News

All News

March 25, 2022

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

March 24, 2022

The Fourth Symposium on Amazonian Languages (SAL 4) will be held at UC Berkeley during the weekend of April 2-3.

All talks will take place in Dwinelle 370. The full program is available here.

More information from the conference organizers, Allegra Robertson and Wesley dos Santos:

What is SAL 4?
The conference consists of 24 talks by scholars working in different subfields of linguistics – from phonetics to typology to semantics – on the following languages: A’ingae, Caquinte, Chamikuro, Enlhet-Enenlhet, Guaraní, Guató, Iskonawa, Iquito, Ka’apor, Kawahíva, Kichwa, Panará, Maropa, Mʉteã, Nadëb, Nheengatu, Secoya, Shiwilu, Siriano, Tuparí, Wari’, and Yanesha’.

Do I need to register?
No! Attendance is open to all, and there is no registration fee. Please feel free to circulate this message.

How can I stay in the loop?
If you are interested in receiving future communications about the conference, please email sympamazlang@gmail.com to be added to the mailing list.

March 23, 2022

An article by Gašper Beguš titled "Distinguishing cognitive from historical influences in phonology" has just been published in Language. Click here to read it. Congratulations, Gašper!

March 18, 2022

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

  • Spring Break!
  • Zoom Phonology - Friday Mar 18 - Zoom - 9am
    Phonology problem set show-and-tell.
    For the Zoom link or to be added to the Zoom Phonology mailing list, contact Karee Garvin.

March 15, 2022

Katie Russell's article "Interactions of Nasal Harmony and Word-Internal Language Mixing in Paraguayan Guaraní" was just published in the journal Languages as part of a special issue on "Word Formation and Language Contact: A Formal Perspective." Congratulations, Katie!

March 14, 2022

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

  • Hannah Sande, with the assistance of Julianne Kapner, has added 63 file bundles of audio and video recordings of elicitation, texts, and other activities related to work with speakers of Guébie (Kru; Côte d'Ivoire). The new bundles -- see 2014-15.081 through 2014-15.144 -- stem from in-person and virtual fieldwork done in 2018 and 2019, and also include other activities such as translation.

March 11, 2022

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

March 8, 2022

We are saddened to learn of the recent deaths of Haruo Aoki (PhD Berkeley 1965), Professor Emeritus of East Asian Languages and Cultures at UC Berkeley; and Terrence Kaufman (PhD Berkeley 1963), Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. Aoki was an authority on Nez Perce, the author of a grammar and dictionary of the language and the editor of two Nez Perce text volumes. Kaufman was one of the foremost specialists in Mesoamerican Indigenous languages and a significant historical linguist. For more information about their lives and accomplishments see this Facebook post.

March 6, 2022

Congratulations to Mairi McLaughlin who just guest edited a special issue of L2 Journal on the Future of Translation in Higher Education.

March 4, 2022

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

March 2, 2022

Congratulations to Martha Schwarz, who successfully applied for a departmental Graduate Diversity Pilot summer grant to become certified in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)!

March 1, 2022

February 27, 2022

Annie Helms's article "Bay Area Spanish: Regional sound change in contact languages" has been published in Isogloss: Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, as part of the special issue Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 17 with selected papers from the Going Romance conference in 2020. Congratulations, Annie!

Zachary O'Hagan published a new article in Cadernos de Etnolingüística, "Morphosyntax and Semantics of Psych-predicates in Caquinte." Congratulations, Zachary!

February 25, 2022

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

  • Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Mar 2 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom (p/w fforum) - 3:10-4pm
    Peter Jenks (UC Berkeley): Interrogating the "field" -- a discussion on the term "fieldwork," critique, and its future.
  • Phorum - Friday Feb 25 - Zoom only - 1-2pm
    John Starr (Cornell): A first look at mind rhymes.
  • Phorum - Friday Mar 4 - Zoom only - 1-2pm
    Andrew Cheng (Simon Fraser University; PhD 2020): Measuring creak in novel words in Infant- and Adult-Directed Speech.
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 25 - 1303 Dwinelle and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
    Márta Abrusán (Institut Jean Nicod): Varieties of Perspective Shift: Protagonist Projection vs. Free Indirect Discourse.
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Mar 4 - 1303 Dwinelle and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
    Wesley dos Santos (UC Berkeley): Reassessing Tupí-Guaraní "nominalizers" through Kawahíva.
  • Zoom Phonology - Friday Mar 4 - Zoom - 9am
    Karee Garvin (University of Delaware; PhD 2021): Constraining place of articulation effects in phonotactic distribution.
    For the Zoom link or to be added to the Zoom Phonology mailing list, contact Karee Garvin.

February 24, 2022

Congrats to Ben Papadopoulos, who has just published an article titled "A Brief History of Gender-Inclusive Spanish" in the Italian feminist journal Deportate, esuli, profughe 'Deported, exiled, refugee (women).' Ben wrote the article in both English and gender-inclusive Spanish (in the x gender), and the journal has published both versions.

February 23, 2022

The Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley is seeking a lecturer in Phonetics. The job ad and link to apply are available here: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF03347

February 21, 2022

February 18, 2022

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

February 11, 2022

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

  • Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 16 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom (p/w fforum) - 3:10-4pm
    Lise Dobrin (UVA): Is the aim accuracy or insight? Transcribers as cultural and linguistic filters.
  • Phorum - Friday Feb 11 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 1-2pm
    Josefina Bittar (UC Santa Cruz): Borrowing of Mental Event Verbs from Spanish to Guaraní.
  • Phorum - Friday Feb 18 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 1-2pm
    Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley): A Q-Theoretic solution to A'ingae postlabial raising.
  • ProD* - Friday Feb 11 - Zoom - 2-3pm
    A conversation with Alice Shen (PhD 2020), an analytical linguist at Grammarly, about her career path, how she uses her PhD training in her work now, among other topics.
    *Professional development seminar for grad students, postdocs, and faculty. If you would like to opt in to the ProD mailing list, please let Susanne Gahl know.
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 11 - 1303 Dwinelle and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
    Andrew Garrett and Erik H. Maier (UC Berkeley): How to do things with birds: The pragmatics of lexical and syntactic choice in early Karuk narrative texts.
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 18 - 1303 Dwinelle and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
    Yurika Aonuki (UBC): Relative pronominal tense in Gitksan and Japanese.
  • Zoom Phonology - Friday Feb 18 - Zoom - 9am
    Larry M. Hyman (UC Berkeley) and Mwambi G. Mbûûi (Graduate Theological Union): Dahl's Law in two Bantu Languages. Part I: Tiania.
    For the Zoom link or to be added to the Zoom Phonology mailing list, contact Karee Garvin.