Final Call for Papers: Workshop on Morphological, Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Dispositions

The goal of this workshop is to explore questions about the
morpho-syntax, semantics and underlying ontology of words and
constructions used to describe dispositions. The central aim of the
workshop is to develop a better understanding of how existing and novel
insights from different approaches to dispositions can be integrated
into a single theory of dispositions and their linguistic descriptions.

Invited Speakers:
Artemis Alexiadou (Stuttgart)
Elena Castroviejo (Madrid)
Ariel Cohen (Ben Gurion)
Bridget Copley (Paris)
Nora Boneh (Jerusalem)
Hans Kamp (Stuttgart)
Marika Lekakou (Ioannina)
John Maier (Cambridge, TBC)
Christopher Piñón (Lille)
Stephan Schmid (Berlin)
Barbara Vetter (Berlin)

Questions to be addressed by the Workshop:
1. What are the truth conditions of dispositional statements?
2. How are these truth conditions determined compositionally?
3. In what ways can dispositions be linguistically expressed?
4. What are linguistic tests for dispositionality?
5. Are there distinct notions of ‘disposition’ between which a
linguistic theory of disposition description should distinguish?
6. Among the words that can be used to express dispositionality are
nouns, adjectives and verbs. What systematic connections are there
between the ways in which different parts of speech do this, in
particular between deverbal nouns and adjectives and the underlying verbs?
7. What role do temporal and aspectual sentence constituents play in the
verbal expression of dispositions?
8. How do dispositional statements differ from habitual and frequency
statements?
9. What relations are there between dispositions and causality?
10. One of the constructions that can be used to describe dispositions
are middles. (An example: the German sentence `Dieser Satz liest sich
leicht’ (‘This sentence is easy to read’)). Is ‘middle’ a
morpho-syntactic or a notional concept? Where do the argument positions
of disposition-expressing middles come from? What is the
syntax-semantics interface for these constructions?

For a more detailed outline of the Workshop, please consult the Workshop
homepage:

https://sites.google.com/site/dispositions2015/general-information

We welcome submissions for a 20 minute talk (followed by 10 minutes of
discussion) or a poster on any topic relevant to the goals of the
workshop. We particularly welcome contributions addressing the
linguistic relevance of philosophical insights on dispositions or the
philosophical relevance of linguistic insights on dispositions.
All submitted abstracts should be written in English and be limited to
two single-spaced pages, complete with examples and bibliography. All
texts should fit within two A4 pages, with 2,54 cm/1-inch margins all
around. Each abstract should start with the title (centered) at top,
above the main text. Use font size 12 throughout (except for examples),
preferably in Times or Times New Roman. The abstract should be
camera-ready. Authors may submit at most one individual and one
co-authored abstract.

Save your abstract as a PDF. Name your abstract with your last name
followed by the suffix pdf (e.g., huang.pdf). Submit your abstract via
the EasyChair Conference, online submission system:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dinl2015

Please leave your name and affiliation out of the abstract. Please
indicate whether your abstract is for a talk, a poster or both.

Extended Deadline for submissions: March 8, 2015
Notification of acceptance: March 31, 2015

Contact: dispositions.workshop@gmail.com

 

Second Call: BCGL 8

 
CRISSP (KU Leuven) and UiL OTS (Universiteit Utrecht), as part of the joint NWO/FWO project ‘The Syntax of Idioms’, are proud to present the 8th Brussels Conference on Generative Linguistics: The grammar of idioms.
 
Workshop description
 
According to the Fregean principle of compositionality, the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the rules used to combine them. This principle is flouted in the case of idioms (cf. Katz & Postal 1963; Fraser 1970; Katz 1973; Chomsky 1980; Machonis 1985; Schenk 1994; Grégoire 2009; among others). Every language contains idiomatic expressions which, by definition, denote a meaning that is not simply derivable from (the combination of) the meanings of the individual lexical items of that expression. A canonical example is kick the bucket, the meaning of which has nothing to do with either kicking or buckets; it simply means ‘to die’. The existence of such expressions within natural language gives rise to many questions which have puzzled linguists for years, such as how these phrases are formed syntactically, whether they are restricted to certain structural domains, or how it is that we are able to deduce the idiomatic interpretation of such phrases despite there being no clues as to their meanings within any of the individual lexical items that comprise these expressions.    
The purpose of this workshop is to discuss and explore the phenomenon of idioms with the aim of gaining better theoretical and empirical insights into how such expressions are able to occur within natural language, and what sorts of rules of language they are governed by. More specifically, issues that we would like to see addressed at this workshop include, but are not limited to, the following: 
 
Syntax

• The “size” and building blocks of idioms: Is there a size limitation to idioms? That is, aside from verbs and their arguments, can idioms be comprised of any other syntactic material? Can they also be built from tense, modality, aspect, or passive voice, for instance, or material from the CP domain? Are there nominal, adjectival or prepositional idiomatic expressions besides the more familiar verbal/clausal ones? What implications might this have for the theory of idiomatic constructions (cf. Chomsky 1980, 1981; Marantz 1984; McGinnis 2002; Svenonius 2005; Hoeksema 2010; Harwood 2013, 2014)?
• The opacity and transparency of idioms: How do opacity and compositionality interact in idioms? Are they completely frozen structureless atoms or are they built up by the same (or similar) syntactic and morphological structure building mechanisms that are responsible for non-idiomatic expressions? What is the internal organization and makeup of idioms? What is their external syntax, i.e. how does material contained within the idiom interact with material that is not part of the idiom (cf. Makkai 1972; DiSciullo & Williams 1987; Marantz 1984; Fellbaum 1993; Nunberg et al. 1994; Van Gestel 1995; Ifill 2002)?
• Idioms and syntactic diversity: Can we attest micro- and macro-variation in the syntax of idiomatic expressions and if so, where? Do different languages allow different sizes of idioms and/or different syntactic behaviour of idioms?  What implications does this have for the theory of idioms in particular, and what does this tell us about cross-linguistic variation in general (cf. Everaert 1996; Hoeksema 1996, 2010; Hoekstra 2009; Fellbaum 2014; Fellbaum et al. 2003)?
• How should idioms be defined? Where does one draw the line between an idiom and simply a fixed expression such as a well-known metaphor? Does a discontinuous idiom constitute an idiomatic expression in the same way that a continuous idiom does? Should opaque/non-compositional idioms be considered apart from transparent/compositional idioms? Should idioms that exhibit syntactic or lexical flexibility be considered alike with inflexible idioms (cf. Chomsky 1981; Nunberg et al. 1994; O’Grady 1998; Ifill 2002; Svenonius 2005; Grégoire 2009; Hoeksema 2010)?

 
Semantics

• The meaning of idioms: Exactly how is the meaning of an idiomatic construction derived when it follows in no (obvious) way from the meanings of any of the individual lexical items that comprise it? Are idioms stored in our mental lexicon, and if so, how (cf. Chafe 1968; Bach 1974; Fellbaum 1993; Nunberg et al. 1994; Jackendoff 1997; Marantz 1997a,b; Ifill 2002; Svenonius 2005; Grégoire 2009)?

 
Processing

• How are idiomatic expressions processed? What is the role of literal processing during the interpretation of idiomatic expressions? Can idiomatic meaning be accessed directly, or is literal processing crucial in the access of idiomatic meaning? What is the role of structural, lexical, and contextual factors in the retrieval, interpretation of, and processing of idiomatic expressions? How do syntactic compatibility, lexical compatibility, and contextual expectations influence real-time processing of idioms and their non-idiomatic counterparts (cf. Swinney and Cutler 1979; Cacciari and Tabossi 1988; Gibbs & Nayak 1989; Cutting and Bock 1997; Sprenger, Levelt & Kempen 2006; Holsinger 2011, to appear)?

 
Diachrony and Acquisition

• Diachronically speaking, when and how does an expression become an idiom? How does an idiom form?
• How are idioms acquired by L1 learners of a language (cf. Elbers 1989)?

 

Invited speakers

Christiane D. Fellbaum (Princeton)
Louise McNally (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Manfred Sailer (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main)
 
Abstract guidelines
 
Abstracts should not exceed two pages, including data, references and diagrams. Abstracts should be typed in at least 11-point font, with one-inch margins (letter-size; 8½ inch by 11 inch or A4) and a maximum of 50 lines of text per page. Abstracts must be anonymous and submissions are limited to 2 per author, at least one of which is co-authored. Only electronic submissions will be accepted. Please submit your abstract using the EasyChair link for BCGL8: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bcgl8
 
 
 Important dates

• First call for papers: January 21, 2015
• Second call for papers: February 15, 2015
• Abstract submission deadline: March 15, 2015
• Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2015
• Conference: June 4-5, 2015

 
Conference location

CRISSP – KU Leuven Brussels Campus
Warmoesberg 26
1000 Brussels
Belgium
 
Organizing institutions

Center for Research in Syntax, Semantics & Phonology (CRISSP) – KU Leuven
Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS (UiL OTS) – Universiteit Utrecht
 
Questions?

 

Contact us by email: bcgl8@crissp.be

Website: http://www.crissp.be/bcgl8/

Kie Zuraw visits department

Kie Zuraw (UCLA) will be visiting the department this week. She will give the department colloquium on Friday, February 27, at 3:30 in N400. A title of her abstract follows.

Polarized Variation

The normal distribution--the bell curve--is common in all kinds of data, and is often expected when the quantity being measured results from multiple independent factors. The distribution of phonologically varying words, however, is sharply non-normal in the cases examined in this talk (from English, French, Hungarian,Tagalog, and Samoan). Instead of most words' showing some medial rate of variation (say, 50% of a word's tokens are regular and 50% irregular), with smaller numbers of words having extreme behavior, words cluster at the extremes of behavior--that is, a histogram of exceptionality rates is shaped like a U (or sometimes J) rather than a bell.  The U shape cannot be accounted for by positing a binary distinction with some amount of noise over tokens, because some items (though the minority) clearly are variable, even speaker-internally. In some cases (e.g., French "aspirated" words) there is a diachronic explanation: sound change caused some words to become exceptional, so that the starting point for today's situation was already U-shaped. But in other cases, such an explanation is not available, and items seem to be attracted towards extreme behavior.

Two mechanisms for deriving U-shaped distributions will be presented, with some speculation as to why some distributions of variation are U-shaped and others bell-shaped.

Sigrid Beck still speaks tomorrow

Sigrid Beck (Tübingen University) will give a talk entitled “Readings of ‘noch’ (‘still’)” in N400 tomorrow, Monday, February 23, at 2:45.

Psycholing Evening

Shayne Sloggett writes:

The psycholing workshop will be having another evening meeting this week to hear from Caroline Andrews about the possibility of experimental work on the anaphor agreement effect in Swahili. As with last time, we'll be meeting at 8:00pm on Tuesday (February 24) in Northampton. 

As a quick reminder to those of you attending CUNY this year, our CUNY prep session is a scant two weeks away! If you're interested in participating and getting some feedback on your talk/poster before the conference, be sure to bring a (reasonably finished) draft to our meeting on March 5. I'll send out another email with more details when we get closer to the date.

SSRG on Wednesday

Leland Kusmer writes:

SSRG will meet next Wednesday, February 25th. We'll meet at 7:30 as usual, this time at the home of Jon Ander and Megan.

This meeting will be our journal overview for Natural Language Semantics. Thanks to everyone who's already signed up to present an issue! If you haven't signed up yet, there are still two issues left:

http://bit.ly/SSRGReadsNLS

As always, if you're planning on coming, please RSVP so I know how much food to buy:

http://doodle.com/2igaukgqpc24f2z5

Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten receives NSF dissertation grant

Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten has received a doctoral dissertation research improvement grant from the National Science Foundation for “Expressing attitudes of belief and desire in Navajo.” Congratulations Elizabeth!

Deniz Ozyildiz in Syntax Workshop on Thursday

Deniz Ozyildiz will give a talk at the syntax workshop this Thursday, February 26, at 10 AM in N452. A title and abstract of his talk follows.

The syntax of the Turkish polar question particle "mI"

"The syntax of the Turkish polar question particle "mI" is currentlynot well understood. I will motivate the argument (i) that mI is asyntactic head positioned above the TP and (ii) that it attracts anassociate XP to its specifier position. This successfully derives thepolar question particle's distribution pattern, crucially therestrictions that bear upon it, in both root and embedded clauses. Itequally makes predictions about the geometry of alternative questions,predictions that appear to be borne out."

Tracy Conner and Nick LaCara in print!

The papers presented at the 2013 Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft meeting in Potsdam have appeared in a volume by de Gruyter Mouton called “Parenthesis and Ellipsis.” Tracy Conner’s “Heads must be heard: Overtness and ellipsis licensing” and Nick LaCara’s “Discourse inversion and deletion in as parenthetical” are inside. Congratulations Tracy and Nick!

Spectrolunch

Deniz Ozyildiz writes:

Our Spectrogram reading lunch last week was a success, and we have decided to meet every week - so that's Wednesdays at 1:35. We will also be meeting in N400 starting next week (LARC having been moved somewhere else).

We have a bunch of recordings and we apparently work very slowly, so there is actually no "need" for more. But of course, if you would like to share something fun, interesting etc. please feel free to do so.

Call for papers: Morphosyntactic Triggers of Tone

Morphosyntactic Triggers of Tone: New Data and Theories
13-14 June 2015
Leipzig

Whereas tone has played a central role in the evolution of phonological theory (Goldsmith 1976, Pulleyblank 1986, Yip 2002), the channels by which morphology and syntax trigger tonal reflexes or conversely restrict tonal alternations are still hardly understood.Firmly persuaded by Hyman's (2011) dictum that `tone can do everythingsegmental or metrical phonology can do' (and more), we think that itis absolutely essential for linguistics to develop a better understanding for the empirical richness and the theoretical implications of the morphosyntax of tone. The goal of this workshop isto provide a forum to this end which brings together descriptively and theoretically oriented linguists addressing questions such as:

• How does morphosyntactic structure interact with tonal phonology? Do syntactic constructions trigger specific tone patterns? Which types of morphosyntactic boundaries restrict (or are required by) general tonal alternations? Does opacity in tonal processes correlate with morphological and syntactic levels of derivation?

• How does tonal featural affixation work morphologically? how are tonal morphemes linearized? Where do they show systematic patterns ofsyncretism and blocking or multiple exponence? What is the distribution of tonal prefixation and suffixation? Is there a tonal equivalent to infixation, and how does tonal overwriting work in contrast to additive tonal morphology?

• What can tonal phenomena teach us about the morphology-syntaxinterface? Are tonal alternations at the phrasal level substantially different from word-level processes? Where do tonal alternations crosscut the boundaries between word-level morphology and phrasal syntax?

We invite abstracts for twenty-minute talks with a ten-minutediscussion. We especially encourage contributions which present original fieldwork (or experimental results), but also highly welcome submissions that provide new theoretical approaches, establish new descriptive generalizations, or, simply, bring to the fore relevant data that have been published, but so far ignored in a the theoretical discussion.

Invited Speakers

• Yuni Kim (University of Manchester)• Mary Paster (Pomona College)

• Gerrit Dimmendaal (University of Cologne)

Abstract Submission

Abstracts must be at most one page long. An optional second page is permitted for data and references. Abstracts must be anonymous.
Submissions are limited to one individual and one joint abstract per author, or two joint abstracts per author.

The abstract should be submitted as a PDF attachment and sent to the following e-mail address:
Eva.Zimmermann[aet]uni-leipzig.de

Please use `Abstract' as the Subject header and include the information in (1) - (4), which should constitute the body of the message. Please make sure that all fonts are embedded.

Author Information

• Name(s) of author(s)

• Title of talk

• Affiliation(s)

• E-mail address(es)

Deadline for Submission:  March 31, 2015
Notification of Acceptance:  April 15, 2015

Call for papers: BUCLD

THE 40th ANNUAL BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENTNOVEMBER 13-15, 2015

Join us for BUCLD's 40th anniversary!

CALL FOR SYMPOSIUM PROPOSALS

We are soliciting proposals for 90-minute symposia for the Boston University Conference on Language Development on any topic likely to be of broad interest to the conference attendees. The symposium format is open, but has frequently included 2-3 speakers presenting research from differing angles on a common theme.  

Proposals should include a list of the participants, specific topics, and a specification of the format, and should name at least one organizer who will be able to work with the BUCLD organizing committee in setting up the symposium.  Submissions can be sent by email to langconf@bu.edu with "Symposium proposal" indicated in the subject line.  Please limit symposium proposals to 1000 words or fewer.

DEADLINE: April 15, 2015

Decisions on symposia will be made by June.

NOTE: Submissions of abstracts for 20-minute talks and poster presentations are not being solicited at this time. The deadline for those will be 8:00 PM EST, May 15, 2015.

FURTHER INFORMATION

General conference information is available at: http://www.bu.edu/bucld

Questions about symposia should be sent to langconf@bu.edu.

Gillian Gallagher gives department colloq

Gillian Gallagher (NYU) will give the department colloquium this Friday, February 20, in the colloq room (N400) at 3:30. A title and abstract of her talk follows.

Natural classes in phonotactic learning

The core representational unit in phonology is the feature, used to  define contrasts between sound categories (/i/ and /e/ are  distinguished by [±high]) and to pick out classes of sounds that  pattern together in the phonology ([+high] vowels may be restricted  from final position in some languages). Traditionally, phonological  features are thought to bear a direct relation to phonetic properties  (Jakobson, Fant & Halle 1952; Chomsky & Halle 1968). Under more recent  proposals, though, features are labels for phonologically active  classes that may bear a loose or no relation to the phonetics of the  sounds in question (Mielke 2008). In this talk, I present evidence  that phonetics plays a direct role in the natural classes used in the  phonological grammar.

The cooccurrence phonotactics of Quechua provide evidence for natural  classes grouping aspirated stops with the glottal fricative [h], and  grouping ejective stops with the glottal stop [?]. In addition to  being phonologically active, both of these classes are phonetically  definable based on articulatory properties of the glottis: [spread  glottis] picks out aspirates and [h], [constricted glottis] picks out  ejectives and [?]. Despite the phonological and phonetic support, two  nonce word tasks fail to find evidence for these natural classes in  speakers' grammars. Instead, aspirate and ejective stops seem to be  targeted by the phonotactics to the exclusion of their glottal  counterparts. It is proposed that the preference for these smaller  classes of laryngeally marked stops is phonetically based, deriving  from the salience of the acoustic properties unique to stops.

Gillian Gallagher at Sound Workshop

Gillian Gallagher will be present at the Sound Workshop this Friday, February 20. The Workshop will focus on her two papers "An identity bias in phonotactics: Evidence from Cochabamba Quechua,” and "Asymmetries in the representation of categorical phonotactics."

Have a Spectrogram for Lunch

Deniz Ozylidz writes:

A bunch of us are organizing a roughly weekly spectrogram reading lunch. If you're interested, please join us this Wednesday, the 18th at 1:35PM. 

I will try to book the conference room as the projector and the whiteboard are in an ideal configuration. But this is subject to change.

We will go over organizational details, set up a schedule and Leland and/or I will bring recordings to work on. Feel free to come with something yourselves!

Michael Clauss in LARC on Wednesday

Jeremy Hartman writes:

Mike Clauss will present and lead a discussion in LARC this Wednesday, at 12:15 in N400 (note new time for this semester).  Mike will talk to us about:

"A Family of Relatives: Exploring the acquisition of Relatives, Free Relatives, and Clefts."

Please join us!

SSRG reads Natural Language Semantics

Leland Kusmer writes:

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, February 25th. At that meeting, we'll be doing a journal overview for Natural Language Semantics.

Just to remind you of the format: Each of us will claim one issue of NLS from the past three years. At the meeting, each of us will give very brief (handout-free) summaries of the material therein. The idea is for each summary to be maybe 3 minutes long. The idea is to get a high-level overview of what's been happening in the field rather than to get into any of the details of the individual papers.

I've set up a spreadsheet for you to claim an issue. Please only claim an issue if you're reasonably sure you'll be able to attend. Also, if you're planning on attending, please claim an issue!

http://bit.ly/SSRGReadsNLS

Brian Dillon at Syntax Workshop

Brian Dillon will present his work at the Syntax Workshop, this Thursday, February 19, from 10-11 in N451.

Call for papers: How to Make Things Happen

Vincent Homer and Rajesh Bhatt are organizing a workshop in connection with the Eleventh International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation. Their workshop is called:

How to make things happen in the grammar: The implementation of obligatoriness

The workshop will be on September 22 2015 in Tbilisi, Georgia. I full description of the workshop can be found here. Submissions for 45 minute talks are being accepted until May 15. Here is the call:

We invite abstract submissions for 45 (35+10) minute oral presentations devoted to the implementation of obligatoriness in grammar. See call information for details concerning the workshop theme. Abstracts should contain original research that, at the time of submission, has neither been published nor accepted for publication. One person can submit at most one abstract as sole author and one abstract as co-author. Abstracts must be submitted electronically in PDF format. Submissions should be anonymous and not reveal the identity of the author(s) in any form (e.g., references, file name or properties of the abstract). Abstracts must not exceed two pages in letter-size or A4 paper, including examples and references, with 2.5 cm (or 1 inch) margins on all sides and 12 point font size. Abstracts should be submitted by email to the following address: obligatoriness2015gmail.com. 

Important Dates: 

Submission deadline: May 15, 2015, 11:59 PM, CET 

Notification of acceptance: Late June 

Registration deadline: September 1, 2015 

Workshop: September 22, 2015

Sigrid Beck speaks on February 23

Sigrid Beck (Tübingen University) will give a talk at 2:45 on Monday, February 23. Her talk is entitled “Readings of ‘noch’ (‘still’).” The room of her talk will be posted in next week’s WHISC.

New Directions in Negation and Polarity

UMass was well-represented at a workshop on negation and polarity held at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem February 8-10. UMass alumna Aynat Rubinstein presented a paper with Edit Doron on “Expletive negation in constituent unconditionals.” Masaaki Kamiya presented a paper jointly authored by Tom Roeper entitled “Neg-feature separation in DP/Nominalization.” And Vincent Homer also presented a talk, entitled "Remarks on Languages with No Negation."

Call for papers: Workshop on Quantification

Katalin Kiss, Lilla Pintér and Tamás Zétényi write:

We are pleased to announce a workshop on Linguistic and Cognitive Aspects of Quantification, to be held at the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest on October 16–17, 2015.
 
Website: http://www.nytud.hu/lcq2015/ 

Invited Speakers:
 
Yosef Grodzinsky (University of Jerusalem): Quantifier Polarity, Numerosity, and Verification Procedures: Experimental Explorations

Irina Sekerina (City University New York): What Eye Movements Reveal About Quantifier-Spreading
 
We expects abstracts for 30-minute talks (+ 10 minute discussions) and poster presentations. Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than two pages, including references and examples, in 12-point Times New Roman, with margins of at least 2,5 cm / 1 inch.Abstracts are to be submitted in pdf-format via the EasyChair system.

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lcq2015

If you have any questions about the workshop, please feel free to contact us at the following e-mail address: quantification.workshop@gmail.com

Candy

WHISC has intercepted this message from the department’s Candy Monster.

In the months since September, when I assumed the responsibilities of Candy Monster, this department has consumed $192.88 in candy. In that same time, the ceramic piggy has consumed only $179.84 in change. My predecessor was able to leave us with some small reserve, but as of this morning the department candy fund is now officially empty.

This most recent resupply has left us with enough candy to last us perhaps three weeks. Please help me to replenish our fund before then.

Call for papers: Northwest Linguistics Conference

For nearly thirty years the Northwest Linguistics Conference (NWLC) has been held, on an alternating basis, by linguistics graduate students at four major universities in British Columbia and Washington State: the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Victoria.
 
The upcoming 31st NWLC will take place at the University of Victoria on the 25th and 26th of April, 2015, with the aim of fostering the ongoing exchange of ideas between students involved in all areas of linguistics. Abstracts are now being accepted for both oral and poster presentations. Oral presentations will be 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for questions, and the poster presentation will be 1 hour. Presenters of both types will have the opportunity to submit a short (maximum 10-page) proceedings paper of their research (submissions to be received before June 1st, 2015) which will be published in Vol. 25 of the Working Papers of the Linguistics Circle of the University of Victoria: http://web.uvic.ca/~wplc/
 
Abstracts should be submitted online at http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/NWLC2015 by Feb. 2, 2015 (now extended to Feb.16th, 2015)*. Abstracts should be maximum 300 words in length excluding illustrations and references, and include at least 3 keywords. Your name or affiliation should not appear in the body of your abstract; instead, please include these in the body of your email along with your paper title, and whether you have a preference for either an oral or poster presentation, or both.

Kai von Fintel in the news

There is a lengthy profile of UMass alumnus Kai von Fintel on the website for MIT's School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, for which Kai is Associate Dean. You can find the article here.

Bhatt on the road

WHISC has learned that Rajesh Bhatt was busy presenting papers over the Winter break. He presented joint work with Veneeta Dayal in a paper presented at Leipzig University on December 17 and at Michigan State University on January 15. Those talks were entitled “Polar Questions and Disjunction: clues from Hindi-Urdu ‘kyaa’.

While at Leipzig he also gave on talk on Tree Adjoining Grammars at Kompaktkurs at IGRA.

Hard Core Linguists

Psycholing Workshop on Tuesday

Shayne Sloggett writes:

The psycholing workshop will be having its first evening meeting at 8:00 this Tuesday (2/10) at Amanda's and my apartment. For our first meeting we'll be having an informal discussion of Frazier 1995, which is an assessment of constraint satisfaction models of language processing.

SSRG meets this Wednesday

Leland Kusmer writes:

Based on the results of the poll, SSRG will be held on alternate Wednesday evenings, starting next Wednesday, February 11th, at 7:30pm. I'll be hosting this one. We’ll discuss plans for the rest of the semester.

As always, please RSVP so I know how much food to buy

http://doodle.com/ahh4ynw2cmikir8q

Syntax Workshop this Thursday

The syntax workshop meets at 10AM on Thursday, Feb. 12, in N451. Kyle Johnson will talk about Andrews Amalgams.

Claire Moore-Cantwell at Ben Gurion

Claire Moore-Cantwell is giving a talk at Ben Gurion University of the Negev during her visit there Tuesday and Wednesday. The title of her talk is: "Probabilistic phonotactics: What’s in the grammar and how can we tell?"

Barbara Pearson at AAAS

Barbara Pearson writes:

I am in San Jose at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting with her Linguistics for Everyone Committee. With representatives from UMass, UMD, OSU and U Arizona, plus some volunteers from Stanford, I organized an LSA booth at Family Science Days, a weekend of science activities for people from preschool to the senior center. I think this is the first time language science has been represented there. Activities coordinators are Cecile McKee, Elly Zimmer, and Kathryn Campbell-Kibler. I promise to return with a whole suite of cool linguistics outreach activities!

If you, or someone you know, will be at the AAAS this year, be sure you (or they) come by Booth 36.

Final Call: Sinn und Bedeutung

Sinn und Bedeutung 20 with Workshop: "Experimental Methodology in Semantics and Pragmatics"

9-12 September 2015 -- University of Tuebingen

Tuebingen, Germany

Conference website

***Call Deadline: 15 February 2015***

The University of Tübingen is proud to host the 20th Sinn und Bedeutung.

Invited Speakers:

Luisa Marti (UQML)

Uli Sauerland (ZAS)

Junko Shimoyama (McGill)

-- Special Session --
Semantic Theory Evolves Continuously – Here’s Our Workshop! (STECHOW)

In addition to the oral presentations and poster sessions, there will be a special workshop celebrating 20 years of Sinn und Bedeutung, and to honour Arnim von Stechow and his contribution to the field of semantics:

Special Session Organisers:

Doris Penka (University of Konstanz)

Sarah Zobel (University of Tübingen)

Special Session Speakers:

Sigrid Beck (University of Tübingen)

Irene Heim (MIT)

Barbara Partee (UMass, Amherst)

Viola Schmitt (University of Vienna)

For more information about STECHOW, go here.

There is also a special Workshop: Experimental Methodology in Semantics and Pragmatics, which is accepting abstracts for 20 minute talks. For more information about this workshop, go here.

For questions or enquiries please write to:

sub20.tuebingen at gmail.com

Call for Papers: Conference on Formal Grammar

The 20th Conference on Formal Grammar

Barcelona, Spain,

August 8-9, 2015                 

http://fg.phil.hhu.de/2015/
 

Collocated with the European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information

         ** SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 22, 2015 **

BACKGROUND

FG-2015 is the 20th conference on Formal Grammar, to be held in conjunction with the European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information, which takes place in 2015 in Barcelona, Spain.
Previous Formal Grammar meetings were held in Barcelona (1995), Prague (1996), Aix-en-Provence (1997), Saarbrücken (1998), Utrecht (1999), Helsinki (2001), Trento (2002), Vienna (2003), Nancy (2004), Edinburgh (2005), Malaga (2006), Dublin (2007), Hamburg (2008), Bordeaux (2009), Copenhagen (2010), Ljubljana (2011), Opole (2012), Düsseldorf (2013) and Tübingen (2014).

AIMS AND SCOPE

FG provides a forum for the presentation of new and original research on formal grammar, mathematical linguistics and the application of formal and mathematical methods to the study of natural language. Themes of interest include, but are not limited to,
* formal and computational phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics;* model-theoretic and proof-theoretic methods in linguistics;* logical aspects of linguistic structure;* constraint-based and resource-sensitive approaches to grammar;* learnability of formal grammar;* integration of stochastic and symbolic models of grammar;* foundational, methodological and architectural issues in grammar and linguistics;* mathematical foundations of statistical approaches to linguistic analysis.
Previous conferences in this series have welcomed papers from a wide variety of frameworks.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

We invite **electronic** submissions of original, 16-page papers (including references and possible technical appendices). Authors are encouraged to use the Springer-Verlag LNCS style

The submission deadline is **February 22, 2015**.

Papers must be submitted electronically at EasyChair:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fg2015

Papers should report original work which was not presented in other conferences. However, simultaneous submission is allowed, provided that the authors indicate other conferences to which the work was submitted in a footnote. Note that accepted papers can only be presented in one of the venues.

Submissions will be reviewed anonymously by at least three reviewers. Accepted papers will be published as a volume in the Springer LNCS series, under the FoLLI subline, either separately or jointly with the papers from FG-2016, depending on the number of accepted papers.

IMPORTANT DATES

* February 22, 2015: Deadline for paper submission

*April 19, 2015: Notification of acceptance

* May 31, 2015: Camera ready copies due

* August 8-9, 2015: Conference dates

Chuck Kisseberth talks on Wednesday

Lisa Selkirk writes:

Pioneering phonologist and pioneer in the study of the syntactic conditioning of tonal and segmental phenomena in the sentence in Bantu  languages, Chuck Kisseberth will give a talk on Prosody, Phonological  Phrasing, and Focus in Chimiini next Wednesday in Kristine Yu's  Phonological Theory class in Room N-458 in the ILC.  

For more  information about Kisseberth, please consult  http://www.linguistics.illinois.edu/people/ckissebe.

In order to provide a normal length time slot for a talk of this sort,  it will get an early start at 12:15 (instead of 12:20). The main  presentation will last roughly an hour, until 1:15, and there will be  a half an hour for discussion, ending at roughly 1:45.  Given the  constraints of normal class schedules and the unusual time slot, it's  understandable that people may have to leave during the discussion  session after the talk. Feel free to bring your lunch to the talk.

Julie Legate gives department colloq

Julie Legate (University of Pennsylvania) will give the department colloquium Friday, February 6, at 3:30 in ILC N400. The title of her talk is “Restrictive Phi in a Partial Typology of Noncanonical Passives,” and an abstract follows.

In this talk, I investigate the syntactic structure of noncanonical passives, focusing on the role played by phi-features that restrict rather than saturate the external argument position. Building on previous work by myself and others, I show that voice is encoded in a functional projection, VoiceP, which is distinct from, and higher than, vP. I demonstrate that microvariations in the properties of VoiceP and in the location of restrictive phi-features explain a wide range of noncanonical passives, including agent-agreeing passives, restricted agent passives, accusative object passives, impersonals, and object voice. The analysis draws on data from a typologically diverse set of languages.

Kristine Yu at MIT on Friday

Kristine Yu will give the department colloq at MIT on Friday, February 6 at 3:30 in room 32-141. The title of her talk is “Tonal marking of absolutive case in Samoan,” and an abstract follows.

This paper argues that the ergative-marking Austronesian languageSamoan has a high boundary tone that occurs on the last mora of theword preceding an absolutive argument, and that the source of thistone is inflectional morphology and not lexical representations,pragmatics, syntax, semantics, or phonology. In short, the claim isthat Samoan has an absolutive high boundary tone case morpheme. Thisclaim is surprising for two reasons. First, Samoan is not a tonelanguage. Second, regardless of the source of the absolutive tone,positing it: (1) introduces a boundary paradox since it groups anabsolutive case head with the prosodic constituent preceding theabsolutive argument, and (2) implies that the presence of anabsolutive induces a new phonological constituent.  Nevertheless, Ishow that inflectional morphology must be the source of the absolutivehigh tone based on a converging body of evidence from: (1) thedistribution of the rarely discussed ia particle that optionallyprecedes absolutive arguments and (2) the phonetic and phonologicalanalysis of intonational patterns in the spoken utterances of asystematically varied set of syntactic structures. I also address thepuzzles that the presence of an absolutive tonal case morpheme inSamoan raises.

Postdoc at Leiden University

Aniko Liptak from Leiden University writes:

For the NWO project ‘Ellipsis licensing beyond syntax’, which will start later this year in Leiden, Lisa (Cheng) and me are looking for a PhD student and a postdoc in the field of syntax & prosody – see the two job advertisements on the Leiden University website, here and here .

Call for papers: ACED-17

The English Department of the University of Bucharest will hold its 17th Annual Conference from 4–6 June, 2015. This year our invited speakers are: 

ALESSANDRA GIORGI – University of Venice

GIULIANA GIUSTI – University of Venice 

Papers are invited in:

General Linguistics

Linguistic Theories

Theoretical Linguistics (syntax, phonology, semantics and the interfaces)

Language acquisition

Applied Linguistics 

Presentations should be in English, and will be allocated 25 minutes each, plus 5 minutes for discussion. Prospective participants are invited to submit anonymous abstracts in both Word and Pdf formats. Proposals should be one A4 page (plus an additional page for examples and references), Times New Roman 12, single spaced. Please include name, affiliation and title in the body of your message. 

Conference fee: 50 euro (or equivalent in Romanian Lei)

(covering lunches and refreshments during the conference, but not evening meals)

Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2015

Notification of acceptance: 15 April 2015

Please send proposals (and enquiries) to the following e-mail address: 17.ACED@gmail.com

Annual Review of Linguistics now available

A new online journal, Annual Review of Linguistics, is now available. An introduction to the journal by co-editors Mark Liberman and Barbara Partee can be found here. The table of contents for the first volume is here. A brief description of the goals of the journal follows. Online access is free through January 2016!

The goal of the Annual Review of Linguistics is to offer access to significant developments across our increasingly diverse field, including all scientific approaches to the study of speech, language, and communication, as well as significant applications of linguistics in technology, medicine, law, education, and public policy. Articles are written for an audience that is centered on the core disciplines of academic linguistics, but extends to researchers, teachers, and students in all fields that are concerned with the forms and functions of human language. If we succeed in our mission, articles should be of benefit to both specialists and nonspecialists, to experts as well as to students, to teachers of introductory courses, and to scholars in neighboring fields.

 

Lyn Frazier in Tübingen

Lyn Frazier gave an invited talk, “An act apart: processing not at issue content,” last Thursday (January 22) at a workshop at Tübingen University called “The Division of Labor: A View from Syntax, Semantics, Information Structure and Processing." You can learn more about her talk here, and more about the workshop here.

PRG on Wednesday

Ivy Hauser and Coral Hughto write:

The first meeting of PRG will be next Wednesday, 1/28 at 7pm.  Sang-Im has volunteered to host us at her place in Northampton.  If you would like to discuss or present something let us know, otherwise we will work on planning the rest of the semester and have a popcorn paper discussion (no preparation necessary).  
Also please RSVP so we know how much food to get.

Roeper, Sevcenco and Pearson at LARC on Friday

Jeremy Hartman writes:

Please join us for the first LARC meeting of the semester on Fri, Jan 30 at 11:30AM in N400.  Everyone is invited!  We'll hear from Tom, presenting work with Barbara and Anca:

Tom Roeper (with Anca Sevcenco and Barbara Pearson):Update on Recursion: New insights, ideas, and approaches from the Holyoke Museum  

Friday, Jan 30 @ 11:30AM, Room N400 ILC

Call for paper: Workshop on the Morphological, Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Dispositions

University of Stuttgart, Germany

25 June – 27 June 2015

https://sites.google.com/site/dispositions2015/

The goal of this workshop is to explore questions about the
morpho-syntax, semantics and underlying ontology of words and
constructions used to describe dispositions. The central aim of the
workshop is to develop a better understanding of how existing and novel
insights from different approaches to dispositions can be integrated
into a single theory of dispositions and their linguistic descriptions.

Invited Speakers:
Artemis Alexiadou (Stuttgart)
Elena Castroviejo (Madrid)
Ariel Cohen (Ben Gurion)
Bridget Copley (Paris)
Nora Boneh (Jerusalem)
Hans Kamp (Stuttgart)
Marika Lekakou (Ioannina)
John Maier (Cambridge, TBC)
Christopher Piñón (Lille)
Stephan Schmid (Berlin)
Barbara Vetter (Berlin)

Questions to be addressed by the Workshop:
1. What are the truth conditions of dispositional statements?
2. How are these truth conditions determined compositionally?
3. In what ways can dispositions be linguistically expressed?
4. What are linguistic tests for dispositionality?
5. Are there distinct notions of ‘disposition’ between which a
linguistic theory of disposition description should distinguish?
6. Among the words that can be used to express dispositionality are
nouns, adjectives and verbs. What systematic connections are there
between the ways in which different parts of speech do this, in
particular between deverbal nouns and adjectives and the underlying verbs?
7. What role do temporal and aspectual sentence constituents play in the
verbal expression of dispositions?
8. How do dispositional statements differ from habitual and frequency
statements?
9. What relations are there between dispositions and causality?
10. One of the constructions that can be used to describe dispositions
are middles. (An example: the German sentence `Dieser Satz liest sich
leicht’ (‘This sentence is easy to read’)). Is ‘middle’ a
morpho-syntactic or a notional concept? Where do the argument positions
of disposition-expressing middles come from? What is the
syntax-semantics interface for these constructions?

For a more detailed outline of the Workshop, please consult the Workshop
homepage:

https://sites.google.com/site/dispositions2015/general-information


Call for Papers:
We welcome submissions for a 20 minute talk (followed by 10 minutes of
discussion) or a poster on any topic relevant to the goals of the
workshop. We particularly welcome contributions addressing the
linguistic relevance of philosophical insights on dispositions or the
philosophical relevance of linguistic insights on dispositions.
All submitted abstracts should be written in English and be limited to
two single-spaced pages, complete with examples and bibliography. All
texts should fit within two A4 pages, with 2,54 cm/1-inch margins all
around. Each abstract should start with the title (centered) at top,
above the main text. Use font size 12 throughout (except for examples),
preferably in Times or Times New Roman. The abstract should be
camera-ready. Authors may submit at most one individual and one
co-authored abstract.
Save your abstract as a PDF. Name your abstract with your last name
followed by the suffix pdf (e.g., huang.pdf). Submit your abstract via
the EasyChair Conference, online submission system:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dinl2015

Please leave your name and affiliation out of the abstract. Please
indicate whether your abstract is for a talk, a poster or both.

Deadline for submissions: March 1st, 2015
Notification of acceptance: March 31st, 2015

Contact: dispositions.workshop@gmail.com

Stefan Keine's paper appears

Stefan Keine’s paper “Differential argument encoding by impoverishment,” co-authored with Gereon Müller has now appeared in the volume “Scales and Hierarchies,” edited by Ina Bornkessel-Schleswsky, Andrej Malchukov and Marc Richards.

Congratulations Stefan!

WCCFL Schedule

WCCFL 33 will be at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver March 27-29, and its program has just been released. UMass is well represented:

Stefan Keine presents the paper “Locality Domains in Syntax: Evidence from Processing"

Robert Staubs presents the paper “Computational modeling of non-finality effects on stress typology"

Anisa Schardl presents the poster “Two Kinds of Partial Movement: Evidence from Dholuo and German Wh-Questions."

Jon Ander Mendia presents the poster “Typicality Effects and Distributivity"

Alex Drummond (with Dave Kush) presents the poster “Decomposing the Spanish Causative Reflexive Passive"

In addition, there are many UMass alumnae talks or posters, including:

Elliot Moreton, Jennifer Smith, Amy Rose Deal, Andrew Mckenzie, Ana Arregui, Karen Jesney, and Rose-Marie Déchaine.

Call for papers: International Conference on Prominence in Language

Date: 15-Jun-2015 - 17-Jun-2015
Location: Cologne, Germany
Contact Person: Jakob Egetenmeyer
Meeting Email: prominence.conference@gmail.com
Web Site: http://prominence-conference.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/

Linguistic Field(s): Phonetics; Phonology; Pragmatics; Semantics; Syntax

Call Deadline: 01-Mar-2015

Meeting Description:

Prominence relations establish a ranking between linguistic units, such as prosodic units, arguments of a verb and discourse referents. Prominence is therefore one of the key notions in language and communication: it accounts for prosodic highlighting and the building of linguistic structure and discourse representations. Accordingly, the study of prominence requires an interdisciplinary linguistic approach, involving phonology and phonetics, syntax, semantics and discourse pragmatics. Our conference aims to foster the understanding of the notion of prominence.

The conference will feature plenary talks in the fields of phonetics-phonology, morphosyntax-semantics and discourse by three keynote speakers:

Sónia Frota (Universidade de Lisboa)
Manfred Krifka (ZAS/Humboldt Universität)
Hannah Rohde (University of Edinburgh)

Hosted by the Cologne Center of Language Sciences (CCLS), the conference will take place on the University of Cologne campus from 15 to 17 June 2015. The event is sponsored by the Emerging Group “Dynamic Structuring in Language and Communication” (DSLC), funded by the Institutional Strategy of the University of Cologne (ZUK 81/1).

Organizing Host:

Christiane Bongartz  (chair; CCLS, University of Cologne)

Organizing Committee:

Jakob Egetenmeyer (CCLS, Universität zu Köln)
Jacopo Torregrossa (DSLC, Universität zu Köln)

Convenors:

Martin Becker (Romanistik, Universität zu Köln)
Christiane Bongartz (Anglistik, Universität zu Köln)
Martine Grice (IfL-Phonetik, Universität zu Köln)
Klaus von Heusinger (IDSL, Universität zu Köln)
Nikolaus Himmelmann (IfL, Universität zu Köln)
Beatrice Primus (IDSL, Universität zu Köln)

Call for Papers:

We invite contributions employing quantitative and qualitative research methods, a synchronic or diachronic perspective, as well as psycho- and neuro-linguistic approaches.

A (non-exhaustive) list of topics to be addressed may include the following:

i) The encoding of prominence at the phonetics-phonology interface
ii) Language-specific and universal prominence scales (animacy scale, referentiality scale, thematic role hierarchy, topic scales, etc.)
iii) Factors determining the ranking of entities in discourse (e.g., accessibility, salience, activation, topicality)
iv) Psycho- and neuro-linguistic underpinnings of prominence relations

We ask for the submission of abstracts for oral presentations and posters on prominence-related phenomena by March 1, 2015. Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract per author or two joint abstracts per author. Abstracts should be written in English and not exceed 500 words. Figures, examples and references might be additionally included, but abstracts must not exceed two A4 pages. Please use Times New Roman, 12pt font, single line spacing, and 2.5cm margins. Abstracts should be submitted via EasyChair at the following address:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icpl2015

Important Dates:

March 1, 2015: Submission of abstracts
April 1, 2015: Notification of acceptance
April 30, 2015: Registration open
June 15-17, 2015: Conference

Call for posters: Theory of mind and language

The Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL CNRS UMR 7309, Aix-Marseille University) will be hosting a conference on the theory of mind and language on March 20, 2015. The program for the conference can be found here. They are accepting submissions of abstracts for posters "on any area of scientific domains (experimental psychology, cognitive neurosciences, phonetics, phonology, pragmatics) with a view to improve our understanding of the relationship between ToM and Language. Abstracts should be written in English or French and not exceed 250 words. An extra page may be added for figures and references. Submissions must be sent with the author’s name(s), affiliation(s) and e-mail address(es).” Registration and abstract submission can be found at:

http://mindprogest.sciencesconf.org

The deadline for abstracts is February 15, 2015, and notification of acceptance is February 20, 2015.

Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship

The Writing and Communication Program at Georgia Tech seeks recent PhDs in rhetoric, composition, technical communication, literature, film, linguistics, visual rhetoric/design, and related humanities fields for the 2015-2016 Brittain Postdoctoral Fellowship. The fellowship, renewable up to three years, includes a 3/3 teaching assignment, Instructor rank, and full faculty benefits.

Candidates with experience in writing and communication center research, pedagogy, and/or practice may be offered positions that combine work in the program’s communication center with a 2/2 teaching assignment. Special consideration will be given to candidates who have conducted writing center research and scholarship.

Teaching: Fellows design courses informed by their research interests within a framework of common programmatic outcomes. Writing and Communication Program courses include first-year composition, business communication, and technical communication. All courses emphasize rhetoric, process, multimodality, digital literacy, and humanistic perspectives in a technological world.

Research: Fellows are expected to continue their scholarly agenda and are encouraged to extend it to include research in areas such as pedagogy, multimodality, digital humanities, instructional innovation, and assessment.

Professional Development: Fellows are supported in their professional development toward academic and non-academic career paths through projects such as programmatic assessment, grant writing, administration, publishing, and public relations.

Service: Fellows serve on and chair committees that act as change agents to help shape programmatic initiatives in areas such as innovative technologies, special events, digital publication, curriculum development, ELL and cross-cultural challenges, and community outreach.

Applicants should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, teaching portfolio (minimally, a teaching statement, sample syllabi, sample assignments, and summary of course evaluations/comments; additional elements are acceptable), and three letters of recommendation to hiring@lmc.gatech.edu. Only digital applications will be reviewed. Review of applications begins on February 1, 2015, and continues until all positions are filled, though earlier applications receive more consideration.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. The Writing and Communication Program is especially interested in considering applications from minority candidates.

Call for papers: ESSLI

27th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI 2015) / Barcelona, Spain

August 3rd 2015 - August 14th 2015

Universitat Pompeu Fabra
http://www.esslli2015.org

* Registration to open during January 2015 *

The European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) is an annual event organized under the auspices of the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI). It brings together logicians, linguists, computer scientists, and philosophers to study language, logic, information, and their interconnections. ESSLLI attracts several hundred participants from all over the world, both senior and junior and is a great place to learn and network -- and have a lot of fun in the process.

There will be 42 courses at introductory and advanced levels, as well as 6 workshops, 4 evening lectures, and a week-long student session to foster interdisciplinary discussion of current research. Most courses and workshops are one week long. Courses are offered in the areas of Language and Logic, Language and Computation, and Logic and Computation.

Check our website for details on the program and registration procedure: http://www.esslli2015.org.

Questions? E-mail esslli2015gmail.com

Universal Logic School -- Instanbul

The fifth Universal Logic School will hold tutorials on June 20-24 in Istanbul. Each tutorial will be presented in 3 sessions of 1h15. The tutorials will be given by a wide range of logical scholars from all over the world.

The idea is to promote interaction between advanced students and researchers through the combination of a school and a congress. Participants of the School are strongly encouraged to submit a paper for the congress that will happen June 25-30, just after the school.
The school will open with a round table "why studying logic" and will end with a round table on "how to publish.” For more information, go here.

2015 P Events

Meghan Armstrong writes:

The link below provides a nice list of phonetics and phonology events  this year:

https://medium.com/@PhoneticsWeekly/top-phonetic-events-in-2015-da6624ef65d4

LOT Summer School

The annual Summer School of the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT) provides introductory and advanced graduate training in linguistics. It offers 18 courses in different domains, spread over two weeks.

The following linguists have already agreed to teach a one-week course at the 2015 LOT Summer School in Leuven. Seven more will follow soon.
 
•       Jim McCloskey (UCSC): Syntax
•       Donka Farkas (UCSC): Semantics/pragmatics
•       Peter Jurgec (University of Toronto): Phonology/phonetics
•       Jeanine Treffers-Daller (University of Reading): Bilingualism
•       Martin Hilpert (University of Neuchâtel): Historical linguistics
•       Arie Verhagen (Leiden University): Usage-based linguistics
•       Spike Gildea (University of Oregon) & Dik Bakker (University of Amsterdam): Typology
•       Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (KU Leuven) & Freek Van de Velde (KU Leuven): Quantitative methods in linguistics
•       Koen Jaspaert (KU Leuven) & Kris Van den Branden (KU Leuven): Language and education
•       Myriam Vermeerbergen & Geert Brône (KU Leuven): Language and Gesture
•       Frank Van Eynde (KU Leuven): Sign-based construction grammar

Courses are two hours every day for five days, and can be taken for partial credit (without paper) or full credit (with submission of a paper after the course). Advanced Phd students can also participate in a Research Discussion Group with one of the teachers.
 
OTHER ACTIVITIES
In each week of the Summer School, there will be a poster session, a reception and a dinner. In the first week, an additional evening lecture (the so-called Schultink lecture) is planned. The venue also offers several leisure and sporting facilities.
 
TUITION FEES
Graduate students of the partner institutes of LOT can participate free of charge (tuition fees and accommodation). For other participants the tuition fees are € 175 for one week and € 300 for two weeks. 

Accommodation (including breakfast, lunch, and dinner) at the Summer School venue is offered for 42 to 49 € per person per night, depending on the type of room.

Participants who are not staying at the Summer School venue can sign up for lunch and refreshments during the coffee breaks for € 105 per week.

REGISTRATION
Registration forms and other practical information will be made available on the LOT website in March 2015. In the meantime, if you want to stay up to date on the latest news concerning the summer school, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
 
VENUE
The 2015 LOT Summer School is organized in La Foresta, a conference center (and former monastery) approximately 7 kilometers south of Leuven in the middle of a forest. Not only will all courses take place in La Foresta, the conference center also provides accommodation (including breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for all participants.

If you travel by plane, you can either go to Brussels Airport (Zaventem) or to Charleroi Airport ("Brussels South"), which is the airport that most low-cost airlines use. From Brussels International Airport, there is a direct train shuttle service to Leuven. From Charleroi, there is a bus service to the railway station Brussel Zuid (Bruxelles Midi), which takes 1 hour. From Brussels, there are direct trains to Leuven roughly every 15 minutes. You can consult this website for timetables.
 
LEUVEN ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Jeroen van Craenenbroeck
Lauren Fonteyn
Bert Cornillie
Marijke De Belder
Elwys De Stefani
Karlien Franco
Isabelle Heyerick
Maribel Montero Perez
Steven Schoonjans
Leen Sevens
Jolijn Sonnaert
Benedikt Szmrecsanyi
Kris Van den Branden
Toon Van Hal
 
CONTACT INFORMATION
 
KU Leuven – LOT 2015
Department of Linguistics
Blijde Inkomststraat 21 PO Box 03308
3000 Leuven
Belgium
 
Email: lotschool2015@arts.kuleuven.be
Phone: +32 (0)16 37 79 36 (office hours)
Facebook: facebook.com/LOTsummerschoolleuven
facebook.com/groups/1520350171575146
Twitter: twitter.com/LOT_Leuven_2015

Angelika Kratzer in Rome

Angelika Kratzer is presenting a talk entitled "Il linguaggio dell’incertezza. Come parliamo dell’incerto” on Sunday, January 25, at the prestigious Science Festival in Rome. This year's theme is: “The science and importance of not knowing.” You can find a schedule here.

Linguistics Vanguard -- a new journal

Check out http://degruyter.com/journals/lingvan - the new multimodal  journal for the language sciences.

Linguistics Vanguard is a channel for high-quality articles and  innovative approaches in all major fields of linguistics. This  multimodal journal is published solely online and provides an  accessible platform supporting both traditional and new kinds of  publications. Linguistics Vanguard seeks to publish concise and  up-to-date reports on the state of the art in linguistics as well as  cutting-edge research papers. With its topical breadth of coverage and  anticipated quick rate of production, it is one of the leading  platforms for scientific exchange in linguistics. Full peer review  assures quality and enables authors to receive appropriate credit for  their work. Its broad theoretical range, international scope, and  diversity of article formats engage students and scholars alike.

The inaugural articles are now freely available at  http://www.degruyter.com/printahead/j/lingvan.

We are now soliciting new articles for the journal.
All topics within linguistics are welcome. Linguistics Vanguard  especially encourages submissions taking advantage of its new  multimodal platform designed to integrate interactive content,  including audio and video, images, maps, software code, raw data, and  any other media that enhances the traditional written word. The target  length for contributions is 3,000-4,000 words (plus references and  ancillary material).

Potential contributions can be submitted via the ScholarOne system at  https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/lingvan.

See also De Gruyter Mouton's style sheet  (http://www.degruyter.com/staticfiles/pdfs/mouton_journal_stylesheet.pdf).

Questions about possible submissions or other questions about  Linguistics Vanguard can be addressed to the Editors-in-Chief or Area  Editors at Linguistics.Vanguard

Description:  http://linguistlist.org/images/address-marker.gifdegruyter.com

Editors-in-Chief

Alexander Bergs (Osnabrück University, Germany)

Abigail C. Cohn (Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA)

Jeff Good (University at Buffalo, NY, USA)

Area Editors

Julie Boland (University of Michigan, USA)

Oliver Bond (University of Surrey, UK)

Christine Dimroth (Universität Münster, Germany)

Martin Hilpert (University of Neuchatel, Switzerland)

Thomas Hoffmann (Osnabrück University, Germany)

Gary Holton (University of Alaska, Fairbanks, USA)

Guillaume Jacque (CRLAO, CNRS Paris, France)

Shigetu Kawahara (University of Keio, Japan)

Erez Levon (Queen Mary, University of London, UK)

Caterina Mauri (Pavia University, Italy)

Bhuvana Narasimhan (University of Colorado, USA)

Fey Parrill (Case Western Reserve University, USA)

Eric Potsdam (University of Florida, USA)

Niels Schiller (Leiden University, The Netherlands)

Jason Shaw (University of Western Sydney, Australia)

Evelyne Tzoukermann (MITRE, USA)

Suzanne Wagner (Michigan State University, USA)

Michael Weiss (Cornell University, USA)

Jochen Zeller (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)

Studies in Chinese Linguistics

STUDIES IN CHINESE LINGUISTICS (SCL), an international academic journal edited by T.T. Ng Chinese Language Research Centre (CLRC) of the Institute of Chinese Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, will be published and distributed by De Gruyter Open starting from 2015. 

Comparative works on syntax, semantics, and morphology among Chinese dialects or between a Chinese language/dialect and any languages that contribute to theoretical linguistics are particularly welcome. SCL has been indexed and abstracted in a number of international databases.

Details of SCL can be found on the following websites. 

CLRC: www.cuhk.edu.hk/ics/clrc/

De Gruyter: www.degruyter.com/view/j/scl  

Studies in Chinese Linguistics

T.T. Ng Chinese Language Research Centre

Institute of Chinese Studies

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong

Tracy Conner in the news

http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/cedl-interview-tracy-conner

Call for papers: Formal and experimental pragmatics

Workshop “Formal and experimental pragmatics: methodological issues of a nascent liaison"

Date: 1st – 3rd June 2015

Venue: Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS), Berlin

Aim

After decades of defying broad-coverage formalization, recent years have seen a surge of precise and testable pragmatic theories, which have substantially advanced our understanding of various types of pragmatic inferences, including scalar implicatures, ad hoc Quantity implicatures, M-implicatures, and ignorance implicatures, to name just a few. At least two kinds of approaches can be distinguished according to the level of abstraction at which they operate. Structural approaches are high-level descriptions of pragmatic phenomena in terms of general and abstract constraints, principles or rules. These constraints, principles or rules are often, but not always, motivated by ideas about optimal conversation (think: Gricean Maxims and its offspring) and often target the interpretation of sentences in a default context. On the other hand, interactional approaches try to explain pragmatic phenomena by explicitly representing relevant contextual factors, distinguishing speaker and listener perspectives and interlocutors’ possibly divergent, partial or approximate beliefs about the aforementioned. Structural and interactional approaches should not be perceived as being in opposition, but rather as synergetic, with insights from either positively stimulating the respective other. In this spirit, this workshop is about general methodological problems of connecting formal pragmatics to empirical data, especially data from psycholinguistic experiments. The problem is brought to the surface clearly by interactional approaches, but affects structural approaches too. A prerequisite for these models to work are formally explicit assumptions regarding speaker and listener beliefs about various contextual factors, including, e.g., action alternatives, interlocutor preferences, degree of interlocutor cooperativity, or differential interlocutor knowledge. Therefore, it is vital that empirically driven pragmatic modeling be explicit about how these contextually relevant factors are mapped from the experimental setup onto the formal pragmatic theory.

The workshop will provide a forum for the discussion of methodological questions and related theoretical issues that arise for researchers working at the interface between formal pragmatic theory and experimental data.

Invited Speakers:

Mike Tanenhaus (University of Rochester)

Hannah Rohde (University of Edinburgh)

Call for papers:Authors are invited to submit an extended abstract relevant to the workshop’s topics. Submissions should be anonymous, in PDF format and not exceed 2 pages with standard formatting, including all references, figures, tables etc.Please upload your submission to

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mxprag2015

by 1st March 2015.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

modeling of context-dependence and the subsequent challenges of controlling context in experimental designs

linking functions between model predictions and experimental data from different measures, including meta-linguistic judgments, sentence verification, response times, reading times, eye movements, sentence completion and other production measures

the role of cognitive resource limitations in computational models

the connection between computational models of pragmatics and online pragmatic processing

Contact:

Anton Benz (benz@zas.gwz-berlin.de)

Nicole Gotzner (gotzner@zas.gwz-berlin.de)

Important Dates:

Submission Deadline: 1st March 2015

Notification of acceptance: 1st April 201

Conference date: 1st – 3rd June 2015

Call for papers: Manchester Phonology Meeting

Twenty-Third Manchester Phonology Meeting

28-30 MAY 2015

Deadline for abstracts: 16th February 2015

Special session: 'Syllables', featuring:

* Marie-Helene Cote (University of Ottawa)
* Adamantios Gafos (University of Potsdam)
* Bridget Samuels (Pomona College)
* Peter Szigetvari (Eotvos Lorand University)

Held at Hulme Hall, Manchester, England. Organised through a collaboration of phonologists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester, and elsewhere.

Conference website: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/mfm/23mfm.html

NB: there will also be a FRINGE workshop on the afternoon of Wednesday 27th May, timed to coincide with the mfm, entitled 'W(h)ither OT?' - details of this can be found here:
http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/mfm/23mfm-fringe.html

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BACKGROUND

We are pleased to announce the Twenty-Third Manchester Phonology Meeting (23mfm). The mfm is the UK's annual phonology conference, with an international set of organisers. It is held in late May every year in Manchester (central in the UK, and with excellent international transport connections). The meeting has become a key conference for phonologists from all over the world, where anyone who declares themselves to be interested in phonology can submit an abstract on anything phonological in any phonological framework. In an informal atmosphere, we discuss a broad range of topics, including the phonological description of languages, issues in phonological theory, aspects of phonological acquisition and implications of phonological change.

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SPECIAL SESSION

There is no conference theme - abstracts can be submitted on anything, but a special themed session has been organised for Friday afternoon, on 'Syllables'. This will feature the invited speakers listed (in alphabetical order) above and will conclude in an open discussion session when contributions from the audience will be very welcome.

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ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

**This mentions only a few details - please consult the website for full information: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/mfm/23mfm.html

* There is no obligatory conference theme for the 23mfm - abstracts can be submitted on anything phonological.

* We are using the Linguist List's EasyAbstracts system for abstract submission. Abstracts should be uploaded to the 23mfm's page on the EasyAbstracts site by 16th February 2015: http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/23mfm

* Full papers will last around 25 minutes with around 5 minutes for questions, and there will be a high-profile poster session lasting one and a half hours. When you submit your abstract, you will be asked to indicate whether you would be prepared to present your work (i) either as a talk or a poster paper or (ii) only as a poster.

* We aim to finalise the programme, and to contact abstract-senders by early-to-mid March, and we will contact all those who have sent abstracts as soon as the decisions have been made.

**Further important details** concerning abstract submission are available on the conference website. Please make sure that you consult these before submitting an abstract: www.lel.ed.ac.uk/mfm/23mfm.html

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ORGANISERS

Organising Committee:

The first named is the convenor and main organiser, If you have any queries about the conference, feel free to get in touch (patrick.honeybone@ed.ac.uk).

* Patrick Honeybone (Edinburgh)
* Ricardo Bermudez-Otero (Manchester)
* Yuni Kim (University of Manchester)

Advisory Board:

* Adam Albright (MIT)
* Jill Beckman (Iowa)
* Paul Boersma (Amsterdam)
* Bert Botma (Leiden)
* Mike Davenport (Durham)
* Stuart Davis (Indiana)
* Laura J. Downing (Gothenburg)
* Mark Hale (Concordia)
* S.J. Hannahs (Newcastle upon Tyne)
* Kristine A. Hildebrandt (Southern Illinois)
* Martin Kramer (Tromso)
* Yuni Kim (Manchester)
* Nancy Kula (Essex)
* Aditi Lahiri (Oxford)
* Nabila Louriz (Hassan II, Casablanca)
* Joan Mascaro (UAB)
* Kuniya Nasukawa (Tohoku Gakuin)
* Marc van Oostendorp (Meertens & Leiden)
* Tobias Scheer (Nice)
* James M. Scobbie (QMU)
* Jennifer L. Smith (UNC)
* Nina Topintzi (Thessaloniki)
* Jochen Trommer (Leipzig)
* Christian Uffmann (Duesseldorf)
* Sophie Wauquier (Paris 8)

Treasurer
* Michael Ramsammy (Edinburgh)

Kristine Yu in print

Congratulations to Kristine Yu, whose paper “The experimental state of mind in elicitation: illustrations from tonal fieldwork” has appeared in the volume, How To Study a Tone Language, edited by Steven Bird and Larry Hyman.

Call for papers: ESSLI Student Session

Held during the 27th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information

Barcelona, Spain, August 03-14, 2015

*Deadline for submissions: March 25th, 2015

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=essllistus2015

*ABOUT*

The Student Session of the 27th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI) will take place in Barcelona, Spain, August 3rd to 14th (http://esslli2015.org). We invite submissions of original, unpublished work from students in any area at the intersection of Logic & Language, Language & Computation, or Logic & Computation. Submissions will be reviewed by several experts in the field, and accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters and will appear in the student session proceedings by Springer. This is an excellent opportunity to receive valuable feedback from expert readers and to present your work to a diverse audience.

*ORAL/POSTER PRESENTATIONS*

Note that there are two separate kinds of submissions, one for oral presentations and one for posters. This means that papers are directly submitted either as oral presentations or as poster presentations. Reviewing and ranking will be done separately. We particularly encourage submissions for posters, as they offer an excellent opportunity to present smaller research projects and research in progress.

*SUBMISSION GUIDELINES*

Authors must be students, and submissions may be singly or jointly authored. Each author may submit at most one single and one jointly authored contribution. Submissions should not be longer than 8 pages for an oral presentation or 4 pages for a poster presentation (including examples and references). Submissions must be anonymous, without any identifying information. More detailed guidelines regarding submission can be found on the Student Session website: http://esslli-stus-2015.phil.hhu.de/.

*FURTHER INFORMATION*

Please direct inquiries about submission procedures or other matters relating to the Student Session to P.Schulz@uva.nl and kaeshammer@phil.uni-duesseldorf.de.

ESSLLI 2015 will feature a wide range of foundational and advanced courses and workshops in all areas of Logic, Language, and Computation. For further information, including registration information and course listings, and for general inquiries about ESSLLI 2015, please consult the main ESSLLI 2015 page: http://esslli2015.org.

Call for Papers: TripleA 2

**The Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages (TripleA) 2**

Date: June 03 - 05, 2015

Call deadline: January 25, 2015

Notification of acceptance: February 2015

Location: Potsdam, Germany

Website: semanticsofaaa.wordpress.com

Abstract Submissions: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=triplea2

The Universities of Potsdam and Tübingen are proud to announce TripleA 2, a workshop focusing on the cross-linguistic formal semantics of understudied languages from Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania.

Invited Speakers:

Seth Cable (UMass Amherst)

Kilu von Prince (ZAS, Berlin)

Dejan Matic (MPI, Nijmegen) 

Call for Papers: We invite submissions for 30-minute talks plus 10 minutes for discussion. Submissions should present original formal semantic or pragmatic work on any interpretive aspect of the languages under discussion, ideally originating from own fieldwork. We particularly encourage Ph.D. students to apply. Abstracts must be anonymous, in PDF format, 2 pages (A4 or letter), in a font size no less than 12pt, and with margins of 1 inch/2.5cm. Please submit abstracts via Easy Chair no later than January 25, 2015.

Organizing Committee:

Mira Grubic (Universität Potsdam)

Anne Mucha (Universität Potsdam)

Malte Zimmermann (Universität Potsdam)

Polina Berezovskaya (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)

Verena Hehl (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)

Vera Hohaus (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)

Anna Howell (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)  

Sponsors:This workshop is funded by the projects C1 and A5 of the SFB 833 at Tübingen University and the SFB 632 at Potsdam University. 

WHISC

This will be the last WHISC of the year, and it’s dominated by sad news. The UMass linguistics community lost two of its members last week: Emmon Bach and Pius Tamanji. WHISC will return with the Spring semester at the end of January.