News

On Monday, October 5, Isaac Bleaman visited Stanford to give a guest lecture on new-speaker parenthood for Linguistics 240: Language Acquisition, taught by Meg Cychosz (Berkeley PhD 2020).

Calques is happy to pass on this information about an exciting event hosted by the Designated Emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization:

UC Berkeley’s Graduate Designated Emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization will be hosting our annual welcome event on Wednesday, October 14 from 3-4 PM in Dwinelle 1303!

We will hear about some current student projects, share information about our Designated Emphasis, and answer questions about the application process. It will also be an opportunity for everyone to talk about their language work and generally spend time together. We hope to see you there!

The DE in ILR offers:

• An interdisciplinary community of scholars dedicated to Indigenous Language Revitalization projects worldwide

• A core course taught by professors in Linguistics, Education, Native American Studies, and related fields

• Support for practicum/field work in an indigenous language

• Elective courses in multiple departments across campus

• Certification of your expertise on your Graduate diploma

Graduate Students enrolled in PhD programs in ANY department are eligible to apply in their second or third year, before taking their Qualifying Exam.

Applicants must provide:

• DE Application Form

• A statement of interest (500 words)

• A brief statement of support (one paragraph) from your advisor

• A copy of your transcript/academic progress report.

• Your current CV

Applications are due November 2nd, 2026 to ling-gsao@berkeley.edu

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

• Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Oct 7 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4pm
  Computational methods showcase! Join us for a short presentation by Becky Everson and Terry Regier followed by an open showcase for anyone who'd like to share how they've used computational methods to support their documentation/descriptive work.
• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Oct 2 - Dwinelle 5125 and Zoom - 2-3pm
  Workshop: Graphing in R for Linguistics Research. (Please come ready with R and R Studio installed!)
• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Oct 9 - Dwinelle 5125 and Zoom - 2-3pm
  Research talk by Sarah Lease (UC Berkeley)
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Oct 2 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Zachary O'Hagan (UC Berkeley): "Aspectual Iconicity, Polysemy, and Idiomaticity of Caquinte Ideophones"
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Oct 9 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  NELS practice session

Several current and former Berkeley linguists are presenting at the Annual Meeting on Phonology, October 9-11 at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Talks:

• A synchronic scalar vowel shift in Lobi (Gur/Mabia) plural formation (Prof. Hannah Sande and Berkeley undergraduate student Dylan Worden)

Posters:

• Modeling segment strength in Q Theory: A case study of Ticuna (Myriam Lapierre (PhD 2021), Karee Garvin (PhD 2021))
• Prosodically-conditioned contour/register alternations in Northern Toussian (Anthony Struthers-Young, Nicholas Rolle (PhD 2018))
• Integrating nominals into a metrical analysis of Kuria tone (Berkeley PhD student Kai Schenck)
• Domain-Specific Phonology of Shekgalagari Diminutives (Berkeley PhD student Rebecca Everson)
• From Denasalization to Backcopying in Nyandarua Gĩkũyũ: Contrast Loss and the Emergence of Base-Reduplicant Identity (Chelsea (Yuen Chun) Tang (BA 2022))

A new volume honoring the life, memory, and academic legacy of the late Professor Gary B. Holland has just been published. The volume, titled Gary Holland mneías khárin, is edited by Roslyn Burns, Alfredo Rizza, and Marina Zorman, and it has been published by Reichert Verlag and Ljubljana University Press. Further details can be found here.

The volume includes contributions by several Berkeley faculty, including Eve Sweetser and Johanna Nichols, and two contributions by Gary's last student, Roslyn Burns.

An article from September 29 in the Los Angeles Times titled "Let each culture decide which languages to save, and how" mentioned Ladino en Kaza, the home language nesting project developed by UC Berkeley students for Ladino/Judeo-Spanish, as an example of active language reclamation work. Ladino en Kaza was created by Julia Peck and made possible by the assistance of many Berkeley undergraduate alumni (Julian Vargo, Adrienne Fleming, Karleigh Dehlsen, Zag Hervas, Parth Patel, and Ece Tabag) through the LRAP program.

Congratulations to Justin Davidson and Julian Vargo on a new publication:

Amengual, M., Davidson, J., Kim, J. Y., & Vargo, J. (2026). Multilingual Hispanic Speech in California (MuHSiC): A Large-Scale Open-Access Spanish–English Bilingual Corpus. International Journal of Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069261489060

Six Glottal Non-Stops ran the Lake Merritt 4th Sunday Run on September 27. Elias, Sydney, Hannah, and Andrew placed first in their age groups.

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

• Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group - Tuesday Sep 1 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 11:00am-12pm
  Beginner-friendly conversation hour (ora de echar lashon) and semester welcome event
• Phorum - Monday Aug 31 - Dwinelle 1229 and Zoom - 12:10-1pm
  Round robin
• Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Sep 4 - Dwinelle 5125 and Zoom - 2-3pm
  Round table: Research over summer, introductions
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Sep 4 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3:10-4:30pm
  Round robin