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January 25, 2025

Group photos from the 2025 LSA conference

Here are some photos of Berkeley linguists from the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (January 9-12 in Philadelphia)!

January 24, 2025

Linguistics events this week (Jan 24-31, 2025)

In and around the Department of Linguistics in the next week:

  • Ladino/Judeo-Spanish Working Group - Thursday Jan 30 - Dwinelle 1303 - 4-5pm (note the new day, time, and room)
    Echar Lashon (Conversation Hour & Welcome Back! Snacks provided!)
  • Language Revitalization Working Group - Wednesday Jan 29 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4pm
    LR Library Launch & Semester Welcome Event! (Snacks provided. We'll share what LR projects we're all working on this semester. If you can, bring language revitalization books to donate to the library!)
  • Phorum - Friday Jan 31 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5pm
    Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley): "The unpredictable but expected deglottalization in some former A'ingae derivatives"

January 23, 2025

Hossain talks in January

Anushah Hossain (Script Encoding Initiative) gave a talk entitled "ISCII Imperialism: The Legacy of a Devanagari-Centric Character Code" on January 18 at Face/Interface, a conference on global type design at Stanford University.

She also gave an online talk on January 23 for World Endangered Writing Day titled "Script Encoding: The Future," which reviewed the Script Encoding Initiative's past work and new directions.

January 22, 2025

Berkeley linguists present at SSILA

Congrats to the Berkeley linguists who will be presenting their work at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, taking place online from January 24 to 26:

January 21, 2025

Gahl publishes in Language

Congratulations to Susanne Gahl on her new article (with R. Harald Baayen), "Time and thyme again: Connecting English spoken word duration to models of the mental lexicon," Language 100.4 (2024), 623-670.

Holliday publishes in Linguistics Vanguard

Congratulations to Nicole Holliday on her new article, "My Memoji, my self: Prosodic correlates of online performed code-switching via avatar," published in Linguistics Vanguard!

Whitmore speaks at MLA

Oliver Whitmore (French) presented a talk at the 2025 Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, held in New Orleans from January 9-12, titled "Disputing Diglossia: When a sociolinguist doesn't see language."

January 20, 2025

Sande publishes on deletion and epenthesis in Kru languages

Congratulations to Hannah Sande, who published a chapter, "Insertion or deletion? CVCV/CCV alternations in Kru languages," in a new volume Epenthesis and beyond: Recent approaches to insertion in phonology and its interfaces with Language Science Press, available here: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/469.

Berkeley linguists attend workshop of Yurok Language Program

Andrew Garrett, Madeleine Strait, Rhosean Asmah, and Julia Peck attended the January workshop of the Yurok Language Program in Klamath on the Yurok Reservation, where Andrew led a session on numerals and the Yurok lunar calendar system. Andrew was recognized with a gift and gratitude for his longtime engagement and prioritization of community requests and needs! They also visited Rek'woy, the place where the Klamath River, now undammed thanks in part to Yurok and Karuk activism, flows freely into the Pacific Ocean (pictured).

'Echkwoh Rek'woy 'o tenem'.
There are a lot of sea lions at Rek'woy.

January 19, 2025

Mam course offered at UC Berkeley

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies just launched a free (non-credit) Mam class for the spring semester. See here for more information.

December 18, 2024

Podcast interview on Garrett book

Greg LeBlanc's podcast unSILOed features a new interview with Andrew Garrett on "The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall — Revisiting the Past and Renaming the Present" (including both audio and video versions).

December 12, 2024

Beguš in Canadian Geographic
Research by Gašper Beguš has recently been featured in Canadian Geographic's Out of our depth: speaking with whales. Link to the story:
Dąbkowski publishes LI squib on postlabial rounding

Maksymilian Dąbkowski published a squib on "A Q-Theoretic Solution to A’ingae Postlabial Rounding" in Linguistic Inquiry. The paper can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00550. Congrats, Maks!

New review of Garrett book

A review by Chloé Laplantine of Andrew Garrett's book The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall: Language, Memory, and Indigenous California has appeared in the journal Histoire Épistémologie Langage 46/2 (2024): 

Linguistics events this week (Dec. 13-Dec. 20)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:

Plus an event during break:

  • LSA practice talks – Thurdsay, January 2 - 11am-1pm and Friday, January 3 - 11am-1pm - Dwinelle 1303 and on Zoom

December 5, 2024

Linguistics events this week (December 6-13)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:
  • SSCircle – Friday, December 6 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pmRebecca Jarvis (UC Berkeley): TBA
  • SLaB – Friday, December 6 - Spanish & Portuguese Library (Dwinelle 5125) - 3-4pm
    Research updates and plans
Beguš and Sprouse (et al.) at Wired Big Interview Science Fair
Work by Gašper Beguš and Ronald Sprouse and coauthors has been highlighted at the Science Fair at the WIRED's Big Interview on December 3, 2024. More info about the event: https://events.wired.com/big-interview/home. The preprint is available at https://osf.io/preprints/osf/285cs. Congrats!
Vowels in Sperm Whales presentation materials
Michael receives Fulbright-Hayes Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship

Lev Michael will be on research leave during Spring and Fall 2025 to carry out research supported by a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship. Lev is planning to work with speakers of four Arawakan languages, Asháninka, Ashéninka, Nomatsigenga, and Yanesha', on a variety of topics aimed at clarifying the historical and language contact relationships among Peruvian Arawakan languages and their non-Arawakan neighbors. Congrats, Lev!

November 29, 2024

Linguistics events this week (November 29-December 6)
In and around the Linguistics Department in the next week:
  • Linguistics Department Colloquium – Monday, December 2 - Dwinelle 370 and on Zoom (lx-colloq) - 3-5pm
    Gabriella Licata (UC Riverside), Brian Asey Gonsoulin, Mesro Coles, Rob Tyler, and Habib Watkins (Mount Tamalpais College): "The Sociolinguistic Labor of Incarcerated People"
  • Canadian Studies Program – Tuesday, December 3 - 223 Philosophy Hall and Zoom (RSVP here) - 12:30-2 p.m.
    Summer Sands-Macbeth (Queen’s University, Ontario): Efforts at Indigenous Language Revitalization at Bkejwanong
  • SSCircle – Friday, December 6 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
    Rebecca Jarvis (UC Berkeley): TBA
  • BLC Fellow Forum – Friday, December 6 - Dwinelle B-4 & Zoom - 3-5pm

    Jennifer Kaplan (UC Berkeley): "Gender in/and French: Teaching Inclusive French in the First-Year Language Classroom and Beyond"


Beguš in The Harvard Crimson
Research by Gašper Beguš has recently been featured in The Harvard Crimson's article titled Are Whales Trying to Tell Us Something? https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/10/26/project-ceti-translating-whales-scrutiny/