Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

Zymet's research presented at FASL 29

May 11, 2020

This weekend at FASL 29, Peter Jurgec (University of Toronto) presented his joint experimental work with Jesse Zymet in a talk entitled "Lexical propensities of Slovenian palatalizing suffixes are learned." Click here for the slides. Jesse adds:

The central results are on slides 20/21 & 29 (those are suffixes on the x-axis). They suggest that Slovenian language learners track triggering rates of palatalization that are specific to individual suffixes.

New phonology discussion group

May 6, 2020

Karee Garvin and Hannah Sande (PhD 2017) have launched a new cross institution discussion group. The group focuses on phonology, welcoming presentations on any and all phonology and phonology adjacent topics. The group meets weekly on Tuesdays at 12:00 PDT. All are welcome to attend. To be added to the mailing list and to receive the Zoom link, email Karee.

Here are the details for the meeting on May 12:

Jack Merrill (Princeton; PhD 2018) and Nik Rolle (Princeton; PhD 2018): Tone triggers vowel-epenthesis and vowel-retention in Wamey (Konyagi).

We present a case of tone-conditioned ǝ-epenthesis in the Wamey language (Niger-Congo: Guinea, Senegal), based on data from Santos (1996). While vowel epenthesis to host an intonational floating tone is attested in a number of languages (Roettger 2017), it has been claimed that vowel epenthesis to host a lexical/morphological floating tone is unattested~impossible (de Lacy 2003, Blumenfeld 2006, Gleim 2019). Wamey presents the clearest case yet of exactly this phenomenon. [Full abstract available here.]

Akumbu, Hyman, and Kießling published in Phonological Data and Analysis

April 16, 2020

A new article by Pius W. Akumbu (Fulbright Visiting Scholar, 2015-16), Larry M. Hyman, and Roland Kießling entitled "The segmental and tonal structure of verb inflection in Babanki" has just appeared in the online open access journal Phonological Data and Analysis. Congrats!

Robertson and Rybka published in Cadernos de Etnolingüística

April 9, 2020

Congratulations to Allegra Robertson and recent post-doc Konrad Rybka
, whose article "A grammatical description of Warao imperatives: Formal brevity and morphological complexity" was published this week in Cadernos de Etnolingüística. Read it here!

Shen to Reed College

April 7, 2020

Alice Shen has accepted a position as Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Reed College. Congratulations, Alice!

Sande, Jenks, and Inkelas published in NLLT

March 25, 2020

Congrats to Hannah Sande (PhD 2017), Peter Jenks, and Sharon Inkelas, whose article "Cophonologies by Ph(r)ase" has just appeared online in Natural Language & Linguistic Theory. Read it here!

Phorum 2019

Spring 2019 February 4 Gopala Anumanchipalli (UCSF), Josh Chartier (UCSF, Berkeley), & Edward Chang (UCSF) - "Synthesizing speech directly from the human brain" Neurological conditions that impair one's ability to speak are debilitating. In this talk, I will detail our efforts to create technology that translates cortical activity into speech. I will begin by sharing some insights into...

Cheng publishes in J. Acoustical Society of America

February 4, 2020

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

Berkeley @ WCCFL 38

January 16, 2020

The program for the upcoming 38th annual meeting of the West Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics has just been released, promising the following presentations by current department members and alumni:

Tessa Scott: Two types of "composite" probes Madeline Bossi: A morphological account of promiscuous agreement and *local > local in Kipsigis Virginia Dawson: Disjunction is not Boolean: novel evidence from Tiwa Nicholas Baier (PhD '18) and Gloria Mellesmoen: Spelling out object agreement in Central Salish Maziar Toosarvandani (PhD '10): TBA (invited talk)

Congrats all!

Elias publications

January 16, 2020

Congrats to first-year student Alexander Elias, whose paper "Are the Central Flores languages really typologically unusual?" is to appear in a book called Austronesian Undressed: How and Why Languages Become Isolating (eds David Gil and Antoinette Schapper), and whose paper "Kabyle Double Consonants: Long or Strong?" will appear in McGill Working Papers in Linguistics!

Alexander has also recently learned that his MA thesis Lio and the Central Flores languages has been nominated for two prizes, the Leiden University Thesis Prize and the Jan Brouwers Thesis Prize!