Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

Linguistics events this week (Nov 30-Dec 7, 2018)

November 29, 2018

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Nov 30 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-5pm
Zach O'Hagan: Two sorts of contrastive topic in Caquinte SLUgS Linguistics Symposium - Saturday Dec 1 - Dwinelle 370 - 8:30am-5pm Linguistics Holiday Potluck - Monday Dec 3 - Dwinelle 1229 - 12 noon Linguistics Department colloquium - Monday Dec 3 - Dwinelle 370 - 3-5pm
Carlos Gussenhoven (Radboud University Nijmegen): Between phonetics and phonology: Of the beast and the untamed savage Fieldwork Forum - Thursday Dec 6 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5:30PM
Quirina Geary (UC Davis): TBA Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Dec 7 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-5pm
Noga Zaslavsky (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Karee Garvin (UC Berkeley), Charles Kemp (University of Melbourne), Naftali Tishby (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), & Terry Regier (UC Berkeley): Color-naming evolution and efficiency: The case of Nafaanra

QP fest 2018!

November 22, 2018

QP Fest will be held on Monday, November 26, in Dwinelle 370, from 3-5pm. (Note the rescheduled date!)

The schedule is as follows:

Introduction (3:10-3:15) Tessa Scott: "Conjoint/disjoint in Ndengeleko: A head movement alternation" (3:15-3:35) Karee Garvin: "Positional effects on timing and coordination of segments within the syllable" (3:35-3:55) Yevgeniy Melguy: "Talker ethnicity and listener expectation in the perception of foreign-accented speech" (3:55-4:15) Mini-break (4:15-4:20) Noah Hermalin: "Ambiguity and efficiency trade-offs in Sumerian cuneiform" (4:20-4:40) Myriam Lapierre: "A phonological analysis of Panãra" (4:40-5:00)

Linguistics events this week (Nov 23-30, 2018)

November 23, 2018

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Phorum - Monday Nov 26 - Dwinelle 1303 - 12-1pm
Simon Todd (Stanford): Word frequency effects in sound change: A listener-based exemplar model QP Fest - Monday Nov 26 - Dwinelle 370 - 3-5pm Fieldwork Forum - Thursday Nov 29 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4-5:30PM
Julia Nee: TBA Syntax and Semantics Circle Friday Nov 30 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-5pm
Zach O'Hagan: Two sorts of contrastive topic in Caquinte

Hyman travels, publishes on Benue-Congo

November 13, 2018
In the days ahead Larry Hyman will be traveling first to the University of British Columbia, where he will present "In search of prosodic domains in Lusoga" and attend workshops on Kinata and Medumba, and then to Ghent University for the International Conference on Reconstructing Proto-Bantu Grammar, at which he will present "Causative and Passive H tone: Spurious or proto?" Continuing the African languages theme, Larry also has three new papers in the newly published book East Benue-Congo: Nouns, pronouns, and verbs. The book is open access and can be downloaded in its entirety here. Larry's three chapters are entitled: “Bantoid verb extensions”. In John Watters (ed.), Eastern Benue-Congo: Nouns, pronouns, and verbs, 175-199. Berlin: Language Science Press. “Third person pronouns in Grassfields Bantu”. In John Watters (ed.), Eastern Benue-Congo: Nouns, pronouns and verbs, 201-223. Berlin: Language Science Press. “More reflections on the nasal classes in Bantu”. In John Watters (ed.), Eastern Benue-Congo: Nouns, pronouns and verbs, 225-238. Berlin: Language Science Press.

NELS 48 proceedings published

October 30, 2018

The Proceedings of NELS 48 have just been published in a three-volume set. The set contains three papers by faculty and/or alumni:

Boris Harizanov and Line Mikkelsen, Resumption and Chain Reduction in Danish VP Left Dislocation Nicholas Rolle (PhD '18), Output-Output Correspondence via Agreement by Projection Hannah Sande (PhD '17) and Peter Jenks, Cophonologies by phase

Congrats all!

Cal Alonquianists gather in Edmonton

October 30, 2018

The 50th Algonquian Conference took place last weekend in Edmonton, Alberta, featuring four talks by Berkeley faculty or alumni:

Rich Rhodes: Morphological transitivity in Ojibwe Amy Dahlstrom (PhD '86): A Meskwaki construction in narrative texts: independent pronoun + full NP David Costa (PhD '94): Verb negation in Indiana Miami Jerome Biedny, Matthew Burner, Andrea Cudworth, & Monica Macaulay (PhD '87): Classifier Medials Across Algonquian: A First Look

Berkeley authors are depicted below!

Cal faculty & alumni at the Algonquian Conference 2018

Linguistics events this week (Oct 26-Nov 2, 2018)

October 25, 2018

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

California Universities Semantics and Pragmatics (CUSP) 11 - Saturday and Sunday Oct 27 and 28 - Dwinelle 370
CUSP will feature semantics and pragmatics talks all day Saturday, as well as Sunday morning, with speakers from across the state! Phorum - Monday Oct 29 - Dwinelle 1303 - 12-1pm
Sarah Bakst and Caroline A. Niziolek (University of Wisconsin-Madison): Self monitoring in L1 and L2: a magnetoencephalography study Climate Committee - Monday Oct 29 - Dwinelle 1229 - 3-4pm and 4-5pm
For everyone, from 3pm to 4pm, we will have a discussion of the 'impostor phenomenon', facilitated by Dr. Amy Honigman from UC Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). For graduate students only, from 4pm to 5pm, Dr. Honigman will talk about the mental health and wellness services that are available for grad students and how to access them. Fieldwork Forum - Thursday Nov 1 - Dwinelle 1303 - 4-5:30PM
Catalina Torres (University of Melbourne): TBA Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Nov 2 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Amy Rose Deal: Clausal complementation vs. “relative embedding”: On knowledge and happiness in Nez Perce

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

October 18, 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

Cal @ Sound Systems of Latin America

October 17, 2018

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!

Structure, Architecture, and Blocking

Jorge Hankamer
Line Mikkelsen
2018

Embick and Marantz (2008) present an analysis of the Danish Definiteness alternation involving a postsyntactic rule of Local Dislocation (an operation that is sensitive to linear adjacency but not hierarchical structure). Examination of a fuller range of data reveals that the alternation cannot be determined strictly in terms of adjacency, but rather depends on the structural relation (specifically, sisterhood) between the D and the N. We propose to treat the alternation as an instance of conditioned allomorphy, the suffixal form appearing when D is sister to a minimal N, and the free...