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October 18, 2018

Linguistics events this week (Oct 19-26, 2018)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Oct 19 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm 
    Susan Steele: The architecture of inflection
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Monday Oct 22 - Dwinelle 1229 - 11-12:30pm  [note special time and place!]
    Ashwini Deo (Ohio State): The emergence of split-oblique case systems: A view from the Bhili dialect continuum (Indo-Aryan)
  • Phorum - Monday Oct 22 - Dwinelle 1303 - 12-1pm
    Eleanor Glewwe (UCLA): Complexity bias and substantive bias in phonotactic learning
  • Linguistics Department Colloquium- Monday Oct 22 - Dwinelle 370 - 3:10-5 pm
    Ashwini Deo (Ohio State): Marathi tense marking: A window into the lexical encoding of tense meanings
  • Fieldwork Forum - Thursday Oct 25 - 554 Barrows Hall - 4-5:30PM [note special location!]
    Line Mikkelsen, Beth Piatote, Sean Brown, and Lou Montelongo  (UC Berkeley): The Many Lives of Indigenous Languages
  • SLUgS - Thursday Oct 25 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm
    Living catalogue: brief overview of linguistics electives for Spring 2019

October 17, 2018

Deo colloquium

The 2018-2019 colloquium series continues this coming Monday, October 22, with a talk by Ashwini Deo from the Ohio State University. Same time as always, same place as always: 3:10-5 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall. The talk is entitled "Marathi tense marking: A window into the lexical encoding of tense meanings", and the abstract is as follows:

Partee (1973) first observed that natural language tense expressions are analogous to pronouns in that they can be interpreted indexically, anaphorically, and like bound variables. These referential (i.e. indexical+anaphoric) and non-referential interpretations of tense marking have not been yet shown to have distinct reflexes in natural language temporal expressions – i.e. no language has been claimed to lexicalize these distinctly. I argue that Marathi [mar, 71,700,000 speakers], an Indo-Aryan language of the Southern subgroup, morphosyntactically distinguishes between referential and non-referential temporal meanings. This lexicalization pattern, observed also in several other New Indo-Aryan languages, points the way to a more nuanced understanding of distinctions with respect to temporal reference in natural languages. The second part of the talk traces the diachronic emergence of this encoding pattern in the New Indo-Aryan languages, comparing it to the systems observed in Old and Middle Indo-Aryan. I tentatively suggest that the referential—non-referential contrast in the temporal domain arises due to the emergence of new present and past tense markers (auxiliaries) in a tenseless aspectually-based system.

Cal @ Sound Systems of Latin America

This weekend features la tercera conferencia sobre Sistemas de Sonido de Latino América (SSLA3) -- Sound Systems of Latin America III -- at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Berkeley linguistics will be represented in five presentations by students, faculty, and '08 alumni: 

  • Yuni Kim (PhD '08): “La relación entre ortografía e investigaciones fonológicas: Algunas posibilidades en amuzgo. Can phonological research contribute to Amuzgo orthography development – and vice versa?” [invited talk]
  • Myriam Lapierre and Lev Michael: “Nasal harmony in Tupí-Guaraní: A comparative synthesis”
  • Christian DiCanio (PhD '08) and Richard Hatcher: “Does Itunyoso Triqui have intonation?”
  • Gabriela Caballero (PhD '08): “Direccionalidad y localidad en el condicionamiento de alomorfos en Tarahumara Central”
  • Myriam Lapierre (University of California, Berkeley): “Word-initial [I] epenthesis in Panará: A prosodic analysis”

Congrats, all!

October 16, 2018

Berkeley to host CUSP 11, Oct 27-28

On Oct 27 and 28, Berkeley will be hosting the annual meeting of California Universities Semantics and Pragmatics, a.k.a. CUSP. CUSP is an informal annual conference that brings together people working in formal semantics and pragmatics at universities across the state. This year, Berkeley linguistics will be represented by presenters Ginny Dawson and Line Mikkelsen (along with visiting scholar Peter Alrenga). You can find the program and the RSVP form here. 

October 11, 2018

Linguistics events this week (Oct 12-19, 2018)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

Linguistics in action

Calques has received some great photos from last weekend's NELS/AMP double-header!

Berkeley linguists at NELS

At NELS: Schuyler Laparle, Emily Clem, Nico Baier (PhD '18), Tessa Scott

Tessa Scott

Tessa Scott with her NELS poster

Schuyler Laparle

Schuyler Laparle with her NELS poster

Nik Rolle

Nicholas Rolle (PhD '18) presenting his poster (joint work with Larry Hyman)

AMP 2018

Berkeley phonologists at AMP:  Gabriela Caballero (PhD '08), Alan Yu (PhD '03), Andrew Shibata (BA '17), Hannah Sande (PhD '17), Nicholas Rolle (PhD '18), Jesse Zymet

Alrenga visits

Welcome to Pete Alrenga, who has just joined us as a visitor! Pete sends the following words about himself: 

Hi!  I'll be visiting from UMass Amherst until mid-November, and I'll be working with Line Mikkelsen while I'm here.  Line and I are developing a project around a long-standing mutual interest of ours, namely the structure and interpretation of identity, similative, and equative constructions.  In English, these notions are canonically expressed by same, different, like, such, so, etc., and our own previous work has explored the intriguing double lives that these items lead as comparative operators and anaphoric devices.  One of the major goals of our project is to extend our understanding of such items/constructions to lesser-studied languages, and to assess the extent to which this range of uses is attested cross-linguistically.

Most of my past work has explored issues in the semantics and pragmatics of scalarity:  degree comparatives, numerals and their modifiers, and more recently, scalar implicatures and Grice's nondetachability doctrine.  I'm looking forward to my stay here at UC Berkeley...stop by some time and say hello!

October 9, 2018

Mikkelsen @ Stanford

On October 19, Line Mikkelsen will be giving a talk with Jorge Hankamer (UCSC) in Stanford's Syntax and Morphology Circle (SMircle) series. The talk is entitled "CP complements to D". 

October 8, 2018

New SSILA Archiving Award

A new SSILA Archiving Award has been inaugurated, the award committee for which is chaired by Andrew Garrett.  The society says that "this award highlights the importance of creating long-term archival materials that are accessible to all communities concerned, including heritage and language communities as well as scholarly communities.

October 5, 2018

Linguistics events this week (Oct 5-12, 2018)

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

  • Workshop on Pronouns and Interpretation de se - Thursday Oct 11 - 10:15-11:15, 2-5
    Join us 10:15-11:15 for a talk by Pranav Anand (UCSC), Perspectives for Pronouns and Reflexives, in Dwinelle 6307 [Celtic seminar room]. We reconvene 2-5 in Dwinelle 3401 for talks by Amy Rose Deal, A puzzle about reflexives of res-movement verbs, Pritty Patel-Grosz and Patrick Grosz (Oslo), The role of pronominal strength in interpretation, and Peter Jenks, Weak pronouns and variable binding.
  • Fieldwork Forum - Thursday Oct 11 - Matrix Conference Room (Barrows Hall 8th Floor) - 4-5:30pm 
    Screening of Dizhsa Nabani - Living Language, followed by a Q-and-A session with faculty and students in the Indigenous Language Revitalization Designated Emphasis
  • Dissertation Defense - Friday Oct 12 - Dwinelle 1229 - 10:10-1
    Kelsey Neely: The Linguistic Expression of Affective Stance in Yaminawa (Pano, Peru) 
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Oct 12 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm 
    Round robin

October 4, 2018

Cheng, Clem recognized by the LSA

Fifth-year grad students Andrew Cheng and Emily Clem were each recognized by the LSA this week in connection with the upcoming annual meeting in New York City.  Andrew was named a finalist for the Five-minute Linguist event, which features short, informative, engaging, and accessible talks about linguistics research on a variety of topics. Andrew's presentation is entitled Style-shifting, Bilingualism, and the Koreatown Accent. Emily has been named as the third place winner of this year's Student Abstract Award, recognizing "the three best abstracts submitted by a student for a paper or poster presentation at Annual Meeting". Emily's prize-winning abstract is entitledThe cyclic nature of Agree: Maximal projections as probes. 

Congrats, Andrew and Emily! 

Gahl named Mercator Fellow

Congrats to Susanne Gahl, who has just been named a Mercator Fellow by the DFG (German Research Foundation)! The fellowship lasts for three years and will support a collaboration with Ingo Plag and others at Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf.  

October 3, 2018

Hyman festscrift published

Newly published with CSLI is the long-awaited volume Revealing Structure: Papers in Honor of Larry M. Hyman (eds. Eugene Buckley, Thera Crane and Jeff Good)! The book features numerous contributions by alumni, faculty, emeriti, and former visiting scholars, including: 

  • Jeff Good (Ph.D. 2003), Eugene Buckley (Ph.D. 1992)  & Thera Crane (Ph.D. 2011): Revealing Structure in Languages and Grammar
  • Jean-Marie Hombert (PhD 1975) and Rebecca Grollemund: Phylogenetic Classification of Grassfields Languages
  • Sharon Inkelas: Overexponence and Underexponence in Morphology 
  • Joyce T. Mathangwane (Ph.D. 1996): On Tones in Chisubiya (Chiikuhane) 
  • Johanna Nichols: A Direct/Inverse Subsystem in Ingush Deictic Prefixes
  • John J. Ohala: The Aerodynamic Voicing Constraint and its Phonological Implications  
  • Imelda I. Udoh (former visiting scholar): Compounding in Leggbó 
  • Alan C. L. Yu (Ph.D. 2003):  Laryngeal Schizophrenia in Washo Resonants

Congrats, Larry, on the celebratory volume, and congrats to the editors and authors!

Berkeley semantics in Sinn und Bedeutung 21 proceedings

The Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21 have just been published, containing four papers by faculty, students, and/or alumni: 

  • Pranav Anand & Maziar Toosarvandani (Ph.D. 2010)
    Unifying the canonical, historical, and play-by-play present. pdf
  • Amy Rose Deal & Julia Nee
    Bare nouns, number, and definiteness in Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec. pdf
  • Peter Jenks, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, & Emmanuel-Moselly Makasso
    On the lexical semantics of property concept nouns in Basaá. pdf
  • Peter Sutton & Hana Filip (Ph.D 1993)
    Restrictions on subkind coercion in object mass nouns. pdf

Congrats all! 

Dawson publishes in Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung

Congrats to fifth-year grad student Virginia Dawson, whose paper A new kind of epistemic indefinite was recently published in the Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22!

Conference double-header!

This weekend features two conferences at which Berkeley Linguistics will have a major presence, one each in the east and the west:

  • The Annual Meeting on Phonology, at UC San Diego, features work by faculty Larry Hyman and Jesse Zymet, along with alumni Nik Rolle (PhD 2018, now at Princeton), Hannah Sande (PhD 2017, now at Georgetown),  Gabriela Caballero (PhD 2008, now at UCSD), Alan Yu (PhD 2003, now at Chicago),  and Eugene Buckley (PhD 1992, now at Penn).
  • NELS 49, at Cornell, features presentations by graduate students Emily Clem, Schuyler Laparle, and Tessa Scott, along with alum Maziar Toosarvandani (PhD 2010, now at UC Santa Cruz). 

Congrats all!

Berkeley linguists @ LSA 2019

The program for this year's LSA annual meeting has been released, and Berkeley linguistics will be represented in 14 talks and posters (plus an organized session) by students, faculty, and very recent alumni: 

Congrats all!

September 28, 2018

This week @ Berkeley linguistics

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

September 27, 2018

Baclawski publishes in Asia-Pacific Language Variation

Congrats to grad student Kenneth Baclawski Jr. whose paper Diglossia and change from below in Eastern Cham has just been been posted online in the latest issue of the journal Asia-Pacific Language Variation!

September 26, 2018

Baby Chen

Ian Chen, son of I-Hsuan Chen (PhD '15) and Tim Chen, was born on Sept. 12. Welcome, baby!