Congratulations to Alexander Elias, who has been invited to give an hour-long "Early Career Researcher Plenary Talk" at the 13th International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference (APLL13) hosted remotely by the University of Edinburgh on June 10-12, 2021. The title of his talk is "Phonemic Initial Glottal Stops in the Lesser Sundas: The Emergence and Spread of an Areal Sound Pattern."
All News
February 24, 2021
February 23, 2021
Gašper Beguš will be giving a seminar talk at UC Berkeley's Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences on Friday, March 5, from 11:10am to 12pm. The title of his talk is "Modeling Language with Generative Adversarial Networks" and the abstract is below. Click here for more details. Congrats, Gašper!
Can we build models of language acquisition from raw acoustic data in an unsupervised manner? Can deep convolutional neural networks learn to generate speech using linguistically meaningful representations? In this talk, I will argue that language acquisition can be modeled with Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and that such modeling has implications both for the understanding of language acquisition and for the understanding of how neural networks learn internal representations. I propose a technique that allows us to wug-test neural networks trained on raw speech. I further propose an extension of the GAN architecture in which learning of meaningful linguistic units emerges from a requirement that the networks output informative data. With this model, we can test what the networks can and cannot learn, how their biases match human learning biases (by comparing behavioral data with networks’ outputs), how they represent linguistic structure internally, and what GAN's innovative outputs can teach us about productivity in human language. This talk also makes a more general case for probing deep neural networks with raw speech data, as dependencies in speech are often better understood than those in the visual domain and because behavioral data on speech acquisition are relatively easily accessible.
Congrats to Larry Hyman, who (virtually) gave an invited talk on "Grammatical functions of tone" to open the conference Prosody & Grammar Festa 5 held last week in Japan!
Mairi McLaughlin's book La Presse française historique: Histoire d’un genre et histoire de la langue has just been published by Classiques Garnier. The book presents the results of the first major study into the history of language in the French press. It has a dual aim: to shed light on the history of the genre of journalism and to explore what the study of historical periodicals can bring to our understanding of the history of language.
Congratulations, Mairi!
February 22, 2021
Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:
- Chris Beier and Lev Michael archived a new collection of materials on Andoa (also known as Katsakáti; Zaparoan, Peru). In 2009 the Berkeley team, including Ramón Escamilla (PhD 2012) and Marta Piqueras-Brunet (MA 2008), collaborated for an intensive few days primarily with speakers Juan Mucushua and María Sandi, in addition to Dionisia Arahuanaza and Lidia Arahuanaza. The collection includes sound recordings, fieldnotes, a booklet "Katsakáti: El idioma antiguo del pueblo de Andoas," photographs, and documents deriving from previous documentation of the language in the 1950s by Catherine Peeke and Mary Sargent of SIL International. These are the only known surviving sound recordings of the language.
February 19, 2021
In and around the linguistics department in the next week:
- Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 24 - Zoom - 3:10-4pm
Felipe H. Lopez (Postdoctoral Scholar in Community Engaged Digital Scholarship, Haverford College Libraries): Teaching Zapotec Language as a form of Language Activism. - Language Variation and Change Working Group - Monday Feb 22 - Zoom - 11am-12pm
Discussion of Regan 2020
Please email Ben Papadopoulos for the Zoom link and/or to be added to the bCourses site. - Phorum - Friday Feb 19 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Check-in meeting facilitated by Hannah Sande: come share current and upcoming projects and get to know our newest faculty member! - Phorum - Friday Feb 26 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Susannah Levi (NYU): TBA. - Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Wednesday Feb 24 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Discussion of Calder 2018
Please email Isaac Bleaman for the Zoom link or to be added to the mailing list. - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 19 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Andrew McKenzie (Kansas): Interpreting verb incorporation in Kiowa. - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 26 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Hadas Kotek (MIT): TBA. - Zoom Phonology - Wednesday Feb 24 - Zoom - 11am-12pm
Myke Brinkerhoff (UCSC): Holmberg's Generalization and Scandinavian Object Shift: A Match and Command account.
For the Zoom link or to be added to the Zoom Phonology mailing list, contact Karee Garvin.
February 16, 2021
Congrats to Maksymilian Dąbkowski, who will be presenting at the 34th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing (Thursday, March 4, at 3:45pm ET). The title of his talk is "Evidence of accurate logical reasoning in online sentence comprehension" and it is a collaboration with Roman Feiman.
February 15, 2021
Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:
- We released a new collection of materials on Tswefap (Grassfields Bantu; Cameroon), from the 2015-2016 graduate field methods course. The consultant was Guy Tchatchouang, the instructors were Larry Hyman and Steven Bird, and students were Geoff Bacon, Andrew Cheng, Emily Clem, Ginny Dawson, Anna Jurgensen, Erik Maier, and Alice Shen.
February 12, 2021
In and around the linguistics department in the next week:
- Language Revitalization Working Group and Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 17 - Zoom - 3:40-5pm (note special time and link)
Presentations from some of the students in Language Revitalization in fall 2020: Ash Cornejo, Alex Chang, Irene Yi, Ellis Miller, and Sharon Marcos, who will each present about their language revitalization work, along with some time for questions and conversation. - Phorum - Friday Feb 12 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Florian Lionnet (Princeton): Downstep in Paicî: between accent and tone. - Phorum - Thursday Feb 18 - Zoom - 6-8pm (note special date, time, and link)
Myriam Lapierre (UC Berkeley): Practice job talk. - Phorum - Friday Feb 19 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Check-in meeting facilitated by Hannah Sande: come share current and upcoming projects and get to know our newest faculty member! - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 12 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Suzana Fong (MIT): A dependent case analysis of pseudo noun incorporation in Wolof. - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 19 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Andrew McKenzie (Kansas): TBA. - Zoom Phonology - Wednesday Feb 17 - Zoom - 11am-12pm
Gašper Beguš (UC Berkeley): Tonal wugs in Žiri Slovenian: Floating tones, vowel quality, quantity, and stress.
For the Zoom link or to be added to the Zoom Phonology mailing list, contact Karee Garvin.
February 10, 2021
Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:
- We've digitized over 3000 lexical file slips of Makah (Wakashan, WA) made by Berkeley linguistics alum William Jacobsen, Jr. (PhD 1964). File slips were the primary way of organizing lexical data before the advent of tools like FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx).
February 5, 2021
Julia Nee will be giving a talk at the Berkeley Language Center's Found in Translation (FIT) working group on Wednesday, February 10, 2021, from 2 to 3pm:
Using Long-Format Speech Environment Recordings to Understand the Full Range of Zapotec Learners' Language Abilities
Zoom link (Meeting ID: 961 6335 9441, Passcode: 555992)
In addition to requiring exposure to the language, one common barrier to language revitalization is the presence of an “ideology of contempt” towards a language (Dorian, 1998), and language revitalization projects will not be successful in the long run if negative language attitudes are not addressed (Dauenhauer & Dauenhauer, 1998). In Teotitlán del Valle, Mexico, ~35 children participate in Zapotec language revitalization camps for children 6-12 promoting positive Zapotec language ideologies and encouraging Zapotec use at home. This study addresses the gap in our understanding of naturalistic language use and development of language attitudes in such an endangered language context by addressing three key questions: (1) What do long-format speech environment (LFSE) recordings suggest about children's language use and attitudes in Teotitlán?; (2) How do patterns in LFSE data compare to other measures of language use?; and (3) What methodological challenges are presented in collecting LFSE data from children ages 6-12? I show that LFSE recordings provide evidence that Zapotec learners’ exposure to and abilities in Zapotec are greater than suggested by other measures, including reported language use and observations of classroom language use. Furthermore, participants’ recordings suggest that learners have acquired significant abilities in Zapotec, and that providing supportive contexts for language use can increase learner investment and result in greater Zapotec use (cf. Riestenberg & Sherris, 2018).
In and around the linguistics department in the next week:
- Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 10 - Zoom - 3:10-4pm
Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley): A'ingae Language Documentation Project and U koorpusil maaya t'aan. Two corpora in LingView, a web interface for viewing ELAN and FLEx files. - Language Variation and Change Working Group - Monday Feb 8 - Zoom - 11am-12pm
Discussion of Major 2004
Please email Annie Helms for the Zoom link. - Phorum - Friday Feb 5 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley): Stress in Paraguayan Guaraní.
Email Anna Björklund or Dakota Robinson for the Zoom link and/or to be added to the mailing list. - Phorum - Friday Feb 12 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Florian Lionnet (Princeton): Downstep in Paicî: between accent and tone.
Email Anna Björklund or Dakota Robinson for the Zoom link and/or to be added to the mailing list. - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 5 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Zach Wellstood (UC Berkeley): Towards a Free Relative Analysis of Event Existential Constructions in Aklanon. - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 12 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Suzana Fong (MIT): A dependent case analysis of pseudo noun incorporation in Wolof. - Zoom Phonology - Wednesday Feb 10 - Zoom - 11am-12pm
Hannah Sande (UC Berkeley) and Madeleine Oakley (Georgetown): A typology of the phonological behavior of implosives.
For the Zoom link or to be added to the Zoom Phonology Mailing List, contact karee_garvin@berkeley.edu.
February 2, 2021
Here's the latest from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:
- Emily Drummond has added the first Zoom-based documentary materials in our holdings to her growing collection on Nukuoro (Polynesian-Outlier, Micronesia; see items 2019-14.129 and higher), video recordings of elicitation on grammatical topics and of work editing a phrasebook, and typed field notes.
- Kenny Baclawski, Jr. (PhD 2019) has added some 70 new file bundles to his collection on Eastern Cham (Chamic, Vietnam; see items 2014-20.069 and higher), audio recordings and notes of grammatical and sociolinguistic elicitation conducted during fieldwork in Vietnam in 2016 and 2018.
- We archived a new collection of sound recordings of Lulamogi (Bantu, Uganda), which derive from the fall 2013 undergraduate field methods course (Linguistics 140) taught by Larry Hyman, with language consultant Andrew Mukacha.
January 29, 2021
In and around the linguistics department in the next week:
- Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 3 - Zoom - 3:10-4pm
Open discussion on Fieldwork and Colonialism. - Language, Computation, and Cognition Reading Group - Wednesday Feb 3 - Zoom - 4-5pm
Alex Carstensen (Stanford): Practice job talk.
Email Noah Hermalin for more information. - Language Revitalization Working Group - Wednesday Feb 3 - Zoom - 4-5pm
Practice talks for ICLDC 7
Ruth Rouvier: Emotion and motivation in language reclamation.
Julia Nee & Rosita Jiménez Lorenzo: Emergent multilingual identities among children learning Zapotec. - Language Variation and Change (LVC) Working Group - Monday Feb 1 - Zoom - 11am-12pm
Jonathan Rosa (Stanford): Do you hear what I hear?: A raciolinguistic perspective on the perceiving subject. [abstract]
Talk from 11:10-12pm, followed by Q&A session until ~1pm
Please email Annie Helms for the Zoom link. -
Phorum - Friday Feb 5 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley): Stress in Paraguayan Guaraní.
Email Anna Björklund or Dakota Robinson for the Zoom link and/or to be added to the mailing list. - Sociolinguistics Lab at Berkeley - Wednesday Feb 3 - Zoom - 3-4pm
Manuscript discussion (Bleaman).
Email Isaac Bleaman for the Zoom link or to be added to the mailing list. - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Jan 29 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Dan Brodkin (UCSC): Agent focus in Austronesian. - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 5 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Zach Wellstood (UC Berkeley): Towards a free relative analysis of event existential constructions in Aklanon. - Zoom Phonology - Wednesday Feb 3 - Zoom - 11am-12pm
Panel Discussion: Remote Data Collection
For the Zoom link or to be added to the Zoom Phonology mailing list, contact karee_garvin@berkeley.edu.
January 28, 2021
Beth Piatote writes to announce a new DE cohort in Indigenous Language Revitalization and a welcome event on February 19. Congrats, all!
We are delighted to welcome a new cohort of outstanding graduate students into the Designated Emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization. We are especially excited about the diversity of fields represented and the dynamic growth of the DE. We welcome Emily Drummond, Linguistics, working with Nukuoro, a Polynesian-Outlier language spoken in Micronesia; Cristina Mendez, Education, working with Mam-speaking diasporic Guatemalan communities in Oakland; Everardo Reyes, Music, interested in creating music- and arts-based materials for language revitalization, with background in Raramuri and Nahuatl; Tessa Scott, Linguistics, teaching Mam as a second language in Oakland; Gabriel Trujillo, Integrative Biology, focusing on STEM-related Indigenous knowledge, particularly related to plants and environment; Oliver Whitmore, Romance Languages—French, working with Occitan, an endangered minority language of regions in France, Spain, and Italy. This group joins Julia Nee, Linguistics; Edwin Ko, Linguistics; Esther Ramer, Classics; Nate Gong, Education; Ataya Cesspooch, Environmental Studies, Policy, and Management.
We invite all to join us in a celebratory gathering to share more about our Language Revitalization goals and joys at 4 p.m. on February 19. Come and be inspired! For a link to the party contact Line Mikkelsen.
Many thanks to Belén Flores for her valuable administrative support of the DE.
Stay tuned for future DE events this spring, co-sponsored with the Language Revitalization Working Group.
— Beth Piatote on behalf of the DE Core Faculty: Line Mikkelsen, Patricia Baquedano-Lopez, Christine Beier, Lev Michael, Andrew Garrett, Leanne Hinton
January 27, 2021
A new article by Lev Michael, "The classification of South American languages," has just appeared in the Annual Review of Linguistics. Congrats, Lev!
January 26, 2021
Calques is saddened to report the passing of colleague and Berkeley Linguistics PhD alumnus Tucker Childs. We are forwarding the announcement sent out to students in Applied Linguistics at Portland State:
With heavy hearts, we are writing to tell you that Professor Tucker Childs passed away yesterday, January 26, 2021. As many of you know, he was admitted to the hospital at the beginning of January. Unfortunately, Tucker was not able to overcome the complications of legionella. He passed away peacefully with his wife and daughter at his side.
If you would like to offer Tucker's family your condolences or help celebrate Tucker's life by sharing a fond memory of your time with him , please visit his memorial page: https://www.inmemori.com/tchilds-u42cg
We will be in touch about memorial events for the department community soon. Even before that, please don't hesitate to reach out to each other and to faculty as we all grieve the loss of our professor, mentor, and colleague. This sad time is even harder since we can't come together physically, but we can still be a community. [...]
In lieu of sending flowers, please consider donating to the Sherbro Foundation—a non-profit dear to Tucker, which empowers rural Sierra Leone through education and agriculture development. Tucker was also a great supporter of the Nattinger Scholarship in our department. You can make a donation in his memory through the PSU Foundation.
Our hearts go out to Tucker's family and to all who knew Tucker. He will be greatly missed.
The Faculty and Staff of Applied Linguistics
January 22, 2021
In and around the linguistics department in the next week:
- Linguistics Department Colloquium - Friday Jan 22 - Zoom - 8-10am [note special time and day]
Martin Haspelmath (MPI-EVA Leipzig): Variable argument marking and the difference between general and particular linguistics. - Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Jan 27 - Zoom - 3:10-4pm
Katie Sardinha (PhD 2017, Independent Scholar): A fieldworker’s reflection on the psycholinguistics of language and aging. - Language Variation and Change (LVC) Working Group - Monday Jan 25 - Zoom - 11am-12pm
Selection of papers to read during the Spring semester. Please email Annie Helms for the Zoom link and/or to be added to the bCourses site. - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Jan 22 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Lev Michael (UC Berkeley): The semantics of graded past tenses in Iquito (Zaparoan, Peru). - Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Jan 29 - Zoom - 3-4:30pm
Dan Brodkin (UCSC): TBA.
January 20, 2021
Congrats to Wendy López Márquez, whose paper 'Headless Relative Clauses in Sierra Popoluca' has appeared in the new Oxford University Press book Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages!
January 19, 2021
Congrats to Gašper Beguš on the publication of his chapter "Segmental Phonetics and Phonology in Caucasian Languages" in the new Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus, edited by Maria Polinsky. (A free preprint is available here.)
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