Seth Cable and Peggy Speas write:
Happy New Year! And, with a new year comes a new session of UMAFLAA (the UMass Funny Languages Afternoon — formerly UMass Funny Languages Breakfast)!
What is UMAFLAA, you might ask? Well, the purpose of UMAFLAA is to bring together individuals with a shared interest in puzzling linguistic data, optimally (but not necessarily) from understudied or minority languages.
*Presentations are always informal*. We are *not* looking for polished work or practice talks (though those are welcome). Rather, participants are free to present any puzzles they like. They needn't have any analysis in mind; indeed, part of the fun of the group is hearing other people's thoughts on some difficult problem.
Thus, if all you have is an interesting pattern worth 'boggling at', that's perfect for our group (particularly if it's from an otherwise not-very-much-talked-about language or variety). For example, a run down of all the crazy data obtained during some recent field work (or experimental work, or whatever) would be quite ideal.
As the name suggests, our meetings will be in the afternoon. Our preliminary plan is to meet during the colloquium slot when no colloquium has been scheduled.
The first meeting will be soon announced. If you’re interested in presenting something, get in touch with Seth.
