Michel DeGraff gives Freeman Lecture

Michel DeGraff will deliver the Freeman Lecture this Friday, 10 April 2015 at 3:30 PM in the Integrative Learning Center, N 151. The title of his talk is "Kreyol pale, Kreyol konprann: Power/knowledge at the crossroads of history, linguistics & education in Haiti."

Michel DeGraff is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He specializes in syntax, morphology, language change, Creole studies, Haitian Creole, education in Haiti, and the linguistics-ideology interface. In his Freeman Lecture, he will discuss his participation in and the rationale, accomplishments and prospects of the MIT-Haiti Initiative, which is a project for the development, evaluation and dissemination of active-learning resources in Kreyòl (the national language of Haiti and one of its two official languages) to improve science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education plus leadership and management in Haiti.

Benu Pareek at LARC

Jeremy Hartman writes:

The LARC meeting on Wednesday, 4/8 at 12:15 in Room N451 will feature Benu Pareek (Jawaharlal Nehru University), who will speak about:

 "Verb Agreement in Hindi and its Acquisition"

All are welcome!

Anna Howell speaks at the Semantics Workshop

UMass visitor from Tübingen, Anna Howell, will be presenting at the Semantics Workshop this Thursday, April 9, at 1PM in N451.

Roeper and Pearson get NSF

An NSF Grant titled “Science Live” Workshop on the Acquisition of Recursion Across Languages” ( $29000) has been awarded to Tom Roeper (in collaboration with Bart Hollebrandse and Barbara Pearson) to work on a museum exhibit and related experimentation on recursion (based on the work of Ana Perez, Terue Nakato, Luiz Amaral, Jon Nelson and Anca Sevcenco). The museums include  the Dutch National Science Museum local Massachusetts museums and then others. The project will engage graduate and undergraduate collaborators as well.

Larry Solan on forensic linguistics

UMass alumnus Larry Solan was a member of the Diane Rehm show on Wednesday, April 1, which focused on “How Technology is Changing Criminal Linguistic Evidence in Court.” Take a listen here.