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October 7, 2021

Nee and Responsible Language Guide for AI & ML

The Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership at the Berkeley Haas School of Business will be launching their Responsible Language Guide for AI & ML (on which Julia Nee is an author) with a panel discussion featuring leaders in responsible innovation at several leading tech companies. The event will take place on Thursday, October 14 from 4 to 5pm (register here).

October 5, 2021

Beguš speaks at USC

Gašper Beguš gave a colloquium talk at USC Linguistics on October 4 entitled "Deep Learning and Phonology: Comparing Behavioral and Neural Speech Data with Outputs of Deep Generative Models."

October 3, 2021

TABLE Colloquium Series: Englebretson

TABLE: Toward a Better Linguistics Environment, a colloquium series taking place this fall, continues on Monday, October 11, with a talk by Robert Englebretson (Rice), held via Zoom and in person in Dwinelle 370 (hybrid) from 3-4:30pm. Those who would like to attend, including Berkeley linguists, need to register for the event regardless of mode of attendance (Zoom registration; in-person registration). The talk is entitled "Linguistics, blindness, and braille: Deconstructing sight-centric assumptions and promoting diversity in teaching and research," and the abstract is as follows:

This talk focuses on blindness as a source of diversity in linguistics teaching and research. I will highlight how enhancing the accessibility of our field enables greater participation, which then feeds back into broader and more diverse research perspectives. I will begin by discussing my work on IPA Braille (Englebretson 2009), which sought to improve general access to our field for blind students and professionals. I will then turn to a discussion of braille as a tactile writing system, and what the unique aspects of (English) braille orthography contribute to the cognitive and reading sciences (e.g. Fischer-Baum and Englebretson 2016). I will conclude with a brief introduction to an ongoing federally-funded multi-disciplinary research project that seeks to address some of the potential barriers to braille literacy (Fischer-Baum, Englebretson, and Holbrook).

CLA updates

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

  • Steve Parker (Dallas International University; SIL International) has archived audio and video recordings of Chamikuro (Arawak; Peru) from 28 virtual sessions with speaker Antonio Inuma Orbe conducted in December 2020 and January 2021 (see 009-037), adding them to his extant collection of field notes on the language from the 1980s. With the exception of a few recordings made in 2019 by Lee Bendezú Bendezú of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, these recordings are the only known recordings of Chamikuro: Don Antonio is one of a handful of remaining speakers, two of whom have passed away since May 2020. Funded by the Endangered Language Fund, Prof. Parker's project was originally supposed to take place in person in the city of Yurimaguas and in the riverine community of Pampa Hermosa; the COVID-19 pandemic restricted the project to a virtual format, facilitated by Pedro Pablo Hernández Fonseca, who set up a computer for Zoom calls and external microphones and recorders.
  • Justin Spence (PhD 2013) has added over 270 new file bundles to the collection Materials of the Hupa Language Documentation Project (see 600-820, from 2005-2008; and 1430-1483, from July to September 2021). The materials stem from a longtime collaboration with speaker Verdena Parker, and include sound recordings of elicitation sessions, (re-)transcription and translation of texts (many of them told by others and/or archived previously), discussions of cultural topics, and more. Other research collaborators from the first period include Amy Campbell (PhD 2012), Ramón Escamilla (PhD 2012), Nicholas Fleisher (PhD 2008), Melodie George-Moore, Victor Golla, Silis Jackson, Ophelia Mose, Lindsey Newbold, and Anne Pycha (PhD 2008).

October 1, 2021

Linguistics events this week (Oct 1-8, 2021)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

September 29, 2021

Berkeley linguists @ AMP 2021

The Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP 2021), taking place online from October 1 to 3, will feature presentations by the following Berkeley linguists:

Congrats, all!

New ASL club at Cal!

ASL at Berkeley, the first ASL club on campus, meets every other Wednesday to learn beginner signs, learn about Deaf culture and ableism, and build community! Additional information is available at the group's linktree. Please contact Beth Auclair with any questions.

Nee and Smith present at EAAMO '21

Julia Nee and Genevieve Smith (Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership at UC Berkeley Haas) will be presenting their paper "Advancing social justice through linguistic justice: Strategies for building equity fluent NLP technologies" (co-authored with Alicia Sheares and Ishita Rustagi) virtually at the the Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (EAAMO ‘21) on October 7.

September 28, 2021

Steele publishes new memoir

Susan Steele, a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley during 2018-19, has published a new book, The Table (Big Hat Press), "a memoir of the stages and changes in the life of the marriage between two academics." Click here for more information and to order the book.

September 27, 2021

TABLE Colloquium Series: Conrod

TABLE: Toward a Better Linguistics Environment, a colloquium series taking place this fall, begins on Monday, October 4, with a talk by Kirby Conrod (Swarthmore; joining us virtually), held via Zoom and in person in Dwinelle 370 (hybrid) from 3-4:30pm. Those who would like to attend, including Berkeley linguists, need to register for the event regardless of mode of attendance (Zoom registration; in-person registration). The talk is entitled "How to ask the gender question," and the abstract is as follows:

A critical approach to methodology in linguistics research should include continuous examination of how demographic information is collected and operationalized. This presentation will give recommendations for strategies to avoid when designing research around gender and/or sex to avoid cissexist or transphobic bias. The presentation reviews several quantitative and qualitative approaches to sex and gender data in linguistics, and examines benefits and drawbacks of each.

Parrill promoted to full professor at CWRU

Congratulations to Fey Parrill (BA 2000 with linguistics dept. honors; co-founder of the Berkeley Gesture and Multimodality Group), who has been promoted to Full Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University!

September 24, 2021

Linguistics events this week (Sep 24-Oct 1, 2021)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

  • Phorum - Friday Sep 24 - Zoom (online only) - 12-1pm
    AMP2021 practice talks
    - Francesco Burroni (Cornell), Raksit T. Lau-Preechathammarach (UC Berkeley), and Sireemas Maspong (Cornell): Unifying Initial Geminates and fortis stops via laryngeal specification: Three case studies from Pattani Malay, Salentino, and Dunan
    - Katie Russell: Nasal harmony and interactions with lexical strata in Paraguayan Guaraní
    - Maksymilian Dąbkowski: Prosody drives Paraguayan Guaraní suffix order
  • Phorum - Friday Oct 1 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 12-1pm
    Yevgeniy Melguy (UC Berkeley): Mechanisms of listener adaptation in perceptual learning for speech.
  • Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Oct 1 - Dwinelle 5125 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    Practice NWAV talks.
    Please email Ben Papadopoulos for the Zoom link and/or to be added to the SLaB mailing list.

September 17, 2021

Linguistics events this week (Sep 17-24, 2021)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

  • Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Sep 22 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom (p/w fforum) - 3:10-4pm
    Jack Martin (William & Mary): 85 Years after Haas: Collaborative Documentation of Muskogee (Creek) Oral History.
  • Language Revitalization Working Group - Wednesday Sep 22 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 4-5pm
    Language revitalization materials show-and-tell! Bring any language revitalization materials that you've been working on, that you've used in the past, or that you are inspired by. We will have a round-robin-style show-and-tell along with time for discussion. We'll ask everyone to briefly describe their material, what they liked about it, and what they didn't particularly like or would like feedback on.
  • Phorum - Friday Sep 17 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 12-1pm
    Jon Rawski (SJSU): Abductive learning of phonotactic constraints.
  • Phorum - Friday Sep 24 - Zoom (online only) - 12-1pm
    AMP2021 practice talks
    Katie Russell: Nasal harmony and interactions with lexical strata in Paraguayan Guaraní
    Maksymilian Dąbkowski: Prosody drives Paraguayan Guaraní suffix order
  • Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Sep 17 - Dwinelle 5125 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    Discussion of Holliday & Squires 2021. Please email Ben Papadopoulos for the Zoom link and/or to be added to the SLaB mailing list.
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Sep 17 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 3-4:30pm
    Amy Rose Deal (UC Berkeley): The logic of agreement: Movement, morphology, and composite probes.

September 16, 2021

Beguš publishes in Computer Speech & Language

Congrats to Gašper Beguš on the publication of his article "Local and non-local dependency learning and emergence of rule-like representations in speech data by deep convolutional generative adversarial networks" in Computer Speech & Language! Click here to download the article (Open Access).

Licata teaches at San Quentin

Gabriella Licata (Ph.D. Candidate, Romance Linguistics) and co-instructor Will Schuerman (UCSF - Chang Lab) are teaching a new course this fall at San Quentin State Prison entitled "Introduction to Linguistics and Language Studies" that addresses a variety of themes centered around linguistic discrimination. This course is offered through the accredited associate's degree program through Mount Tamalpais College.

September 15, 2021

Berkeley linguists @ NELS 52

NELS is again remote this year, hosted online by Rutgers on Halloween weekend. The program has just been released, advertising talks by numerous Cal linguists and alumni:

Congrats all!

September 14, 2021

Sande speaks at Epenthesis Workshop

Hannah Sande will be giving an invited talk at the Epenthesis Workshop at Stony Brook on Friday called "Epenthesis or deletion? CVCV~CCV alternations in Kru languages." Congrats, Hannah!

September 13, 2021

Kavitskaya and Wandl present at PLM

Darya Kavitskaya and Florian Wandl (University of Zurich) will present at the Poznań Linguistic Meeting (PLM) on September 16 in the special session "Phonological diversity matters." The title of the talk is "A rare contrast in Slavic: The palatalization of rhotics." The conference program is available here.

September 12, 2021

CLA updates

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

  • Wesley dos Santos added recordings of 78 texts in Juma and Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau (Tupian; Brazil) to his collection of Kawahiva language materials, principally stories told by Mandei Juma, with some conversations with Aruká Juma and Awip Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau.
  • The California Language Archive hosted a visit by Susan Albright, Heidi Barlese, Nicholas Cortez, and Candace Gonzalez, sponsored by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, to consult archival materials related to Northern Paiute (Numic, Uto-Aztecan; CA, OR, ID, NV). They worked with original notes written by native speaker Gilbert Natchez (c1882-1942) from the 1910s (e.g., here), other papers associated with Walter L. Marsden (1858-1913), recordings by Margaret Wheat (1908-1988), notes and recordings by Sydney Lamb (PhD 1957), and recordings by Michael Nichols (PhD 1974). The group also visited the Bancroft Library.

September 10, 2021

Linguistics events this week (Sep 10-17, 2021)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

  • Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Sep 15 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom (p/w fforum) - 3:10-4pm
    Ronald Sprouse (UC Berkeley): Computing needs of Linguistics Department field research.
  • Phorum - Friday Sep 10 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 12-1pm
    David Gaddy (UC Berkeley): Decoding silent speech with electromyography.
  • Phorum - Friday Sep 17 - Dwinelle 1303 and Zoom - 12-1pm
    Jon Rawski (SJSU): Abductive learning of phonotactic constraints.
  • Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Sep 10 - Dwinelle 5125 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    Organizational meeting. Please email Ben Papadopoulos for the Zoom link and/or to be added to the SLaB mailing list.
  • Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Friday Sep 17 - Dwinelle 5125 and Zoom - 3-4pm
    TBD.
  • Zoom Phonology - Monday Sep 13 - Zoom - 10-11am
    Myke Brinkerhoff (UCSC): Tone and phonation in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec.
    For the Zoom link or to be added to the Zoom Phonology mailing list, contact Karee Garvin.