News

On Friday, November 21, Andrew Garrett, Leanne Hinton, Tyler Lee-Wynant, and Madeleine Strait hosted Victoria Carlson, Ryan Fleisher, Nikki Peters, and Brittany Vigil-Burbank from the Yurok Tribe at its monthly language workshop, held for the first time on the Berkeley campus. The morning focused on Yurok syntax and the afternoon featured a visit to the Bancroft Library to inspect early-twentieth-century Yurok manuscripts. (Photo by Zachary O'Hagan.)

Debbie Anderson was recognized by the Unicode Consortium for her two decades of contributions to the Unicode Standard and to the field of script digitization. The Unicode Bulldog Award is "to be given to those tenacious champions of Unicode who have produced solid achievements in promoting its use around the globe. This award is called the Bulldog Award; once they bite, they never let go!"

Presenters highlighted her supervision of more than 120 scripts into modern digital infrastructure, as well as her mentorship of the next generation of researchers and technologists. A well-deserved honor!

Unicode Consortium CEO Toral Cowieson recognizing Debbie Anderson with the Bulldog Award at the 2025 Unicode Technology Workshop. Photo credit: Elango Cheran

In and around the Department of Linguistics in the next week:

• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Nov 21 - Dwinelle 5125 - 3-4pm
  Justin Davidson (UC Berkeley) leads a discussion of Montrul 2025
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Nov 21 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Practice LSA talks
  - Line Mikkelsen (UC Berkeley), Emily Clem (UC San Diego), Grethe Schmidt (Umiaq, Kalaallit Illuutaat), and Ellen Thrane (Umiaq, Kalaallit Illuutaat): "Reverse prolepsis in Kalaallisut"
  - Line Mikkelsen (UC Berkeley), Grethe Schmidt (Umiaq, Kalaallit Illuutaat), and Ellen Thrane (Umiaq, Kalaallit Illuutaat): "Focus fronting, Q-Particles and anti-pied-piping"

Tessa Scott (PhD 2023) has just published the article "Formalizing two types of mixed A/Ā movement" in Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics.

Julian Vargo and Verónica Grajeda presented at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, hosted at the University of Arizona, Tucson, on November 13-15, 2025:

• Julian Vargo: "Timing of Vocalic Articulatory Maxima in Spanish-English Bilinguals"
• Julian Vargo & Tyler Thornley: "Asymmetrical Reinforcement of Nasalized Vowels in Spanish-English Bilinguals"
• Verónica Grajeda: "U.S. Spanish Nasal Neutralization: A Case Study on the Production of /njV/ and /ɲV/"

In and around the Department of Linguistics in the next week:

• Linguistics Department Colloquium - Monday Nov 17 - Dwinelle 370 and Zoom (passcode: lx-colloq) - 3:10-4:30pm
  Aris Clemons (UT Knoxville): "US Black Vernacular Spanish(es): Toward a theory of Linguistic Solidarity through Blaxican Soundscapes in Southern California"
• Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group - Tuesday Nov 18 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 3:40-4:30pm
  Devin Naar (University of Washington): "A Curious and Exotic Land: The United States as Reflected in Ladino Newspapers in the Ottoman Empire"
• Language Revitalization Working Group - Wednesday Nov 19 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
  7000 Languages: TBA
• Phorum - Friday Nov 14 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 4:10-5pm
  Sarah Ertel (UC Berkeley alum): "The Front Vowels of Eastern Washington English"
• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Nov 14 - Dwinelle 5125 - 3-4pm
  Group study session
• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Nov 21 - Dwinelle 5125 - 3-4pm
  Justin Davidson (UC Berkeley): Special article discussion
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Nov 21 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Line Mikkelsen (UC Berkeley) and Emily Clem (UC San Diego): TBA

Aurora Martinez Kane participated as a speaker and moderator in a panel titled New Mexico Spanish Language Archival Recovery Project: Simposio y Plática at the University of New Mexico on Wednesday, November 12.

In and around the Department of Linguistics in the next week:

• Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Nov 12 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
  Identity and Fieldwork: Perspectives from Working within our Communities
  Panel discussion with Claudia Iron Hawk, Wendy Liz Arbey López Márquez, Nafisa Iyatunde Rashid, and Hei Vangz (UC Berkeley)
• Phorum - Friday Nov 14 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 4:10-5pm
  Sarah Ertel (UC Berkeley alum): "The Front Vowels of Eastern Washington English"
• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Nov 7 - Dwinelle 5125 - 3-4pm
  Teresa Pratt (SFSU): Workshop on sociolinguistic fieldwork and ethnography
• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Nov 14 - Dwinelle 5125 - 3-4pm
  Group study session
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Nov 7 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Daniel Aremu (Goethe University Frankfurt): "Towards an Operator-Particle Approach to exclusive association with focus in Yorùbá" (remote talk)

UC Berkeley News has just run a feature story on the California Language Archive's acquisition of Pomoan language materials from the late linguist Sally McLendon (PhD 1966), highlighting the work of department members Zachary O'Hagan and Tyler Lee-Wynant. The collection is supporting language revitalization efforts with the Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake Tribe.

The following Berkeley linguists will be presenting their research at the 53rd annual conference New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV), taking place November 5-7, 2025, at the University of Michigan. The full program is available here.

• Nicole Holliday: "Accent Translation" AI Fails to Generate "Standard English" Intonational Patterns

• Julian Vargo: "Acoustical Diphthongal Trajectory Variation in Hispanic Californian English"

• Julian Vargo and Akul Shivkumar: "Multidimensional Vowel Dispersion as a Cue to Stylistic Variation"

• Becky Everson and Kamogelo "Blade" Mokgosi: "Linguistic Elicitation and Style in a Language Documentation Context: Variable Click Production in Tjhauba"

• Sarah Ertel: "Prevelar Movement in Eastern Washington English"

Research by Gašper Beguš and Maksymilian Dąbkowski on the metalinguistic abilities of language models has been featured in Quanta Magazine! Check it out here.

The 2025-2026 Linguistics Colloquium series continues on Monday, November 17, with a talk by Aris Clemons (UT Knoxville). The talk will take place in Dwinelle 370 and synchronously via Zoom (password: lx-colloq) from 3:10-4:30pm. The title is "US Black Vernacular Spanish(es): Toward a Theory of Linguistic Solidarity through Blaxican Soundscapes in Southern California" and the abstract is as follows:

Drawing on the work of social, political, and linguistic theorists, this talk seeks to disrupt traditional approaches to mapping contact varieties of Spanish used by Black speakers in the United States. To do so, I first provide an overview of foundational concepts to underscore the ways that language and race are inextricably bound, such that language begets understandings of race and race becomes a lens by which we are able to analyze language. Anchored by a discussion of Blackness as a hemispheric concept, the talk considers how the Black Mexican soundscape of (Southern) California represents an unruly entrance into the possibility for a distinct methodological approach to mapping a Blaxican variety of Spanish. Positing an interdisciplinary incursion into sociolinguistic analysis, I contest colonial framed ontologies and argue for a human centered approach to Social and Anthropological Linguistics. Specifically, the talk provides a cultural and linguistic case-study analysis of four songs: (1) El Rey by D-Smoke; (2) Go Loko by YG featuring Tyga and Jonz; (3) Que Maldición by Banda Mas, Karol G, and Snoop Dog; and (4) Wacced out Murals by Kendrick Lamar. Using a combination of linguistic and anthropological methods, including critical conversation analysis and a descriptive sociophonetic analysis, I argue that community alignment shapes both the production and reception of Blaxican Spanish as a locally situated ethnolect. Moreover, I propose linguistic production as a space for ethnoracial solidarity while contesting identity regimes that ultimately sets the stage for future empirical research on Black Spanish varieties.