Barbara Partee writes:
On September 6, there was a surprise 60th birthday party for UMass PhD Gennaro Chierchia at Harvard (his birthday was Sept 10; by the time this note is published it should be safe to reveal that there will have been another surprise event in honor of his birthday, at Sinn und Bedeutung in the Basque Country during the week.) Gennaro was presented with a festschrift edited by his former students Ivano Caponigro and Carlo Cecchetto entitled From Grammar to Meaning:The Spontaneous Logicality of Language, including articles by Partee, Chomsky, Rizzi & Belletti, and others, and including as an appendix a play written at UMass in 1984 by Ray Turner and Kathy Adamczyk, dramatizing Gennaro and Ray's stormy collaboration on property theory.
At the party, Gennaro was presented with copies of the book inscribed by Chomsky and by Partee. UMass faculty attending the celebration besides me were Lisa Selkirk, Angelika Kratzer, Tom Roeper, Lyn Frazier, and adjunct faculty member Vladimir Borschev.
The party turned out to be a complete surprise to Gennaro, even though Gennaro's wife Isa Orvieto was one of the planners, together with Ivano and Carlo.
