News

Congratulations to Yevgeniy Melguy and Keith Johnson, whose article "Perceptual adaptation to novel accent: Phonetic category expansion or category shift?" was published online this week in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (Vol. 152, Issue 4). It may be accessed via this link.

The 2022-2023 colloquium series continues on Monday, October 24, with a talk by Anne Charity Hudley (Stanford) and Christine Mallinson (UMBC), taking place via Zoom (and live-streamed in Dwinelle 370) from 3:10-5pm. Their talk is entitled "Decolonization and inclusion in linguistics: Setting the framework for a liberatory linguistics," and the abstract is as follows:

Colonial oppression is at the heart of linguistics as a discipline because of the expedient material and intellectual wealth that colonialism has provided. Over the last few years, linguists have begun to take the exclusionary, racist and colonial histories seriously in linguistics and in the study of language more broadly. Charity Hudley, Mallinson, and Bucholtz’s (2020) call for racial justice in linguistics challenged current scholars to increase inclusivity while decolonizing the linguistics departments and programs. Several authors responded with their own reckonings with continued colonial and white supremacist practices within the field, all of which were published together a special issue in Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of America.

Following the publication of this special issue, Charity Hudley, Mallinson, and Bucholtz presented a call for the development and publication of two volumes on racial justice and inclusion in linguistics: Decolonizing Linguistics and Inclusion in Linguistics (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). In addition, Charity Hudley was invited to co-edit an issue of Dædalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, on the topic of Language and Social Justice.

In this talk, Charity Hudley and Mallinson will present an overview of the three forthcoming volumes and share how this collective work moves us closer to a more liberatory linguistics.

References:
Charity Hudley, A.H., Mallinson, C., & Bucholtz, M. (2020). Toward racial justice in linguistics: Interdisciplinary insights into theorizing race in the discipline and diversifying the profession. Language 96(4), e200-e235. doi:10.1353/lan.2020.0074.
Charity Hudley, A.H., Mallinson, C., & Bucholtz, M. (forthcoming). Decolonizing Linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Charity Hudley, A.H., Mallinson, C., & Bucholtz, M. (forthcoming). Inclusion in Linguistics. Oxford University Press.
Charity Hudley, A.H., & Wolfram, W., guest editors. (forthcoming). Special issue: Language and Social Justice. Dædalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

• Larry Hyman and Mwambi Mbûûi (Graduate Theological Union) have archived a new collection of materials related to their ongoing collaborative study of Tiania (Bantu; Kenya). The materials are notable for including drafts of several descriptive pieces co-authored by Prof. Hyman and Mr. Mbûûi in the early months of the project (some already published), alongside recordings of sessions conducted on Zoom, typed notes, and database files. Their collaboration began in the fall 2021 Berkeley undergraduate field methods course, which also included Cynthia Zhong (BA 2022), some of whose notes and recordings are also included here.
• Madeline Bossi has added 34 new file bundles to her archival collection Kalenjin Field Materials (see items 2019-26.153 through 2019-26.187). The audio recordings of elicitation sessions and texts cover the period from April through August of this year, including in-situ fieldwork in Kenya in June. Speakers represented in the new items are Lydia Chebet Bett, Sharon Chemtai, Ezra Cheruiyot, Linus Kipkoech, Chepkemoi Ronoh, and Kiplangat Yegon.

The Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP 2022), taking place at UCLA from October 21 to 23, will feature presentations by the following Berkeley linguists:

• Gašper Beguš: "Deep Phonology: How to model phonology with deep learning" [abstract]
• Gašper Beguš and Peter Jurgec (Toronto): "Interactions of tone, stress, quantity, and vowel quality in Žiri Slovenian" [abstract]
• Katherine Russell: "Paraguayan Guaraní reduplication: A novel prosodic analysis" [abstract]
• Maksymilian Dąbkowski: "A'ingae reduplication is phonologically optimizing" [abstract]
• Hannah Sande: "Discontinuous harmony is movement after local phonology" (invited plenary)

Congrats, all!

The two linguistics undergraduate majors who are finishing theses this semester will be giving practice talks on Thursday morning, October 6, from 11:10am-12pm in Dwinelle 1303. These will be 20 minute talks followed by 5 minutes for questions. The titles and authors are:

• Jasper Talwani: "Argument indexing in lajltayki- / tsome / Highland Chontal"
• Chelsea Tang: "A description and theoretical analysis of Lobi STAMP morphs"