18 November 2012

Athulya Aravind at Acquisition Lab/LARC on Monday

Magda Oiry writes:

This Monday, due rescheduling, Athulya Aravind will present his work in the acquisition lab / LARC meeting. The title of his talk is:

"First and Second Order Complementation: New Experimental Directions".
 
We will meet in Herter 301 at noon.

Everyone is welcome!

William Snyder gives talk tomorrow

Tom Roeper writes:

William Snyder will be giving a guest lecture in the class on Multiple
Grammars where he will discuss his approach to Grammatical Conservatism in Acquisition.

The class meets at 230 Monday November 19th in Herter 211.

Everyone is welcome.

Tom Roeper ( and Luiz Amaral)

Project TRAIT abstract deadline delayed

Joanna Blaszczak writes:

We are finalizing the program of our  workhop "How categorical are categories?" organized within the Project TRAIT ("Temporality at the Interfaces"), funded by the Foundation for Polish Science
 
We still have some free slots for a few additional (GOOD) presentations. We would be very glad if you  - or some of your PhD students - could contribute to the program of our workshop. We would like to invite you to have a look at the description of the workshop available here http://www.ifa.uni.wroc.pl/linguistics/traitworkshop.html
 
We decided to extend the deadline for selected abstract submissions till November 28th. Please find enclosed the call for papers.

TRAIT second call for papers

Hot Chocolate and Excercise

Brian Smith writes:

For the past five years, some of us have participated in the Hot Chocolate Run. It's a 2-mile walk or a 5k run through Downtown Northampton, followed by delicious hot chocolate in a commemorative mug. The proceeds benefit Safe Passage, an organization that helps victims of domestic violence.  It happens on December 2. 
 
If you'd like to participate, you can register online, or you can download the registration form, fill it out, and put it in my mailbox with the registration fee. Under "Team/School Name", write "Linguists & Friends". Since we register as a team, each of us gets a $3 discount on the registration fee. The fee is $27 for adults and $15 for students ($24 and $15 with group discount).
 
Here's a link: http://safepass.org/HCR/
 
This year, they are anticipating selling out by Thanksgiving, so I recommend registering as soon as you read this email if you'd like to participate. (There is no longer an online registration fee!)
 
It's really a great time!
 
What: Hot Chocolate Run
When: December 2, 9:30 am
Why: Benefit for Safe Passage, delicious hot chocolate
How: Register online or by form. Definitely register by Thanksgiving. Sooner is better. (Team name: Linguists & Friends)

SRG's new face

Jason Overfelt writes:

I would like to introduce myself as your new SRG coordinator.  I will be doing my best to take over for Anisa who has done a wonderful job.  Thanks, Anisa!

Our final meeting this semester was last Thursday, but it's never too early to start planning ahead.  If you think you  would like to talk at SRG next semester, then feel free to email me once you know.  You should feel free to present a practice talk, discuss a  term paper you're working on, or just throw out some puzzling data.

Conner, Pearson and Jackson in Atlanta

Barbara Pearson writes:

Tracy Conner,  Janice Jackson and I presented a paper on "Dialect Awareness: Foundations for Effective Education of African American English-speaking Children" at the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association annual meeting in Atlanta on Thursday, November 15, 2012.  The paper was based on an article to appear in Developmental Psychology, January 2013, a themed edition on "Deficit versus Difference? Interpreting Diverse Developmental Paths" (and is already available on-line).  As part of Tracy's answers to an engaged audience, she was able to refer people to her poster in the following session:  New Diagnostic Criterion: Obligatory Possessive Marking in African American English.  

Magda Oiry at Maryland

Magda writes:

I gave a talk at the University of Maryland on Wednesday Nov. 14th entitled "The acquisition of Long-Distance questions" in a seminar co-taught by Valentine Hacquard and Jeff Lidz. I discussed a case of "Poverty of the Stimulus": children are able to acquire the syntax and the felicity conditions of Scope Marking without ever been exposed to it. My visit was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to Hacquard and Lidz on "Acquiring the semantics and pragmatics of attitude verbs".

Call for papers: CSSP 2013

Call for papers

CSSP 2013
The 10th Syntax and Semantics Conference in Paris
September 26-28, 2013
Université Paris Diderot, Amphi Buffon, batiment Buffon
15 rue Hélène Brion, 75013 Paris

Invited speakers

Ricardo Etxepare (CNRS UMR 5478)
Tim Fernando (Trinity College Dublin)
Bart Geurts (U. Nijmegen)
Louisa Sadler (U. Essex)

Submission deadline: April 15th, 2013


The 8th Syntax and Semantics Conference in Paris (CSSP 2009) will  
take place on September 26-28th, 2013.


The Conference welcomes papers combining empirical inquiry and  
formal explicitness. CSSP aims at favouring comparisons between  
different theoretical frameworks.
CSSP conferences combine a general session and a thematic session.

Submissions for the general session may address any topic on
syntax, semantics, or the syntax-semantics interface. The thematic session will focus on experimental syntax and semantics
We invite submissions for 40-minute presentations (including 10  
minutes for discussion). Abstracts should be at most 2 pages in  
length (including examples and references) written in French or  
English. The same person may submit at most one abstract as a sole  
author and one as a co-author. Preference will be given to  
presentations that are not duplicated at other major conferences.

Abstracts will be refereed blindly by an international programme  
committee.

For the submission procedure, please see : 
http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/cssp2013/soumission/index_en.html

Tom Ernst teaches at Haverford

Tom Ernst will teach two undergraduate courses at Haverford College (as part of the Tri-College linguistics program, also including Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr Colleges) in the spring semester. The courses are Structure of Chinese, and Seminar in Syntax.

Suzi Lima speaks at Ecole Normale Superieure

Suzi Lima will be giving "The count/mass distinction in Yudja (Tupi): quantity judgment studies" at the  “Mass/Count in Linguistics, Philosophy and Cognitive Science” colloquium. On December 20-21, 2012 a the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.

The colloquium will be preceded by a one-day tutorial on the mass/count
distinction given by Friederike Moltmann (IHPST) and David Nicholas (IJN).

If you are interested in attending, registration is required. It is done in two steps: (i) pre-registration on the conference website, (ii) final registration and payment on-site. To pre-register, create an account on the conference website, log in, and fill in the registration form.

More information, and  a program are available on the
conference website:
http://mass-count.sciencesconf.org/

UMass applies to the ASA

Abstracts were sent to the Acoustical Society of America meeting in Montreal this June. They are:

Kristine Yu and Kate Silverstein: "Voice quality and dispersion in
tonal inventories"

Jeremy Cahill, Kevin Mullin, and John Kingston: "Spectral contrast effects when Ganong effects are delayed"

Kevin Mullin, Diego Alves and John Kingston: "Lexical effects are independent of distant phonetic context effects."

Shifra Sered, Megan Whiteford and John Kingston: "How do autistic traits influence speech perception?"

Claire Moore-Cantwell: "Syntactic predictability influences duration."