30 December 2013

One year position at Boston University

Carol Neidle writes:

What we got for Christmas was approval to advertise for a  1-year replacement position (VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR)  in SYNTAX for AY 2014-15. We'll advertise in the usual places,  but please help spread the word, especially to prospective  candidates who plan to attend the LSA meetings in January. Go here for details.

University of Rochester's linguistics and cognitive sciences program

Jeff Runner writes:

The department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences and the department of Linguistics at the University of Rochester invite applications from students interested in pursuing a joint PhD in Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics. The department of Linguistics (http://www.ling.rochester.edu/) combines strengths in formal linguistics--syntax, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics and phonology--with experimental and empirical methodologies. The department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences combines strengths in language research--language processing, language acquisition, brain and language--with vision, and neuroscience, which includes computational neuroscience, learning and plasticity. The language researchers in these departments--along with those in Computer Science--constitute Rochester's Center for Language Sciences. This year we are particularly interested in applicants who want to investigate the formal syntactic and semantic properties of language structure using experimental and empirical techniques. Students interested in the joint Brain & Cognitive Sciences/Linguistics PhD program should apply through the Brain & Cognitive Sciences department as soon as possible, and no later January 15, 2014. Please mention in your application your interest in pursuing the joint degree with Linguistics. For further information contact Jeff Runner (jeffrey.runner@rochester.edu).

Call for papers: SPE 7

The 7th Colloquium Semantics and Philosophy in Europe – SPE 7 – will be hosted by the Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin in cooperation with the Institut für Philosophie and the Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik at Humboldt University Berlin

Place: Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin
Date: June 26-28 , 2014 (conference), June 25, 2014 (tutorials)
Web: www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/spe7

We invite submissions for the general session and the special sessions for 45 minute presentations (incl. discussion) or posters Please visit the SPE7 web pages for details.

The submission deadline is 1. February 2014. We expect to make notifications of acceptance in the beginning of March.

25 December 2013

Call for Papers: Models in formal Semantics and Pragmatics

                                     Workshop held at ESSLLI 26

                                 August 18-22, Tuebingen, Germany

Organizers: 

 * Magdalena Kaufmann, University of Connecticut

* Stefan Kaufmann, University of Connecticut

Invited Speakers:

* Michael Glanzberg, Northwestern University

* Stanley Peters, Stanford University

* Thomas Ede Zimmermann, Frankfurt University

 

Workshop Information:

 Whatever happened to "model-theoretic" semantics?  Since Montague’s groundbreaking work and throughout much of its history, the field of formal semantics (and later pragmatics) was characterized by the use of models - abstract mathematical structures in which linguistic expressions are interpreted and which serve as the backdrop for stating generalizations about their semantic properties and relations.

Over the last couple of decades, however, the once-prominent status of models has been eroding. In the research literature, explicitly defined fragments and models were the norm in the early days (Partee 1975, 1976; Dowty, 1979), but are now the exception rather than the rule. In teaching, one of the most widely used textbooks, Heim and Kratzer (1998), makes no mention of models, in stark contrast with early standard works like Dowty, Wall and Peters (1981). Aside from such signs of waning interest, there is a small but formidable body of work which actively questions the status of models and finds them to be of limited use at best (Lepore 1983; Higginbotham 1988; Zimmermann 1999, 2011; Glanzberg, t.a.).

Such explicit reflections are rare, however. The overall decline of models in the field is not driven by a general debate, let alone consensus. Nor is the turn away from models a turn towards some non-model-theoretic alternative. What we do see instead is a tendency to stay loosely within the model-theoretic framework, but to enrich it with notions and tools whose formal properties remain largely implicit. 

The goal of this workshop is to promote and generate discussion of the past, present, and future of models in natural-language semantics and pragmatics, specifically the implications of their apparent demise for the foundations and goals of the field. Topics for discussion include, but are in no way limited to the following:

* What are models, anyway?  Commitments about language, reality, and the nature of meaning that a model-theoretic approach to semantic analysis implies. The (special?) status of possible worlds and their relationship to extensional models.

 * What are models good for? Linguistic phenomena or aspects of meaning n whose analysis a model-theoretic approach has been, or would be, crucial or at least beneficial. The (potential) use of models in treating meaning as variable (e.g., in the analysis of uncertainty about language, or in cross-linguistic and diachronic comparative semantics).

* Where do models get in the way? Desiderata for semantic theory and limitations of the model-theoretic approach. Risks and side effects of specific methods associated with the model-theoretic approach (e.g., meaning postulates).

* Are we safe without models? Advantages and potential pitfalls of innovative uses of formal techniques or metalinguistic expressions, whose repercussions are underexplored (various kinds of states and events, partial functions, etc.)

* What are the alternatives? 

Workshop Format: 

The workshop is part of ESSLLI and open to all ESSLLI participants. It will consist of five 90-minute sessions held over five consecutive days in the second week of ESSLLI. The three invited talks are allotted one hour each, including discussion. On the first day, the workshop organizers will give a 30-minute introduction to the topic. This leaves room for eight submitted papers of 30 minutes each, including discussion.

Submission Procedure:

Authors are invited to submit an abstract of up to three pages, including examples and/or references (single-spaced, at least 11pt font, on US letter of A4 paper with margins at least 1in or 2.5cm on all sides, in .pdf, .txt, .doc or .odt format). Abstracts must be submitted by February 15, 2014, electronically at the following address:

                 http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/Models_ESSLLI14

Review:

 Abstracts will be reviewed by members of the program committee and, where appropriate, outside reviewers. Reviewing will be anonymous unless authors include self-identifying information in their abstracts. Decisions will be made by the program committee and announced to authors on April 15, 2014.

Important Dates:

* Feb 15, 2014: Submission deadline

* Apr 15, 2014: Notification of acceptance 

* Jun 15, 2014: End of ESSLLI early registration period

* Aug 18-22, 2014: Workshop

Contact Information:

* Magdalena Kaufmann

* Stefan Kaufmann

COLANG 2014 at UT, Arlington

Colleen M. Fitzgerald writes:

I am writing you to ask for your help and support for CoLang 2014: the Institute on Collaborative Language Research, taking place at The University of Texas at Arlington in June and July 2014. CoLang (previously known as InField) allows students and faculty to acquire or refine cutting edge skills in language documentation, revitalization and field linguistics, to network with established international experts in these areas, and to gain hands-on experience in working with endangered and underdescribed language communities through field methods offerings. An exciting development this year is our partnership with the Linguistic Society of America. Part of this co-sponsorship includes LSA scholarships to CoLang 2014, creating expanded opportunities for academic training in language documentation and field linguistics for faculty and students, including undergraduates.  

As we continue our planning and advertising for the upcoming summer, I'd like to ask your help in raising awareness of CoLang 2014 and in supporting the LSA and its commitment to endangered language documentation and revitalization.  I will be holding office hours at the LSA on January 3rd and 4th, where we will have fliers and posters for you to take home to your university.  I will be available to answer any questions that you or your faculty or students might have about attending CoLang.  The two-week session, from June 16-27, 2014 consists of workshops in aspects of language documentation and revitalization and it costs $1450, which covers registration, room and board.  Many attendees stay on for an additional four-weeks, which includes enrollment in a four-week field methods class, as well as the two weeks of workshops. Costs for the entire six-week session is $4300 (registration, room and board).  The field methods classes give participants a firsthand experience in working with speakers of an endangered language to document and analyze the language. With three to four field methods classes scheduled, CoLang 2014 will be able to serve a large number of interested participants. This year, for the first time, we plan to offer a Spanish-medium field methods class featuring a language of Mexico.

The CoLang website is up at here and we expect registration to open soon.  Online scholarship applications from the Linguistic Society of America and for CoLang 2014 internal scholarships will shortly be available; the due date for consideration for both is February 17, 2014.  Full scholarship information and updates as they occur are here.

We hope that you will join our many sponsors, including the National Science Foundation, the Linguistic Society of America, the Endangered Language Fund, and The University of Texas at Arlington, in making CoLang 2014 a significant step in the documentation of our vanishing linguistic heritage,  a valuable training ground for emerging linguists to acquire documentation, revitalization, and field linguistics skills, and a place where established linguists can expand their repertoire or retool for their next research projects.

Prosody Bootcamp in January

Kristine Yu writes:

You are cordially invited to a prosody bootcamp on **Friday, 1/17 -
Sunday, 1/19** right before the start of the Spring semester. (Note:
date change due to popular demand). This is a component of activities
this year for the Five Colleges Prosody Community Mellon Mutual
Mentoring grant. There will be plenary lectures, research talks, and tutorials, all geared towards stimulating collaborative research on
prosody. We welcome anyone interested in learning more about prosody.

While most of the speakers at the bootcamp are from the local Five
College community, I'm delighted to share that we will also be joined
by our regional colleagues from Boston: members of the BU-MIT-Simmons Prosody Lab and Mohinish Shukla (UMass Boston).

***IMPORTANT: For head-counting, food-ordering purposes, please send me a note if you are planning to come by JANUARY 6, 2014. *****

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE:

FRIDAY JAN 17 (Math Lounge, UMASS)

9:00-11:00 Lyn Frazier/Chuck Clifton plenary: prosody/sentence processing
11:00-11:30 Break
11:30-12:30 Research talks
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:00 Research talks
3:00-3:30 Break
3:30-6:00 Tutorial 1: working with f0 and voice quality in the
speech signal; intro
to ToBI transcription (Kristine Yu)
6:30 on Dinner party somewhere off-campus


SATURDAY JAN 18 (Math Lounge, UMASS)

9:00-11:00 Lisa Selkirk/Angelika Kratzer plenary: prosody/information structure
11:00-11:30 Break
11:30-12:30 Research talks
12:30-1:30 Lunch
1:30-2:00 Research talks
2:00-3:00 John Kingston plenary: tone
3:00-3:30 Break
3:30-6:00 Tutorial 2: empirical methods for prosodic research
(Meghan Armstrong, Mara Breen)
6:30 on Informal dinner parties

SUNDAY JAN 19

Morning brunch in Northampton
Collaborative group discussions

Call for papers: CCLCC 2014

Computational, Cognitive, and Linguistic Approaches to the Analysis of Complex Words and Collocations (CCLCC 2014)

http://www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~vhenrich/cclcc_2014/

Workshop organized as part of the European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information ESSLLI 2014 (http://www.esslli2014.info/), August 11-15 2014 (ESSLLI first week), Tübingen, Germany


Workshop Organizers:
--------------------

Erhard Hinrichs and Verena Henrich
esslli-workshop@sfs.uni-tuebingen.de


Workshop Purpose:
-----------------

The analysis of complex words, compounds, and collocations has received considerable attention in linguistics, cognitive science and computational linguistics. Research on these phenomena concerns theoretical, experimental, and applied aspects relevant to all three disciplines. This diverse and interdisciplinary perspective lends itself particularly well to an ESSLLI workshop on this topic.

The aim of the workshop is to stimulate a cross-disciplinary discussion that will be of mutual benefit to the three fields sketched above and that will provide a forum for junior and senior researchers alike.

Relevant topics for the workshop include, but are not limited to, the following issues:

- Cognitive and computational models for the interpretation of compounds and collocations
- Experimental and computational methods for the analysis of compounds and collocations
- Statistical models for the identification and classification of collocations
- Word formation, lexical semantics, and semantic compositionality
- Word formation at the interface of morphology and syntax


Submission Details:
-------------------

Authors are invited to submit an EXTENDED ABSTRACT for a 30-minute presentation (including discussion). Submissions should not exceed 3 pages, including figures, data, and references. The submissions will be reviewed anonymously by the workshop's program committee. The abstracts accepted for presentation will appear in the workshop web site and be published as part of the ESSLLI 2014 proceedings. In addition, we are considering the possibility of compiling a journal special issue from selected papers presented at the workshop.

Please upload your submission at EasyChair:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cclcc2014


Workshop Format:
----------------

The workshop is part of ESSLLI and is open to all ESSLLI participants. It will consist of five 90-minute sessions held over five consecutive days in the first week of ESSLLI. There will be 2-3 slots for paper presentation and discussion per session. On the first day the workshop organizer will give an introduction to the topic.

All workshop participants, including the authors, will be required to register for ESSLLI.


Important Dates:
----------------

- December 23: First Call for Papers
- January 11: Second Call for Papers
- February 11: Last Call for Papers
- March 8: *Deadline for Submissions*
- April 21: Notification of Acceptance
- August 11-15: Workshop

Frazier a Winner!

Lyn Frazier was announced as one of two winners for the iPad Mini Raffle put on by the UMass Amherst Community Campaign. Congratulations Lyn!

16 December 2013

Word?

http://xkcd.com/1301/

Deadline Extended for Language and Other Minds

The submission deadline for the Language and Other Minds workshop at Maryland, with invited talks Mandy Simons and Jason Stanley, has been extended to December 30.  A fuller description follows.


PHLING, a research group of students and faculty from the departments of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Maryland, invites student contributions to PHLINC 2: Language and Other Minds, our second biennial conference on topics at the intersection of linguistics, philosophy, and neighboring disciplines. The topic of Language and Other Minds is attitudes and attitude ascriptions, with a special emphasis on knowledge ascriptions and related phenomena such as presupposition, factivity, and evidentiality.

The use of language relates to an awareness of other minds in two important ways. First, communication depends fundamentally on a sensitivity to the intentions and beliefs of others in conversation. Presupposition and implicature are interesting special cases of this. Second, with verbs like "think" and "know", we can talk about mental states explicitly, in ways that create familiar semantic challenges. Acquiring a language therefore involves the development of competence in both areas, not a simple task.

In this conference, we invite discussion of both sorts of relations between language and other minds, from the perspectives of philosophy, linguistics and cognitive or developmental psychology. What understanding of knowledge, belief, desire and intention is expressed in the meanings of attitude verbs? In what ways does the use of such verbs rely on pragmatic enrichment? What is the correct understanding of knowledge in conversation, as expressed in presuppositions, evidentials, or epistemic modals? By what path do children become competent in these various areas? And what does this tell us about the linguistic representation of mental states, or semantic theories of attitude verbs?

The conference will feature talks by invited speakers Mandy Simons (Carnegie Mellon University) and Jason Stanley (Yale University), as well as a special discussion session on acquisition issues in this area, led by Shevaun Lewis (Johns Hopkins University).

Submissions are open to graduate student researchers only. Presenters will have 30 minutes to present their work, followed by 15 minutes for round-table discussion. Submissions to the conference may take one of two forms, depending on the author’s preferences:

Type 1: Abstract. Maximum of 1 page of text single-spaced, 12pt font, with an additional page for examples, figures, and references.

Type 2: Paper. Maximum 4000 words, double-spaced, 12pt font, suitable for a 30 minute presentation. Please include references.
All submissions will be considered by an interdisciplinary panel of reviewers. As a goal of the conference is to bring together researchers with a strong focus on interdisciplinary cognitive science, reviewers will be looking for evidence in abstract/paper submissions that the author(s) are able to communicate effectively to individuals outside of their primary field.

We will be accepting submissions until December *30th*, 2013, with final selections to be made by January 15th, 2014. Abstracts should be uploaded to EasyChair (abstracts, like papers, should be loaded as a separate document).

Call for papers: Semantics/Syntax Interface online Journal

Semantics-Syntax Interface seeks to provide a platform for the discussion of theoretical developments in syntax/semantics interface based on formal and experimental methods. Edited by young scholars, Semantics-Syntax Interface welcomes research articles, short contributions (squibs, replies) as well as review articles. The journal publishes studies mainly focused on (but not limited to) mood and modality, quantification, argument structure, tense, aspect, event structure, and negation. All submissions will undergo double-blind review.

Semantics-Syntax Interface is an open access journal, freely available to all online readers at http://semantics-syntax.ut.ac.ir/.

Guidelines for authors are available here.
For questions, contact semsynut.ac.ir.

Deadline for submissions to the inaugural issue is 28 February 2014.

Call for papers: SLA symposium in Madison

The SLA Graduate Student Organization at UW-Madison is organizing an annual SLA symposium which for next year will be held on April 11-12, 2014.  They are accepting abstracts;  the deadline is February 1, 2014. 
 
 For more information go here
 

Call for papers: NASSLLI at Maryland June 23-27

The North American Summer School for Logic, Language and Information (NASSLLI) welcomes paper submissions for presentation at its Student Session. Submissions may be in any of the fields related to the school (logic and language, logic and computation, or language and computation) and should represent original, unpublished work by individuals who will not yet have received their Ph.D. by the time of the conference.

The Student Session will co-occur with NASSLLI and provides students an excellent opportunity to present their work to experts in their field as well as to a broader, well-informed interdisciplinary audience. All submissions will be reviewed by at least three specialists who will provide commentary on the paper regardless of its acceptance status.

Submissions should be prepared for blind review (i.e., should not contain any information identifying the author) and should be uploaded as a .pdf file to the Student Session’s EasyChair site. Submissions should not exceed 10 pages and should be formatted standardly (11 or 12 point font, 1 inch margins).

No more than one-single authored and one co-authored paper should be submitted by an individual. (All co-authors should also be students.) Authors whose submissions have been accepted and who intend to present will be required to register for NASSLLI.


IMPORTANT DATES:
Submissions due: February 28, 2014 (by midnight)
Notifications: April 14, 2014

WEBSITES:
Submissions
NASSLLI 2014: http://www.nasslli2014.com/

 

08 December 2013

Heidi Buetow's defense on Friday at 3PM

The Final Oral Examination for the PhD for Heidi Buetow is scheduled for 3:00pm on Friday, December 13, 2013 in Bartlett 374. The title of Heidi's dissertation is "Disagreement and the Semantics of Predicates of Personal Taste".  The Chair of her Dissertation Committee is Phillip Bricker.

A copy of the dissertation is available in the Main Office.

All members of the UMass philosophical community are invited to attend the Oral Exam.

(WHISC has been informed that linguists are members of the philosophical community.)

Call for Papers: Graduate Student Workshop

The Department of Linguistics at Tel-Aviv University is proud to announce the 2nd graduate student workshop in memory of Professor Tanya Reinhart, which will take place on April 24th, 2014.

MA students and PhD students not having submitted their dissertation in linguistics by April 2014 are invited to submit abstracts of their research in all areas of theoretical and applied linguistics: semantics, syntax, phonology, pragmatics, language acquisition, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics.

Papers will be allotted 20 minutes for presentation plus 10 minutes for discussion.

Invited Speaker: Prof. Danny Fox (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, MIT).

Length

Up to two single spaced A4 pages with 2.5 cm margins, typed in 12-point Times New Roman.

Format

Abstracts must be anonymous and in pdf format.

Submission

To submit your abstract, please send it to tau.linguistics.workshop@gmail.com  no later than February 1st. Please state your name and affiliation in the body of the message.

Important dates:

Deadline for submission: 1 February 2014 

Notification of acceptance: 1 March 2014

Workshop: 9:30 - 17:30, 24 April 2014

 

Website: http://taulinguisticsworkshop.wordpress.com/

UMass at the 19th annual Amsterdam Colloquium

The 19th Annual Amsterdam Colloquium will meet from December 18-20 at the University of Amsterdam. UMass will be well represented. Angelika Kratzer gave an invited talk, “Modality and the Semantics of Embedding,” and is one of four participants in the “SMART Cognitive Debate on the Future of Semantics.” Barbara Partee will give a speech in a special event honoring Jeroen Groenendijk, Martin Stokhof and Frank Veltman. In addition Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten will give a talk entitled “Subsentential modal modification as reduced Transparent Free Relatives.” The wider UMass Diaspora is also well represented:

Bernhard Schwarz will give a talk entitled “At least and quantity implicature: choices and consequences"

Luis Alonso-Ovalle and Paula Menendez-Benito will give a talk entitled “Epistemic Indefinites and Evidential Constraints: Spanish Algún."

Robin Cooper will give a talk entitled “Update Conditions and intensionality in a type-theoretic approach to dialogue semantics."

Roger Schwarzschild will give a talk, with Daniel Altshuler, entitled "Correlating cessation with double access."

Johnson at CUNY

Kyle Johnson gave a talk at the linguistics department of the City University of New York on Thursday, December 5, entitled “How to give someone their innocence again."

Hot Chocolate Run

Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten writes:

Here’s a picture taken this morning at the Hot Chocolate Run, where the ‘Linguists and Friends’ took part in both the 5K run (Ivy Hauser, Hannah Greene, Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten, Kristine Yu) and 2 mile walk (Magda Oiry (and Marie!), Andrew Weir, Claire Moore-Cantwell, and Terri Yu). Not pictured in the post-hot chocolate photo are Magda and Marie.

Photo  8

02 December 2013

LARC on Wednesday

Magda Oiry writes:

We will meet for the last time of the semester on Wednesday at 12:15 in the Partee room.
 
Tom Roeper and Luiz Amaral will report on the conference on Recursion and every interesting things that came out of it.
 
Everyone welcome!

01 December 2013

Charles Yang virtually in LING 830

Tom Roeper writes:

Charles Yang will skype into our root infiinitives class and discuss those
issues and others he may be working on.

The class is 2:30 on December 2nd in Dickinson 210. Everyone is invited to attend!

SALT 24 deadline is tomorrow

The deadline for SALT 24 is Monday, December 2, 2013, 11:59pm EST.  SALT 24 will be hosted by the Linguistics Department of New York University on May 30 through June
1, 2014. The conference will be preceded by a series of tutorials on Formal Semantics Beyond Spoken Language, on May 29 (see notice below). The Call for Papers and submission information can be found here.

Tao Gong and Lan Shuai speak on Tuesday

The Department of Languages, Literatures, & Cultures presents
Dr. Tao Gong (The Hong Kong University) and Dr. Lan Shuai (Johns Hopkins University)  who will give a talk entitled "Simulating Vowel Chain Shifts" (Tao GONG) and "Language as an 'interface' -- evidence from tone perception and its lateralization" (Lan SHUAI). The talks are on Tuesday, December 3, 2013 in Herter Hall 210 from 4:00-6:00. Abstracts of the talks follow.

Simulating Vowel Chain Shifts.

Vowel chain shift, as a series of related sound changes leading to a rearrangement of the phonetic realizations, is a typical phonetic change in world languages, yet the explanation for it remains controversial; some scholars highlight the roles of self-organizing property of the vowel space, whereas others emphasize the necessity of phonetic contrast maintenance. In this talk, based primarily on Bart de Boer's self-organizing model and the empirical data of vowel chain shifts in Xumi language, I present an agent-based computer simulation to address this controversy and explain how the vowel chain shift in Upper Xumi occurs. The simulation results show that extended vowel chain shift cannot be solely explained by self-organization, the phonemic contrast maintenance mechanism is also necessary. Under these two factors, the vowel chain shift in Upper Xumi can be explained as the combined effect of the evolution of vowel system under noise conditions and the addition of the loan phoneme /ɔ/. This is the first simulation attempt to address the process of an extended vowel shift in relation to real-world data.

Langauge as an Interface — evidence from Tone Perception and its lateralization

In this talk, I report my ERP studies investigating the hemispheric specialization of tone perception. This line of research begins with the debate between the task-dependent (based on linguistic mechanisms) and cue-dependent (based on acoustically driven mechanisms) hypotheses, which predict opposite lateralization patterns. Since lexical tone is defined as the use of pitch variations to distinguish lexical meanings, it is natural to examine both the linguistic function and acoustic property of lexical tone, and my work shows that both aspects affect the lateralization in tone perception, in both early (~200 ms) and late (~400 ms) time windows. This work contributes to a more complete picture of tone lateralization, and supports a parallel processing of both linguistic and acoustic factors. It further indicates that language functions such as tone perception involve various concurrent cognitive functions, linguistic and non-linguistic, such as semantic memory or pitch perception, which is in accordance with the ‘mosaic theory’ stating that “language is regarded as a kind of ‘interface’ among a variety of more basic abilities” (Wang, 1978).

Barbara speaks on December 10

Seth Cable writes:

I wanted to let everyone know that, as part of the Semantics Proseminar, Barbara will be giving a special one-hour talk on December 10th at 2PM in the Partee room.

Titled "On the History (and a Bit of Post-History) of Montague's PTQ", this talk will assume some prior familiarity with the content of Montague's seminal paper "The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English." That is, unlike some of Barbara's other popular talks on the history of formal semantics, this one will be targeted to 'S-siders' with some technical knowledge of Montague's work. Nevertheless, all are very welcome to attend!

If you'd like to attend Barbara's talk, could you please let me know by Friday? I'd like to get a head count, just in case we need to shift venues.

Call for papers: Afranaph Workshop

The Linguistics Department at Rutgers is hosting the Afranaph Project Development Workshop II (APDW2) which will take place on December 13-14 at the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers, New Brunswick. The full event program for APDW2 is available here.

APDW2 brings together researchers and consultants presenting their work on languages within the Afranaph Project, or joint work in connection with the Afranaph Sister Projects, or else proposals for new sister projects that will expand the scope of the Afranaph data resources. We invite anyone interested in African linguistics, theoretical linguistics, and the relationship between online empirical research collaborations and linguistic fieldwork, to attend our event (there is no registration fee). Inquiries may be directed to Ken Safir, Afranaph Project Director, safir@ruccs.rutgers.edu.

UMass at American Speech Language and Hearing Association meeting

Barbara Zurer Pearson writes:

UMass Linguistics was represented at the American Speech Language and Hearing Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, November 14-17.
Fourth-year graduate student Tracy Conner led a "Dialect Awareness Workshop: Enhancing Language Flexibility in African American English-Speaking Children & Their Teachers & Clinicians." Co-presenters for the hands-on activities of the two-hour workshop were myself, and Tamika LeRay, a 2009 participant in Professor Lisa Green's Summer Dialect Research Project, who is now a practicing speech-language therapist in the Boston Public Schools. The workshop was based on a paper by me, Tracy, and co-author Janice Jackson published earlier this year in Developmental Psychology (volume 49:1). [Janice was unable to join them because she had extensive brain surgery earlier in the fall. Fortunately, she is now on the mend.) ]

Tom Roeper and Ondene van Dulm, a colleague from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, presented "Toward a Principled Approach to Child Language Remediation", showcasing materials based on the DELV-Norm Referenced test (Seymour, Roeper, & de Villiers, 2005) that Ondene and Frenette Southwood of Stellenbosch University in South Africa created.

LARC member Jill de Villiers of Smith College participated in three presentations of a still-unnamed computer-based assessment of vocabulary and syntax for monolingual and bilingual preschoolers being developed in conjunction with researchers at Temple University, University of Delaware, and Laureate Learning Systems. Like the DELV, the new assessment focuses on a more sophisticated notion of syntactic and lexical knowledge than most current tests that screen for language delay.

I also presented on the DELV-NR in Catherine Snow's class at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on Monday November 25.

Call for papers: Triple A semantics workshop

In conjunction with the University of Potsdam, the SFB 833 at the
University of Tübingen is currently co-organising a semantics workshop titled 'Triple A’. The workshop's primary focus is the semantics of underrepresented languages in Africa, Asia and Austronesia. It will be held on June 11-13, 2014 . Submissions for 30-minute talks plus 10 minutes for discussion are invited. Submissions should present original formal semantic or pragmatic work on any interpretive aspect of the languages under discussion, ideally originating from own fieldwork. We particularly encourage Ph.D. students to apply. The deadline for abstracts is January 7, 2014. For more information, go here.

Formal Semantics Beyond Spoken Language

In conjunction with SALT, NYU is sponsoring a series of tutorials on the formal semantics of signed languages and the formal semantics of pictures, gestures and diagrams. These tutorials take place on May 29, 2014. They are free, but registration is required. For more information, go here.

GLOW Spring School

GLOW 37 will take place on April 2-5, 2014 in Brussels. The GLOW conference will be followed by the GLOW Spring School 1 (April 7-11, 2014), with courses taught by Charles Yang, Antal Van den Bosch, Norvin Richards, Philip Hofmeister, Martina Wiltschko, Philippe Schlenker, Hagit Borer, and Pavel Caha.

The registration deadline for GSS1 is January 15, 2014!

For all practical information relating to both the GLOW colloquium and the Spring School, see http://www.glow37.org.

24 November 2013

Call for Papers: TULCON

The Society of Linguistics Undergraduate Students (SLUGS) at the
University of Toronto is excited to announce its 7th annual Toronto
Undergraduate Linguistics Conference (TULCON), to be held on March 7-9, 2014!

TULCON is a great opportunity for undergraduate linguists to meet their
peers, share their work, and further their appreciation for linguistics
and language-related studies.

We invite research, complete or in progress, from any area of linguistics.
Abstracts should be approximately 500 words in length (not including
references). Please submit your abstracts in .pdf or .doc (NOT .docx)
format to tulcon2014@gmail.com by Friday January 31st, 2014. In your
submission, please indicate whether you would like to present a talk or a
poster during our poster session. Speakers will have the opportunity to
present for 20 minutes, followed by an additional five-minute question
period.

Citizens of countries who require a visa to enter Canada may submit
abstracts early. In your submission, please indicate approximately how
much time you require to secure your visa. We will try our best to review
your abstract and send notification of acceptance at an earlier date.

Stay tuned for more announcements about registration in the future! If you
have any questions, please contact us at tulcon2014@gmail.com.

Postdocs in Cologne

The Research Group Dynamic Structuring in Language and Communication, which is funded by the Institutional Strategy of the University of Cologne as part of German Excellence Initiative, offers

four post-doc research positions at the level of TV-L E13 

to be filled by 1st February, 2014 or as soon as possible thereafter for a period of three years (with the possibility of renewal for 2 years subject to the funding situation)

We are seeking excellent linguists to join our interdisciplinary Research Group constituted by the following PIs: Martin Becker, Christiane Bongartz, Martine Grice, Klaus von Heusinger, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Beatrice Primus. Our current main concern is Prominence in Language, which we approach from different linguistic perspectives. Candidates are expected to have a clear interest in interdisciplinary work, a completed PhD and an excellent research record in one or more of following four areas of specialization: A: Crosslinguistic analysis of argument structure; B: Phonology and the interface to semantics/pragmatics with a specialization in prosody; C: Syntax and discourse structure in second language acquisition; D: Modeling dynamic structure and interface conditions. 

The research group provides a professional infrastructure and an appropriate workplace for conducting research, and encourages developing and implementing individual research projects associated with Prominence in Language. Fellows have the opportunity to benefit from a variety of career development measures.

The University of Cologne is committed to promoting equal employment opportunities and, in light of this, applications from disabled candidates are particularly welcome. Disabled candidates will be given priority in cases in which applicants possess similar qualifications. Additionally, applications from female candidates will also be favored in cases of comparable qualifications, capabilities and professional accomplishments unless an applicant’s personal qualities recommend them in particular for the position.

Applications with the usual documentation (CV, list of referees, a two page outline of a research project, and a pdf-file of the dissertation thesis) should be submitted no later 30. 12. 2013. to Prof. Dr. Klaus von Heusinger by email only:  klaus.vonheusinger@uni-koeln.de.

Call for Papers: Workshop on Pragmasemantics

The 15th Szklarska Poreba Workshop, a workshop on the roots of pragmasemantics, will be held at the top of the mountain Szrenica, near Szklarska Poreba, Poland, on 21-24 February 2014. The workshop will address issues related to the semantics and pragmatics of aspect and, more generally, to the representation of meaning, both from a linguistic as well as a philosophical and cognitive perspective. 

For more information, go here.https://sites.google.com/site/szklarskaporebaworkshop/

16 November 2013

Call for abstracts: Penn Linguistics Conference

The 38th annual Penn Linguistics Conference will take place on March 28-30 at the UPenn campus in Philadelphia. The conference hosts posters and 20 minute talks on any topic in linguistics and associated fields. This is a very good venue for student papers. The deadline for abstracts is MONDAY, November 18. For more information about the conference, go here. For information about submitting an abstract, go here.

Gajewski gives department colloquium on Friday

Jon Gajewski (UConn) will give the department colloquium on Friday, November 22, at 3:30 in Machmer E-32.  A title and abstract follow.

NPIs in definite descriptions

This talk will examine in detail the issue of licensing negative polarity items in the restrictors of definite descriptions.  According to a somewhat standard view (Lahiri 1998, Cable 2003, Guerzoni & Sharvit 2007), (i) NPIs such as 'any' and 'ever' are licensed in plural definite descriptions and not in singular definite descriptions and (ii) this can be explained using Strawson entailment and a slight modification of the downward entailing analysis of NPI licensing.  Questions have been raised both for the utility of Strawson entailment in licensing (Homer 2010) and for the empirical generalization about number (Hoeksema 2008, Rothschild 2009).  Cases of licensing in singular definites and failure to license in plural definites have been discussed.  In this talk I will argue that to arrive at a better analysis of licensing in definites, more attention must be paid to the compositional structure of the relevant examples.  In particular, we must identify what is responsible for licensing - the definite article itself, the environment in which the definite occurs (argumental, predicative, distributive/collective) or some combination. 

Psych evening on Wednesday

Brian Dillon writes:

Psych evening meeting will meet (at least) one more time this semester. Please join us Wednesday, 11/20, at 7:30pm. We'll meet at Adrian's house. Adrian is interestd in presenting, and getting feedback on, a new analysis for visual world eye-movement data that he and John Kingston have been using to analyze some of their recent eye-tracking data. No reading is required, but Adrian has suggested the following articles for people who want to get some background on the issues that he'll be discussing:

Barr, D. J. (2008). Analyzing ‘visual world’ eyetracking data using multilevel logistic regression. Journal of memory and language, 59(4), 457-474.

Mirman, D., Dixon, J. A., & Magnuson, J. S. (2008). Statistical and computational models of the visual world paradigm: Growth curves and individual differences. Journal of memory and language, 59(4), 475-494.

Sakshi Bhatia and Jyoti Iyer in LISSIM Working Papers

Sakshi Bhatia and Jyoti Iyer, with their co-author Gurmeet Kaur, have a paper “Comparatives in Hindi-Urdu: Puzzling over ZYAADAA” appear in the online Linguistics Summer School in the Indian Moutnains Working Papers. Take a look here.

Congratulations Jyoti and Sakshi.

Call for Abstracts: Workshop on Co-Distributivity

Workshop on (Co-)Distributivity

The workshop will be held
Fri 14 February 2014
CNRS Pouchet, 59 rue Pouchet 75017 Paris.

Conférences invitées / Invited speakers :

-  Adrian Brasoveanu (UC Santa Cruz)
-  Jakub Dotlacil (Leiden)

Submission deadline: 5 Dec 2013
   
We encourage submissions exploring the linguistic means used to establish distributive dependencies, including, but not limited to, questions like the following:

- the syntax and semantics of markers of distributive keys (e.g. distributive quantifiers) or distributive shares (e.g. Hungarian reduplicated numerals)
- multiplication effects for indefinite singulars (e.g. He eats a sandwich for breakfast.)
- distribution effects for plurals (e.g. dependent plurals: Here professors wear ties.)
- distribution effects over times (e.g. A lot of people have been dying of this disease lately).

We welcome work on formal syntax and semantics on distributive dependencies (distributivity and co-distributivity) in spoken and sign languages.

We invite submissions for 25-minute presentations (plus ten-minute discussions).

Abstracts should be at most 2 pages in length (including examples and references) written in French or English.

Abstracts must be anonymous and should be sent by e-mail (plain ASCII, rtf, ps or pdf) to : pcabredo //AT// univ-paris8.fr

Please write the (first) author's name plus the word 'abstract' in the subject line of your message (e.g., 'Dupont abstract'), and include author name(s), affiliation, contact information and the title of the abstract in the body of the email. For co-authored papers indicate the email address that we should use for correspondence.

For more information :
Page www/ Website :
http://www.umr7023.cnrs.fr/Journee-Co-Distributivite.html
E-mail : pcabredo //AT// univ-paris8.fr

Abstract Submission Deadline : 5 Dec 2013
Notification of Acceptance : 20 Dec 2014
Workshop : Fri 14 February 2014


Dillon, Clifton and Frazier in "Language and Cognitive Processes"

Dillon, Clifton and Frazier's article "Pushed aside: Memory, Processing, and Parentheticals" has been accepted for publication at Language and Cognitive Processes.

Call for Papers: Semantics and Philosophy in Europe

7th Colloquium Semantics and Philosophy in Europe — SPE 7

Hosted by Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin in cooperation with Institut für Philosophie and Institut für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik  at Humboldt University Berlin

 Place:    Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin

Date:     June 26-28 , 2014 (conference),  June 25, 2014 (tutorials)

WEB:     www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/spe7

The Semantics and Philosophy in Europe colloquia provide a forum for presenting research in the interface between linguistic semantics and various areas in philosophy (philosophy of language, philosophy of mind/cognition, metaphysics etc.). In addition to the general session, SPE 7 will feature two special sessions and offer two preconference tutorials.

 Special sessions:

  • Conceptual structures and truth-conditional semantics
  • Attitudes towards questions

Tutorials:

  • Questions: from embedded clauses to speech acts (Manfred Krifka, ZAS)
  • Evaluative predicates (Friederike Moltmann, CNRS, Carla Umbach, ZAS)

The submission deadline is 1. February 2014.  
For submission details cfwww.zas.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/spe7/call.html

Hot Chocolate Run

Hannah Greene writes:

There is officially a "Linguists and Friends" team participating in this year's Hot Chocolate Run, to be held on the morning of Sunday December 8th. There are options for both a 2K walk and a 5K run. Right now, we have a group that will be jogging the 5K at a non-competitive pace.
 
The registration costs are $18 students/seniors and $27 for others.
 
I would encourage you to go ahead and register at the following link:
 
 
Please let me know if you register so I can set up a rendezvous point for linguists.

Between Feet!

http://xkcd.com/1290/

Noah gets the Fish

Congratulations to Noah Constant, who successfully defended his dissertation,  “Contrastive Topic: Meanings and Realizations” on Friday.

CAM00229

10 November 2013

Noah Constant's dissertation defense

Noah Constant defends his dissertation, “Contrastive Topic: Meanings and Realizations,” Friday, November 15 at 3:30 in Machmer E-37.

Steven Foley talks on Friday, Nov. 15

Steven Foley from NYU will give the following talk at 2:30pm in the Partee Room on Friday, November 15.

Relative Clauses in Georgian

Georgian is notable for exhibiting many relativization strategies.
Relative clauses may contain a wh-phrase, or the complementizer rom,
which occurs in a non-initial position; they may occur directly after
the modified nominal head, extraposed to the right edge of the matrix
clause, or preposed in a correlative construction; the nominal head
may appear inside the relative, outside it, or both. Despite this
variation, I propose that all relative clauses in Georgian are derived
from a single underlying structure, with the relative CP generated as
the complement of D/N (Kayne 1994, Hulsey & Sauerland 2006). The whole
array of relative clauses and their asymmetries are derived through a
combination of an articulated left periphery and movement through
escape hatches provided by Phase extension (Bobaljik & Wurmbrand
2005). Such a unified account challenges analyses of very similar
phenomena in Hindi by Mahajan (2000) and Bhatt (2003).

Elliott Moreton, phonology guru

Phonology guru Elliott Moreton has arrived, and will be leading three sessions this week.

On Wednesday in Tobin 207 from 10:10 - 11:25, he will lead a discussion in Joe Pater and Lisa Sanders' seminar of the following paper:
 
Moreton, Elliott (2012). Inter- and intra-dimensional dependencies in implicit phonotactic learningJournal of Memory and Language 67 (1):165-183. [Draft (pdf), December 2011] 
 
On Thursday at 4 he will give a general audience talk on "Biased learning in phonology and elsewhere” in Machmer W-15.
 
On Friday, he will talk in the sound workshop about some affordances of the weightless MaxEnt learner described in this paper:
 
Moreton, Elliot, Joe Pater and Katya Pertsova. 2013/in submission. Phonological concept learning. Ms, University of North Carolina and University of Massachusetts Amherst. Submitted versionCurrent draft.

UMass: A Radical Idea

WGBY will be airing a documentary about UMass tonight (Sunday, November 10) at 8PM. The trailer can be found here.

Call for abstracts: GLOW

GLOW (Generative Linguistics in the Old World) Workshop Series
The semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages (TripleA) 1
-------------------------
-------------------------

Date: June 11-13, 2014
Call deadline: January 7, 2014
Notification of acceptance: February 2014
Location: Tübingen, Germany


::: Meeting Description :::

The Universities of Tübingen and Potsdam are proud to announce TripleA 1, a workshop focusing on the cross-linguistic formal semantics of understudied languages from Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania.

::: Invited Speakers :::

Miriam Butt (Universität Konstanz)
Manfred Krifka (ZAS/ Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Kilu von Prince (ZAS, Berlin)
Walter Bisang (Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) -to be confirmed-

::: Call for Papers :::

We invite submissions for 30-minute talks plus 10 minutes for discussion. Submissions should present original formal semantic or pragmatic work on any interpretive aspect of the languages under discussion, ideally originating from own fieldwork. We particularly encourage Ph.D. students to apply.

Abstracts must be anonymous, in PDF format, 2 pages (A4 or letter), in a font size no less than 12pt, and with margins of 1 inch/2.5cm. Please submit abstracts via Easy Chair (see link below) no later than January 8, 2014.

::: Abstract submission link ::::

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=semanticsofaaa1

::: Organizing Committee :::

Sigrid Beck (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Polina Berezovskaya (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Vera Hohaus (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Anna Howell (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Pritty Patel-Grosz (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Konstantin Sachs (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Mira Grubic (Universität Potsdam)
Anne Mucha (Universität Potsdam)
Malte Zimmermann (Universität Potsdam)

Keine in Morphology

Stefan Keine’s paper “Syntagmatic Constraints on Insertion” has appeared in Morphology. Congratulations Stefan!

Call for papers: AFLA in May

The Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
will host the 21th annual meeting of the Austronesian Formal
Linguistics Association (AFLA) on 23-25 May, 2014.  AFLA is an
organization which promotes the study of Austronesian languages from a
formal perspective. More information about the conference can be found
at the conference website (http://www2.hawaii.edu/~afla21/).

We will elicit talks on all aspects of formal linguistics (e.g.
language acquisition, morphology, phonology, phonetics, semantics,
syntax) of Austronesian languages. In addition to promoting the formal
study of Austronesian languages, we especially encourage work by
speaker-linguists and junior scholars.

Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks (plus 10 minutes for
discussion) on any aspect of formal linguistics (morphology,
phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics) of any Austronesian
language(s). Abstracts on experimental or psycholinguistic research of
any Austronesian language(s) are also invited. Submission limitations
are one singly-authored abstract and one jointly-authored abstract, or
two jointly-authored abstracts per applicant. Abstracts should be
limited to a maximum of two Letter-sized (or A4) pages (for text,
examples, trees, tableaux, and references), with margins of one inch
and in 12 pt font.

Abstracts should be submitted online by January 13, 2014 at the
following URL: http://linguistlist.org/confservices/afla21

Contact person: Yuko Otsuka (afla21@hawaii.edu)

Acquisition of Quantification across the Atlantic

Tom Roeper writes:

Our acquisition of quantification conference was so successful, that Angeliek van Hout and Bart Hollebrandse reproduced the conference in Holland, since there were a lot of Dutch contributors---more than half of whom were from UMass too: Bill Philip, Ken Drozd, Bart Hollebrandse, Angeliek van Hout.

03 November 2013

WGBY documentary on UMass

WGBY will air a documentary on Sunday, Nov. 10, at 9PM entitled “The Radical Idea: UMass Amherst and America’s Educational Revolution." You can see a description, and a trailer, here.

Sharon Peperkamp gurus this week

Sharon Peperkamp will be visiting as our phonology guru starting on Monday November 4th. She will be presenting in Joe Pater and Lisa Sanders' seminar in Tobin 207 from 10:10 - 11:25 on Monday and Wednesday. The reading for Monday is:

Skoruppa, K. & Peperkamp, S. (2011). Adaptation to novel accents: Feature-based learning of context-sensitive phonological regularities. Cognitive Science, 35, 348-366.

She will also be discussing the following paper at a meeting of the PRG Thursday Nov. 7th chez Claire Moore-Cantwell:

Dupoux, E., Parlato, E., Frota, S., Hirose, Y., Peperkamp, S. (2011). Where do illusory vowels come from? Journal of Memory and Language, 64, 199-210.

Finally, on Sunday November 10th at 9 am in the Herter auditorium, she will deliver a plenary address at Phonology 2013, entitled "Assimilation from the listener's perspective: adult and infant data". The abstract is available here.

Phonology 2013 this weekend

The inaugural meeting of Phonology 2013 is hosted by UMass this weekend: November 9 and 10. Over 100 phonologists, from all corners of the world, will be in attendance. Registration is not required to attend, but a quick email to phonology-2013@linguist.umass.edu is required if you plan on participating in the meals or consuming the coffee break goodies. The plenary speakers are John McCarthy, Kevin Ryan (Harvard), and Sharon Peperkamp (LSCP). McCarthy’s talk is at 9 on Saturday, and entitled “Irreducible Parallelism.” Ryan’s talk is at 5:15 and entitled “Onset Weight, word weight, and the perceptual interval.” Peperkamp’s talk is at 9 on Sunday and entitled “Assimilation from the listener’s perspective: adult and infant data.” A schedule can be found here.

Phonology 2013 Methods Workshops on Friday

This Friday, November 8, Phonology 2013 hosts a series of Workshops on experimental and computational methods. They are in Machmer W 32 and W 37. For a schedule, go here.

Tom Roeper in Norway

Tom Roeper gave one of the keynote talks at the “Parallel Grammars and Multilingualism” in Trondheim Norway on October 16-18. Preceding that he gave a course on Multilingualism and Grammar, along with Johanne Paradis and Shana Poplack, For more information, go here.

Call for Papers: PHLINC 2

The University of Maryland is hosting the second of their biennial conference on topics of interest to linguists, philosophers and others in neighboring disciplines. This year’s conference is devoted to “Language and Other Minds." It will take place on February 14 and 15, 2014; Mandy Simons and Jason Stanley are the invited speakers, and there is a special discussion session devoted to acquisition issues led by Shevaun Lewis. Here is their description of the conference topic:

********************************

The use of language relates to an awareness of other minds in two important ways. First, communication depends fundamentally on a sensitivity to the intentions and beliefs of others in conversation. Presupposition and implicature are interesting special cases of this. Second, with verbs like "think" and "know", we can talk about mental states explicitly, in ways that create familiar semantic challenges. Acquiring a language therefore involves the development of competence in both areas, not a simple task.

In this conference, we invite discussion of both sorts of relations between language and other minds, from the perspectives of philosophy, linguistics and cognitive or developmental psychology. What understanding of knowledge, belief, desire and intention is expressed in the meanings of attitude verbs? In what ways does the use of such verbs rely on pragmatic enrichment? What is the correct understanding of knowledge in conversation, as expressed in presuppositions, evidentials, or epistemic modals? By what path do children become competent in these various areas? And what does this tell us about the linguistic representation of mental states, or semantic theories of attitude verbs?

***********************************

Submissions are open to graduate student researchers only. Presenters will have 30 minutes to present their work, followed by 15 minutes for round-table discussion. Submissions to the conference may take one of two forms, depending on the author’s preferences:

Type 1: Abstract. Maximum of 1 page of text single-spaced, 12pt font, with an additional page for examples, figures, and references.
Type 2: Paper. Maximum 4000 words, double-spaced, 12pt font, suitable for a 30 minute presentation. Please include references.

Submissions are accepted until December 15th, 2013, with final selections to be made by January 15th, 2014. Abstracts should be uploaded to EasyChair (abstracts, like papers, should be loaded as a separate document): https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=phlinc2.

Ned Block gives Philosophy seminar on Friday

Ned Block from NYU will be speaking on Friday, November 8, at 3:30 pm in Bartlett Hall, room 206.

The title of his talk is "Seeing – As in the Light of Vision Science.”

27 October 2013

Joshua Levy on Wednesday

Joshua Levy will give the brown bag lunch talk in Psychology on Wednesday, October 30th, in Tobin 521B from 12:00-1:15.  The title of his talk is "Resolution of Reflexive Dependencies: Is binding theory enough?” All are welcome!

Page Piccinini talks on Thursday

Page Piccinini (UCSD) will be giving the following talk at 10AM on Thursday, October 31, in Herter 301. 

Accessing Cross Language Categories in Learning a Third Language

Current theories differ greatly in explaining how bilinguals organize
their two languages, including at the sound level. The heart of the
debate is whether bilinguals have constant access to all of their
sounds across their two languages, or only access to sounds from one
of their two languages at a time. The present study examines these
theories by testing the ability of early Spanish-English bilinguals to
access phonetic distinctions within the voice onset time (VOT)
continuum that exist across their two languages (negative, short-lag,
and long-lag VOT). To this end, bilinguals were tested on a third
language that has all three contrasts phonemically: Eastern Armenian.
The effects of both language mode and language dominance were
examined. One production and two perception tasks were carried out. In
the production task participants heard words and nonce words in
Eastern Armenian and were told to repeat the words back to the best of
their abilities. Participants produced the three types of stops
significantly differently both for bilabials and velar. However this
was modulated by language dominance, with those who were more English
dominant producing less of a contrast between the negative and
short-lag categories (the phonemic categories in Spanish). There was
no effect of language mode. The first perception task was an AX
discrimination task. Participants heard two words and said if the
words were the same or different. Participants were consistently good
at negative versus long-lag VOT, but did poorly at both negative
versus short-lag VOT and short-lag versus long-lag VOT. There was no
effect of language mode or language dominance. The second experiment
was an ABX discrimination task. Participants heard three words and
said if the third word was the same as the first or second word.
Participants performed best at negative versus long-lag VOT, also
preformed well at short-lag versus long-lag VOT, but performed poorly
at negative versus short- lag VOT. However, there was an interaction
with language dominance such that those who were more balanced
bilinguals preformed better at the negative versus short-lag VOT
contrast than those were more English dominant. Language mode was not
significant. These results support a theory whereby language dominance
and not language mode is a key determining factor both in speech
production and perception. Furthermore, the results of the AX and ABX
experiments together suggest that while more balanced bilinguals can
accurately perceive the three way contrast when forced to assign
category labels (the ABX task) they do poorly when categorization is
open (the AX task). This may show a preference by participants for a
language with a two-way contrast, as would match their native
languages, even if they can produce and perceive a three-way contrast.

Nina Hyams speaks on Wednesday

Nina Hyams (UCLA) will give a talk entitled “The Acquisition of Syntactically Encoded Evidentiality: Evidence from English Copy-Raising” in the Oiry/Johnson seminar on Wednesday, October 30 at 4pm in Dickinson 210. She will be reporting on her collaboration with Lauren Winans and Jessica Rett.

Everyone is welcome!

Tim Hunter gives department Colloquium

Tim Hunter (University of Minnesota) will give the department colloquium this Friday, November 1, in Machmer E-37 at 3:30. A title and abstract follow.

Adjunction, Movement and Primitive Syntactic Operations

Many descriptive generalisations have been established concerning the characteristic properties of adjuncts: for example, (1) adjuncts are optional and iterable, (2) they are typically islands (Huang 1982), (3) they are able to avoid reconstruction (Lebeaux 1988), and (4) they can be extraposed rightwards to a strictly local degree (Baltin 1981). This talk addresses the question of why these properties should cluster together, and proposes an analysis of adjunction which unifies the various characteristic properties that have been observed.

To do so, I develop a system where movement and adjunction are not independent phenomena, but rather are related byproducts of the same underlying grammatical machinery. This relies on the interaction of two crucial ingredients that I take from previous work. The first is the observation that in neo-Davidsonian semantics adjunction generally corresponds to a simple mode of semantic composition (namely predicate conjunction) that is not mediated by grammatical roles or thematic relations, in contrast to predicate-argument relations (Hornstein and Nunes 2008). The second is the intuition that syntactic movement might usefully be thought of as "re-merging", which I implement by drawing on insights from formal computational analyses of minimalist syntax (Stabler 2006). I show how together these ingredients yield a system in which adjunction and movement are revealed to be two sides of the same coin. The system therefore makes strong predictions about how adjunction and movement should interact, and these predictions unify the distinctive properties of adjunction listed in (1)-(4) above.

Brian Dillon at Yale

Brian Dillon will be giving the linguistics colloquium at Yale tomorrow, Monday October 28. A title and abstract follow.

Colloquium to be given at Yale Linguistics, 10/28, 4pm:

Memory search in syntactic comprehension

One widely observed finding about syntactic comprehension is that the construction of syntactic dependencies is subject to locality effects: shorter syntactic dependencies are easier to process, and preferred over longer ones in cases of ambiguity (Bartek, Lewis, Vasishth & Mason, 2011; Frazier, 1978; Gibson, 1998; Grodner & Gibson, 2005; Kimball, 1973; Lewis & Vasishth, 2005; a.o.). A number of theories have proposed to capture these findings as a consequence of the memory architecture of the parser. Recently, theories in this tradition have highlighted the role for temporal decay (Gibson, 1998; Lewis & Vasishth, 2005; McElree, Foraker & Dyer, 2003) and similarity-based interference (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005; Van Dyke & McElree, 2006). In this talk I defend the hypothesis that locality effects in syntactic comprehension cannot be entirely reduced to the effects of decay and interference. I argue instead that locality effects reflect a memory search procedure that prioritizes the retrieval of dependents within a local syntactic domain. I support this hypothesis by investigating the time course of antecedent retrieval for long-distance reflexives in Mandarin Chinese. Data from a speed accuracy trade-off experiment show that local antecedents are retrieved more quickly than non-local antecedents. A computational model of these data points to a role for a local search procedure when retrieving an antecedent for a reflexive. Taken together, these findings support the view that locality effects in processing reflect a syntactically-guided memory search.

Lyn Frazier at BUCLD

Lyn Frazier is an invited participant at a symposium at the 38th meeting of the BU Conference on Language Development this Sunday, November 3. The symposium, which includes Helen Goodluck and Colin Phillips is entitled “A New Approach to Language Learning: Filtering through the Processor.” You can learn more about BUCLD here.  

John Kingston at UPenn

John Kingston will give a colloquium at the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday, 31 October 2013. The title of the talk is "You hear more than you know: Expanding the interaction-autonomy debate." Among other things, the talk will report the results of collaborations with Mara Breen, now at Mt. Holyoke, and Lisa Sanders, as well as with Adrian Staub and Josh Levy.

Rajesh Bhatt at McGill

Rajesh will give a presentation at McGill University on Friday, November 1. He’ll present his work with Stefan Keine:

Two Roots in One Phase: An Environment for Semantically Contentful Head Movement
  
In this presentation we develop an argument that head movement may
have semantic effects and that it can hence not be a PF phenomenon.
The argument is based on novel facts regarding scope in infinitival
complementation structures in German. We show that every element
inside the infinitival clause must take scope over the matrix verb if
the embedded clause is a VP that remains in situ. If, by contrast, the
embedded clause is either a vP or a VP that undergoes movement, no
such wide scope is possible. We propose that wide scope of embedded
elements is the result of syntactic verb cluster formation: The
infinitival verb incorporates into the higher verb. To obtain the
observed scope facts, we suggest that the verb cluster is semantically
interpreted via Function Composition. Supplemented with standard
assumptions about the interpretation of movement, this account derives
the wide scope of material inside the embedded clause.

 

Call for paper: TripleA 1: cross-linguistic semantics

Date: June 11-13, 2014
Call deadline: January 7, 2014
Notification of acceptance: February 2014
Location: Tübingen, Germany

::: Meeting Description :::

The Universities of Tübingen and Potsdam are proud to announce TripleA 1, a workshop focusing on the cross-linguistic formal semantics of understudied languages from Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania.


::: Invited Speakers :::

Miriam Butt (Universität Konstanz)
Manfred Krifka (ZAS/ Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Kilu von Prince (ZAS, Berlin)
Walter Bisang (Johannes-Gutenberg-

Universität Mainz) -to be confirmed-


::: Call for Papers :::

We invite submissions for 30-minute talks plus 10 minutes for discussion. Submissions should present original formal semantic or pragmatic work on any interpretive aspect of the languages under discussion, ideally originating from own fieldwork. We particularly encourage Ph.D. students to apply.

Abstracts must be anonymous, in PDF format, 2 pages (A4 or letter), in a font size no less than 12pt, and with margins of 1 inch/2.5cm. Please submit abstracts via Easy Chair (see link below) no later than January 8, 2014.

::: Abstract submission link ::::

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=semanticsofaaa1

::: Organizing Committee :::

Sigrid Beck (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Polina Berezovskaya (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Vera Hohaus (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Anna Howell (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Pritty Patel-Grosz (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Konstantin Sachs (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Mira Grubic (Universität Potsdam)
Anne Mucha (Universität Potsdam)
Malte Zimmermann (Universität Potsdam)

 
::: Sponsors ::

This workshop is under the patronage of GLOW (Generative Linguistics in the Old World) and is funded by the cross-linguistic semantics projects C1 and A5 of the SFB 833 at Tübingen University and the SFB 632 at Potsdam University.
 

Barbara Partee at MIT

Barbara Partee writes:

I gave the linguistics colloquium at MIT on Friday Oct 25, “The Starring Role of Quantifiers in the History of Formal Semantics”. While in Cambridge Oct 23-25, I also did interviews for her history project with Joyce Friedman, Kai von Fintel, Irene Heim, and Hilary Putnam. On colloquium day besides meeting with a number of advanced PhD students, I enjoyed lunchtime conversation with the first-year students and wondered whether we have such a tradition -- if not it might be nice to think about it.

David Huber's seminar on Computational Modeling

Joe Pater writes:

David Huber of Cognitive Psychology will be offering a seminar "Computational Modeling in Cognition" Tuesday 4 - 6:30. He'll be using a text by Lewandowsky and Farrell that I've started reading myself, and can already highly recommend - from my perspective, it starts at exactly the right level of math, and does a great job of explaining the role of quantitative modeling in theory construction.

http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Modeling-Cognition-Principles-Practice/dp/1412970768

You might also want to check out this paper by Huber and Cowell, which offers a perspective on the connectionist/bayesian debate that you might find congenial:

Huber, D. E. & Cowell, R. A. (2010). Theory driven modeling or model driven theorizing? Comment on McClelland et al/Griffiths et al. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(8), 343-344.http://people.umass.edu/dehuber/TICS_huber_cowell.pdf

Finally, this is a good opportunity to welcome David and Rosie to UMass - they are a great addition to our cognitive science community, and I'm sure many of you will look forward to meeting them if you haven't already at the Cognitive bag lunches or elsewhere.

Chronos 11 deadline for abstracts extended

Angelika Kratzer writes:

The deadline for abstracts for Chronos 11 has been extended:

http://linguistica.sns.it/Chronos11/dates.htm

The new deadline is 20 December 2013.

Again, of particular note is the variety of interesting workshops proposed:

http://linguistica.sns.it/Chronos11/conference_workshop.htm

Apple Tasting

Saturday, October 26, was the annual department tasting party. This year, continuing the smashing success of last year’s party, the theme was apples and their products. In addition to such pomological achievements as the Golden Russet, the Fuji, the famed University of Minnesota Honeycrisp, and the sensational Winter Banana (all from UMass’s Cold Spring Orchard), there was a Bhatt-curated selection of hard ciders, fine cheeses, Rysling-shaken (Apple)Jack Rose cocktails,  and apple-themed baked goods. 

And there were characters.

IMAG0748IMG 0126

IMAG0735Mail Attachment

IMG 0136

971493 10151710315483483 1432991875 n

IMG 0140IMAG0767

21 October 2013

William Snyder speaks in Oiry/Johnson Seminar on Wednesday

William Snyder (UConn) will give a talk entitled "Evidence of parameter-setting in the acquisition of English particles and datives" in the seminar on Arguments and Acquisition that Magda Oiry and Kyle Johnson are conducting. His talk is on Wednesday, October 23, at 4PM in Dickinson 210. Everyone is welcome.

20 October 2013

Adam Albright gives colloq on Friday

Adam Albright (MIT) will give the department colloquium on Friday, October 25, in Machmer E-37 at 3:30. A title and abstract follow.

Modeling the acquisition of phonological alternations with learning biases
[joint work with Young Ah Do, Georgetown University]

What expectations do learners bring to the task of acquiring alternations? We provide evidence for three biases: (1) a bias against alternations, favoring uniform paradigms (McCarthy 1998); (2) a bias in favor of alternations that target broader classes of segments (Peperkamp et al. 2006); (3) a substantive bias against perceptually salient alternations (Steriade 2001). 

Learners’ biases were probed using Artificial Grammar experiments, in which adult English speakers were taught singular~plural pairs in a “Martian language”, and were then asked to produce or rate plural forms. In the artificial language, obstruent-final stems exhibited either voicing alternations (dap~dabi) or continuancy alternations (brup~brufi), for both labial-final and coronal-final stems.  By manipulating the frequency of labials vs. coronals, we were able to vary the amount of data concerning different segmental alternations. If learners are biased to expect non-alternation, then we expect fewer alternating responses for the rarer segment, and this is indeed what we observe: participants often produce non-alternating responses for the rarer segment, even though non-alternation was unattested in the training data.

By manipulating the relative proportion of voicing vs. continuancy alternations across the two places of articulation, we were able to pit frequency of segmental alternations (p~f > p~b) against feature-level frequency (voicing > continuancy). If learners expect alternations to target natural classes, rather than individual segments, then we expect subjects to prefer the alternation that is overall more frequent across both classes.  In general, this is indeed what we find: subjects prefer to generalize the featurally more frequent alternation, even if it is less frequent for particular segment pairs.  However, the effect of feature-level frequency differs significantly depending on the feature. Comparing across experiments, we find that subjects more readily extend voicing alternations across different places of articulation than continuancy alternations.  We attribute this to a learning bias against certain featural alternations.  Finally, we show how these relative preferences can be modeled using a regularized maximum entropy model of constraint weighting.