Weir defends

Andrew Weir will defend his dissertation, "Fragments and Clausal Ellipsis," on Tuesday, May 6 in Machmer W23 at 2:30. Come cheer him on!

Reception for class of 2014

The Linguistics Department in conjunction with the Philosophy Department will be holding a reception in honor of the graduating class of 2014 on Wednesday, May 7. It’ll be in room 160 of the Commonwealth Honors college, right next to Roots Cafe from 12 to 2. All are welcome, but drop Tom Maxfield (maxfield@linguist.umass.edu) a note letting him know if you plan on attending so that enough refreshments are ordered.

Call for papers: Pronouns in Embedded Contexts

Pronouns in Embedded Contexts at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Location: University of Tuebingen; Tuebingen, Germany Date: 7-9 November 2014

Call Deadline: July 20th 2014

Meeting Description:

Embedded environments (e.g. clausal complements of attitude predicates) provide a window into the nature of pronouns: pronouns in such environments not only exhibit classic distinctions, such as that between bound and referential pronouns; they also participate in a broader range of phenomena, e.g. a distinction between de se and de re readings may emerge if they refer to the attitude holder. This workshop aims at investigating pronouns in such environments in order to shed new light on interactions between (i.) their syntactic properties (e.g. personal vs. clitic vs. null vs. demonstrative pronouns) and (ii.) their semantic properties (e.g. ‘de se’ pronouns vs. syntactically bound ‘de re’ pronouns vs. accidentally coreferring ‘de re’ pronouns). The goal of this workshop is to bring together recent advances on the behavior of pronouns in embedded contexts and how it bears on the correct analysis of pronominal elements.

Invited Speakers:

Angelika Kratzer (UMass Amherst)

Hazel Pearson (ZAS Berlin)

Orin Percus (Université de Nantes)

Philippe Schlenker (Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS; New York University) Yael Sharvit (UCLA)

Commentators for invited talks:

Sigrid Beck (University of Tübingen) Regine Eckardt (University of Göttingen) Natasha Korotkova (UCLA)

Thomas Weskott (University of Göttingen) Igor Yanovich (University of Tübingen)

The workshop will be accompanied by a special discussion session led by the main organisers. In the current syntactic and semantic literature, it is a controversial question whether a unified treatment can be given for certain subsets of words that fall into the traditional category ‘pronoun’ (e.g. the subset of personal pronouns). The aim of this special session is to engage in a general discussion on possible research directions that emerge from investigating the behavior of pronouns in embedded contexts.

Special Session: On the (Non-)Uniformity of Pronouns Patrick Grosz & Pritty Patel Grosz (University of Tübingen) Sarah Zobel (University of Tübingen)

commentary: Cornelia Ebert (University of Stuttgart)

Pronouns in Embedded Contexts at the Syntax-Semantics InterfaceLocation: University of Tuebingen; Tuebingen, Germany Date: 7-9 November 2014Call Deadline: July 20th 2014Meeting Description:Embedded environments (e.g. clausal complements of attitude predicates) provide a window into the nature of pronouns: pronouns in such environments not only exhibit classic distinctions, such as that between bound and referential pronouns; they also participate in a broader range of phenomena, e.g. a distinction between de se and de re readings may emerge if they refer to the attitude holder. This workshop aims at investigating pronouns in such environments in order to shed new light on interactions between (i.) their syntactic properties (e.g. personal vs. clitic vs. null vs. demonstrative pronouns) and (ii.) their semantic properties (e.g. ‘de se’ pronouns vs. syntactically bound ‘de re’ pronouns vs. accidentally coreferring ‘de re’ pronouns). The goal of this workshop is to bring together recent advances on the behavior of pronouns in embedded contexts and how it bears on the correct analysis of pronominal elements.Invited Speakers:Angelika Kratzer (UMass Amherst)Hazel Pearson (ZAS Berlin)Orin Percus (Université de Nantes)Philippe Schlenker (Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS; New York University) Yael Sharvit (UCLA)Commentators for invited talks:Sigrid Beck (University of Tübingen) Regine Eckardt (University of Göttingen) Natasha Korotkova (UCLA)Thomas Weskott (University of Göttingen) Igor Yanovich (University of Tübingen)The workshop will be accompanied by a special discussion session led by the main organisers. In the current syntactic and semantic literature, it is a controversial question whether a unified treatment can be given for certain subsets of words that fall into the traditional category ‘pronoun’ (e.g. the subset of personal pronouns). The aim of this special session is to engage in a general discussion on possible research directions that emerge from investigating the behavior of pronouns in embedded contexts.Special Session: On the (Non-)Uniformity of Pronouns Patrick Grosz & Pritty Patel Grosz (University of Tübingen) Sarah Zobel (University of Tübingen)commentary: Cornelia Ebert (University of Stuttgart)

TA/TO Training Session on Monday, May 12

Peggy Speas writes:

There will be a Linguistics TA/TO training session held on Monday May 12, from 1 to 3 pm in Herter 601. Everyone is welcome - We'll be talking about all levels/types of TAs and TOs, and it's always helpful to have experienced TA/TOs there to help out.