The University of Manchester is hosting the the Twenty-Fourth Manchester Phonology Meeting May 26-28th. UMass is represented by
alumna Nancy Hall who is giving the talk “A phonetic study of closed syllable shortening in Palestinian Arabic."
Coral Hughto who is giving the talk “Typological prediction of an interactive learning model"
Leland Kusmer and Ivy Hauser who are giving the talk “Wrong side reduplication in Koasat"
For more information, go here.
Cornell University is hosting the Twenty Fifth annual meeting of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics on May 13-15. Gaja Jarosz and alumnus Michael Becker are giving plenary talks. Gaja’s is entitled “Sonority sequencing in Polish: Defying the sttimulus?” and Michael’s is entitled “Inconspicuous unfaithfulness in Slovenian.” For more information, go here.
John Kingston will give a talk on Wednesday, April 13, at the Workshop on (Morpho)-phonological Processing at Oxford University. His talk presents work with Amanda Rysling, Adrian Staub, Andrew Cohen and Jeffrey Starn; the title is “When do words influence perception? Converging evidence that Ganong effect is early and variable”
And on Friday, April 15th, he will be presenting the paper “Misperception, coarticulation, and sound change,” work with Amanda Rysling, Alexandra Jesse, and Robert Moura, at the Worshop on Articulatory Control at the Laboratories de Phonetique et Phonologie, Paris 3.
NYU is hosting phoNE this Saturday, April 9. UMass is represented by Deniz Ozyildiz and Alexei Nazarov who are giving talks. A complete schedule follows.
Saturday, April 9
11:30-12 Luca Iacaponi (Rutgers): Non-stringent markednessrelations: evidence from Consonant Harmony
12-12:30 Chris Geissler (Yale): Explaining Vowel Harmony in Lhasa Tibetan
12:30-1:30 lunch
1:30-2 Deniz Ozyildiz (UMass)
2-2:30 James Whang (NYU)
2:30-2:50 break
2:50-3:20 Juliet Stanton (MIT): Trigger deletion in Gurindji
3:20-3:50 Gašper Beguš (Harvard) Unnatural phenomena and gradient phonotactics
3:50-4:10 break
4:10-4:40 Shu-hao Shih (Rutgers)
4:40-5:10 Alexei Nazarov (UMass)
5:10-5:30 break
5:30-6 Erin Olsen (MIT)
6 business meeting
The conference takes place on the first floor of the Linguistics Department, which is at 10 Washington Place in Manhattan.
The Hispanic Linguistics Talk series features Terrell Morgan (Ohio State University) on Friday, April 1 at 3PM in Herter 601. The title of his talk is “Cultura fonológica: Expanding the notion of `phonological competence’ in second language acquisition.”
Professor Morgan is also giving a workshop on Saturday April 2nd at the UMass Center at Springfield, which is designed for high school and middle school teachers of Spanish. His talk is from 10 to 1 in room 014 at the Springfield UMass Center. For a description, and to register for tickets, go here.
The 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics is being hosted by the University of California, Berkeley on March 23-26. UMass is represented by:
Rodica Ivan and Deniz Ozyildiz who are giving the paper “The Somali microscope: pronouns, determiners and possession.” (Their abstract is here,)
William Bennett, Kristine Yu and alumnus Wendell Kimper with Christopher Green who are giving the paper “Acoustic correlates of harmonic classes in Somali."
Alumna Rose-Marie Déchaine, who is giving the paper “Shona root classes: implications for the lexicon and beyond,” and, with Herman Keupdjio, “Compound pronouns in Bamileke Medumba"
Lisa Selkirk who is giving the paper “Edge-sensitivity in Bantu sentence topology: Luganda, Xitsonga, Bemba"
Leland Kusmer who is giving the paper “Prosody and the conjoint/disjoint alternation in Tshivenda"
Alumna Meredith Landman who is giving the paper “Quantification in Kipsigis"
Alumnus Ken Safir gives the paper “Actual clauses in Lubukusu and what they mean for a symmetric theory of clausal complementation."
You can learn more about the conference here.
Two submissions from UMass Linguistics to Laboratory Phonology 15, to be held at Cornell University, 13-16 July 2016, have been accepted for presentation as posters:
Kevin Mullin: Phonotactically-mediated compensation for coarticulation
Amanda Rysling, John Kingston, Adrian Staub, Andrew Cohen and Jeffrey Starns: Lexical knowledge is available, but not always used, very early
Lisa Sanders, Claire Moore-Cantwell, Joe Pater, Robert Staubs and Benjamin Zobel: ERP evidence for the ecological validity of artificial language learning
John Kingston writes:
Tony Woodbury will present his joint work with Stephanie Villard on tone in Zacatepec Chatino in Sound Workshop on Friday 26 February 1-2 in ILC N451.
Joe Pater will present joint work with Jennifer Culbertson, Coral Hughto and Robert Staubs at a joint meeting of the syntax and phonology workshop this Friday at 2:30 in ILC N458. A title and abstract of his talk follow.
Title: Typological Prediction with Learning: Grammatical Agent-Based Modeling of Typology
Abstract: What effect does learning have on the typological predictions of a theory of grammar? One way to answer this question is to examine the output of agent-based models (ABMs), in which learning can shape the distribution over languages that result from agent interaction. Prior research on ABMs and language has tended to assume relatively simple agent-internal representations of language, with the goal of showing how linguistic structure can emerge without being postulated a priori (e.g. Kirby and Hurford 2002, Wedel 2007). In this paper we show that when agents operate with more articulated grammatical representations, typological skews emerge in the output of the models that are not directly encoded in the grammatical system itself. This of course has deep consequences for grammatical theory construction, which often makes fairly direct inferences from typology to properties of the grammatical system. We argue that abstracting from learning may lead to missed opportunities in typological explanation, as well as to faulty inferences about the nature of grammar. By adding learning to typological explanation, grammatical ABMs allow for accounts of typological tendencies, such as the tendency toward uniform syntactic headedness (Greenberg 1963, Dryer 1992). In addition, incorporating learning can lead to predicted near-zeros in typology. We show this with the case of unrealistically large stress windows, which can be generated by a weighted constraint system, but which have near-zero frequency in the output of our ABM incorporating the same constraints. The too-large-window prediction is one of the few in the extant literature arguing for Optimality Theory’s ranked constraints over weighted ones.
Laura McPherson (Dartmouth College) will give the department colloquium this Friday at 3:30 in N400. The title of her talk is “Constraint Interaction and the role of spell-out in Dogon tonosyntax,” and an abstract follows.
The Dogon languages of Mali share a unique system of replacive grammatical tone in the DP, where a word’s lexical tone is completely overwritten by tonal overlays in particular morphosyntactic positions. Unlike more typologically common systems of replacive tone, which tend to be triggered by morphemes or morphological features and are confined to a single word, Dogon overlays in the DP may span multiple words and are triggered by certain c-commanding syntactic categories or positions (hence, tonosyntax). In cases where a word is targeted by more than one potential trigger, the Dogon languages differ in their resolutions. I argue that these changes are inherently morphological in nature, despite occurring at the phrase-level rather than the word-level, and propose a construction-based model in which phrase-level morphological constructions encode idiosyncratic phonological changes sensitive to both syntactic category and syntactic structure. Constructional schemas are implemented in the grammar as constraints (construction constraints). The variation found in the Dogon language family is descriptively quite complicated, with no two languages working in exactly the same way, but in this talk, I show that the surface patterns falls out naturally in a maximum entropy (Goldwater and Johnson 2003, Hayes and Wilson 2008) model with weighted constraints, capable of capturing both within-language and between-language variation.
Additionally, data from the tonosyntax of possession and relative clauses provide evidence for the role of phases in determining morphophonological form. In particular, the application of tonal overlays is often, though (crucially) not obligatorily, blocked on material that has spelled out in a previous cycle. I argue that these effects provide evidence for transcyclic faithfulness constraints, which penalize alterations to the morphophonological form of spelled out material in later grammatical cycles. Like all constraints, these too are shown to be violable, with different Dogon languages displaying varying degrees of faithfulness to phasal targets. Thus, the Dogon data show that while spelled out material may be resistant to later phonological changes, it is not immune to it, as argued by proposals such as Lowenstamm (2010) or Newell and Piggott (2014).
CUNY Phonology Forum: CONFERENCE ON SONORITY
Sponsored by the MA/PhD Program in Linguistics at the City University of New York
January 14-15, 2016, at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., New York City
CALL FOR PAPERS
Sonority is thought to play a central role in the organization of segments into syllables, and more specifically, to determine the nature of syllable-internal consonant clusters, possible coda segments, syllabic consonants, glide-vowel alternations, epenthesis sites, tone-bearing units, and even, in some languages, sonority-based stress patterns. Investigations into sonority have focused on its role in synchronic grammar, its status as universal and innate, and whether the full sonority scale reflects a single phonetic correlate. The topic has received much attention from both theoretical and laboratory phonologists, and this forum seeks to showcase work from both approaches.
We invite papers from any subdivision of cognitive science such as formal linguistics, language acquisition, neurolinguistics, phonetics, philosophy, psychology, etc. We also encourage diversity in methods so we welcome both formal and experimental approaches to the topic of sonority.
INVITED SPEAKERS:
To be announced.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
We invite both oral presentations and posters. Abstracts should consist of a one-page description of the paper (12pt font) with a second page for references, data and/or illustrations; please specify if you wish to submit for a poster, an oral presentation, or are fine with either. Talks will be 20 minutes with 10 minutes for discussion.
Abstracts should be anonymous, on one A4/letter page (12 pt. font) with a second page for references, data and/or illustrations. Abstracts should be emailed as a .pdf attachment to phonoforum@gmail.com no later than 23:59 EDT on 31 October 2015.
IMPORTANT DATES:
31 October 2015 – deadline for abstract submission1 December 2015 – notification of acceptance14-15 January 2016 – Conference on Sonority
CONTACT:
The Department of Linguistics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick) invites applicants for a tenure‐track Assistant Professor position in linguistics with a specialization in phonology, beginning September 1, 2016. We seek applicants whose research interests complement those of the current faculty and who can contribute breadth and depth to the department with respect to research, teaching, and advising at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Applicants must have completed all degree requirements for a Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field by August 31, 2016.
Applications should include a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, a research statement, sample publications, a teaching statement, teaching evaluations if available, and three letters of reference addressed to Linguistics Search Committee (address below). The cover letter should include a list of those writing letters of reference and a list of all the materials that have been, or will be, submitted. All materials should be submitted via Interfolio (http://apply.interfolio.com/31902).
Review of applications will begin November 1, 2015 and continue until the position is filled. For full consideration, applications should be submitted by November 15, 2015. Inquiries about the search should be sent to Ms. Marilyn Reyes (lingdept@rci.rutgers.edu).
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer. Qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, military service or any other category protected by law. As an institution, we value diversity of background and opinion, and prohibit discrimination or harassment on the basis of any legally protected class in the areas of hiring, recruitment, promotion, transfer, demotion, training, compensation, pay, fringe benefits, layoff, termination or any other terms and conditions of employment.
Open until filled
Application Address:
Linguistics Search Committee
Dept. of Linguistics, Rutgers University
18 Seminary Place
New Brunswick NJ
USA
Application URL: http://apply.interfolio.com/31902
Contact Information: Ms. Marilyn Reyes
The Department of English at Wayne State University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor, Advanced Assistant Professor, or Associate Professor in Linguistics with a specialization in Phonology. A second specialization is highly desirable. PhD required at time of appointment.
The interdepartmental Linguistics Program at Wayne State offers the BA and MA. Wayne State University is an urban research university with the highest Carnegie designation of RU/VH [Research University, very high research productivity]. Duties include a sustained research program, a teaching load of 2-2, and departmental/university service.
The WSU Jobs site is now open. All applications must be submitted online. To submit an application, applicants should go to the application website below and upload the following: letter of application, CV, and one writing sample (PDF of a published article or a manuscript of approximately 15-30 pages).
Applicants should also arrange to have 3 letters of recommendation sent electronically to Ljiljana Progovac, Director of Linguistics (email below). All materials are due by November 1, 2015.
Wayne State University offers more than 370 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 28,000 students in metropolitan Detroit. Wayne State is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Application Deadline: 01-Nov-2015
Application Deadline: 01-Nov-2015
Application URL: http://jobs.wayne.edu
Contact Information: Ljiljana Progovac, Director of Linguistics <progovac@wayne.edu>
Wendell Kimper will give a practice talk for his AMP talk this week in Sound Workshop, which this week meets at 1:15 Friday, Oct. 2.
Coral Hughto and Ivy Hauser write
This semester's first meeting of PRG will be on Wednesday 23 September at 7:30pm. PRG is an informal gathering to talk about half-baked ideas, interesting papers, works-in-progress, or anything else. PLEASE EMAIL US IF YOU WILL BE COMING! The current plan is to meet downstairs in Haymarket (in Northampton), but if enough people RSVP we will host the meeting somewhere else.
Elan Dresher of the University of Toronto (PhD UMass 1978) gave a talk last Friday Sept. 18th. The title and abstract follow.
Contrastive Hierarchy Theory: An Overview.
In this talk I will present an overview of contrastive hierarchy theory, aka Modified Contrastive Specification (MCS) or ‘Toronto School’ phonology. I will set out the main tenets of this theory, and briefly review their antecedents in the history of phonology. I will then illustrate various applications of the theory to topics in synchronic and diachronic phonology, as well as its implications for typology.
John Kingston writes:
Sound Workshop will meet Mondays 11:15-12:05 in N451, starting this Monday, September 14.
Ivy Hauser and Coral Hughto write:
Phonology reading group plans to meet this semester every other week. PRG has been used as an informal place to present sound related work, do paper discussions, recap conferences, etc. What we do this semester is up to us and we can discuss what would be useful at the first meeting. Dinner always provided by the GLSA.
We've tentatively scheduled meetings for 7:30p Wednesdays (exactly which weeks we meet will be determined later). If you want to be involved in PRG and this time cannot work for you please get in touch with us.
The Fifth international symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages will be held in Buffalo, New York May 24-27. The special theme of these year’s meeting is "Tone in the brain and the world: Bridging linguistic and psychological perspectives.” The deadline for submission of papers is December 1, 2015. For more information, go here.
Cornell University is hosting the fifteenth meeting of LabPhon July 13-16, 2016. The call for abstracts for 20 minute talks, as well as posters, can be found here. This year’s themes are: Perceptual dynamics, Prosodic organization, Lexical dynamics and memory, Phonological acquisition and changes over the lifespan, and social network dynamics.
Two page abstracts are due on December 1. You can learn more about the conference here.