News

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

• Phorum - Friday Feb 13 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 4:10-5pm
  Kai Schenck (UC Berkeley): "Unsupervised learning at the limits of phonology: Unbounded circumambient patterns"
• Phorum - Friday Feb 20 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 4:10-5pm
  Noah Macey (UC Berkeley): "What makes an accent 'foreign'? Preliminary evidence from self-supervised speech models"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 13 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Nikolas Webster (UC Santa Cruz): "Delayed argument saturation in Korean double ACC constructions"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle and Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Feb 20 - Location TBA - 3:10-4:30pm
  Alessandro Duranti (UCLA): "Kinds of 'We': The Constitution of Togetherness in Samoan"

Gašper Beguš gave a colloquium talk titled "Understanding Humans, Animals, and Machines" at the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan on Tuesday, February 10, 2026.

Berkeley Forum, the Berkeley Center for New Media, and the Department of Linguistics are pleased to host An Evening With Adam Aleksic (@etymologynerd) on Thursday, February 26 at 6pm in Grimes Engineering Building 103. Adam will be interviewed by Professor Nicole Holliday about his work on language and social media, how the algorithm affects us all, and his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language. The event is open to all, but RSVPs via this link are highly recommended!

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

• Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group - Wednesday Feb 11 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 1:10-2pm
  Benny Ginsberg-Margo (McGill): "Incorporating Sephardic Food and Cooking into Ladino Revitalization: The new Mersi Muncho YouTube Project"
• Language Revitalization Working Group - Wednesday Feb 11 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4pm
  Isaac L. Bleaman (UC Berkeley): "Bringing Yiddish Home: Reflections on Two Years of New Speaker Parenthood"
• Phorum - Friday Feb 6 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 4:10-5pm
  (Larry Hyman's talk rescheduled for February 27.)
• Phorum - Friday Feb 13 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 4:10-5pm
  Kai Schenck (UC Berkeley): "Unsupervised learning at the limits of phonology: Unbounded circumambient patterns"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 6 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Yi-Chi (Yvette) Wu (Harvard): "The decomposition of Philippine-type voice: Implications for phasehood and movement"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 13 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Nikolas Webster (UC Santa Cruz): "Delayed argument saturation in Korean double ACC constructions"

Congratulations to Amy Rose Deal, whose article "Constraints on Agreement" has just appeared in the Annual Review of Linguistics.

The College of Letters & Science interviewed Line Mikkelsen, Katherine Russell, and Hannah Sande about their paper (in press) — co-authored with Berkeley alumni Emily Clem (UCSD) and Myriam Lapierre (McGill) — on LRAP and its sister programs at other universities. Read the story here!

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

• We have accessioned a new collection of course materials from the 2009 Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, which was hosted here. Berkeley faculty members who were instructors included Susanne Gahl, Andrew Garrett, William Hanks, Leanne Hinton, Larry Hyman, Sharon Inkelas, Lev Michael, Line Mikkelsen, Johanna Nichols, John Ohala, Richard Rhodes, and Eve Sweetser. Instructors included other Berkeley alums as well!

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

• Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 4 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
  Julianne Kapner (UC Berkeley): "Doing fieldwork locally: Insights from the Armenian Language in the Bay Area Project"
• Phorum - Friday Feb 6 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 4:10-5pm
  Larry M. Hyman (UC Berkeley): "A Gap in OCP Tonal Effects"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Jan 30 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Freja Lauridsen (Lund University): "A modal in motion: On the emergence of the English modal mun"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 6 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Talk by Yi-Chi (Yvette) Wu (Harvard)

Marguerite Morlan's article "Metalinguistic evaluations of language choice in the linguistic landscape of Catalonia" has just been published in the International Journal of Multilingualism. Congratulations!

Gašper Beguš was recently a guest on the podcast The Good Fight with Yascha Mounk. Listen to the episode here!

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

• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Jan 30 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Talk by Freja Lauridsen

Gašper Beguš is giving a presentation and a fireside chat (in person and online) at OpenAI Forum on Thursday, January 29. More info is available here.