News

All News

September 20, 2018

Linguists at the ballgame

A group of students, faculty, alumni, and friends of Berkeley linguistics were on hand this Wednesday evening to cheer the Oakland A's to a 10-0 victory over the visiting LA Angels!

Berkeley linguists at the ballgame

Johnson colloquium
The 2018-2019 colloquium series continues this coming Monday, Sept 24, with a talk by Keith Johnson. Same time as always, same place as always: 3:10-5 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall. The talk is entitled Four phonetic discoveries: How I spent my sabbatical “vacation”.

September 18, 2018

Petruck book, Brazil visit

Alumna Miriam R. L. Petruck (PhD '86) writes to share news of her edited book MetaNet, recently published by John Benjamins. The book contains contributions by Miriam and fellow alumni Karen Sullivan (PhD '07),  Elise Stickles (PhD '16), Oana David (PhD '16), Ellen Dodge (PhD '10), and Jisup Hong (PhD '12), along with faculty member Eve Sweetser and emeritus faculty member George Lakoff. 

David to Google

Congrats to alumna Oana David (PhD 2016), who has just taken up a new position as an Analytic Linguist at Google!

September 13, 2018

This week @ Berkeley linguistics

In and around the linguistics department in the next week: 

  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Sept 14 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
    Ryan Bochnak (Universität Konstanz):  Combining coordination and focus: Towards an analysis of alternative questions in Washo
  • Linguistics Department Colloquium - Monday Sept 17 - Dwinelle 370 - 3:10-5 pm
    Jesse Zymet (UC Berkeley): Lexical propensities in phonology: Corpus and experimental evidence, grammar, and learning
  • Phonological Reading Group - Thursday Sept 20 - Dwinelle 1226 - 11-noon 
    From Matthew Gordon's book Phonological Typology, we will be reading Chapter 3: Phoneme Inventories.
  • SLUgS - Thursday Sept 20 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-7pm
    Join us for linguistics-related games! 
  • Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Sept 21- Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
    Sabrina Grimberg (Stanford): Between Economy and Recoverability: The Case of Subject Doubling in Colloquial Finnish

And coming up at Stanford (Saturday, Sept 22): Analyzing Typological Structure: From Categorical to Probabilistic Phonology

Calques on the web

We're excited to announce that Calques is transitioning to a blog format! The new Calques blog is integrated with our department webpage, and gives us the opportunity to share photos and department news to an even wider community. Email lovers, fear not: thanks to the hero of this transition, Ron Sprouse, you will still receive an email digest every week. 

Click here to visit us on the web!

September 12, 2018

Calques goes visual

Taking advantage of the visual possibilities afforded by the new Calques format, we present some recent evidence of Berkeley linguists out and about. Send your photos of linguistics-in-action to Calques!

 Berkeley linguists at LabPhon

The Berkeley Crew at LabPhon16:  Yao Yao (PhD 2011), Charles Bond Chang (PhD 2010), Grant McGuire (former postdoc), Keith Johnson, Matt Faytak (PhD 2018), Myriam Lapierre, Jeremy Steffman (BA 2016), Hannah Sande (PhD 2017), Alice Shen, Andrew Cheng and Alan Yu (PhD 2003)

Berkeley semantics at Sinn und Bedeutung

The Berkeley Crew at Sinn und Bedeutung 23: Emily Clem, Virginia Dawson, Amy Rose Deal, Peter Jenks, Rachel Rudolph, Ruyue Agnes Bi

Nik Rolle and Jack Merrill

Two new doctors in celebratory gear: Jack Merrill (PhD 2018) and Nik Rolle (PhD 2018)

Rogers, Rogers, & Mikkelsen publish Starritt biography
The trio of Claudette Rogers (Karuk Tribe), Dixie Rogers (Karuk Tribe), and Line Mikkelsen (UC Berkeley) have just published a collaborative work entitled "Biography of Julia Starritt". The authors would like to express thanks to Ron Sprouse for help with web implementation!
Hyman publishes in Language

Larry Hyman has a new paper out in the latest issue of Language: What tone teaches us about language. The paper reflects his Presidential Address to the LSA in January of this year -- congrats, Larry!

Dawson receives APS grant

Congrats to fifth-year grad student Virginia Dawson on receiving a grant from the American Philosophical Society's Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research! The grant project is entitled "Strategies of disjunction in Tiwa", and will support her field research in Assam, India.

September 10, 2018

Zymet colloquium
The 2018-2019 colloquium series begins this coming Monday, Sept 17, with a talk by Jesse Zymet. Same time as always, same place as always: 3:10-5 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall. The talk is entitled Lexical propensities in phonology: Corpus and experimental evidence, grammar, and learning. Click on the link above to read the abstract!

September 7, 2018

Cal @ Sinn und Bedeutung

The annual meeting of Sinn und Bedeutung, taking place this week in Barcelona, features five presentations by Berkeley students, faculty, and very recent alumni:

  • Emily Clem: Attributive adjectives in Tswefap: Vague predicates in a language with degrees
  • Virginia Dawson and Amy Rose Deal: Third readings by semantic scope lowering: prolepsis in Tiwa
  • Amy Rose Deal and Vera Hohaus: Vague predicates, crisp judgments
  • Ruyue Agnes Bi (BA '18) and Peter Jenks : Pronouns, radical pro-drop, and ellipsis in Mandarin
  • Rachel Rudolph (Berkeley philosophy): A Closer Look at the Perceptual Source in Copy Raising Constructions
Regier, Zaslavsky publish in PNAS, Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society

Terry Regier and visiting graduate student Noga Zaslavsky (together with their colleagues) have two new papers out this summer:

The paper Color naming reflects both perceptual structure and communicative need received the conference prize for best paper on computational modeling of language. Congrats, Noga and Terry! 

Johnson, Bakst publish in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Keith Johnson and alumna Sarah Bakst (PhD '17) have a new open access paper out this July (published with financial assistance from the University Library for open access publishing): 

Inkelas in Daily Cal

This Tuesday's edition of the Daily Cal newspaper contains a letter to the editor by Sharon Inkelas:

September 6, 2018

Talmy book published

Alumnus Len Talmy (PhD '72) writes to share news of his book The Targeting System of Language, published earlier this year by MIT Press. 

August 31, 2018

William S-Y. Wang receives honorary degree

A hearty congratulations to our emeritus colleague William S-Y. Wang, who was recently one of five world-class scholars to be awarded honorary degrees from the University of Chicago. Described as "a pioneer in the study of language evolution and the emergence of new languages", Wang was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. 

Faculty publish in Journal of Linguistics, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
Rhodes book now on pre-order

A new book on The Language of Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Rich Rhodes together with Tom Güldemann (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) and Patrick McConvell (Australian National University), can now be pre-ordered from Cambridge University Press. Congrats, Rich!

Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics launches
Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics is a new online working papers series edited by Line Mikkelsen and Amy Rose Deal. Since launching in June, BPFL has published 7 papers by faculty and students (both graduate and undergraduate), representing work in formal linguistics across a number of subdisciplines. We welcome submissions of new research or work in progress in any area of formal linguistics; please contact the editors for submission details!