News

Congratulations to the new principal of Bowles Hall, Gašper Beguš!

Wesley dos Santos presented at the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) last Sunday, January 23. The slides for his talk, "For a Realis and Irrealis Account of Ko and Po in Kawahíva," are available here.

A chapter by Christine Beier and Lev Michael entitled "Managing Lexicography Data" appears in the new Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management (MIT Press). All 56 chapters of the handbook, which span a tremendous range of topics, are available free online. Check it out!

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

• Linguistics Department Colloquium - Monday Jan 24 - Zoom - 3:10-5pm
  Melissa Baese-Berk (Oregon): Factors influencing non-native perception and learning.
• Phorum - Friday Jan 21 - Zoom - 12-1pm
  Kie Zuraw (UCLA) and Paolo Roca: OPM Rhythms.
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Jan 21 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
  Deniz Satik (Harvard): The infinitive size generalization.
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Jan 28 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
  Tatiana Bondarenko (MIT): TBA.

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

• Anna Lewington has archived two cassettes of sound recordings of stories, songs, and music in Matsigenka (Arawak; Peru), from fieldwork conducted for her (1985) MA thesis "The Implications of Manioc Cultivation in the Culture and Mythology of the Machiguenga of South Eastern Peru" (St. Andrews).
• Justin Spence (PhD 2013) has added over 220 new file bundles to the collection Materials of the Hupa Language Documentation Project (see items 821-1044, from 2009-2010; and 1484-1497, from October to December 2021). The materials stem from a longtime collaboration with speaker Verdena Parker. See Calques from October 8, 2021 for more details!

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

• Phorum - Friday Jan 21 - Zoom - 12-1pm
  Kie Zuraw (UCLA) and Paolo Roca: OPM Rhythms.
• Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Jan 21 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
  Deniz Satik (Harvard): TBA.

Congratulations to Larry Hyman on the publication of a new article in Africana Linguistica:

• Hyman, Larry M. 2021. Augmentability and High Tone Deletion in Runyankore. Africana Linguistica 27.103-140.

Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships fund graduate students to study critical and less commonly taught foreign languages, in combination with area and international studies. FLAS awards are offered by the Center for African Studies; the Institute of East Asian Studies; the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; the Center for Latin American Studies; the Center for Middle Eastern Studies; the Institute for South Asia Studies; the Center for Southeast Asia Studies; and the Institute of European Studies. Summer and academic year applications are due Monday, 1/31, and more information is available here.

Calques is happy to share this message from our departmental Climate Committee:

Hello all:

As the Fall semester draws to a close, we thought it fitting to offer here in Calques a brief summary of the positive outcomes of our weekly climate meetings on behalf of our departmental community:

• We issued a report to the department which included our analysis and visualization of the results of the most recent department Climate Survey, which was carried out in May 2021. This report also contained a set of recommendations, including concrete responses to several key concerns raised in past surveys, which we hope will continue to improve our departmental climate.

• In response to concerns about desk/office space assignments for graduate students that were brought to our attention early on in the semester, we solicited information that enabled us to improve desk/office assignments for students in the coming spring semester. In addition, based on feedback we received via a topical survey that we sent to all graduate students, we developed a set of recommendations and criteria regarding management of graduate student desk/office assignments in the future.

• In response to recurring concerns about opacity in department policies and procedures that have been voiced in past departmental climate surveys, we are developing an FAQ resource for our departmental website, to be launched early next semester, that will address a wide range of questions. To solicit input to the development of this resource, we created a living document where members of the department can contribute their own questions.

• Through various channels (including regular office hours) we were available to discuss climate-related topics with our peers — and we will continue to be available next semester!

With best wishes for winter break,

Tzintia Montaño Ramírez, Raksit Lau-Preechathammarach, Noah Hermalin, Line Mikkelsen, and Christine Beier

AY 2021-2022 Climate Committee

Gašper Beguš will give an invited lecture at ICON 2021: 18th International Conference on Natural Language Processing during a special session on the "Representation of speech, articulatory dynamics, prosody and language in layers." The talk is titled "Interpreting internal representations of deep convolutional neural networks trained on raw speech." More info is available here. Gašper can provide the link to anyone who would like to attend.

Here's the latest from the California Language Archive:

• On Wednesday and Friday of last week, we hosted five Achumawi visitors who consulted linguistic field notes and sound recordings related to Achumawi (Palaihnihan; CA). The visit was the last of those sponsored by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival this semester.

Congratulations to Isaac Bleaman, whose article "Minority language maintenance and the production-prescription interface: Number agreement in New York Yiddish" has just been published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics. The early view is available here, or contact Isaac for a PDF.