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February 25, 2020

Survey updates

Zach O'Hagan sends the following updates from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:

  • Maziar Toosarvandani (PhD 2010) archived a new collection on Northern Paiute (Uto-Aztecan; CA, OR, ID, NV), based on 10 years of research with elders Grace Dick, Leona Cluette Dick, Morris Jack, Inez Jim, Elaine Lundy, Edith McCann, Harold Miller, and Jimmy Nez, and in collaboration with Molly Babel (PhD 2009) and Michael Houser (PhD 2010). The collection consists of 281 recordings of lexical and grammatical elicitation (as he writes, with a focus on "nominalization, clausal embedding, clause chaining, and aspect"), and texts. The project grew out of Andrew Garrett's 2005-2006 field methods course on the language.
  • Conor Daly (PhD Slavic 1991) archived a new collection on Ninilchik Russian, a variety spoken on the Kenai Peninsula and surrounding region of southern Alaska. Based on fieldwork in July and August 1985, the collection consists of conversations, interviews, and linguistic work with 25 people.
  • The five notebooks comprising Marvin Kramer's (PhD 2002) field notes from summers 1968 and 1969 on Kutenai (isolate; British Columbia, ID, MT) are now available (Kramer.002.001-Kramer.002.005). The consultants were Ambrose Gravelle, Catherine Gravelle, and Frank Whitehead. (Thanks to Alex Elias for assisting us in scanning these!)
Dawson to Western Washington

Congratulations to Virginia Dawson, who has just accepted a tenure-track position in semantics at Western Washington University! Ginny will be joining Western's newest department.

February 21, 2020

Linguistics events this week (Feb 21-28, 2020)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

  • Linguistics Department Colloquium - Friday Feb 21 -  Dwinelle 88 - 3-5pm
    Charles O'Hara (USC): Inter-Generational Learning Affects Phonotactic Typology
  • Linguistics Department Colloquium - Monday Feb 24 -  Dwinelle 370 - 3-5pm
    Gasper Begus (University of Washington): (Deep) Learning in Phonology
  • Language Revitalization Working Group - Wednesday Feb 26 - 1303 Dwinelle  - 2pm-3pm
    Discussion of language revitalization in non English-matrix contexts
  • Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 26 - 1303 Dwinelle - 4-5.30pm
    Myriam Lapierre (Berkeley): Challenges of literacy education and orthography development in the Amazonian Indigenous context: a case study from Panãra.

February 20, 2020

Nee paper to appear in L2 Journal

Congrats to Julia Nee, whose paper Creating Books for Use in Language Revitalization Classrooms: Considerations and Outcomes will be coming out in the Spring 2020 edition of L2 Journal! You can access the paper here.

Gahl joins board of the Aphasia Center of California

Congrats to Susanne Gahl, who has been voted into the Board of Directors of the Aphasia Center of California!  The Aphasia Center is a resource and community for people with aphasia, built on the principles of the Life Participation Approach to Aphasia (https://leader.pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/leader.FTR.05032000.4 ).

February 14, 2020

Survey updates
First-year graduate student Alex Elias has assisted in the last few weeks in scanning two Berkeley linguists' field notes on five different languages:
  • George Foster's 13 notebooks on the culture and language of the Yuki people of northern California, dating from 1937 (Oswalt.007.001 through Oswalt.007.013). Foster (1913-2006) received his PhD under A.L. Kroeber in 1946, and was later Professor of Anthropology, until 1979. His wife, Mary LeCron Foster (1914-2001), received a PhD from this department in 1965, and the campus's anthropology library is named after them. The notebooks were originally given to Robert Oswalt (PhD 1961). Consultants were Charlie Doorman, Cecilia Logan, George Moore, Ralph Moore, Eben Tilletson, and Old Toby.
  • George Foster's 3 notebooks on Huchnom (Yukian; CA) culture, also dating from 1937 (Oswalt.007.014 through Oswalt.007.016). The consultant was Lula Johnson.
  • George Grekoff's 3 notebooks on the Clayoquot dialect of Nuu-chah-nulth, a Wakashan language of British Columbia, dating from 1966 and 1967 (Grekoff.002.001 through Grekoff.002.003). Grekoff (1923-1999) was a student of Mary Haas in this department. He did not complete the PhD, but later taught at the University of Washington. Consultants were Hyacinth David, Winifred David, and Odelia Hunter.
  • George Grekoff's 5 notebooks on Skagit, a Lushootseed variety (Salishan; WA), dating from 1964 to 1967 (Grekoff.002.004 through Grekoff.002.008). The consultant was Louise George.
  • George Grekoff's notebook on Southeastern Pomo (Pomoan; CA), dating from 1957 (Grekoff.002.009). The consultants were Effie and John Kelsey.
Linguistics events this week (Feb 14-21, 2020)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

February 11, 2020

Mystery Language, Splash @Berkeley!

Raksit Lau, Wendy López Márquez, Alice Shen and Edwin Ko will present a short course at Splash on Sunday, March 8th.

Splash brings over 400 high school students to Berkeley's campus for "a day of unlimited learning". 

Mystery Language! Introduction to Linguistic Analysis

February 7, 2020

Linguistics events this week (Feb 7-14, 2020)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

February 4, 2020

Cheng publishes in J. Acoustical Society of America

Congratulations to Andrew Cheng, whose paper "Cross-linguistics f0 differences in bilingual speakers of English and Korean" just came out in JASA-Express Letters!

January 31, 2020

Linguistics events this week (Jan 31-Feb 7, 2020)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

January 30, 2020

Cychosz paper to appear in Journal of Child Language

Congrats to Meg Cychosz, first author of another new article just accepted:

Cychosz, M., Erskine, M., Munson, B., & Edwards, J. (to appear). A lexical advantage in four-year-old children's word repetition. Journal of Child Language. [preprint]

January 29, 2020

Dissertations filed in 2019

Now that 2019 is in the books, congratulations to our 2019 PhD alumni!

Survey update

Zach O'Hagan sends the following update from the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages:

  • We archived a new collection of sound recordings and transcriptions of Kupang Malay (West Timor), which derive from the spring 2013 undergraduate field methods course (Linguistics 140) taught by Sarah Cutfield, with language consultant Adriana Tunliu. Sarah was a lecturer at the time, having just finished her PhD in 2012 at Monash University (Australia) with a dissertation titled "Demonstratives in Dalabon: A Language of Southwestern Arnhem Land."

January 27, 2020

Deal at NYU

Amy Rose Deal will be in New York City this week to give an NYU colloquium on Interaction, satisfaction, and the PCC.

January 26, 2020

Licata in Italian news

Gabriella Licata of Romance Linguistics writes to share that her quantitative work on language attitudes towards Genoese and Italian is in the Ligurian news. The article, by Andrea Acqarone of the newspaper Secolo XIX, sums up her results (in Genoese) for a nonlinguistic audience, explaining how gender can condition the way we speak and perceive language.

January 24, 2020

Linguistics events this week (Jan 24-31, 2020)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

January 23, 2020

Cychosz paper to appear in Behavior Research Methods

Congrats to Meg Cychosz, first author of a new paper to appear:

Cychosz, M., Romeo, R. R., Soderstrom, M., Scaff, C., Ganek, H., Cristia, A., Casillas, M., de Barbaro, K., Bang, J., Weisleder, A. (to appear). Longform recordings of everyday life: Ethics for best practices. Behavior Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ah37c

Here is a link to the Open Science Framework ethics repository created for the article.

Laparle, Scott publish in NELS 49

The proceedings of NELS 49 are now in print, featuring a paper each by Schuyler Laparle and Tessa Scott:

  • Laparle, S. 2019. Locative inversion without inversion. In NELS 49: Proceedings of the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, vol. 2, eds. Maggie Baird & Jonathan Pesetsky, 199-208.   [preprint]
  • Scott, T. 2019. Clitic placement in Mam (Mayan) requires a host requirement. In NELS 49: Proceedings of the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, vol. 3, eds. Maggie Baird & Jonathan Pesetsky, 117-126. [preprint]

Congrats both!

January 22, 2020

Bardagil awarded Rubicon grant
Postdoc Bernat Bardagil has recently learned that he has been awarded a Rubicon grant by the Dutch funding agency NWO for a postdoc at Ghent University with Jóhanna Barðdal. The project is entitled The subject in the Amazon. Grammatical relations in indigenous Amazonian languages. Congrats, Bernat!