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October 10, 2024

Hyman speaks at CNRS
Larry Hyman gave the following talk on October 10, 2024 at the Langage, Langues et Cultures d’Afrique (LLACAN, UMR 8135) research lab of the CNRS, the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) and the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Paris:  "

October 6, 2024

Garrett in Bancroft Library Roundtable series
At 12 noon on Thursday, October 17, in the Bancroft Library Roundtable series, Andrew Garrett will present a Zoom talk “The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall — Indigenous and University Histories in Bancroft Collections.” Register at ucberk.li/kroeber. Abstract:
"Much of Andrew Garrett’s book The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California (MIT Press, 2023) is grounded in The Bancroft Library’s collections relating to anthropologist and linguist Alfred Kroeber; Kroeber’s family, including his second wife, Theodora, and his daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin; his colleagues, students, and collaborators throughout California; and Phoebe Hearst, who directed and funded his work. In this presentation, Garrett will talk about a few of the archival objects — manuscripts and photos — that had a significant impact on how he framed his argument about Kroeber’s documentation of Indigenous stories."

October 3, 2024

Linguistics events this week (October 4-11)

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

  • SSCircle – Friday, October 4 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm

    NELS practice talks:
    1. Morphological boundary glottals in A'ingae: A new argument for [δ] (Maksymilian Dąbkowski)
    2. Person hierarchy effects from φ-agreement at the left periphery in Kawahíva (Wesley dos Santos)
    3. The clause-medial vP phase is real: Evidence from Moselle Franconian (Akil Ismael & Jessica Göbel)

  • Phorum – Friday, October 4 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pmMarko Drobnjak (Univeristy of Ljubljana): VOICE: Verifying How Speech Perception Shapes Credibility in Legal Contexts – A Statistical and Experimental Approach with Future Machine Learning Potential

  • Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group – Monday, Oct. 7 - Dwinelle 1229 - 3-4pm
    Conversation hour: learn to make (Turkish) coffee and tea in Ladino! (snacks included)

  • LRWG – Wednesday, Oct. 9 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    Anna Macknick (UC Berkeley) with a workshop on "Creating mini zines for accessible language materials"

  • SSCircle – Friday, October 11 - Dwinelle 1303 -- 3-4:30pm
    Travis Major (USC): TBD
  • Phorum – Friday, October 11- Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm

    Kai Schenck (UC Berkeley): Modeling stochasticity, gradience, and domain effects in Yurok rhotic vowel harmony with Gestural OT.

Beguš and Dąbkowski publish in Journal of Linguistics

Gašper Beguš and Maksymilian Dąbkowski published a paper on "The blurring history of intervocalic devoicing" in the Journal of Linguistics. The paper proposes a new explanation for an unusual sound change--intervocalic devoicing. The paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226724000197. Congrats!

October 1, 2024

Berkeley linguists at LASSO
Two Berkeley linguists presented at the Linguistic Association of the Southwest (LASSO) this weekend at the University of Texas at San Antonio:

September 30, 2024

Berkeley linguists at NELS55

Several UC Berkeley linguistics faculty and students will present at NELS 55, to be held at Yale on October 17-18, 2024.

  • Hannah Sande, plenary talk on "Discontinuous harmony in Guébie: Consequences for cyclic spellout"
  • Amy Rose Deal and Zachary O'Hagan, talk on "Person and aspect in Taushiro split ergativity"
  • Elango Kumaran (former Berkeley undergraduate linguistics major), talk on "No categorical gang effects"
  • Akil Ismael and Jessica Göbel, poster on "The clause-medial vP phase is real: Evidence from Moselle Franconian"
  • Maksymilian Dąbkowski, poster on "Morphological boundary glottals in A'ingae: A new argument for [δ]"
  • Wesley dos Santos (PhD 2024), poster on "Person hierarchy effects from Φ-agreement at the left periphery in Kawahíva"

Congrats, all!

September 28, 2024

Script Encoding Initiative awarded Mellon and Internet Society Foundation grants

The Script Encoding Initiative led by Anushah Hossain and Deborah Anderson was awarded two grants this summer to continue its work on making writing systems available on digital devices. A four-year grant from the Mellon Foundation will support research on over twenty writing systems that are not yet incorporated in the Unicode Standard, a widely-implemented communication standard. A second two-year grant from the Internet Society Foundation will support science communication projects to demystify SEI’s work on language technologies for public audiences. Visit SEI’s websiteto learn more about their work.

September 26, 2024

Linguistics events this week (September 27-October 4)

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

Hyman and Nichols co-edit volume on language change

Larry Hyman and Johanna Nichols, together with several co-editors, have published a volume on "Language change for the worse" with Language Science Press. The full citation is below. Congrats!

Enke, Dankmar W., Hyman, Larry M., Nichols, Johanna, Seiler, Guido, Weber, Thilo & Hölzl, Andreas (eds.). 2024. Language change for the worse. (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 33). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5116353
CLA Updates

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

Garrett publishes on Morpurgo Davies
Andrew Garrett's essay "Remembering Anna Morpurgo Davies" has appeared as part of "Anna Morpurgo Davies, 10 years on", a collection of memorial essays published by the Philological Society on the tenth anniversary of the death of Anna Morpurgo Davies (1937-2014), whose career included stints as a Be

September 25, 2024

Bleaman and Kommerell publish in Linguistics Vanguard

Isaac Bleaman and Rhea Kommerell ('24) published their article "A computational approach to detecting the envelope of variation" in Linguistics Vanguard. Congrats!

Hyman presents at workshop on Pertinacious Phonology & Morphology
Larry Hyman presented a paper "Latent high tones in Limba (Tonko dialect; Sierra Leone)" at a workshop on Pertinacious Phonology & Morphology, 
organized by Aditi Lahiri (Oxford University), held September 23- 25, 2024 at Ettington Park Hotel. Congrats!

September 24, 2024

Berkeley linguists present at Obviation workshop

 Two talks will feature Berkeley linguists at the upcoming workshop on Understanding Obviation at McGill (https://obviationworkshop2024.wordpress.com)

September 23, 2024

Sande gives colloquium talk at University of Illinois

Hannah Sande will give a colloquium talk on Discontinuous Harmony in Guébie at the University of Illinois Urban-Champaign on Monday, October 7.

McLaughlin gives keynote

Mairi McLaughlin gave a keynote presentation called "Variation, varieties, variants: the role of the media" at the 14th Kongress der Frankoromanistikverbands in Passau, Germany on September 26th. Congrats!

Garrett book featured in two publications

Andrew Garrett's book The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California is featured in two new publications:

September 19, 2024

Sweetser presents keynote at workshop on Figurative Language and Large Language Models
Eve Sweetser will be making a keynote presentation, "MetaNet: its current status and future directions," in the workshop on Figurative Language and Large Language Models, at the 21st EURALEX conference in Cavtat, Croatia (Oct. 8-12, 2024).

September 18, 2024

Linguistics events this week (September 20-27)

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

  • SSCircle – Friday, Sep 20 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
    Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley) on "Case discrimination, Agree, and the theory of features"
  • Phorum – Friday, Sep. 20 - 4-5pm
    Niko Schwarz-Acosta (UC Berkeley) on “Al Cʉɐntu da Penuchu”: Perceptual Learning of a Vowel Shift in Mexican Spanish
  • Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group – Monday, Sep. 23 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    Rachel Bortnick (Ladinokomunita/American Ladino League) on Ladino language revitalization efforts and her own life
  • LRWG – Wednesday, Sep. 25 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    Beth Piatote (Berkeley) with a workshop/talk on writing and creative expression in language revitalization
  • SSCircle – Friday, Sep 27 - Dwinelle 1303 -- 3-4:30pm
    Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley), Title TBA
  • Phorum – Friday, Sep. 27 - Zoom - 4-5pm

    Alexia Hernandez (Stanford) on "The role of experience on the cognitive underpinnings of linguistic bias: An interdisciplinary investigation of Miami-based Cuban American speech"

Beguš speaks at Harvard

Gašper Beguš is giving a talk at the linguistics department at Harvard University on Friday, September 20 (https://linguistics.fas.harvard.edu/blog/week-sept-16). The title of the talk is "Building realistic models of language with deep learning". Congrats!