Jon Nelson writes:
LARC will meet this Friday, Oct. 23, at noon in ILC N451 to hear Jill de Villiers present: “How to make a child language assessment in a language with no history of assessments (or even research); some lessons learned.” All are welcome!
Syntax guru Claire Halpert will give a talk on Friday, Oct. 23, in ILC N400 at 3:30. (The title and abstract follow.) Claire has taken up residence in N472 until October 30, and she can be reached at halpert@umn.edu.
Escape clause
In this talk, I investigate the syntactic properties of clausal arguments, looking in particular at whether A-movement is permitted out of finite clauses and at whether these clauses themselves may undergo movement or establish agreement relationships. In English, argument clauses show some puzzling distributional properties compared to their nominal counterparts. In particular, they appear to satisfy selectional requirements of verbs, but can also combine directly with non-nominal-taking nouns and adjectives. Stowell (1981) and many others have treated these differences as arising from how syntactic case interacts with nominals and clauses. In a recent approach, Moulton (2015) argues that the distributional properties of propositional argument clauses are due to their semantic type: these clauses are type e,st and so must combine via predicate modification, unlike nominals. In contrast to English, I show that in the Bantu language Zulu, certain non-nominalized finite CPs exhibit identical selectional properties to nominals, therefore requiring a different treatment from those proposed in the previous literature. These clauses, also like nominals, appear to control phi-agreement and trigger intervention effects in predictable ways. At the same time, these clauses differ from nominals (and nominalized clauses) in the language in certain respects. I will argue that these properties shed light on the role that phi-agreement plays in the transparency/opacity of finite clauses for A-movement and on the nature of barrier effects in the syntax more generally.
Mike Clauss gives a talk at the Acquisition Lab at MIT Wednesday, Oct. 21, where he will present “Classifying Adjectives without Semantic Information," joint work with Jeremy Hatrman.
The Department of English, Linguistics/TESOL Program at Central Connecticut State University is pleased to announce the 12th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics, to be held from May 12 to May 15, 2016. As a special feature, we are hosting a one-day session on sign languages in the regions of spoken Altaic Languages.
Invited Speakers:
- Mark Baker (Rutgers University)
- Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware)
- Yoonjung Kang (University of Toronto)
2nd Call for Papers:
Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks (plus 10-minute discussions) and for posters on topics dealing with formal aspects of any area of theoretical Altaic linguistics, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics. Additionally, abstracts covering any area of theoretical linguistics of sign languages in the regions of spoken Altaic languages are welcome. We are using Easy Abstracts at the LINGUIST List for the submission and the blind review process.
The address for abstract submission is: http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/WAFL12
Authors are invited to submit anonymous abstracts to any of the following sessions:
- General session: May 13-15
- Special session on sign languages in the regions of spoken Altaic languages: May 12
- Poster session: TBA
Authors should indicate what session they are submitting an abstract to. Abstracts should be a maximum of one page in length excluding references and examples, in 12-point Times New Roman, with margins of at least 2.5 cm/1 inch. There is a maximum of two abstracts per person, one of which must be co-authored.
Important Dates:
- Deadline for submission: November 30, 2015, 11:59pm EST
- Notification of acceptance: January 31, 2016
The special issue of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience on “Cross-linguistic Psycholinguistics,” edited by our own Alice Harris with Elisabeth Nordcliffe and Florian Jaeger has appeared. The issue has thirteen papers on language production and comprehension with a focus on understudied languages. You can learn more here.
Claire Bowern writes:
The Department of Linguistics at Yale University is seeking to make a tenure-track appointment at the level of Assistant or Associate Professor (without tenure) to begin in Fall 2016. The area of specialization is open and full consideration will be given to candidates in all areas, but we are particularly interested in candidates in phonetics/experimental phonology and semantics/pragmatics. Special consideration will be given to candidates whose scholarly interests complement and connect with those of the current department faculty and other departments and research units at Yale. Evidence of successful teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels will also be taken into consideration in making an appointment. Candidates should be assured of completing the requirements for the Ph.D. by the summer of 2016 at the latest.
The application will need to include a current CV, a research statement outlining the candidate's research program, evidence regarding teaching qualifications, and two or three representative pieces of research. Applicants should also arrange for three letters of reference to be submitted to this website. To ensure full consideration, applications should be submitted by November 15, 2015. We expect to interview potential candidates at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Washington, DC in January 2016 (though attendance at that meeting is not a requirement for consideration).
For more information, go here: http://apply.interfolio.com/31809
Johan Brandtler writes:
This e-mail is to encourage you to submit any current work on the Scandinavian languages to the December issue of Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax. Over the years, WPSS has proven an invaluable resource for on-going research within Scandinavian linguistics, and each issue is e-mailed personally to more than 200 researchers over the world (in addition to being published on the WPSS webpage).
If you want to contribute to the December issue, please send your paper electronically to this address no later than November 15, 2015. As you might already know, articles published in WPSS can subsequently appear (revised or unrevised) in other publications.
Please see the WPSS homepage for current and previous issues:
http://projekt.ht.lu.se/grimm/working-papers-in-scandinavian-syntax/
The Department of Linguistics and the Center for Data Science at New York University seek an assistant professor to fill a tenure-track position in natural language processing, beginning September 1, 2016, pending administrative and budgetary approval. We are looking for outstanding applicants with demonstrated excellence in teaching and an active research program that uses quantitative, computational methods and other digital technologies to address substantive questions about natural language.
The successful candidate will be expected to engage collaboratively withthe faculty in both the Linguistics department and the Center for Data Science. Responsibilities include teaching in both the CDS and the Department of Linguistics at the undergraduate, masters, and PhD level, aswell as supervising student research.
Review of applications will begin on December 1, 2015. To apply, see the NYU Department of Linguistics web site. Instructions for electronic submission of documents can be found under the link 'Employment’. Applicants should submit an application including a description of their research program; a teaching statement; curriculum vitae; work samples, and three references.
For further information about this position, please contact Professor ChrisBarker <chris.barker@nyu.edu>.