Annie Gagliardi talks on Tuesday and Wednesday

Annie Gagliardi, from the University of Maryland, will give two talks on language acquisition. Tuesday's talk will be at 4:30, in Bartlett 219, and is entitled "Bayesian Inference as an Evaluation Metric: Putting Computational Models to Work in Language Acquisition."

Wednesday's talk will also be at 4:30 and is entitled "Unpacking the Black Box: The Inner Workings of the Language Acquisition Device." The talk will be in Herter 217.

For more information about Ms. Gagliardi, go to: http://ling.umd.edu/~acg/

Robyn Orfitelli gives talks on Thursday and Friday

Robyn Orfitelli, from UCLA, will give two talks on language acquisition. Each talk will take place at 4:30.

Her talk on Thursday is entitled "Competence and Performance in Children's Grammar of Null Subjects," and will take place in Dickinson 209.

The talk on Friday is entitled "Argument Intervention in the Acquisition of A-Movement," and will be in Machmer E-37.

The rooms have not yet been nailed down. When they are, the locations will appear here.

For more information about Ms. Orfitelli, go to: http://rorfitelli.bol.ucla.edu/

Paper by Barbara Pearson, Tracy Conner and Janice Jackson to appear in "Developmental Psychology"

"Removing Obstacles for African-American-English-Speaking Children through Greater Understanding of Language Difference" by Barbara Pearson, Tracy Conner and Janice Jackson will appear in a special section of "Developmental Psychology":  Deficit of Difference? Interpreting Diverse Developmental Paths. The abstract of their paper follows:

Language difference among speakers of African-American English (AAE) has often been considered language deficit, based on a lack of understanding about the AAE variety. Following Labov (1972), Wolfram (1969), Rickford (1999), Green (2002, 2011) and others, we define AAE as a complex rule-governed linguistic system, and briefly discuss language structures that it shares with general American English (GAE) and others that are unique to AAE. We suggest ways in which mistaken ideas about the language variety add to children’s difficulties in learning the mainstream dialect and, in effect, deny them the benefits of their educational programs. We propose that a linguistically-informed approach that highlights correspondences between AAE and the mainstream dialect and trains students and teachers to understand language varieties at a metalinguistic level creates environments that support the academic achievement of AAE- speaking students. Finally, we present three program types that are recommended for helping students achieve the skills they need to be successful in multiple linguistic environments.

Angelika Kratzer's Modals and Conditionals now available

Angelika Kratzer's new book on modals and conditionals, which collects many of her classic papers on the subject along with a  guide to how this work bears on recent developments, is now available from Oxford University Press.  The blurb on the Oxford University Press's website describes her book as follows:

This book contains updated and substantially revised versions of Angelika Kratzer's classic papers on modals and conditionals, including 'What "must" and "can" must and can mean', 'Partition and Revision', 'The Notional Category of Modality', 'Conditionals', 'An Investigation of the Lumps of Thought', and 'Facts: Particulars or Information Units?'. The book's contents add up to some of the most important work on modals and conditionals in particular and on the semantics-syntax interface more generally. It will be of central interest to linguists and philosophers of language of all theoretical persuasions.

See: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199234691.do

Congratulations Angelika!

ECO5!

Anisa Schardl writes:

This year, UMass is hosting ECO5, a graduate student workshop on
syntax, on April 7th.  I am emailing to solicit presenters for ECO5.
This could be you!

ECO5 is a place for grad students to present work in progress in a
relaxed atmosphere.  It is especially good for first- and second-year
students.  Good stuff to present might be: your current GP project,
your project for a term paper that may or may not turn into a GP
later, something you were working on as an undergrad/master's student
that you haven't let go of, something cool that you recently
discovered.  No project is too small!

There are five schools involved in ECO5 and each school can send up to
three presenters.  If you're interested in being one of these
presenters, email me and tell me a title for your presentation.  Email
me!

Call for Papers: ESSLLI

The Organizers of ESSLLI 24 write:

The Student Session of the 24th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI) will take place in Opole, Poland on August 6-17, 2012. We invite submissions of original, unpublished work from students in any area at the intersection of Logic & Language, Language & Computation, or Logic & Computation. Submissions will be reviewed by several experts in the field, and accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters and will appear in the student session proceedings. This is an excellent opportunity to receive valuable feedback from expert readers and to present your work to a diverse audience.

ESSLLI 2012 will feature a wide range of foundational and advanced courses and workshops in all areas of Logic, Language, and Computation. Consult the main ESSLLI website (link below) for further information.

SPRINGER PRIZES FOR BEST PAPER AND BEST POSTER

In 2012, Springer has again continued its generous support for the Student Session by offering € 1000 in prizes. These include a a € 500 for Best Paper and € 500 for Best Poster. The prizes are awarded best on the reviews of the submission as well as the oral presentation.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:

Authors must be students, i.e., may not have received the Ph.D. degree before August 2012. All submissions must be in PDF format and be submitted to the conference EasyChair website. Submissions may be singly or jointly authored. No one may submit more than one singly and one jointly authored paper.

There are two types of papers. Long papers of up to 8 pages will be considered for both oral presentation and the poster session. Short papers of up to 4 pages will be considered as submissions for the poster session.

Submissions must be anonymous, without any identifying information, and must be must be received by March 20, 2012.

More detailed guidelines regarding submission can be found on the Student Session website: http://loriweb.org/ESSLLI2012StuS/
Links to previous years' proceedings are also available there.

Please direct inquiries about submission procedures or other matters relating to the Student Session to esslli2012stus@loriweb.org.

For general inquiries about ESSLLI 2012, please consult the main ESSLLI 2012 page, http://esslli2012.pl/.