News

Congratulations to Amy Rose Deal and Justin Royer (former Berkeley postdoc, now at Université de Montréal), who have a new Open Access article out on "Mayan animacy hierarchy effects and the dynamics of Agree" in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory!

At the 17th Researching and Applying Metaphor Conference in Southfield, MI, August 7-10, Eve Sweetser, Lorianne Fan (BA 2024), and Kim Grogan (University of British Columbia) will present a paper titled "Multimodal metaphor data and enrichment of corpus interpretation."

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

• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday May 9 - Dwinelle 1303 (and Zoom by request) - 3-4:30pm
  Shweta Akolkar (UC Berkeley): "Two structures for modal clauses in Marathi and implications for case"

We wrote to our soon-to-be and very recent undergraduate alumni (fall 2024, spring and summer 2025) for updates on their plans after graduation. Here are the stories they shared with us:

• Luis Bejarano-Beltran (BA 2025) will be converting to a full-time Brand Marketing Coordinator for Chase Center Concerts and Events, under the Golden State Warriors.
• Ajay Bhargava (BA 2025) will be starting a job as an engineer at Applied Intuition, working on software for autonomous vehicles.
• Habiba Geweifal (BA 2025) will be starting her MS in Speech-Language Pathology at San Jose State University in Fall 2025.
• Lindsay Hatch (BA 2025) will be taking a year off and then applying to graduate school to continue research.
• Madison Fanucchi (BA 2025) will be attending San Jose State University to earn her Master's of Library and Information Science with a concentration on Archival Studies.

Congratulations, everybody!

News from the Script Encoding Initiative:

Helena Kansa is the Program Manager of the Script Encoding Initiative (SEI). She is a recent graduate of the University of California, Irvine, and has a background in linguistics, anthropology, and foreign languages such as Italian and Arabic. In her role at SEI, Helena provides administrative and logistical support, oversees special projects like the script status database, and develops new initiatives like the upcoming SEI fieldwork fellowship. With a passion for advancing language accessibility, she is excited to assist SEI in promoting the digital representation of minority writing systems. As representative of SEI’s communications with the public, Helena hopes to cultivate new opportunities for collaboration with UC Berkeley students and the surrounding community. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, traveling, boxing, and working on her car. Helena welcomes anyone interested to reach out to her for any questions about SEI.

Please give her a warm welcome to the department. Helena is starting her role remotely, but will be around in person starting this summer. Feel free to drop by SEI's new office at Dwinelle 1224 to say hello!

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

• Linguistics Undergraduate Honors Colloquium - Monday May 5 - Dwinelle 370 and Zoom - 3:10pm
  Presentations by Sarah Ertel and Lindsay Hatch
• Phorum - Friday May 2 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
  Max Kaplan (UC Santa Cruz): "Phonotactics in speech perception: A crosslinguistic comparison of repair in onset clusters"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday May 2 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
  Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley): "Case sensitivity reflects case structure: Agreement, extraction, and clitics"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday May 9 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
  Shweta Akolkar (UC Berkeley): "Two structures for modal clauses in Marathi and implications for case"

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

• Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group - Thursday May 1 - Dwinelle 1303 - 4-5pm
  Ora de Echar Lashon (beginner-friendly conversation hour) with discussions of May Day and Ladino poetry across time and space!
• Language Revitalization Working Group - Wednesday Apr 30 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
  Panel: Revitalization and re-awakening sleeping and near-sleeping languages, with Chelsi Sparti (Wintun), Jonathan Cirelli (Habematolel Pomo), and Shaunie Briggs (Salinan)
• Phorum - Friday Apr 25 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
  Antón de la Fuente (Stanford): "Ideological Change and Phonological Variation in the Galician of O Grove"
• Phorum - Friday May 2 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
  Max Kaplan (UC Santa Cruz): "Phonotactics in speech perception: A crosslinguistic comparison of repair in onset clusters"
• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Monday Apr 28 - Dwinelle 5125 and Zoom - 2-3pm
  Talk by Verónica Grajeda
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Apr 25 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
  Andrew Simpson (USC): "Obligatory object shift in Chinese: Aspect, definiteness, and affectedness"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday May 2 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
  Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley): "Case sensitivity reflects case structure: Agreement, extraction, and clitics"

BayPhon, taking place at UC Santa Cruz on May 10, will feature the following presentations by Berkeley linguists:

• Rhosean Asmah: "Coronal stop deletion in Megan Thee Stallion's rap and casual speech"
• Maksymilian Dąbkowski: "Missing glottalization in some A'ingae nouns: A diachronic perspective"
• Julianne Kapner: "Varying vowels in Bay Area Armenian"

Amanda Boomershine (UNC Wilmington) and Keith Johnson published an article entitled "The influence of language experience on speech perception: Heritage Spanish speaker perception of contrastive and allophonic consonants" in a special issue of the journal Languages.