hagan & Lev Michael (UC Berkeley): Reconsidering Chamikuro tense-marked determiners: Methodological and analytical perspectives
  • Phorum – Friday, November 1 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
    Santiago Barreda (UC Davis): TBA
  • Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group – Monday, Nov. 4 - Dwinelle 1229 - 3-4pm
    Adam Mahler (Harvard) on “Editorial Cruxes and Early Judeo-Spanish texts”
  • LRWG – Wednesday, Nov. 6 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    Anushah Hossain (UC Berkeley) on the The Politics of Script (Re)Vitalization: Case Studies of Lampung (Indonesia) and Bété (Côte D'Ivoire)
  • SSCircle – Friday, November 8 - Dwinelle 1303 -- 3-4:30pm
    Akil Ismael (UC Berkeley): TBA
  • Phorum – Friday, November 1 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
    TBA
Berkeley linguists at NWAV

There will be six talks by Berkeley linguists at NWAV 52 in Miami, November 7-9, 2024:

  • Amber Galvano: "Measuring Sibilants in Speech & Sexuality Research: Beyond Spectral Moments"
  • Anna Knall: "Gender Assignment Variation in Spanish-English Mixed Noun Phrases"
  • Nicole Holliday: “'I Don’t Like My Conversations Being Judged By an AI'”: Issues of Bias and Quality in Social Feedback Speech Technology"
  • Julia Peck: "Multilingualism and Gender Assignment:Three Parallel Systems for Loanwords in Istanbul Judeo-Spanish?"
  • Rhosean Asmah: "Coronal Stop Deletion in Megan Thee Stallion's Rap and Speech"
  • Niko Schwarz: "Phonetics of Liquid Neutralization in Isla Margarita, Venezuela"

Congrats, all!

October 24, 2024

Linguistics events this week (October 25-November 1)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:
  • SSCircle– Friday, October 25 - Dwinelle 1303 -- 3-4:30pm
    Huilei Wang (UCLA): Apparent overt extraction from Mandarin relative clauses
  • Phorum – Friday, October 25- Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
    Yin Lin Tan (Stanford): Towards an indexical account of English in Singapore: Sociophonetic variation and Singlish
  • Halloween party! – Tuesday, October 29 - Ishi Court - 4:30-6:30pm
    Everyone in the Linguistics community is invited; family and significant others are welcome to join.
  • SSCircle & Fforum – Friday, November 1 - Dwinelle 1303 -- 3-4:30pm
    Zachary O'Hagan & Lev Michael (UC Berkeley): Reconsidering Chamikuro tense-marked determiners: Methodological and analytical perspectives
  • Phorum – Friday, November 1 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
    Santiago Barreda (UC Davis): TBA
Rhodes speaks at Algonquian Conference

Richard Rhodes is giving a talk called "The funny medial construction" on Sunday, October 27 at the 56th Algonquian Conference. Congrats!

October 22, 2024

Beguš gives two talks

Gašper Beguš gave two invited talks:

  • An invited plenary talk at the Bridging East and West: Cutting-Edge Perspectives in Language and Cognitive Science conference organized by the Beijing Language and Culture University on October 20, 2024. His talk was titled "New ways of modeling language".
  • An invited talk titled "Jezikoslovne zmožnosti velikih jezikovnih modelov'' at the Mednarodni dan slovarjev 2024 conference, at the Fran Ramovš Institute of the Slovenian Language on October 14, 2024.

Congrats!

October 17, 2024

Linguistics events this week (October 18-25)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:
  • SSCircle – Friday, October 18

    Cancelled for NELS!

  • Phorum – Friday, October 18 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
    Richard Wang (UC Santa Cruz): Morphosyntax-Prosody Mismatch in Beijing Mandarin: Evidence from Retroflex Lenition
  • LRWG – Wednesday, Oct. 23 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    Vanessa Raffin (E-Reo): E-Reo: Empowering Language Revitalization with Digital Tools
  • SSCircle – Friday, October 255 - Dwinelle 1303 -- 3-4:30pm
    Huilei Wang (UCLA): TBD
  • Phorum – Friday, October 25- Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm

    Yin Lin Tan (Stanford): Towards an indexical account of English in Singapore: Sociophonetic variation and Singlish