Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

Linguistics events this week (Feb 22-Mar 1, 2019)

February 22, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 22 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-5pm
Jorge Hankamer (Santa Cruz) & Line Mikkelsen (Berkeley): CP complements to D Phorum - Monday Feb 25 - 1303 Dwinelle - 12-1pm
Jeremy Steffman (UCLA): TBA Linguistics Dept Colloquium - Monday Feb 25 - 370 Dwinelle - 3-5pm
Jessica Coon (McGill): Mayan Agent Focus and the Ergative Extraction Constraint: Facts and Fictions Revisited SLUgS - Thursday Feb 28 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm and 6-7pm
Discussion with three Cal Linguistics alumni that now work at Google, followed by "Helpful SLUgS" (unofficial tutoring hour) from 6-7 pm. Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday March 1 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Margaret Kroll (UC Santa Cruz) and Amanda Rysling (UC Santa Cruz): The search for truth: Semantic or pragmatic judgments

Amazonianist and Celtic conferences

February 25, 2019

March 15-17 will see not one but two conferences of interest for, and organized by, department members:

Third biennial Symposium on Amazonian Languages (SAL3)
March 16-17; 1229 Dwinelle Hall
Program here! The 41st California Celtic Conference
March 15-17, 2019; 370 Dwinelle Hall
Program here!

Linguistics events this week (Feb 15-22, 2019)

February 15, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Linguistics & Near Eastern Studies special lecture - Friday Feb 15 - 254 Barrows Hall - 2pm
Lutz Edzard (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg): The morphosyntax of compounding in Semitic Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Peter Jenks (Berkeley): Anaphoric definites as anchored definites Ling 47 ("Communication Disorders") special event - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4pm
Viewing and discussion of the documentary When I Stutter
Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 20 - Dwinelle 1303 - 11-12:30PM
Practice talks for ICLDC: Julia Nee (Berkeley): Communication Based Instruction and Evaluation of Language Revitalization; Anna Berge (Alaska Native Language Center) and Edwin Ko (Berkeley): Interactive Maps, Place, and Context Philosophy Dept Work in Progress Talk - Wednesday Feb 20 - Moses 301 - noon-1
Amy Rose Deal (Berkeley): Factivity and uncentered attitudes Climate care tea/coffee hour - Friday Feb 22 - 3401 Dwinelle - 2-3pm
Discussion of goal setting
Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 22 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-5pm
Jorge Hankamer (Santa Cruz) & Line Mikkelsen (Berkeley): CP complements to D

Schwarz publishes in Journal of Phonetics

February 14, 2019

Congrats to Martha Schwarz, whose first-authored paper Realization and representation of Nepali laryngeal contrasts: Voiced aspirates and laryngeal realism (with Morgan Sonderegger and Heather Goad) has just been published by Journal of Phonetics! You can read it here.

Linguistics events this week (Feb 8-15, 2019)

February 8, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

BLS Workshop: Countability Distinctions - Friday Feb 8 & Saturday Feb 9
Join us for talks including keynotes by Suzi Lima (Toronto) and David Barner (UCSD)! The complete program is available here. Phorum - Monday Feb 11 - 1303 Dwinelle - 12-1pm Georgia Zellou, Michelle Cohn, & Bruno Ferenc Segedin (UCD): Talking Tech: How does voice-AI influence human speech? Linguistics Colloquium - Monday Feb 11 - 370 Dwinelle - 3:10-5pm
Larry Hyman: The Fall and Rise of Vowel Length in Bantu Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 13 - Dwinelle 1303 - 11-12:30PM
Andrew Garrett, Dmetri Hayes, and Ronald Sprouse: TBA SLUgS - Thursday Feb 14 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm
Viewing of Atlantis Linguistics & Near Eastern Studies special lecture - Friday Feb 15 - 254 Barrows Hall - 2pm
Lutz Edzard (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg): The morphosyntax of compounding in Semitic Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Peter Jenks: TBA

Hyman colloquium

February 7, 2019

The 2018-2019 colloquium series continues this coming Monday, February 11, with a talk by our own Larry Hyman. Same time as always, same place as always: 3:10-5 p.m., 370 Dwinelle Hall. The talk is entitled "The Fall and Rise of Vowel Length in Bantu", and the abstract is as follows:

Although Proto-Bantu had a vowel length contrast on roots which survives in many daughter languages today, many other Bantu languages have modified the inherited system. In this talk I distinguish between four types of Bantu languages: (1) Those which maintain the free occurrence of the vowel length contrast inherited from the proto language; (2) Those which maintain the contrast, but have added restrictions which shorten long vowels in pre-(ante-)penultimate word position and/or on head nouns and verbs that are not final in their XP; (3) Those which have lost the contrast with or without creating new long vowels (e.g. from the loss of an intervocalic consonant flanked by identical vowels); (4) Those which have lost the contrast but have added phrase-level penultimate lengthening. I will propose that the positional restrictions fed into the ultimate loss of the contrast in types (3) and (4), with a concomitant shift from root prominence (at the word level) to penultimate prominence (at the intonational and phrase level). In the course of covering the above typology and historical developments in Bantu, I will show that there are some rather interesting Bantu vowel length systems that may or may not be duplicated elsewhere in the world.

Linguistics events this week (Feb 1-8, 2019)

February 1, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 1 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Round Robin Lecture in Hispanic Linguistics - Friday Feb 1 - 5125 Dwinelle - 1-2pm Jhonni Carr (Berkeley): Spanish in Los Angeles Urban Signage: Language Attitudes and Linguistic Communities Phorum - Monday Feb 4 - 1303 Dwinelle - 12-1pm
Gopala Anumanchipalli (UCSF), Josh Chartier (UCSF, Berkeley), & Edward Chang (UCSF): Synthesizing speech directly from the human brain Language Variation and Change reading group - Wednesday Feb 6 - 5303 Dwinelle - 11a-noon Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 6 - Dwinelle 1229 - 11-12:30PM
Meg Cychosz (Berkeley): TBA SLUgS - Thursday Feb 7 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm
Game night, plus informal tutoring afterwards from 6-7pm BLS Workshop: Countability Distinctions - Friday Feb 8 and Saturday Feb 9 - Dwinelle 370
Schedule available here!

O'Hagan papers to appear in WSCLA

January 27, 2019
Zach O'Hagan has two new papers to appear in the proceedings of WSCLA, both based on his fieldwork on Caquinte and both in collaboration with 2018 PhD alumni: Baier, Nico and Zachary O'Hagan. to appear. Morphological Reflexes of Subject Extraction in Caquinte. Proceedings of WSCLA 23. [pdf] Rolle, Nicholas and Zachary O'Hagan. to appear. Different Kinds of Second-position Clitics in Caquinte. Proceedings of WSCLA 23. [pdf]

Congrats, Zach!

Inkelas publishes in Linguistic Inquiry

January 26, 2019

A new article by Stephanie Shih (BA '07) and Sharon Inkelas on Autosegmental Aims in Surface-Optimizing Phonology has just appeared in Linguistic Inquiry. Congrats, Sharon and Stephanie!