05 February 2012

Seth Cable interview in "Faculty Profiles"

A profile and interview with Seth Cable appears in the Humanities and Fine Arts "Faculty Profile" series. Take a look:

http://www.umass.edu/hfa/faculty/profiles/sethcable.html

Congratulations Seth!

Katya Pertsova presents Brown Bag lunch on Thursday

Joe Pater writes:

Katya Pertsova, a visitor this semester from UNC Linguistics, will be presenting a Brown Bag practice talk this Thursday February 9th at noon in Dickinson 214. Feel free to bring lunch if you'd like.

The talk is entitled "Logical complexity in morphological learning".

Visiting Assistant Professor position at University of Rochester

The Department of Linguistics at the University of Rochester invites applications for a one year non-tenure track appointment as a visiting assistant professor to begin July 1, 2012; possibility of renewal. We seek candidates with a proven record of research in formal pragmatics and semantics, a record of excellence in teaching, and strong evidence of interest in interdisciplinary work. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in hand before the appointment starts. Duties include teaching established courses in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum and working with graduate students in allied fields such as experimental psychology and computer science.

Excellence in teaching is required, and breadth of teaching interest is highly desirable. The Department of Linguistics is part of a larger, active interdisciplinary community consisting of faculty and students doing research in cognitive science, philosophy, computer science, neuroscience, and we seek candidates who are likely to further those connections. Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience.

Applicants should send a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, teaching evaluations if possible, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent to: Professor Joyce McDonough, c/o Carla Gottschalk (carla.gottschalk@.rochester.edu). Review of applications will begin on 1 March, 2012 and continue until the position is filled.

The University of Rochester, an Equal Opportunity Employer, has a commitment to diversity and encourages applications from candidates from groups underrepresented in higher education.

Application Deadline: 1-March-2012 (Open until filled)

Email Address for Applications: carla.gottschalk@.rochester.eduContact Information:Joyce McDonoughEmail: joyce.mcdonough@rochester.edu

Spring Colloq series announced

The Colloq Monsters (Claire Moore-Cantwell and Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten) write:

We are pleased to announce the schedule of colloqs for the Spring semester:

March 2: Colin Phillips (University of Maryland)

March 9: Kai von Fintel (MIT)

March 30: Judith Tonhauser (Ohio State U.) --Semantics Guru

April 13: Hamida Demirdache (University of Nantes) --Syntax Guru

April 20 *4:00pm*: John Drury (Stony Brook) --ICESL colloq

April 27: Gaja Jarosz (Yale) 

Newton International Fellowships now open

From their notice:

A new round of Newton International Fellowships - an initiative to fund research collaborations and improve links between UK and overseas researchers - has now opened. The Newton International Fellowships are funded by the British Academy and the Royal Society and aim to attract the most promising early-career post-doctoral researchers from overseas in the fields of the humanities, the natural, physical and social sciences. The Fellowships enable researchers to work for two years at a UK research institution with the aim of fostering long-term international collaborations.Newton Fellows will receive an allowance of £24,000 to cover subsistence and up to £8,000 to cover research expenses in each year of the Fellowship. A one-off relocation allowance of up to £2,000 is also available. In addition, Newton Fellows may be eligible for follow-up funding of up to £6,000 per annum for up to 10 years following completion of the Fellowship to support activities which will help build long term links with the UK. The scheme is open to post-doctoral (and equivalent) early-career researchers working outside the UK who do not hold UK citizenship.

Applications are to be made via the Royal Society’s online application system which is available at https://e-gap.royalsociety.org/

The closing date for applications is Monday 16 April 2012.

Further details are available from the Newton International Fellowships website: www.newtonfellowships.org

UMass Linguist spotted by the Hampshire Gazette's "style team"

The February 3rd issue of the local newspaper -- the Hampshire Gazette -- devoted a full page spread to first year graduate student Mike Clauss. The short, but informative interview, can be found by typing his name into the search box at http://www.gazettenet.com/

Unfortunately, the full page color photograph is not reproduced online.

University of Cambridge invites applications for PhD studentships in Linguistics

University of Cambridge, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages

Applications are invited for three PhD studentships covering the period 1 October 2012 to 30 September 2015, working under the general supervision of Professor Ian Roberts in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages (although each student will in fact be assigned to a four-member PhD committee). This award has become available as a result of an ERC Advanced Grant “Rethinking Comparative Syntax” (see http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/dtal/research/recos/). Successful applicants for these awards are expected to begin PhD study on 1 October 2012 and will receive a student stipend sufficient to meet the fees and maintenance requirements.

Qualification requirements

Candidates should hold or be in the process of obtaining a Master's degree (or equivalent) in Linguistics, with a specialisation in Syntax, and have attained or expect to obtain a mark of distinction. Excellent writing skills in English and knowledge of some language(s) other than English are desirable. Eligible candidates must submit an advanced proposal of research relevant to the “Rethinking Comparative Syntax” project, specifying how their research would contribute to the typological and theoretical goals of the project. Applicants are encouraged to look at the project website (http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/dtal/research/recos/) to identify one or more areas of research to which they feel they would be able to contribute via their doctoral work. Applicants can be from the UK, EU or overseas.


Closing date 14 March 2012.

Application Procedure

Candidates will fall into two brackets:

1. You may already be applying/have applied for a PhD in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, and have timed your application to meet funding deadlines such as that set for the AHRC (13 January 2012).

2. You may only be interested in applying for this studentship.

1. If you have already made an application for the PhD through the Board of Graduate Studies, please email Siobhán Carew (sw334@cam.ac.uk) and give her your Application Number. Please note that applicants who have already submitted a PhD application will need to write a 500-1000 word research proposal specifically for this application, along the lines outlined above and below. ALL supporting documents must be uploaded by 14 March 2012 at the very latest.

2. Applications from candidates who intend to apply only for this studentship should be made directly to the Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages. Successful candidates will be asked to make a formal application through the Board of Graduate Studies. Applications should be made on the University graduate application form (GRADSAF), available at: http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/gradstud/prospec/pdf/gradsaf1213.pdf, and include the following supporting documents: two academic references transcripts or degree certificates English Language Score Report (if English is not your first language) 500-1000 word research proposal Completed applications should be emailed or posted to Ms Siobhán Carew, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, tel: (01223) 335010, email: sw334@cam.ac.uk, by the closing date of 14 March 2012. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

In the Research Statement, candidates are required to outline their original research proposal and explain how it will fit the Project, “Rethinking Comparative Syntax”. Applicants should specify Professor Ian Roberts as supervisor on their application forms and are encouraged to contact Professor Roberts (igr20@cam.ac.uk) to discuss the ERC project, Cambridge College selection, and their applications.

The ERC project

The ERC Advanced Grant “Rethinking Comparative Syntax” endeavours to reconceptualise principles-and-parameters theory along new lines. The central idea is to organise parameters into hierarchies, which define the ways in which properties of individually variant categories may act in concert; this creates macroparametric effects from the combined action of many microparameters. The highest position in a hierarchy defines a macroparameter, a major typological property, lower positions define successively more local properties. Parameter- setting in language acquisition starts at the highest position as this is the simplest choice; acquirers will "move down the hierarchy" when confronted with primary linguistic data incompatible with a high setting. Hence the hierarchies simultaneously define learning paths and typological properties. The project aims to investigate five hierarchies: those determining word-order, null arguments, word structure, discourse-configurationality and case/agreement alignment. These five hierarchies, although not exhaustive, combine to give a typological footprint of many languages, as well as providing the basis for the study of the interaction of micro- and macroparametric interactions. In this way, the claim that formal comparative syntax has little to offer typological studies can be met. Also, a clear diagnostic is provided for showing that these hierarchies represent genuine syntactic variation, and not merely morphophonological variation as suggested by Berwick & Chomsky (2011). Last, a more purely theoretical component of the project aims to show that the nature of the hierarchies is determined, not directly UG, but by UG interacting with "third-factor" principles of simplicity and efficiency.

Johnson speaks at Yale

Kyle Johnson will present "Squashing Tangled Trees," at Yale's colloquium Monday, February 6.