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October 3, 2018

Dawson publishes in Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung

Congrats to fifth-year grad student Virginia Dawson, whose paper A new kind of epistemic indefinite was recently published in the Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22!

Conference double-header!

This weekend features two conferences at which Berkeley Linguistics will have a major presence, one each in the east and the west:

  • The Annual Meeting on Phonology, at UC San Diego, features work by faculty Larry Hyman and Jesse Zymet, along with alumni Nik Rolle (PhD 2018, now at Princeton), Hannah Sande (PhD 2017, now at Georgetown),  Gabriela Caballero (PhD 2008, now at UCSD), Alan Yu (PhD 2003, now at Chicago),  and Eugene Buckley (PhD 1992, now at Penn).
  • NELS 49, at Cornell, features presentations by graduate students Emily Clem, Schuyler Laparle, and Tessa Scott, along with alum Maziar Toosarvandani (PhD 2010, now at UC Santa Cruz). 

Congrats all!

Berkeley linguists @ LSA 2019

The program for this year's LSA annual meeting has been released, and Berkeley linguistics will be represented in 14 talks and posters (plus an organized session) by students, faculty, and very recent alumni: 

Congrats all!

September 28, 2018

This week @ Berkeley linguistics

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

September 27, 2018

Baclawski publishes in Asia-Pacific Language Variation

Congrats to grad student Kenneth Baclawski Jr. whose paper Diglossia and change from below in Eastern Cham has just been been posted online in the latest issue of the journal Asia-Pacific Language Variation!

September 26, 2018

Baby Chen

Ian Chen, son of I-Hsuan Chen (PhD '15) and Tim Chen, was born on Sept. 12. Welcome, baby! 

September 21, 2018

This week @ Berkeley linguistics

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

September 20, 2018

Linguists at the ballgame

A group of students, faculty, alumni, and friends of Berkeley linguistics were on hand this Wednesday evening to cheer the Oakland A's to a 10-0 victory over the visiting LA Angels!

Berkeley linguists at the ballgame

Johnson colloquium
The 2018-2019 colloquium series continues this coming Monday, Sept 24, with a talk by Keith Johnson. Same time as always, same place as always: 3:10-5 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall. The talk is entitled Four phonetic discoveries: How I spent my sabbatical “vacation”.

September 18, 2018

Petruck book, Brazil visit

Alumna Miriam R. L. Petruck (PhD '86) writes to share news of her edited book MetaNet, recently published by John Benjamins. The book contains contributions by Miriam and fellow alumni Karen Sullivan (PhD '07),  Elise Stickles (PhD '16), Oana David (PhD '16), Ellen Dodge (PhD '10), and Jisup Hong (PhD '12), along with faculty member Eve Sweetser and emeritus faculty member George Lakoff. 

David to Google

Congrats to alumna Oana David (PhD 2016), who has just taken up a new position as an Analytic Linguist at Google!

September 13, 2018

This week @ Berkeley linguistics

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Sept 14 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
    Ryan Bochnak (Universität Konstanz):  Combining coordination and focus: Towards an analysis of alternative questions in Washo
  • Linguistics Department Colloquium - Monday Sept 17 - Dwinelle 370 - 3:10-5 pm
    Jesse Zymet (UC Berkeley): Lexical propensities in phonology: Corpus and experimental evidence, grammar, and learning
  • Phonological Reading Group - Thursday Sept 20 - Dwinelle 1226 - 11-noon 
    From Matthew Gordon's book Phonological Typology, we will be reading Chapter 3: Phoneme Inventories.
  • SLUgS - Thursday Sept 20 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-7pm
    Join us for linguistics-related games! 
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Sept 21- Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
    Sabrina Grimberg (Stanford): Between Economy and Recoverability: The Case of Subject Doubling in Colloquial Finnish

And coming up at Stanford (Saturday, Sept 22): Analyzing Typological Structure: From Categorical to Probabilistic Phonology

Calques on the web

We're excited to announce that Calques is transitioning to a blog format! The new Calques blog is integrated with our department webpage, and gives us the opportunity to share photos and department news to an even wider community. Email lovers, fear not: thanks to the hero of this transition, Ron Sprouse, you will still receive an email digest every week. 

Click here to visit us on the web!

September 12, 2018

Calques goes visual

Taking advantage of the visual possibilities afforded by the new Calques format, we present some recent evidence of Berkeley linguists out and about. Send your photos of linguistics-in-action to Calques!

 Berkeley linguists at LabPhon

The Berkeley Crew at LabPhon16:  Yao Yao (PhD 2011), Charles Bond Chang (PhD 2010), Grant McGuire (former postdoc), Keith Johnson, Matt Faytak (PhD 2018), Myriam Lapierre, Jeremy Steffman (BA 2016), Hannah Sande (PhD 2017), Alice Shen, Andrew Cheng and Alan Yu (PhD 2003)

Berkeley semantics at Sinn und Bedeutung

The Berkeley Crew at Sinn und Bedeutung 23: Emily Clem, Virginia Dawson, Amy Rose Deal, Peter Jenks, Rachel Rudolph, Ruyue Agnes Bi

Nik Rolle and Jack Merrill

Two new doctors in celebratory gear: Jack Merrill (PhD 2018) and Nik Rolle (PhD 2018)

Rogers, Rogers, & Mikkelsen publish Starritt biography
The trio of Claudette Rogers (Karuk Tribe), Dixie Rogers (Karuk Tribe), and Line Mikkelsen (UC Berkeley) have just published a collaborative work entitled "Biography of Julia Starritt". The authors would like to express thanks to Ron Sprouse for help with web implementation!
Hyman publishes in Language

Larry Hyman has a new paper out in the latest issue of Language: What tone teaches us about language. The paper reflects his Presidential Address to the LSA in January of this year -- congrats, Larry!

Dawson receives APS grant

Congrats to fifth-year grad student Virginia Dawson on receiving a grant from the American Philosophical Society's Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research! The grant project is entitled "Strategies of disjunction in Tiwa", and will support her field research in Assam, India.

September 10, 2018

Zymet colloquium
The 2018-2019 colloquium series begins this coming Monday, Sept 17, with a talk by Jesse Zymet. Same time as always, same place as always: 3:10-5 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall. The talk is entitled Lexical propensities in phonology: Corpus and experimental evidence, grammar, and learning. Click on the link above to read the abstract!

September 7, 2018

Cal @ Sinn und Bedeutung

The annual meeting of Sinn und Bedeutung, taking place this week in Barcelona, features five presentations by Berkeley students, faculty, and very recent alumni:

  • Emily Clem: Attributive adjectives in Tswefap: Vague predicates in a language with degrees
  • Virginia Dawson and Amy Rose Deal: Third readings by semantic scope lowering: prolepsis in Tiwa
  • Amy Rose Deal and Vera Hohaus: Vague predicates, crisp judgments
  • Ruyue Agnes Bi (BA '18) and Peter Jenks : Pronouns, radical pro-drop, and ellipsis in Mandarin
  • Rachel Rudolph (Berkeley philosophy): A Closer Look at the Perceptual Source in Copy Raising Constructions
Regier, Zaslavsky publish in PNAS, Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society

Terry Regier and visiting graduate student Noga Zaslavsky (together with their colleagues) have two new papers out this summer:

The paper Color naming reflects both perceptual structure and communicative need received the conference prize for best paper on computational modeling of language. Congrats, Noga and Terry!