Call for papers: Dealing with Bad Data

Workshop at the Meertens Institute, Amsterdam (The Netherlands), March 17-19, 2016.

Call for Papers 

In recent years, linguistic theory has significantly expanded its empirical scope. If it has indeed ever been true that theories were built exclusively on the researcher’s own armchair judgements, such is definitely no longer the case. More and more, researchers have turned their attention to databases and corpora of all kinds, to experimental results, and to many other types of data sources. This development went hand in hand with an expansion of the scope of the theories, and collaborations with e.g. historical linguistics, dialectologists, sociolinguists, and psycholinguists. 

We believe that this is a positive development; but we also believe that some issues have not been sufficiently discussed. In this workshop we aim to tackle the issue of how to deal with ‘bad data’: many data that we have to deal with has not been collected with exactly the questions in mind that we want to ask. E.g., we have to use the results of a dialect survey of a few decades ago as the money is lacking to set up a new survey; or certain data are simply lacking for a particular historical period. 

We invite papers on all these issues. Which problems do you encounter in your work, and how do you solve them? Is there any privileged type of data to answer certain questions? Do we need more methodological standards and if so what should they look like? How can we make sure that we keep an integrated theory in which the results of different kinds of empirical explorations can all be accomodated? What is the relation between our methodological choices and central hypotheses of the theory of mental grammar? 

Sketch of the issues 

We distinguish between (at least) four classes of problems: (i) Incomplete data, (ii) Noisy data, (iii) One-sided data, (iv) Conflicting data.  

Ad i), As we mentioned above, both in historical and dialectological surveys, data from some period or some region may be missing, either because (in dialectology) we do not have any data for some area at all, or because for different areas there are different gaps in the data we have. Also, in a lot of typological work, ‘typological gaps’ have been taken as significant: if a certain phenomenon does not occur in any language then the theory should be restricted accordingly. This idea has come under attack: the languages we have actually studied in detail is probably not a representative sample of all languages in the world, and those in turn stand in an unknown relationship to all possible languages.

Ad ii), generative grammar (and many related types of theorizing) has been based on the division between I-language and E-language (or competence and performance), where the research object has been reduced to I-language, among other things for reasons of manageability: E-language is influenced by too many complicated factors. Although native speaker judgements can also not be said to be ‘pure’ reflections of I-language, it seems clear that the ‘new’ kinds of data indeed show the influences of many kinds of noise. 

Ad iii), in many cases, the data that are given do not show everything we need to know. For instance, if we study a historical corpus, we can only learn that certain constructions did occur, not whether or not the constructions that we do not find were ungrammatical, or just did not occur by accident. We would need to complement them by judgment data, but this is obviously lacking. Inversely, people sometimes demand that ‘just’ judgements are not enough and need to be complemented by e.g. Google data on actual occurrences.  

Ad iv): When we combine data from different types of data resources in our research, e.g. judgement data and language use data, these may show conflicting patterns. How do we resolve such conflicts? 

Invited speakers 

The following speakers have confirmed their participation: Paul de Lacy, Paula Fikkert, Paul Kiparsky, Cecilia Poletto, Keren Rice, Christina Tortora, Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck, Charles Yang.This list will hopefully be extended by a few more names. 

Submission of abstracts 

You can submit a 2-page abstract (excluding references) for a 30 minutes talk on EasyChair before December 1, 2015. You are allowed to submit multiple abstracts, but we may decide to only accept one abstract per author, and the choice will be ours.

Deadline of submission: December 1, 2015

Notification of acceptance: December 22, 2015

Website address: http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/baddata/

Phonetics job at UC, Santa Barbara

The Linguistics Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara seeks to hire a linguist specializing in phonetics. The appointment will be a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level, effective July 1, 2016. The ideal candidate will use primary data collected through one or more methodological paradigms to explore the importance of phonetics for our understanding of phonology, and more generally, linguistic theory. We especially seek candidates with expertise in speech perception and/or articulation. Important criteria for this position include research on multiple languages and thorough training in linguistics. The candidate should also have the potential to link the theoretical implications of his or her research to other subdisciplines in linguistics, and to interact with colleagues and students across disciplinary boundaries at UCSB. Candidates must have demonstrated excellence in teaching and will be expected to teach a range of graduate and undergraduate courses in phonetics, phonology, and general linguistics and to contribute to the department’s undergraduate minor in Language and Speech Technologies. For more information on the department, see www.linguistics.ucsb.edu.

A Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field is expected by the time of appointment. To ensure full consideration, all application materials, including letters of reference, should be received by November 6, 2015. The position will remain open until filled. Applicants must complete the online form at https://recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/apply/JPF00566and must submit online the following in PDF format: letter of application, statement of research interests, curriculum vitae, and 2 writing samples. Applicants should request at least 3 academic letters of reference to be sent directly to https://recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/apply/JPF00566 by the November 6 deadline. Materials submitted via fax or hard copy will not be accepted. Inquiries may be addressed to the Search Committee at Phoneticssearch@linguistics.ucsb.edu.

Applicants selected for an interview will have the option of either a Skype video interview with the search committee or an in-person interview at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting in Washington, D.C. (January 7-10, 2016); interviews in either format will be considered equivalent. Our department has a genuine commitment to diversity, and is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching and service. The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

LEARN MORE

More information about this recruitment: http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu

Syntax job at UC, Santa Cruz

The Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) invites applications for a position in syntax, at the (tenure track) Assistant Professor or (tenured) Associate Professor level. Applicants at the level of Associate Professor should have a demonstrated record of teaching and research in syntactic theory that will contribute significantly to this area of the Department’s research profile and teaching mission. Applicants at the level of Assistant Professor should have the teaching potential and research expertise in syntactic theory that will enable them to contribute to this area. We would welcome applicants with a secondary strength in an area that interfaces with syntactic theory.

The successful candidate must be able to work with students, faculty and staff from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds. We are especially interested in candidates who can contribute tothe diversity and excellence of the academic community through their research, teaching, and service.This position carries a five-course equivalency workload, which normally means teaching four courses over three quarters and carrying other academic and service responsibilities.

RANK: Assistant Professor or Associate Professor

SALARY: Commensurate with qualifications and experience; academic year (9-month) basis

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS: Ph.D. or equivalent foreign degree in Linguistics or a closely related field; record of research and teaching. Degree expected to be conferred by June 30, 2016.

POSITION AVAILABLE: July 1, 2016, with academic year beginning September 2016. Degree must be conferred by June 30, 2016 for appointment July 1, 2016.

TO APPLY: Applications are accepted via the UCSC Academic Recruit online system, and must include a letter of application that indicates which level you are applying for (Assistant or Associate), curriculum vitae, research statement, teaching statement (with evaluations, if desired), 1-3 writing sample or publications, and 3-5 confidential letters of recommendation*. Applicants are invited to submit a statement addressing their contributions to diversity through research, teaching and/or service. Documents/materials must be submitted as PDF files.

Apply at https://recruit.ucsc.edu/apply/JPF00302

Refer to Position #JPF00302-16 in all correspondence.

*All letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. For any reference letter provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service, career center), direct the author to UCSC’s confidentiality statement at http://apo.ucsc.edu/confstm.htm

CLOSING DATE: Review of applications will begin on November 16, 2015.

To ensure full consideration, applications should be complete and letters of recommendation received by this date. The position will remain open until filled, but not later than 6/30/2016.

Barbara Pearson in Berlin

Barbara Pearson will be in Berlin October 16 to present joint work with Giang Pham at a conference on the Acquisition of Discourse Phenomena across Languages and Populations (ADILP) held at the Centre for General Linguistics, better known as ZAS,  Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft. Giang Pham was a member of the faculty at UMass in the department of Communication Disorders from 2013 to 2015, but as of 8/2015 is at San Diego State University in their  School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences. Pham and Pearson's topic is "Relations across Age, Vocabulary, and Narratives in Vietnamese and English."  Giang will present a related poster for the two authors, "The Weaker First Language Still Matters: Associations between Vietnamese Vocabulary and English Narratives" at the American Speech Language and Hearing Association Annual Meeting in Denver in November 2015. 

Linguistics job at UC, Irvine

The Program in Language Science (http://linguistics.uci.edu) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) is seeking applicants for a tenure-track assistant professor faculty position. We seek candidates who combine a strong background in theoretical linguistics and a research focus in one of its sub-areas with computational, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, or logical approaches.

The successful candidate will interact with a dynamic and growing community in language, speech, and hearing sciences within the Program, the Center for Language Science, the Department of Cognitive Sciences, the Department of Logic and the Philosophy of Science, the Center for the Advancement of Logic, its Philosophy, History, and Applications, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience & Engineering, and the Center for Hearing Research. Individuals whose interests mesh with those of the current faculty and who will contribute to the university's active role in interdisciplinary research and teaching initiatives will be given preference.

Interested candidates should apply online at https://recruit.ap.uci.edu/apply/JPF03107 with a cover letter indicating primary research and teaching interests, CV, three recent publications, three letters of recommendation, and a statement on previous and/or past contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Application review will commence on November 20, 2015, and continue until the position is filled.
The University of California, Irvine is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.

Phonology job at Wayne State

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>

Postdoc in Applied Cog Sci Lab at Penn State

From this ad:

We’re beginning new, NSF-funded research in the areas of linguistics and computational social science. Generally, we seek to model cognitive processes using large-scale datasets and experimentation. Our recent core contributions have been in psycholinguistic models of natural-language dialogue and in decision making. Our work in cognitive science is fueled by advances in computing. In turn, we translate progress in cognitive science to contributions in computer science, recently in cybersecurity and machine learning. We are looking for a postdoc with training in one or more of the following areas:

cognitive science (e.g., computational psycholinguistics and data-driven modeling),

deep connectionist representations, and

natural language processing and information retrieval.

While the successful applicant is likely to focus on some areas, strong practical computational skills and a research interest in cognition or linguistics are required. Duties will include contributing to a project that combines crowd-sourcing and natural language processing to curate a dataset for peace research. Beyond that, the post-doc is primarily expected to build a strong research agenda, but may also collaborate in the graduate students’ projects and teach. The initial appointment would be for one year and is renewable. Applicants should have a Ph.D. in a relevant area (or be in the final stages of obtaining one) and a strong record of publications.

Matt Wagers spoke on Wednesday

Matt Wagers (UCSC) gave an impromptu talk at the Psycholinguistics Workshop last Tuesday, Oct. 6. The title of his talk was “I see nothing! Processing phonetically-null DPs in a verb-initial language."

SSRG meets tomorrow

Leland Kusmer writes:

As we discussed, we're going to move the date of the next meeting earlier by a week to avoid Columbus Day. As such, our next meeting will be next Monday, October 5th.

For that meeting, we'll be reading two of the papers we overviewed last night. They are:

Sichel, Ivy. (2014) "Resumptive Pronouns and Competition". LI volume 45, number 4.

Syrett, Kristen. (2015) "Experimental Support for Inverse Scope Readings of Finite-Clause-Embedded Antecedent-Contained-Deletion Sentences". LI volume 46, number 3.

Gerry Altman at Cognitive Brown Bag

Gerry Altmann of UConn Psychology will be giving the Cognitive Brown Bag on Wednesday, 10/7, at 12:00 in Tobin 521B.  The abstract for the untitled talk is:

Language is often used to describe the changes that occur around us – changes in either state (“I cracked the glass…”) or location (“I moved the glass onto the table…”). To fully comprehend such events requires that we represent the ‘before’ and ‘after’ states of any object that undergoes change. But how do we represent these mutually exclusive states of a single object at the same time? I shall summarize a series of studies, primarily from fMRI, which show that we do represent such alternative states, and that these alternative states compete with one another in much the same way as alternative interpretations of an ambiguous word might compete. This interference, or competition, manifests in a part of the brain that has been implicated in resolving competition. Furthermore, activity in this area is predicted by the dissimilarity, elsewhere in the brain, between sensorimotor instantiations of the described object’s distinct states. I shall end with the beginnings of a new account of event representation which does away with the traditional distinctions between actions, participants, time, and space. [Prior knowledge of the brain is neither presumed, required, nor advantageous!].

Semantics position at Queen Mary

Queen Mary University of London is one of the world’s leading universities (in the top one per cent of universities in the world according to Times Higher Education). We have an impressive reputation for academic excellence, reinforced by our membership of the Russell Group of leading UK universities, which helps us to attract some of the brightest minds to study, teach and research here. We work across the humanities, social sciences, law, medicine and dentistry, and science and engineering. We are based in a creative and culturally diverse area of east London and are the only London University able to offer a completely integrated residential campus at our Mile End home.

The School of Languages, Linguistics and Film intends to appoint a Lecturer in Linguistics with a focus in Formal Semantics.  The successful candidate will be expected to convene and teach introductory and advanced modules in semantics at undergraduate and MA level, and enrich the graduate and research life of the department by incorporating his or her expertise into the Syntax and Semantics research group. S/he will also be expected to undertake PhD supervision and to contribute to the life of the School in a more general way, for instance by undertaking appropriate administrative and pastoral duties.

The post is full-time and permanent, with an expected start date of 1 September 2016.  Starting salary will be in the range of £39,351 - £41,553 per annum.  Benefits include 30 days annual leave, a defined benefit pension scheme and interest-free season ticket loan. 
Although QMUL does not require candidates to submit their work as part of their application, we recommend that you enclose 1 - 2 representative articles with your application and/or provide us with a web link to access samples of your work online.

Candidates must be able to demonstrate their eligibility to work in the UK in accordance with the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006. Where required this may include entry clearance or continued leave to remain under the Points Based Immigration Scheme.
 
The Department of Linguistics

The department of linguistics was ranked first among UK linguistics departments in the last two national research assessment exercises: REF 2014 and RAE 2008. Present research strengths of the department are within the areas of syntax and semantics and their interface; sociolinguistics, phonetics, and their interface; and neurolinguistic/psycholinguistic perspectives on the above.  As well as a popular MA programme, the department is home to a thriving and vibrant PhD student community.

Within the areas of syntax and semantics, the department boasts an extremely strong research profile with 6 permanent members of the academic staff and a dozen or so active teaching fellows, visitors, and syntax/semantics Ph.D. students.  A full list of staff in the department and their research interests, as well as any additional information about the department, can be found on our website at http://linguistics.sllf.qmul.ac.uk.  Details about the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film can be found at www.sllf.qmul.ac.uk.

For more information, go here.

Randall Munroe's theory of polarity items

http://xkcd.com/1576/

Call for papers: Non-Finite Subjects

The Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes (LLING) is pleased to announce the NonFinite Subjects Conference, to be held at the University of Nantes, Nantes (France) on April 1-2, 2016. The conference aims at providing a forum for discussion of recent, high quality research on the subject position of non-finite structures.

INVITED SPEAKERS:
Misha Becker, University of North Carolina 
Hazel Pearson, ZAS Berlin
Michelle Sheehan, University of Cambridge
Sandhya Sundaresan, University of Leipzig

IMPORTANT DATES: 
Deadline for submissions: December 11, 2015
Notification of acceptance: January 22, 2016
Conference dates: April 1-2, 2016

MEETING DESCRIPTION
This workshop focuses on recent findings that shake the standard assumptions on the syntax and semantics of the subject position of non-finite structures. By scrutinizing data that does not quite fit standard approaches to non-finite subjects, we seek to question the premises and basic tenets underlying standard approaches in order to develop more explanatory analyses of the distribution and interpretation of non-finite subjects.

We invite submission of abstracts on the syntactic, semantic and psycholinguistic aspects of this topic, with potential questions that include, but are not restricted to the following issues:

Lexical subjects freely alternating with PRO.
The classical approach assumes a strict correlation between finiteness and types of subjects: finite constructions display lexical subjects, while non-finite ones only allow PRO (here used pretheoretically) or NP-traces. However, a multiplicity of data contradicts this generalization. 

In many languages lexical DPs alternate with PRO in non-finite structures (see in particular Sundaresan & McFadden 2009), including English gerunds (Reuland 1983, Pires 2007), personal infinitive constructions in Romance (Elordieta 1992, Mensching 2000, Herbeck 2011), and raising structures across a variety of languages (Szabolcsi 2009). 

Structures that are apparently finite allow PRO-like non-overt subjects in alternation with lexical subjects in languages such as Brazilian Portuguese, a phenomenon dubbed 'finite control' (for discussion cf. Rodrigues 2004, Ferreira 2007, Holmberg et al. 2009, Modesto 2011).
What are the theoretical consequences of this non-complementary distribution? Should the PRO vs. lexical subject dichotomy be abandoned?

The standard approach relied on Case theory (Chomsky 1981). But given the aforementioned facts, can Case still be said to play a role with respect to the realizational properties of subjects (cf. Sigurðsson 1991, 2008, Landau 2006, Sundaresan & McFadden 2009)?

'Overt PRO'.
Languages such as Hungarian, Korean, Italian or Portuguese allow overt pronouns with the properties of Obligatory Control PRO (Borer 1989, Szabolcsi 2009, Barbosa 2009). How does the existence of 'overt PROs' fit in current approaches to non-finiteness (and in particular to control/raising)? Should we conclude that the silent nature of PRO is nothing more than a circumstantial fact (cf. Livitz 2013, Sundaresan 2014, Herbeck 2015)? Furthermore, 'overt PROs' appear to be limited to pro-drop languages (Barbosa 2009). Is this a causal correlation? 

Overt PROs are pronouns in many languages, but have reflexive or anaphor-like properties in languages such as Korean (Borer 1989, Lee 2009). Can a unified explanation be given of this cross-linguistic variation?

Beyond infinitives: Degrees of (non-)finiteness and subjects.
From a cross-linguistic perspective, the finiteness vs. non-finiteness dichotomy is intricate. Besides infinitives, languages display other non-inflected structures, such as gerundive constructions, or nominalizations whose subject positions can have properties that contrast with those of infinitives (cf. Pires 2007). Moreover, certain subjunctives, in particular in languages that lack non-inflected constructions, such as Greek and other Balkan languages, have been shown to display OC properties, while in other languages (e.g. Romance languages) the subject of subjunctives is typically obviative (cf. Szabolcsi 2010). A further relevant topic is that of inflected infinitives and the variety of subjects they allow (cf. Sheehan 2013, 2014). How can this range of phenomena be accounted for? How do we correlate the typology of (non-)finiteness and the distribution/interpretation of subjects and what theoretical implications should we draw? 

From a more general perspective on clausal structure, assuming a whole spectrum of non-finiteness (Haddican & Tsoulas 2012, Wurmbrand 2014), is there a corresponding array of subjects and how do the precise features of this continuum interact with the typology of subjects? Are the properties of the C-layer relevant in this regard (Rizzi 1997, Adger 2007)? What about tense and/or agreement (Wurmbrand 2001, 2014, Landau 2004)?

Interpretation of finite vs. non-finite subjects.
Beyond forcing the subject to be non-overt, a further tenet of the standard approach is that non-finiteness also forces the subject to be anaphoric/referentially dependent. To what extent does this correlation hold since, as noted above, in many languages referentially free expressions (overt or null) also occur in nonfinite constructions.  How can these differences be accounted for? 

Should we abandon the idea that (non-)finiteness and referential dependence are causally related? In which case, should we still maintain the hypothesis that the silence of PRO-like expressions is related to their anaphoric nature (cf. Livitz 2013)? Is a notion of 'syntactic dependence' (cf. Sundaresan 2012) relevant for characterizing the types of subjects found in non-finite constructions ? Ultimately, should we consider (at least) PRO and pro to be two facets of a single phenomenon (cf. Herbeck 2015; see also Sundaresan 2014)?

Selection.
There is also the issue of the relation with the higher finite structure. Are the properties of non-finite subjects determined by the matrix verb that selects the non-finite construction (Borer 1989, Sundaresan & McFadden 2009, Pearson 2013, Grano 2015)? What then determines the nature of subjects of e.g. non-finite clauses in adjunct position or subject position?

Experimental evidence.
How do children acquire the intricate patterns of finiteness and the corresponding subject properties? Are the different constructions discussed above processed differently?
More generally, what experimental or psycholinguistic evidence can be brought to bear on the issues discussed above?

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Abstracts should not exceed two pages in letter-size or A4 paper, including examples, tables, figures and references, with 1 inch or 2.5 cm margins on all sides and 12 point font size. The abstract should have a clear title and should not reveal the name of the author(s). The abstracts must be uploaded as PDF attachments to the EasyChair site. Submissions are limited to one individual and one joint abstract per author, or two joint abstracts per author. 

CONFERENCE WEBSITE:
https://sites.google.com/site/nonfinitesubjects/

CONTACT
nonfinitesubjects@gmail.com 

Job at McGill

The Department of Linguistics, McGill University, invites applications for a tenure-track position in syntax or semantics at the rank of Assistant Professor, effective August 1, 2016. The Department welcomes applications from candidates whose research agenda complements the existing strengths of the Department, including candidates whose work draws on data obtained through experimental, quantitative, or computational methods or field methods. General qualifications are a PhD in linguistics or a related discipline and demonstrated excellence in research and teaching in the area(s) of specialization. Duties will include undergraduate and graduate teaching, graduate research guidance and administrative responsibilities. 

Application Deadline: To ensure full consideration, all materials should be submitted by: Friday, November 6, 2015. 

All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply; however, in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority. English is the language of instruction at McGill; knowledge of French is an asset. 

McGill University is committed to diversity and equity in employment. It welcomes applications from: women, Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, ethnic minorities, persons of minority sexual orientation or gender identity, visible minorities, and others who may contribute to diversification. 

Interested candidates should submit an application consisting of a letter of introduction, a curriculum vita, a research statement, a teaching statement, samples of research, and teaching evaluations (if available). Applicants should also arrange for three referees to submit letters of reference. 

The application must be uploaded directly to the application website below (position ID: McGill Linguistics ASSTPROF LING #6070). The letters of reference should also be uploaded to the application website. 

Prof. Bernhard Schwarz Chair, Search Committee Department of Linguistics McGill University 1085 ave Docteur-Penfield Montreal (Que) Canada H3A 1A7 

American International Morphology Meeting 3 at UMass

UMass is hosting the third meeting of the American International Morphology Meeting this weekend. The meeting starts this Friday, October 2, with a tutorial from 2:30 to 5:30 on Building digital resources by Kie Zuraw and Matt Wagers. The talks start on Saturday at 9:00 and the conference ends on Sunday. UMass is represented by Hsin-Lun Huang who will be giving the paper “Argument structure and causatively in Mandarin resultatives,” Kristine Yu who will be giving the paper “Tonal marking of absolutive case in Samoan,” and Jaieun Kim who (with Inkie Chung) will be giving the poster “Locality in Suppletive Allomorphy of GIVE in Korean.” For more information, go here.

SSRG tomorrow

Leland Kusmer writes:

We'll be meeting this coming Monday, the 28th of September, at 7:30. This will be our SSRG Reads LI meeting. If you haven't signed up to present an issue, there are still some unclaimed! You can sign up here:

 

http://bit.ly/SSRGReadsLI

 

We'll meet at the home of Katia and Rodica.

 

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

 

http://doodle.com/poll/6sfvsig4sanr2iqf

Wendell Kimper in Sound Workshop on Friday

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.

Andrew Murphy in Syntax Workshop this Friday

Andrew Murphy will give a talk this Friday in Syntax Workshop, which meets in N458 at 2:15. The title of his talk is "Cumulativity and Opacity in Syntactic Derivations: Arguments for Weighted Constraints."

Workshop on Modality across Categories

Pompeu Fabra University will host the Workshop on Modality Across Categories, November 5th and 6th in Barcelona. Invited speakers include Angelika Kratzer and alumna Aynat Rubinstein (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). The program also includes two talks by alumnus Andrew McKenzie: “Control Incorporation and Intensional Compounds” and (with Lydia Newkirk “Modal restrictions from complement type of ‘almost’."

You can learn more here.

SSILA hosts a special symposium in honor of Emmon Bach

Pat Shaw, past president of SSILA, writes:

Our esteemed and cherished colleague, Emmon Bach, was serving as elected President of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) at the time of his sudden passing in November 2014. In honour of his memory and of his many diverse contributions to scholarship based on his extensive work with the Native languages of North America and with Native communities engaged in language documentation, conservation, and revitalization, SSILA is hosting a special symposium at the 2016 SSILA/LSA annual meetings to be held January 7-10 in Washington, DC.

More details forthcoming in the meeting program.

Keine and Bhatt is accepted to NLLT

“Interpretive Verb Clusters,” a paper by Stefan Keine and Rajesh Bhatt, has been accepted to Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Congratulations!

LSA Spotlight

Alumnus Kai von Fintel is the subject of the Linguistic Society of America's September Member Spotlight.

Call for papers: BLS

Joe Pater is an invited speaker to a special session on Learnability at this year’s meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. A description, and call for abstracts, follows.

 

The 42nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS42) will take place Friday through Sunday, February 5th-7th, 2016, on the UC Berkeley campus. BLS42 welcomes abstract submissions from all areas of descriptive and theoretical linguistics. Abstracts that make use of experimental methods in combination with formal-theoretical analysis are especially encouraged.

The period for submissions is now open. Please submit your abstracts through our EasyChair conference page by 11:59 pm PSTon November 1st, 2015.

General Session

The general session welcomes abstracts from the areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, historical/comparative linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and psycholinguistics.

General Session Invited Speakers:
Liina Pylkkänen, New York University
Meghan Sumner, Stanford University
Judith Tonhauser, The Ohio State University

Special Session: Learnability

The special session will focus on learnability and welcomes papers on theoretical, experimental, computational, and other approaches to the learning of grammatical systems.

Special Session Invited Speaker:
Joe Pater, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Parasession: Austronesian Linguistics

The areal parasession will focus on the languages of the Austronesian family. The session welcomes descriptive and theoretical papers from all areas that draw the majority of their data from Austronesian languages.

Parasession Invited Speaker:
Joey Sabbagh, University of Texas, Arlington

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts are due by November 1st, 2015, 11:59 pm PST. Please submit all abstracts through EasyChair. Authors will be notified of acceptance by December 1st. 

Authors may maximally submit one single-authored abstract and one co-authored abstract. Abstracts, including titles, data, and examples, must fit onto 1 page with 1" margins and 12pt font. References may be included on a separate page. Abstracts must be anonymous; omit names or phrasing (e.g. my paper (Author 20XX)) that would otherwise reveal author identity. Surname-year citations (Author 20XX) that do not identify the author of the abstract as the author of the cited paper are acceptable.

Please fill out all required fields in EasyChair and check at least one box indicating a topic corresponding to the linguistic subfield(s) of greatest relevance to your abstract. All submissions will be anonymized for review.

Links:

Check our website for general information and updates concerning the conference. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter.

Contact:

 

Address correspondence concerning abstract submissions tobls_submissions@berkeley.edu. Address general correspondence to bls@berkeley.edu.

 

Rising Voices screens in Northampton

On October 18, the Academy of Music in Northampton will be screening a documentary on the revitalization of the Lakota language. Go here for information about the film, and a trailer, and here for information about the screening at the Academy of Music. The movie is free, but reservations are required.

UMass at Sinn und Bedeutung

The Twentieth meeting of Sinn und Bedeutung met at the University of Tubingen September 9-12. UMass alumna Junko Shimoyama was among the invited speakers, and there were many members of the UMass community in the program.

Alumnus Florian Schwarz gave a paper (with Jacopo Romoli and Cory Bill) entitles “Reluctant Acceptance of the Literal Truth — Eye Tracking in the Covered Box Paradigm."

Alumna Maribel Romero gave a paper (with Andreas Walker) entitled “counterfactual Donkeys: A Strict Conditional Analysis."

Alumna Amy Rose Deal gave the paper “Mass and count without the signature property: Yudja and Nez Perce."

Barbara Partee along with UMass alumna Irene Heim gave presentations at the workshop for Arnim von Stechow

Alumnus Marcin Morzycki gave a talk entitled “Toward a General Theory of Nonlocal Readings of Adjectives."

Alumnae Ana Arregui and Maria Biezma gave a poster entitled "Discourse Rationality and the Counterfactuality Implicatures in Backtracking Conditionals"

Alumnae Ilaria Frana and Paula Menendez Benito gave a poster entitled “The Hypothetical Future in Italian and Spanish."

Alumna Maria Nella Carminati gave a poster (with Francescas Foppolo and Panzeri) entitled “The Incremental processing of telic predicates."

Alumni Ilaria Frana and Kyle Rawlins gave a poster entitled “Italian Negation and mica in questions and assertions.” 

For more information, go here.

Amy Rose Deal sends us this picture of some of the UMass-ers in attendance. (From left to right: Maribel Romero, Kylito Rawlins, Ilaria Frana, Maria Biezma, Paula Menendez Benito and Amy Rose Deal.)

UMass at TbiLLC 2015

The Eleventh Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation is meeting this weekend at Tbilisi State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. UMass is represented by:

Jeremy Pasquereau who is presenting “Overt movement of comparative quantifiers in European French"

and

Vincent Homer and Rajesh Bhatt who are conducting a workshop on Obligatoriness, as well as presenting a paper “PPIs and Movement."

Ashwini Deo gives department colloquium on Friday

Ashwini Deo (Yale) will give the department’s first colloquium of the semester this Friday, September 25, at 3:30 in ILC N400. The title and abstract of her talk follow.

Title: The Semantic and Pragmatic underpinnings of Grammaticalization Paths

It is a well-established fact that meanings associated with functional linguistic expressions evolve in systematic ways across time. But we have little precise understanding of why and how this happens. We know even less about how formal approaches to the meanings of functional categories like tense, aspect, negation can be reconciled with the typologically robust findings of grammaticalization research. In this talk, I will take a first step towards such an understanding by analyzing a robustly attested semantic change in natural languages — the progressive-to-imperfective shift.

The facts can be described as follows: At Stage 0, a linguistic system L possesses a single imperfective or neutral aspectual marker X that is used to express two contextually disambiguable meanings α and β. At Stage 1, a progressive marker Y arises spontaneously in L in order to express α in some contexts. At Stage 2, Y becomes entrenched as an obligatory grammatical element for expressing α while X is restricted in use to expressing β. At Stage 3, Y generalizes and is used to express both α and β. X is gradually driven out of L. Stage 3 (structurally identical to Stage 0) is often followed by another instantiation of Stage 1, with the innovation of a new progressive marker Z. The trajectory to be explained is thus cyclic. The analysis I provide has a semantic component that characterizes the logical relation between the progressive and imperfective operators in terms of asymmetric entailment. Its dynamic component rests on the proposal that imperfective and progressive sentences crucially distinguish between two kinds of inquiries: phenomenal and structural inquiries (Goldsmith and Woisetschleger 1982). The innovation and entrenchment of progressive marking in languages is shown to be underpinned by optimal ways of resolving both kinds of inquiries in discourse given considerations of successful and economic communication. Generalization is analyzed as the result of imperfect learning. The trajectory — consisting of the recruitment of a progressive form, its categorical use in phenomenal inquiries, and its generalization to imperfective meaning — is modeled within the framework of Evolutionary Game Theory. 

PRG this Wednesday

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.

Jarosz speaks at LARC on Friday

Jon Nelson writes:

LARC will meet this Friday 9/25 at 12PM in N451. All are welcome! Gaja Jarosz will present:

Acquisition of Onset Clusters in Polish: Sonority Sequencing and Input Sensitivity 

SpectroLunch this Friday

The second meeting of the weekly SpectroLunch meets this Friday at 11am in N400. SpectroLunch is a venue in which participants practice spectrogram reading and WHISC has learned that this week’s meeting will feature “Peggy’s Animals pt. 2.” 

Job at University of Potsdam

The University of Potsdam, Human Sciences Faculty invites applications for:

W 1- Junior Professorship for “Variation and Variability in Grammatical Systems”  

The specialization for the junior professorship includes the investigation and modeling of variation and variability in grammatical systems, with an emphasis on non-European languages. Particular attention should be given to structural similarities and differences between different languages, and to how these inform grammar-theoretical or typological modeling. 

 The prospective junior professor will have demonstrated expertise (in research and teaching) in the comparative evaluation of variation and variability of non-European languages. A specialization in morphology and morphosyntax, complemented by expertise in phonology or syntax and/or a specialization in the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, or Afro-Asiatic language families, is desired. 

 A successful applicant has a solid foundation of the underlying theories and models, works with empirical methods in data acquisition and analysis (e.g., systematic field research, corpus research, experimental methods, etc.), and can demonstrate how grammar-theoretical or typological modeling can be advanced through the inclusion of cross-linguistic variation and within-language variability. 

 The junior professor will teach undergraduate and graduate courses in linguistics at the University of Potsdam. Furthermore, it is expected that the applicant will partake in the research activities of the Research Area in Cognitive Sciences at the University of Potsdam, and will actively contribute to the acquisition of larger joint research projects. Very good command of the English language is a prerequisite for the position, experience with international cooperation and the acquisition of third-party funding are desired. 

 According to State law (§ 45 Brandenburgisches Hochschulgesetz - BbgHG), preconditions for the appointment as a Junior Professor include a completed university education, teaching skills, and a special qualification for academic work, which is usually demonstrated though an outstanding PhD thesis. International experience, an outstanding publication record and a teaching record are advantageous. The total time for completion of the PhD and subsequent post-doc employment should not have exceeded six years. 

 Appointments are made according to §§ 40 and 46 BbgHG. The appointment as a civil servant or a public employee will be made for up to four years in the first instance and can be extended to up to 6 years in total, conditional upon a positive evaluation. 

The University of Potsdam strives to increase the proportion of women in research and teaching and specifically encourages female applicants to apply for this position. Handicapped applicants will be given preference in case of equal suitability. People with an immigration background are specifically encouraged to apply. 

 The University of Potsdam offers dual career support and coaching for newly-appointed professors: http://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/neue-beschaeftigte/information-for-newly-appointed-professors.html

 Applications (with a presentation of your research interests, curriculum vitae, copies of academic certificates and documents, a list of publications, a list of conducted courses, a list of externally funded projects) should be sent to the University of Potsdam ausschreibungen@uni-potsdam.de no later than 1^st of October 2015.

Job at University of Delaware

Position Title Assistant Professor in Neurolinguistics or Psycholinguistics

Location Newark, DE

Job Title: Neurolinguist/psycholinguist

Job Rank: Assistant Professor

Specialty Areas: Neurolinguistics, Psycholinguistics

Description: College of Arts & Sciences,Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science

Tenure-track Faculty Position in Neurolinguistics or Psycholinguistics

The University of Delaware Department of Linguistics and CognitiveScience invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position in Neurolinguistics or Psycholinguistics at the rank of Assistant Professor.  The position is expected to begin September 1, 2016.  The successful candidate will have a Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field, with a specialization in neurolinguistic or psycholinguistic research on language disorders and/or first language acquisition.  The Ph.D. must be in hand prior to the start of the appointment.

We seek individuals who demonstrate the drive and vision to develop an innovative, cutting-edge, and internationally recognized researchprogram in neurolinguistics or psycholinguistics with a focus onlanguage disorders and/or first language acquisition. Preference will be given to scholars who can contribute to our undergraduatepre-professional program in speech/language pathology.  Applicants who can conduct fundable research at the new UD Multi-Modal Imaging Center (http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2015/apr/functional-mri-042415.html) ,scheduled to open in the spring of 2016, are also particularly encouraged to apply. This 11,600 square foot research facility will house a Siemens 3T Magnetom Prisma scanner, and the suite will beequipped with state-of-the-art MR-compatible visual and auditory stimulation equipment, eye-tracking, response devices, and physiological measurement hardware.

The successful applicant will be expected to teach a subset of thefollowing undergraduate courses: First Language Development,Introduction to Communication Disorders, Psycholinguistics, Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism, and general courses inlinguistics and cognitive science.  They will also be expected tooffer graduate courses in areas of their specialization. The teaching load is 2+2.  Other duties include supervision of graduate students, undergraduate student advising, involvement in curricular development,and performance of University and Department service.

The Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science is housed in the University of Delaware’s College of Arts andSciences. The department runs an internationally-renowned PhD programin Linguistics, a Master’s degree in Linguistics and CognitiveScience, a Bachelor of Science degree in Cognitive Science, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics. The Department also offers,via a university-wide Cognitive Science committee, an interdisciplinary Certificate in Cognitive Science as part of graduate degrees across schools and departments. The department has state-of-the-art laboratories in phonetics, phonology, and psycholinguistics, including a 128-channel ERP lab. The department is part of a university-wide cognitive science community, including adiverse set of researchers from various departments and colleges.  The Department also has ties to a new Clinical Master’s Program in Communication Sciences and Disorders, anticipated to begin admitting students in academic year 2016-2017. This program includes a new Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic (http://sites.udel.edu/cscd/clinic/), to open fall 2015.

The University of Delaware combines a rich historic legacy with acommitment to education and the latest in advanced technology. With external funding exceeding $200 million per year, the University ranks among the top 100 universities in federal R&D support for science and engineering. Enhanced by state-of-the-art facilities, research is conducted across all seven colleges and numerous interdisciplinary institutes and centers. Other relevant facilities on campus include the new 103,000 square foot Health Sciences Complex, a state-of-the-art facility that includes labs for human-based studies and an active outpatient clinic; a 194,000 square foot Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Laboratory; and the DelawareTechnology Park, where entrepreneurial and academic research labs are co-located. The Delaware Health Sciences Alliance (DHSA), a partnership among the University of Delaware, Christiana Care HealthSystem, Nemours / Al duPont Hospital for Children, and Thomas Jefferson University, provides infrastructure and opportunity for innovative clinical and translational collaborations.
 
Applicants should apply online at www.interfolio.com and submita cover letter, a statement of current and long-term research plans, a statement of teaching experience and philosophy, a CV, three representative research publications, and three letters of recommendation. 

Inquiries, but not application materials, should be emailed to Arild Hestvik, Chair of the Search Committee, hestvik@udel.edu. Review of applications will begin on October 18, 2015, and will continue until the position is filled.

Application Deadline:  18-Oct-2015  (Open until filled)

Call for papers: SNEWS 2015

Jon Ander Media writes:

The call for SNEWS 2015 is out. As always, the workshop is meant to be   a friendly venue for graduate students in Linguistics to present their  work in semantics. Presentations about ongoing research are most  welcome. On average, the goal is to have  2-3 presenters from each  school.

Those interested in presenting should let me know by September 30th, although titles are not due until October 31st. There is no need to send an  abstract and no need to provide a title (for the moment). This year SNEWS will be organized and hosted by Harvard.

Below you can find the relevant information:

- What: The talks should be 20 min + 10 min for questions.

- When: November 21, 2015

- Where: Department of Linguistics, Harvard University

- Who can present: Graduate students at the participating schools: Brown, Harvard, MIT, UConn, UMass, Yale.

- Who can attend: Graduate students, post-docs, visitors at the participating schools; faculty are encouraged to attend!

- What to expect: A day in which you get to hear about what other fellow graduate students are doing and chat with them over breakfast, lunch, and during coffee breaks (food and beverages provided). An evening which you are warmly invited to spend at a party hosted by one of our graduate
students.

- Short description of SNEWS:

The Southern New England Workshop in Semantics (SNEWS) is an annual workshop for graduate students in Linguistics to present their research and receive feedback in an informal setting. Topics of  
presentation generally fall into any of the following categories (broadly defined): semantics, pragmatics, semantics/pragmatics interface, experimental and psycholinguistic investigations into semantic/pragmatic phenomena, etc. The workshop is meant to encourage the development and exchange of ideas through friendly interaction between students and faculty from different universities in the area. Universities that have participated in the past include UConn, UMass, Harvard, MIT, Brown, and Yale.

Cog Sci Mixer

Deniz Ozyildiz writes:

In order for us, the grad students involved in the UMass Cognitive Science initiative, to get acquainted with each other, both personally and professionally, it's a good idea to get together and chat! So I'm trying to set up a date for the first CogSci mixer of the fall semester. We had a few similar events last year and they were successful and fun!
If you're interested in attending the mixer, please fill out the doodle poll below. http://doodle.com/poll/88w4u3ee9f4ecd83

We'll meet at a local cafe or restaurant. Everybody will have the opportunity to present themselves and give a quick, informal overview of their work and their interests. 

If you can't make it on any of these dates, but you're interested in meeting everybody, please let me know so that we can arrange for another date.

Please also circulate the information to your department and to everybody who you think might be interested. People can also sign up to be on our website and mailing lists:
http://blogs.umass.edu/cogsci/contact-and-mailing-lists/

Call for papers: ECOM

The Expression, Communication, and Origins of Meaning (ECOM) Research Group is pleased to announce that it will be hosting its second annual interdisciplinary workshop this November on "Expressive Language: Semantics, Pragmatics, and Origins", to be held November 19-20, 2015 at the University of Connecticut. 

The workshop will explore theoretical analyses — offered from a variety of perspectives (such as metaethics, philosophy of language, psycho- and socio- linguistics, and cognitive psychology) — of systematic ways in which language is used to express emotions and other attitudes, through, e.g. slurs, pejoratives, laudatives, exclamatives, and evaluative terms.

Our invited speakers are:

Timothy Jay (Psychology, Massachusetts College)

Anna Papafragou (Psychology, Delaware)

Dean Pettit (Philosophy, UNC-Chapel Hill)

Ljiljana Progovac (Linguistics, Wayne State)

Mark Richard (Philosophy, Harvard) 

We also invite abstracts of short papers by junior researchers (25-30mins) on the topics of the conference. Please submit abstracts in PDF format to Nathan Kellen by October 20th.  (Authors of accepted papers will be notified during the following week.) 

Elan Dresher last Friday

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.

LSA's Program is published

The Ninetieth meeting of the Linguistic Society of America takes place Jan. 7-10 in Washington D.C. and their conference schedule has recently been posted. You can find information about the conference, as well as information about accommodations and registration, here. UMass is well represented:

Alumna Gillian Gallagher presents “Rapid phonotactic generalization: Behavioral evidence and a Bayesian model” with Tal LInzen and Timothy O’Donnell.

Meghan Armstrong presents  "Epistemic stress shift in American English" with Scott Schwenter.

Barbara Pearson and Tom Roeper presents “Linguistic and Pragmatic Ambiguity of Quantified Expressions in Mathematics Word Problems"

Robert Staubs, Coral Hughto and Joe Pater present “Grammar and learning in syntactic and phonological typology” with Jennifer Culbertson.

Alumnus Jonah Katz presents “Cue integration and fricative perception in Seoul Korean” with Sarah Lee.

Alumna Cherlon Ussery presents “The Typology of Mandarin Infinitives” with Lydia Ding and Rebecca Liu

Nick LaCara presents “Verb phrase movement as a window into head movement"

Alumnus Jeff Runner presents “Locality effects in long-distance reflexive retrieval: the case of Mandarin Chinese ziji” with Yuhang Xu.

Stefan Keine presents “Positions versus items in the syntax of superraising” 

Joe Pater, Lisa Sanders, Robert Staubs, Benjamin Zobel and alumna Claire Moore-Cantwell present “Phonological learning in the laboratory: ERP evidence"

Aleksei Nazarov presents “Ambiguity of analysis: Learning Dutch stress with input inference"

Robert Staubs presents “Learning morpheme segmentation with distributions over underlying representations"

Thuy Bui presents “Menominee Agreement: Two probes for Two Hierarchies"

Alumnus Florian Schwarz presents “Local Accommodation and Presupposition Trigger Class: Results from the Covered Box Task” with Hezekiah Akiva Bacovcin and “Entailed Presupposiitons: Experimental Evidence for a Distinction Between Triggers” with Jeremy Zehr and “Two Types of Definites in American Sign Language” with Ava Irani.

Ivy Hauser presents “VOT variation and perceptual distinction"

Tom Ernst presents “The Semantics of Domain Adverbs” with Timothy Grinsell

Alumna Maria Gouskova presents “Sublexical phonotactics of English -er suffixes” with Suzy Ahn

Alumna Jennifer Smith presents “Segmental noun/verb phonotactic differences are productive too"

 

The LSA Program

Last weekend, our own Rajesh Bhatt assisted Marlyse Baptista, David Robinson and  alumnus Andries Coetzee in putting together the LSA program. He has sent WHISC the following photo of the process.

Memorial for Emmon Bach, and department picnic, this Saturday

The department picnic occurs this Saturday, September 19, and will be preceded by a memorial tribute to Emmon Bach, long-time pillar of the department and a beloved colleague, teacher, and friend to many of us. You may have received a separate invitation from John Kingston to that -- let me know if you didn't so that we can make sure you will get future notices in case of any changes (e.g. if it rains); in any case, everyone is welcome to both parts of the combined event. The Emmon remembrance will include music, reminiscences, tributes, to which everyone is welcome to contribute, planned in advance or spontaneously. If you're interested in contributing some live music, contact Kristine Yu (krisyu@linguist.umass.edu).

The Emmon event will start at 2, and the picnic proper will start at 3:30. In case of rain, the Emmon event will probably be moved to the department, but the picnic will be at 50 Hobart Lane rain or shine.
If you're coming from out of town, you don't have to contribute to the potluck part -- just let me know and we'll make sure there's plenty! 

And please let me know of people who should be added to the mailing list; and at the same time you can invite them to come (and urge relevant people to get themselves onto the ling-colloq mailing list.)

For more information about the picnic — directions, etc, — go here.

SSRG meets tomorrow, Monday September 14

The first meeting of the Syntax/Semantics Reading Group meets at 7:30pm, Monday the 14th, at Leland Kusmer’s apartment in Northampton. Food will be provided by the GLSA.

Sound Workshop on Mondays

John Kingston writes:

Sound Workshop will meet Mondays 11:15-12:05 in N451, starting this Monday, September 14.

Chuck Clifton speaks on Wednesday

Chuck Clifton (Psychology) will give the first cognitive brown bag talk this semester on Wednesday, September 16, at noon in Tobin 521B. The title and abstract follow.

How readers and listeners use their knowledge of grammar - and how they go beyond it

The realization that our ability to produce and comprehend language requires use of detailed and elaborate knowledge of syntax fueled the cognitive revolution of the 1960s. Over the following 20 years, we learned a great deal about how readers and listeners used this knowledge in real time to interpret sentences. The success of these analyses of how language comprehension was driven by grammatical knowledge led to competing analyses, emphasizing how various sources of extra-grammatical knowledge contribute to language comprehension. In the years since the peak of the debate between these contrasting positions, more nuanced approaches have developed. These approaches extend the analysis of grammar's contributions to incorporate effects of prosody, semantics, and pragmatics, and recognize that different types of grammatical relations might be processed differently. Other recent approaches have gone beyond grammar to consider the role language statistics might play in comprehension. Currently, my colleagues and I are exploring how language users employ their knowledge of what speakers and writers are likely to intend, and what kinds of errors they are likely to make in producing language, to arrive at interpretations of sentences that violate the grammatical requirements of the language.

In the first part of this talk, I will summarize the changing views of how we comprehend what we read and hear, providing illustrations of theoretical claims and examples of experimental evidence. In the second part of the talk, I will describe some of the work my colleagues and I are currently doing on what we call "acceptable ungrammaticality," in which readers' and listeners' interpretations of language are guided by what they know of how writers and speakers can misuse the grammar of their language.

LARC this Friday

Jeremy Hartman writes:

LARC will meet this Friday 9/18 at 12PM in N451.  All are welcome!  Rita Mathur, visiting us from Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University, Pune, India, will present:

"Study of Parameter Setting: evidence from a few case studies of Hindi and English speaking bilingual children aged 2-7 year old"

Lisa Green: LSA Fellow

WHISC is pleased to announce that Lisa Green has been named to the class of 2016 Linguistic Society of America’s Fellows. She joins nine other of “the field’s leading linguists,” including UMass alumnus Kai von Fintel. You can learn more here.

Alice Harris on the road

Alice Harris was in New York at a leadership workshop for the American Council of Learned Societies on Friday, September 11, and from there, has gone to Austin Texas where she is an invited speaker at a Workshop entitled "Historical Linguistics and Typology: Assessing a Partnership.” She is giving her paper, "Affix Order, Multiple Exponence and Morphological Reconstructions,” today. You can learn more here.

Department colloqs schedule announced

Katerina Vostrikova and Stefan Keine write:

GLSA is excited to announce the colloqs schedule for this semester:

Ashwini Deo September 25

Howard Lasnik November, 13

Laura McPherson November, 20

Jon Sprouse December, 4

Masashi Hashimoto goes to Hiroshima

Congratulations to UMass alumnus Masashi Hashimoto, who has accepted a postdoc at Hiroshima University.

Tom Ernst in Language

Congratulations to Tom Ernst, whose paper “Modification of Stative Predicates” has been accepted for publication in Language.

Phonology Reading Group

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.

Seth Cabe at Triple A

Seth Cable gave the talk, “Graded Tenses in Complement Clauses: Evidence that Future is not a Tense” at the conference “The Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages” which was hosted by the University of Tübingen June 3-6. You can learn more here.

Call for papers: Prosody and Information Structure

*Prosody and Information Structure in Stuttgart (PINS)*
March 22-23, 2016

*Aim*

Starting out from the (not uncontroversial) assumption thatinformation-structural categories are universal and definable inabstract interpretive terms, this workshop aims at bringing togetherresearchers interested in the prosodic manifestation ofinformation-structural categories within and across languages, includingboth cross-linguistic comparisons as well as language contact situationsof various kinds (L2, FL, Heritage languages).
The workshop welcomes both semantic-pragmatically oriented as well asprosodically oriented contributions. We particularly invite experimentaland corpus-based studies.

*Important dates*

Deadline for Submission: October 11, 2015

Notification of Acceptance: November 16, 2015

Workshop: March 22-23, 2016

*Invited Speakers*

- Sasha Calhoun (Victoria University of Wellington)

- Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie (LLF CNRS, Université Paris Diderot)

- Caroline Féry (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

- Michael Wagner (McGill University Montréal) (to be confirmed)

*Call for papers*

We invite the submission of abstracts for oral or poster presentations.Abstracts should be anonymous, in English, and should not exceed onepage (2.5 cm margins, 12pt font size), with an extra page for examples,figures and references. Please submit your abstract as a pdf documentusing EasyChair.

*Info*

http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/events/PINS/index.en.html

*Topics of interest*

Topics include, but are not limited to:

- Recent advances in the theory of information structure

- Which are the information-structural categories that are expressed prosodically in a language (including both L1 and L2 varieties)?

- Is the prosodic marking of information structure interpreted categorically by listeners (in both L1 and L2 varieties)?

- How does rhythm interact with the prosody of information structure?

-Are there prosodic effects which have no pragmatic interpretation? (Forexample: are prenuclear accents optional? Are there cases of deaccentuation which occur for purely phonological, non-meaning-related,reasons?)

- How do the results of production and perception studies on the prosody of information structure find their way into prosodic annotation systems for a language? How important is it that a pitch accent categorization reflects meaning differences?

- How can the results obtained from controlled studies be transferred to corpus data of spontaneous speech?

- What are semantic-pragmatic contexts suitable for the elicitation ofI S-prosody beyond question-answer pairs and/or explicit contrast structures?

- Which distinctions of referential information status (e.g. coreference anaphora, bridging anaphora, deixis, newness of discourse referents) and lexical information status (e.g. word repetition, synonymy, hypernymy, meronymy, discourse-newness of content expressions) are expressed by prosody (including both L1 and L2 varieties)?

- By means of which cues (pitch accents, phrasing) are these categories expressed?

- What kinds of speaker bias can be expressed in positive and negative polar questions, and how is this influenced by prosody?

- What is the role of implicit Questions under Discussion (QUDs) in the determination of information structure, and how can they be used in experimental and corpus linguistics?

- What is the interplay between discourse structure and information structure? What effects does discourse structure have on prosody?

- What is the relationship between at-issueness and prosody? How is not-at-issue material (e.g. appositions or evidentials) realized prosodically?

WHISC returns

Classes start this week, and with them so does WHISC. As in previous years, WHISC posts news about the goings-on in the Linguistics department at UMass. The posts usually appear on Sundays. If you have an item that you would like to see in WHISC, send it to umass.whisc@gmail.com by the Friday preceding the Sunday you’d like to see it posted. (The staff at WHISC are slow and long in the tooth. They will appreciate a bit of lead time.)

Welcome back!

Town Meeting on Friday

The introductory Town Meeting occurs this Friday (Sept. 11)  in the department seminar room (ILC N400) at 3:30. This gathering is a chance for us to welcome the new members of the department, and for them to get their first look at us. Photographer Brian McDermott from Communication and Journalism be on hand at 2:30 to take pictures. If you have not had your picture taken for the department directory, or if you would like to replace the one we have, please come at 2:30. 

Department Picnic and memorial to Emmon Bach

Barbara and Volodja write:

This year the picnic, which occurs on Saturday September 19, will be preceded by a memorial tribute to Emmon Bach, long-time pillar of the department and a beloved colleague, teacher, friend to many of us. You may have received a separate invitation from John Kingston to that -- let me know if you didn't so that we can make sure you will get future notices in case of any changes (e.g. if it rains); in any case, everyone is welcome to both parts of the combined event. The Emmon remembrance will include music, reminiscences, tributes, to which everyone is welcome to contribute, planned in advance or spontaneously. If you're interested in contributing some live music, contact Kristine Yu (krisyu@linguist.umass.edu).

The Emmon event will start at 2, and the picnic proper will start at 3:30. In case of rain, the Emmon event will probably be moved to the department, but the picnic will be at 50 Hobart Lane rain or shine.
If you're coming from out of town, you don't have to contribute to the potluck part -- just let me know and we'll make sure there's plenty! 

And please let me know of people who should be added to the mailing list; and at the same time you can invite them to come (and urge relevant people to get themselves onto the ling-colloq mailing list.)

For more information about the picnic — directions, etc, — go here.

Call for papers: Tonal Aspects of Languages 2016

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.

Semantics Workshop

Seth Cable writes:

I’m writing to let you all know that the meetings of the Semantics Workshop this fall will be at the following time-space coordinates:

Wednesdays, 12:20 - 1:10

Room N451 (of the Integrative Learning Center)

Our first meeting will be Wednesday (September 9th). We’ll discuss our general goals for the semester, and set a preliminary agenda.

Call for papers: Speech Prosody 2016

Speech Prosody 2016 will be held in Boston May 31-June 3, 2016. This year’s theme is “Prosody and Individual: Unity and Difference Within and Across Speech Communities.” The deadline for submission of regular papers is November 15. (They are also accepting proposals for Special Sessions. The deadline for those proposals is September 15.) You can learn more about the conference here.

Psycholinguistic Workshop

Amanda Rysling writes:

The Psycholinguistics Workshop this semester will meet on Thursdays from 11:30 to 12:45 in N400.
There are also going to be some talks or events not at that time, which will be announced on the ling-psych mailing list. Anyone who wants to present something, whether at a daytime meeting or during a special evening/reading group session, should let me know. 

Call for papers: LabPhon 15

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.

Phonology Grant Group meetings

Joe Pater writes:

We’ve settled on Thursday 4-5 as the meeting time for the phonology grant group. Our first meeting at that time will be Thursday the 24th, but we’ll have a meeting this week at the special time of 1:45 Friday (the 11th). I’l try to get N400, but if I can’t, I’ll e-mail the ling-phonology list (newcomers can sign up to this list and others here: http://www.umass.edu/linguist/news/mailer.php.html).

Syntax Workshop

Rajesh Bhatt and Lisa Green write:

The Syntax Workshop this semester will meet on Fridays from 2:15 to 3:05, location TBA. Our first meeting will be on Friday September 11. We will attend to organizational matters and then we already have a speaker lined up for the meeting! An announcement will be forthcoming.

Program for AIMM 3 is posted

UMass will host the third meeting of the American International Morphology Meeting October 2-4. UMass is represented by:

Hsin-Lun Huang presents the paper “Argument Structure and Causativity in Mandarin Resultatives."

Kristine Yu presents the paper “Tonal Marking of Absolutive Case in Samoan."

Jaieun Kim (with Inkie Chung) presents the poster “Locality in Suppletive Allomorphy of GIVE in Korean."

You can learn more here, and register here.

The Rhythmic structure of songs and finger drums

http://blogs.umass.edu/pater/2015/08/28/finger-drums-for-everyone/

AMP 2015 Program announced

The program for the 2015 Annual Meetings on Phonology has been announced, and features talks and posters by the following UMassers:

Alumna Claire Moore-Cantwell gives a talk entitled “The phonological grammar is probabilistic: new evidence pitting abstract representation against analogy."

Alumna Gilian Gallagher gives a talk entitled “Vowel height and dorsals: allophonic differences cue contrasts"

Faculty Gaja Jarosz gives a talk entitled “Learning opaque and transparent interactions in Harmonic Serialism."

Alumnus Wendell Kimper gives the talk “Asymmetrical generalisation of harmony triggers” (Wendell has been at the University of Manchester for the past three years, explaining his quaint orthography.)

Alumna Karen Jesney will give the poster “On the relationship between learning sequence and rate of acquisition"

Alumna Presley Pizzo, with faculty Joe Pater, will give the poster “Learning alternations affect phonotactic judgments"

Alumna Suzanne Urbanczyk will give a tutorial on fieldwork on indigenous languages.

The conference meets October 9-11 at UBC in Vancouver. You can learn more here.

Program for GALA 2015 is posted

The Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes is hosting the twelfth meeting of the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition this weekend: September 10-12. UMass is represented by:

Alumna Suzi Lima, who with Peggy Lis and Jesse Snedeker, is presenting the paper “Acquiring the denotation of object-denoting nouns"

Alumnus Bart Hollebrandse, who with Natasa Knezevic and Hamida Demirdache, is presenting “Vowel epenthesis in children’s oral and written productions of consonant clusters."

Michael Clauss is presenting “Free relatives in acquisition: Mislabeling or Generalized Move-Wh rule?

Tom Roeper and Barbara Pearson, who with Anca Sevcenco, is presenting the poster “The acquisition of recursive locative PPs and relative clauses in child English."

Bart Hollebradse, who with Marleen Kremer and Angeliek van Hout, is presenting the poster “Asymmetries in Dutch children’s development of definiteness."

You can learn more here.

Sang-Im Lee-Kim at Haskins

Sang-Im Lee-Kim will be giving a talk on May 28th at the Haskins Lunch Talk Series, entitled “The role of static vs dynamic cues in vowel transitions: the case of sibilant place contrast."

Weir goes Norwegian

Andrew Weir writes:

I am very happy and excited to say that, in August, I will be taking up a position as Associate Professor in Modern English Language and Linguistics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

[If anyone is wondering about the apparently rapid promotion: there are only two ranks in the Norwegian system, associate professor and full professor. The Norwegian title is "Førsteamanuensis".]

Cable at AAA

Seth Cable is giving an invited talk at a workshop sponsored by the Universities of Tübingen and Potsdam called “The Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages.” The workshop is hosted by the University of Potsdam, June 3-5. For more information, go here.

Call for papers: The Amsterdam Colloquia

Angelika Kratzer writes:

The Amsterdam Colloquia aim at bringing together linguists, philosophers, logicians, cognitive scientists and computer scientists who share an interest in the formal study of the semantics and pragmatics of natural and formal languages.

The 2015 edition will be held at the University of Amsterdam on 16-18 December.

The 20th Amsterdam Colloquium will feature two workshops on Negation and on Reasoning in Natural Language; and one evening lecture, jointly organized with the E.W. Beth Foundation.

Furthermore, there will be a special issue of the journal Topoi with selected contributions presented at the Colloquium, both in the main programme and in the workshops.

For information, go to http://www.illc.uva.nl/AC/AC2015/

Kristine Yu at AFLA 22

Kristine Yu is giving her talk “Tonal marking of absolutive case in Samoan,” at AFLA 22 this Thursday, May 21, at McGill University in Montreal. You can learn more about the conference here.

UMass at Manchester

UMass is well represented at the 23rd Manchester Phonology Meeting, which is taking place May 28-30. 

Alumna Nancy Hall is giving the paper “The phonetics of epenthetic vowels under emphasis spread in Levantine Arabic."

Alumna Karen Jesney is giving the paper “Weighted scalar constraints and implicational process application” with Brian Hsu

Gaja Jarosz is giving the paper “Phonotactic probability and sonority sequencing in Polish initial clusters."

Alumnus Elliott Moreton is giving the paper “Implicit and explicit phonology: what are artificial-language learners really doing?” with Katya Pertsova

Kevin Mullin and Joe Pater are giving the talk “Harmony as iterative domain parsing."

Aleksei Nazarov is giving the paper “Learning as a window on lexical versus grammatical representation of stress."

Alumna Jennifer Smith is giving the paper “Experimental evidence for aggressive core-periphery phonology in Guarani” with Justin Pinta

Alumnus Michael Becker is giving the talk “Fewer grammars, more coverage for the English past tense.” with Blake Allen.

Alumna Gillian Gallagher is giving the talk “The features content of phonotactic restrictions."

Alumnus Brian Smith is giving the talk “A unified constraint-based account of the English indefinite article."

Alongside the Manchester Phonology Meeting there is a workshop entitled “W(h)ither OT?” on May 27th at which several UMassies will be speaking:

Joe Pater gives the talk “Violable constraints in Classical Universalist Phonology and beyond."

Wendell Kimper gives the talk “What changes and what stays the same: is Harmonic Serialism with positive constraints still Optimality Theory?"

and

Michael Becker gives the talk “MaxEnt as a baseline theory of grammar." 

Pater, Pizzo and Staub

Joe Pater writes:

I have been in Paris this year at the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, on a Research in Paris Fellowship from the City of Paris, hosted by Sharon Peperkamp. Presley Pizzo will be visiting the LSCP next week to give a presentation on Speriment, software she has written for designing web-based experiments that are hosted by PsiTurk.

https://github.com/presleyp/Speriment

https://psiturk.org

In case you happen to be in Paris, the meeting will take place the Salle de Réunion in the Pavillon Jardin of the LSCP at 29 rue d’Ulm from 14:00 to 16:00 next Wednesday May 20th. 
I was also an international chair at the LabEx-EFL, and June 16th in Paris he will be participating in a roundtable with two other LabEx-EFL chairs, Mark Liberman and Adrian Staub. Adrian, of UMass Cognitive Psychology, will also be giving a series of lectures in June (http://www.labex-efl.org/?q=en/node/305)

Cable in Alaska

Seth Cable will be heading to Alaska to conduct fieldwork on Tlingit this August.  Seth anticipates working with James Crippen and Rose Marie Dechaine from UBC.

Pearson and Roeper at Rutgers

Barbara Pearson will present a joint paper with Tom Roeper entitled "Cross-linguistic Ambiguity of Quantified Expressions: Implications for Mathematics Teaching and Testing of Bilingual Students" at the Tenth International Symposium of Bilingualism (ISB10), conveniently hosted by Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, May 20 to 24.  En route to NJ, she will attend the NSF sponsored workshop at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown Manhattan on "Bilingualism and Executive Function: An Interdisciplinary Approach," May 18 and 19.

More information about ISB10, including the full program is found at http://isb10.rutgers.edu/

Kristine Yu in Leipzig

Kristine You will be delivering her paper “Tonal marking of absolutive case in Samoan” on June 12 at the conference “Morphosyntactic Triggers of Tone: New Data and Theories,” hosted by Leipzig University. For more information, go here.

Roeper at Caen

Tom Roeper will be presenting a poster at a conference on “The pragmatics of Negation and Polarity” at the University of Caen on May 19-20. The poster, with Masaaki Kamiya from Hamilton College is entitled “Neg-feature extraction from nominalization: NPI and tag question.” For more information go here.

ETAP 3

The third meeting of Experimental and Theoretical Advances in Prosody is being hosted by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign May 28-30. Kristine Yu will be giving a talk with Ed Stabler entitled “A parsing model for crowding, speech rate and syntax of tone.” Mt. Holyoke professor Mara Breen will also be giving a talk, with Johanna Kneifel, entitled “Rhythmic context affects on-line ambiguity resolution in silent reading.” And UMass alumna Emily Elfner will be giving her talk “Prosodic juncture strength and syntactic constituency in Connemara Irish.” For more information, go here.

Yu off to New Zealand

Kristine Yu will be conducting fieldwork on Samoan in Auckland, New Zealand this July.

UMass at WAFL11

The Univesity of York is hosting the eleventh meeting of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics Jun 4-6. UMass will be represented by

Deniz Ozyildiz (graduate student) who will be giving the talk “Move to mI, but only if you can."

Masashi Hashimoto (new alumnus!) who will be giving the talk “A syntactic-semantic analysis of the experiencer restriction in Japanese."

Mioko Miyama (visiting scholar) who will be giving the talk “A Choice Function Analysis of the EitherOr Construction in Japanese."

and

Peter Sells (UMass alumnus) who, with Shin-Sook Kim, will give the talk “Digging Deeper into non-modifying Constructions in Japanese and Korean."

Roeper in Toronto

Tom Roeper gave the plenary lecture at a workshop on “Complexity and Recursion in Acquisition” hosted by the University of Toronto last Thursday (May 14). The title of his talk was “Is there a Recursion Trigger: Adapting Merge, Search, Label to an acquisition model."

WHISC goes on holiday

This is the last WHISC post for the 2014-15 year. Look for the next post in the third week of August.

Barbara Partee gives UConn Lecture Series

This week, Barbara Partee will be giving a series of lectures at the UConn Lecture Series entitled "The History of Formal Semantics.” There will be an interlude by Vladimir Borschev and Barbara Partee on the integration of formal and lexical semantics.

Lecture 1: Logic and language: A history of ideas and controversies

Lecture 2: The starring role of quantification in the history of formal semantics

Lecture 3 (Borschev and Partee): Ontology and the integration of formal and lexical semantics

Lecture 4: Psychologism and Anti-psychologism in the history of formal semantics

For information and program, go here.

Christopher Baron gets Baggett

Graduating linguistic major Christopher Baron has been awarded the highly prestigious Baggett Fellowship at the University of Maryland. Baggett Fellowships are full-time post baccalaureate research positions and many illustrious linguists have started their careers as Baggett Fellows. For more about the Baggett programs, go here, and for past fellows, research assistants and summer scholars, go here.

Congratulations Christopher!

Barbara is invited speaker at Pronouns: Syntax, Semantics, Processing

Barbara will be part of a mini-summer school event on pronouns in Moscow June 16-19. She'll be one of three invited lecturers, along with Colin Phillips and Eric Reuland, giving four lectures each on various aspects of anaphora. There will also be a mini-conference with submitted papers. The event is hosted by the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Barbara will, probably predictably, lecture about the history of theories of anaphora. For more information, go here.