Call for Papers: SALT

SALT 26

The 26th Semantics and Linguistic Theory conference will take place on May 12–15, 2016, at The University of Texas at Austin. There will be keynote presentations by:

• Sigrid Beck, University of Tübingen
• Edit Doron, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Rick Nouwen, Utrecht University
• Kristen Syrett, Rutgers University

In addition to the regular sessions of SALT 26 there will be a one day special session on Presupposition, with presentations on theoretical, experimental, fieldwork-based, or corpus-based approaches to presupposition, presupposition triggering, or presuppositional inference. We are happy to announce three further invited speakers for this session:

• Lauri Karttunen, Stanford University
• Stanley Peters, Stanford University
• Judith Tonhauser, The Ohio State University

Call for Papers

We invite submission of abstracts for 30-minute oral presentations (with an additional 10 minutes for questions) or posters on any topic in natural language semantics with relevance to linguistic theory. The special session on presupposition has the same submission and reviewing process as the main session.

• Call URL: http://salt.ling.utexas.edu/26/call
• Submission URL: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=salt26

Submission Details

Deadline: December 20, 2015, 11:59 pm Central Standard Time (UTC-6)

As with SALT 25, there will be a short period for authors and reviewers to exchange feedback. Author feedback is scheduled for February 5–12, 2016.

Requirements

Abstracts must be anonymous. The main text should be at most 3 pages (US Letter or A4) in length, including examples, with an optional fourth page for references. The abstract should use a 12pt font and 1 inch margins (for US Letter) or 3 cm margins (for A4) on all four sides. The abstract must be submitted as a single PDF file. These limitations will be strictly enforced. In addition to the intellectual merit of the abstract, clarity and readability will also be taken into account in reviewing.

SALT 26 will feature a poster session. Poster presentations will be published as regular papers in the proceedings. Poster presenters will be asked to give a short “lightning round” presentation prior to the poster session.

Policies

Authors may be involved in at most two abstracts and may be the sole author of at most one abstract.

SALT does not accept papers that at the time of the conference have been published or have been accepted for publication. In addition, preference will be given to presentations that are not duplicated at other major conferences.

If the work or a close variant of it is under submission to or accepted for publication or presentation in any other major venue (such as a national or international conference or a journal/book chapter), we request that the authors create a small section titled “Additional Submission” after the references at the end of the paper. This section should include the other venue(s) for which the work has been submitted, the status of those submissions, and an indication of any major aspects of the SALT abstract not submitted elsewhere. We require that authors update us by email if/when there is a relevant change in the status of other submissions.

Proceedings

All papers presented at the main or the special session of the conference will be published in a SALT 26 volume following the conclusion of the conference, edited at Cornell University and published by the Linguistic Society of America.

Easychair Instructions

On the EasyChair submission page, there are several additional options to pay attention to:

1. A checkbox to indicate if you want your abstract to be considered for poster presentation (if you do not check this, your paper will be considered only for oral presentation).
2. A checkbox to indicate if you would like your abstract to be considered for the Special Session on Presupposition.
3. An extensive (but not comprehensive) list of topics that will be used to help assign reviewers. Select all topics relevant to your paper (we estimate most papers will select 1-3 topics).
4. You may use the Keywords textbox to prioritize or add additional topics.

Submit your abstract here: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=salt26

UUSLAW on Saturday

Smith College will host the “University of Massachusetts, University of Connecticut and Smith College Language Acquisition Workshop” (UUSLAW) on Saturday, November 7. The talks, below, will be in McConnell Hall 103. 

9.30am  Coffee, tea and bagels  Foyer of McConnell

10 am Andie Faber (U.Mass) “Assigning and incorporating grammatical gender in L1 and L2 speakers of gendered languages”

10.40am Emma Nguyen (U.Conn)  "Some thoughts on English-speaking children's comprehension of long passives"

11.20am Ryosuke Hattori  (U.Conn) "On The Majority Influence in English-Chinese Japanese Trilingual Acquisition"

11.50pm Mantoa Smouse (UCT, visiting Smith) “The Acquisition of Disjoint Morphemes in isiXhosa”

12.30-2 Lunch break (we will provide, but other options available locally!) Foyer of McConnell

2pm Kadir Gökgöz  (U.Conn) "IX arguments in code-blending: asymmetries between subjects and objects"

2.30pm Meghan Armstrong (U. Mass) “Catalan-speaking children's multimodal perception of disbelief”

3.10pm Vanessa Petroj  (U. Conn) "Article Distribution in English-ASL Code-blended Whispered Speech"

3:50pm tea break  Foyer of McConnell

4.10pm Renato Lacerda (U.Conn) "Contrastive topicalization in early English: initial questions"

4.40pm Michael Clauss, Tom Roeper and Barbara Pearson (U.Mass)  “Examining restrictiveness and the semantic correlates of recursion”

Dillon in Connecticut

Brian Dillon gives a colloquium talk at the University of Connecticut on Friday, November 6, entitled  "Grammatical illusions in real-time sentence processing: New findings and perspectives."

Barbara Partee at Hornucopia!

Barbara Partee will be at Yale November 6-7 to participate in Hornucopia (https://campuspress.yale.edu/hornucopia/) -- a workshop in honor of Laurence R. Horn on the occasion of his retirement. She'll be giving an invited talk: An ever-so-brief history of semantics, pragmatics, and Larry.

Call for Papers: ACAL 47

2nd Call for Papers: 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 47)

We are now accepting papers for the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, to be held at UC Berkeley, March 23-26, 2016. The general session will take place March 23-25, while a special workshop on "Areal features and linguistic reconstruction in Africa" will take place March 25-26.

General Session

For the general session we welcome papers on any area of African linguistics. The general conference will consist of talks, poster sessions, and plenary talks by prominent researchers on African languages.

Special Workshop: Areal features and linguistic reconstruction in Africa

In addition to the general session, we welcome papers on the special theme "Areal features and linguistic reconstruction in Africa." Africa contains several distinct linguistic areas which are often claimed to hold special importance for the reconstruction of African proto-languages and our understanding of African pre-history. This workshop will focus on exploring the fine-grained areal distribution of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of Africa with debates about genetic affiliation and historical migration patterns as a backdrop.

Deadline

The deadline for submission is Sunday, November 15, 2015 at 11:59pm PST (UTC-8:00). Please be advised that late submissions may not be considered. Because of visa requirements, prospective international participants are urged to submit their abstracts at the earliest date possible. Participants will be notified about the outcome of their submission by early January 2016.

Review process

All abstracts will be blind reviewed for their originality, quality, and relevance. Main session talks will be allocated 20 minutes for presentation with a 10 minute question and answer period. Poster presentations will take place at a dedicated time with no simultaneous oral sessions. An important factor in considering your abstract will be its appropriateness for a 20-minute talk.

Abstract Guidelines

All abstracts should be anonymous and written in English with glosses or translations for words or examples in any other language. Each abstract, including the title and any data in figures or tables, must not exceed 500 words. Data must include interlinear glosses following the Leipzig Glossing Rules. The 500-word abstract should be single-spaced and in a unicode font no smaller than 11 point, and in .pdfor .doc/.docx format. Abstracts must be be submitted electronically via EasyChair. Example abstracts from other conferences can be found on the conference website: linguistics.berkeley.edu/acal47/.

Submission Instructions

Submissions are restricted to one single-authored paper and one co-authored paper per individual. Your abstract must be submitted online using the EasyChair website, which will give you additional instructions, at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acal47. If you have never used EasyChair before, you will need to register at https://www.easychair.org/account/signup.cgi?conf=acal47

Contact Information

For more information, you may email the conference organizers at acal47@berkeley.edu or visit the conference website: linguistics.berkeley.edu/acal47/.

Graduate Program in Linguistics at the University of Kansas

The Linguistics Department at KU has undergone significant changes in the past decade to position itself as a unique program that unites linguistic theory and experimental research. We have particular strengths in experimental phonetics and phonology, first and second language acquisition, developmental psycholinguistics, second language psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, the cognitive neuroscience of language, linguistic fieldwork, and theoretical syntax and semantics. Our faculty members and graduate students study a broad range of languages including understudied language varieties in Asia and the Americas. The department has six active research labs, which have all successfully competed for external funding and provide support for graduate studies. The department has both head-mounted and remote eye trackers, an EEG laboratory, and on the KU medical center campus, cortical MEG, fetal MEG and MRI systems. We offer both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. We invite you to explore our graduate degree program further at our website: http://linguistics.ku.edu/

Funding

The Linguistics Department has several fellowships that will be available in the 2016-2017 academic year. All doctoral students who are admitted to the program will be offered five-year packages that include graduate teaching or research assistantship positions. We will be able to award one Chancellor’s Fellowship, the university's most prestigious graduate award, which offers a very generous funding package. All Ph.D. applicants will be automatically considered for these awards.

Placement

Recent Ph.D. graduates of our program have enjoyed successful job placement as postdoctoral researchers and tenure-track professors at a variety of institutions around the world. Recent graduates have attained postdoctoral positions at universities such the University of Chicago, New York University, University of Reading, Oxford University, the Basque Center on Brain, Cognition, and Language, and tenure-track appointments at colleges and universities such as Indiana University, Mississippi State University, Harding College, Hankyung National University in Korea, and the University of Costa Rica.

Lawrence, KS

Lawrence is a dynamic college town located 45 minutes from downtown Kansas City. We have an art theatre, a local brewery, multiple museums, great coffee shops, several natural foods grocers, many farmers markets, and the most amazing sunflower fields you will ever see.

Apply

Information on admission requirements is available at: https://linguistics.ku.edu/admission

The deadline to apply for the Fall 2016 semester is January 1, 2016.

If you have questions, please contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Dr. Alison Gabriele at gabriele@ku.edu.

Syntax Workshop

Lisa Green writes:

The schedule for the remaining activity is below.

November 6th: Discussion of "How to Neutralize a Finite Clause Boundary:Phase Theory and the Grammar of Bound Pronouns: by Thomas Grano and Howard Lasnik

November 13th: David Erschler talks

November 20th: Open

November 27th: Thanksgiving break (We will not meet.)

December 4th: Rodica Ivan talks

Armstrong in LARC on Friday

Jon Nelson writes:

LARC will meet this Friday, 10/30 at 12pm in N451. All are welcome! Meghan Armstrong will present a talk titled: "Tasks for eliciting expressive prosody in mother-child dyads"

SSRG tomorrow

Leland Kusmer:

Our next meeting will be this coming Monday, October 26th, at 7:30pm as usual. Two of our visitors — Lisa and Georgia — will be presenting their own work. The meeting will take place at the home of Lisa, Michael, and Jai Eun — 183 Bridge Street in Northampton.

As always, please remember to RSVP so that we can get food for you:

http://doodle.com/poll/crziepiqbyqqe3k5

Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Agreement at UMass

The departments of Linguistics and Psychology are hosting a workshop on Agreement Thursday and Friday of this week (Oct. 28 and 30). Registration is free, but if you plan on attending, you should rsvp here. Thursday’s talks are on “Agreement and Linear Order,” and Friday’s on “Experimental and theoretical approaches.” Thursday’s talks are in ILC N400 and Friday’s talks are in ILS S211.

For a schedule and more information, go here.

Tracy Conner in Kentucky

Tracy Conner gave a talk entitled “The Effects of Morphosyntactic Variation on Ellipsis Licensing” at the University of Kentucky last Monday, Oct. 19.

AAUW dissertation fellowships

The American Association of University Women has dissertation fellowships designed to help pay for living expenses in the year that a woman is writing her dissertation. The fellowships are available to citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. They are due on November 15, 2015. You can learn more here.

Tu+ program available

Deiz Ozylidiz writes:

Tu+, aka "the Turkish workshop", is happening on November 21-22, save the date!

The program is available here:

http://campuspress.yale.edu/tuworkshop1/program/

The workshop dinner slash party is hosted by Rajesh in Northampton, on Saturday, Nov. 21. We ask for a small contribution (~$15), because we are unable to fund the event. The money will be used to get food and non-alcoholic beverages, but we encourage everybody to bring fancier drinks. (The price is also likely to vary depending on attendance!) If you'd like to attend, please RSVP here: 

http://goo.gl/forms/1TZAUpCk2N

Alice Harris at Oxford

Alice Harris will be giving an invited talk at Oxford University on Monday, October 26, entitled “Affix order, multiple exponence, and morphological reconstruction."

Roeper in India

Tom Roeper gave a keynote talk at the Thirty-Seventh International Conference of Linguistic Society of India, hosted by the Centre of Linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi last week.  The title of his talk was “Recursion: from theory to acquisition in cross-linguistic Perspective.” He also gave a two week workshop on connecting acquisition experiments to fieldwork on newly researched Northern Indian languages. Tom is a guest at the Institute for Advanced Study at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he is also giving a lecture entitled “Strict Interfaces: Why modern theories of UG entail greater Innateness."

Jill de Villiers presents at LARC

Jon Nelson writes:

LARC will meet this Friday, Oct. 23, at noon in ILC N451 to hear Jill de Villiers present: “How to make a child language assessment in a language with no history of assessments (or even research); some lessons learned.” All are welcome!

Claire Halpert gives talk on Friday

Syntax guru Claire Halpert will give a talk on Friday, Oct. 23, in ILC N400 at 3:30. (The title and abstract follow.) Claire has taken up residence in N472 until October 30, and she can be reached at halpert@umn.edu.

Escape clause

In this talk, I investigate the syntactic properties of clausal arguments, looking in particular at whether A-movement is permitted out of finite clauses and at whether these clauses themselves may undergo movement or establish agreement relationships. In English, argument clauses show some puzzling distributional properties compared to their nominal counterparts. In particular, they appear to satisfy selectional requirements of verbs, but can also combine directly with non-nominal-taking nouns and adjectives. Stowell (1981) and many others have treated these differences as arising from how syntactic case interacts with nominals and clauses. In a recent approach, Moulton (2015) argues that the distributional properties of propositional argument clauses are due to their semantic type: these clauses are type e,st and so must combine via predicate modification, unlike nominals. In contrast to English, I show that in the Bantu language Zulu, certain non-nominalized finite CPs exhibit identical selectional properties to nominals, therefore requiring a different treatment from those proposed in the previous literature. These clauses, also like nominals, appear to control phi-agreement and trigger intervention effects in predictable ways. At the same time, these clauses differ from nominals (and nominalized clauses) in the language in certain respects. I will argue that these properties shed light on the role that phi-agreement plays in the transparency/opacity of finite clauses for A-movement and on the nature of barrier effects in the syntax more generally.

Clauss at MIT

Mike Clauss gives a talk at the Acquisition Lab at MIT Wednesday, Oct. 21, where he will present “Classifying Adjectives without Semantic Information," joint work with Jeremy Hatrman.

Call for papers: Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics

The Department of English, Linguistics/TESOL Program at Central Connecticut State University is pleased to announce the 12th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics, to be held from May 12 to May 15, 2016. As a special feature, we are hosting a one-day session on sign languages in the regions of spoken Altaic Languages.

Invited Speakers:

- Mark Baker (Rutgers University)

- Satoshi Tomioka (University of Delaware)

- Yoonjung Kang (University of Toronto)

2nd Call for Papers:

Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks (plus 10-minute discussions) and for posters on topics dealing with formal aspects of any area of theoretical Altaic linguistics, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics. Additionally, abstracts covering any area of theoretical linguistics of sign languages in the regions of spoken Altaic languages are welcome. We are using Easy Abstracts at the LINGUIST List for the submission and the blind review process.

The address for abstract submission is: http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/WAFL12

Authors are invited to submit anonymous abstracts to any of the following sessions:

- General session: May 13-15

- Special session on sign languages in the regions of spoken Altaic languages: May 12

- Poster session: TBA

Authors should indicate what session they are submitting an abstract to. Abstracts should be a maximum of one page in length excluding references and examples, in 12-point Times New Roman, with margins of at least 2.5 cm/1 inch. There is a maximum of two abstracts per person, one of which must be co-authored.

Important Dates:

- Deadline for submission: November 30, 2015, 11:59pm EST

- Notification of acceptance: January 31, 2016

Language. Cognition and Neuroscience issue on "Cross-linguistic Psycholinguistics"

The special issue of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience on “Cross-linguistic Psycholinguistics,” edited by our own Alice Harris with Elisabeth Nordcliffe and Florian Jaeger has appeared. The issue has thirteen papers on language production and comprehension with a focus on understudied languages. You can learn more here.

Job at Yale

Claire Bowern writes:

The Department of Linguistics at Yale University is seeking to make a tenure-track appointment at the level of Assistant or Associate Professor (without tenure) to begin in Fall 2016.  The area of specialization is open and full consideration will be given to candidates in all areas, but we are particularly interested in candidates in phonetics/experimental phonology and semantics/pragmatics.  Special consideration will be given to candidates whose scholarly interests complement and connect with those of the current department faculty and other departments and research units at Yale. Evidence of successful teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels will also be taken into consideration in making an appointment. Candidates should be assured of completing the requirements for the Ph.D. by the summer of 2016 at the latest.

The application will need to include a current CV, a research statement outlining the candidate's research program, evidence regarding teaching qualifications, and two or three representative pieces of research. Applicants should also arrange for three letters of reference to be submitted to this website. To ensure full consideration, applications should be submitted by November 15, 2015.  We expect to interview potential candidates at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Washington, DC in January 2016 (though attendance at that meeting is not a requirement for consideration).

For more information, go here: http://apply.interfolio.com/31809

Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax

Johan Brandtler writes:

This e-mail is to encourage you to submit any current work on the Scandinavian languages to the December issue of Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax. Over the years, WPSS has proven an invaluable resource for on-going research within Scandinavian linguistics, and each issue is e-mailed personally to more than 200 researchers over the world (in addition to being published on the WPSS webpage).

If you want to contribute to the December issue, please send your paper electronically to this address no later than November 15, 2015.  As you might already know, articles published in WPSS can subsequently appear (revised or unrevised) in other publications.

Please see the WPSS homepage for current and previous issues: 

http://projekt.ht.lu.se/grimm/working-papers-in-scandinavian-syntax/

Job at NYU

The Department of Linguistics and the Center for Data Science at New York University seek an assistant professor to fill a tenure-track position in natural language processing, beginning September 1, 2016, pending administrative and budgetary approval. We are looking for outstanding applicants with demonstrated excellence in teaching and an active research program that uses quantitative, computational methods and other digital technologies to address substantive questions about natural language.

The successful candidate will be expected to engage collaboratively withthe faculty in both the Linguistics department and the Center for Data Science. Responsibilities include teaching in both the CDS and the Department of Linguistics at the undergraduate, masters, and PhD level, aswell as supervising student research.

Review of applications will begin on December 1, 2015. To apply, see the NYU Department of  Linguistics web site. Instructions for electronic submission of documents can be found under the link 'Employment’. Applicants should submit an application including a description of their research program; a teaching statement; curriculum vitae; work samples, and three references.

For further information about this position, please contact Professor ChrisBarker <chris.barker@nyu.edu>.

Syntax Guru arrives

This year's syntax guru arrives on Tuesday, October 13. She is Claire Halpert, from the University of Minnesota. She received her PhD from MIT in 2012 with a dissertation on Zulu agreement and argument structure. She has worked on raising constructions, Aspect and modality, Case, movement typology and locality constraints and the syntax-prosody interface, frequently drawing on her fieldwork in Zulu. You can learn more about her work, and see a likeness, at http://www.tc.umn.edu/~halpert/.

Claire will be in residence until the end of October. Make your appointments early and often -- she can be reached at halpert@umn.edu. Claire will give a talk on Friday, October 23, in N400 at 3:30. A title and abstract follow.

Escape clause

In this talk, I investigate the syntactic properties of clausal arguments, looking in particular at whether A-movement is permitted out of finite clauses and at whether these clauses themselves may undergo movement or establish agreement relationships. In English, argument clauses show some puzzling distributional properties compared to their nominal counterparts. In particular, they appear to satisfy selectional requirements of verbs, but can also combine directly with non-nominal-taking nouns and adjectives. Stowell (1981) and many others have treated these differences as arising from how syntactic case interacts with nominals and clauses. In a recent approach, Moulton (2015) argues that the distributional properties of propositional argument clauses are due to their semantic type: these clauses are type e,st and so must combine via predicate modification, unlike nominals. In contrast to English, I show that in the Bantu language Zulu, certain non-nominalized finite CPs exhibit identical selectional properties to nominals, therefore requiring a different treatment from those proposed in the previous literature. These clauses, also like nominals, appear to control phi-agreement and trigger intervention effects in predictable ways. At the same time, these clauses differ from nominals (and nominalized clauses) in the language in certain respects. I will argue that these properties shed light on the role that phi-agreement plays in the transparency/opacity of finite clauses for A-movement and on the nature of barrier effects in the syntax more generally.

Screening of "Rising Voices" on Friday

Peggy Speas writes:

The Linguistics Department will present a special screening of the film 'Rising Voices:  Revitalizing the Lakota Language’ on Friday Oct. 16, at 3:30pm, in room S404 of the Integrated Learning Center.  We hope to have at least one of the filmmakers on hand for this special screening.  The film will also be shown on Sunday Oct. 18 at the Academy of Music in Northampton, at 4 pm.  If you miss both of these, you can still see the film when it is aired on PBS in November.

For more information about the film, go to http://risingvoicesfilm.com/

For information about the screening at the Academy of Music, go to:

http://aomtheatre.com/event/rising-voiceshothaninpi/

Agreement Workshop @ UMass

Rajesh Bhatt, Brian Dillon and Adrian Staub write:

The Department of Linguistics at UMass Amherst are hosting a workshop on agreement in natural language, aimed at bringing together researchers investigating agreement from theoretical and experimental points of view. The goal of this workshop is to promote cross-talk between researchers investigating agreement from grammatical and psycholinguistic perspectives. This workshop will particularly focus on the ways in which linear order can affect agreement processes, as well as the question of how best to model linear order effects on agreement. Presenters include:

Rajesh Bhatt (UMass Amherst)
Jonathan Bobaljik (UConn)
Brian Dillon (UMass Amherst)
Julie Franck (Université de Genève)
Maureen Gillespie (University of New Hampshire)
Laura Kalin (UConn)
Lap-Ching Keung (UMass Amherst)
Andrew Nevins (UCL)
Adrian Staub (UMass Amherst)
Francesco Vespignani (Università di Trento)
Martin Walkow (MIT)
Jana Willer-Gold (UCL)
Ellen Woolford (UMass Amherst)

The workshop takes place on October 29th and 30th at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. We invite anyone who is interested to attend. Registration is free and all are welcome, but if you plan to attend, please visit our website and RSVP:

http://people.umass.edu/bwdillon/AgreementWorkshop/

Please feel free to contact Brian Dillon (brian@linguist.umass.edu) if you have any questions about the workshop or about visiting Amherst during this time. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you in Amherst!

UMass at NELS

The Forty-Sixth meeting of the North East Linguistic Society is this weekend, Oct. 16-18 at Concordia University in Montreal. Our own Rajesh Bhatt is one of the invited speakers. He will be presenting joint work with Vincent Homer in a paper entitled “PPIs and Movement in Hindi-Urdu.” UMass is well represented in the rest of the program, which can be found here, as well.

Alumnus Jason Overfelt is presenting the paper “When Variable Re-binding Bleeds ACD"

Seth Cable is presenting “The Special Implicatures of Optional Past Tense: The Tlingit Decessive and ‘Discontinuous Past'

Alumna Maribel Romero is presenting “POS and the relative proportional reading of ‘many’ "

Jon Ander Mendia is presenting “Focusing on scales: Superlatives as scalar modifiers"

Alumni Maria Biezma and Kyle Rawlins present “Or what?: Challenging the speaker"

Visitor Andrew Murphy is presenting, with Sampson Korsah, “Tonal reflexes of successive-cyclic movement in Asante Twi"

Alumnus Keir Moulton, with Nino Grillo, has the poster “Event Kinds and Pseudo Relatives"

Stefan Keine and Ethan Poole have the poster “Semantic vs. syntactic intervention in ‘tough’-constructions."

Alumni Paula Menendez Benito and Luis Alonso-Ovalle have the poster “Modal Selectivity in the Nominal Domain: Spanish “Uno Cualquiera"

Jérémy Pasquereau has the poster “Overt movement of comparative quantifiers in European French"

Alumnus Bernhard Schwarz, with Alexandra Simonenko, have the poster “Two accounts of factive islands"

Alumnus Florian Schwarz, with Jeremy Zehr, have the poster “Experimental Evidence for Entailed vs non-Entailed Presuppositions"

Call for papers: Conference on Sonority

CUNY Phonology Forum: CONFERENCE ON SONORITY

Sponsored by the MA/PhD Program in Linguistics at the City University of New York

January 14-15, 2016, at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., New York City
 
CALL FOR PAPERS

Sonority is thought to play a central role in the organization of segments into syllables, and more specifically, to determine the nature of syllable-internal consonant clusters, possible coda segments, syllabic consonants, glide-vowel alternations, epenthesis sites, tone-bearing units, and even, in some languages, sonority-based stress patterns. Investigations into sonority have focused on its role in synchronic grammar, its status as universal and innate, and whether the full sonority scale reflects a single phonetic correlate. The topic has received much attention from both theoretical and laboratory phonologists, and this forum seeks to showcase work from both approaches.

We invite papers from any subdivision of cognitive science such as formal linguistics, language acquisition, neurolinguistics, phonetics, philosophy, psychology, etc. We also encourage diversity in methods so we welcome both formal and experimental approaches to the topic of sonority.

INVITED SPEAKERS:
To be announced.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

We invite both oral presentations and posters. Abstracts should consist of a one-page description of the paper (12pt font) with a second page for references, data and/or illustrations; please specify if you wish to submit for a poster, an oral presentation, or are fine with either. Talks will be 20 minutes with 10 minutes for discussion.

Abstracts should be anonymous, on one A4/letter page (12 pt. font) with a second page for references, data and/or illustrations. Abstracts should be emailed as a .pdf attachment to phonoforum@gmail.com no later than 23:59 EDT on 31 October 2015.

IMPORTANT DATES:
31 October 2015 – deadline for abstract submission1 December 2015 – notification of acceptance14-15 January 2016 – Conference on Sonority

CONTACT:

phonoforum@gmail.com

http://cunyphonologyforum.ws.gc.cuny.edu/

Phonology job at Rutgers

The Department of Linguistics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (New Brunswick) invites applicants for a tenure‐track Assistant Professor position in linguistics with a specialization in phonology, beginning September 1, 2016. We seek applicants whose research interests complement those of the current faculty and who can contribute breadth and depth to the department with respect to research, teaching, and advising at the graduate and undergraduate levels. 

 Applicants must have completed all degree requirements for a Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field by August 31, 2016. 

 Applications should include a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, a research statement, sample publications, a teaching statement, teaching evaluations if available, and three letters of reference addressed to Linguistics Search Committee (address below). The cover letter should include a list of those writing letters of reference and a list of all the materials that have been, or will be, submitted. All materials should be submitted via Interfolio (http://apply.interfolio.com/31902).

 Review of applications will begin November 1, 2015 and continue until the position is filled. For full consideration, applications should be submitted by November 15, 2015. Inquiries about the search should be sent to Ms. Marilyn Reyes (lingdept@rci.rutgers.edu).

 Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer. Qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, military service or any other category protected by law. As an institution, we value diversity of background and opinion, and prohibit discrimination or harassment on the basis of any legally protected class in the areas of hiring, recruitment, promotion, transfer, demotion, training, compensation, pay, fringe benefits, layoff, termination or any other terms and conditions of employment.

 Open until filled

 Application Address:      

Linguistics Search Committee

Dept. of Linguistics, Rutgers University

18 Seminary Place

New Brunswick   NJ 

USA 

 

Application URL:               http://apply.interfolio.com/31902

Contact Information:      Ms. Marilyn  Reyes 

                                                lingdept@rci.rutgers.edu

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)