Jon Sprouse at Psycholing

Brian Dillon writes:

Jon Sprouse (UConn Linguistics) will be speaking at the Psycholinguistics Workshop on Thursday 10/16, at 3pm, in the N400. Jon is a syntactician and psycholinguist with significant expertise in experimental syntax. He has worked on island effects and anaphoric dependencies from a variety of different angles, and has done ground-breaking work on the collection and interpretation of intuitive judgments in an experimental setting. He will be leading an informal discussion on acceptability judgment methodology, and will share with us some of what he's learned over the years. All are welcome. See you there!

SS Reading Group

Leland Kusmer writes:

At the end of this month, we will be trying something new: Rather than presenting and discussing our own work, we're going to live up to our name and do some reading!
The idea is this: Each of us will claim one issue of the journal Syntax from the past three years. At the upcoming meeting, each of us who have claimed an issue will give (brief, high-level, handout-free) summaries of the material therein. The idea is to get a better idea of what the current issues of interest are in the field at large.

I have set up a spreadsheet whereby you can claim an issue. We will discuss these at the meeting on Thursday, October 30th. Please only claim an issue if you are reasonably sure you'll be able to attend. Relatedly, if you think you would like to attend, please claim an issue! We would like to have as much of the last three years covered as possible. (I've provided a column to allow two people to share an issue if they so desire, but in the interest of better coverage please try to claim your own if any are available.)

The spreadsheet is here:

http://bit.ly/SSRGReadsSyntax

Thank you in advance for making this experiment a success! ;)

Future Proofing your PhD

On Friday, October 24th, the Graduate School Office of Professional Development will sponsor a “Future-Proofing Your PhD” workshop by Dr. Brenda Bethman, UMass alumna and Director of the Women’s Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.  In this workshop, Dr. Bethman will discuss alternate academic (‘alt-ac’) careers and provide participants with tips to secure employment in these positions. The workshop will kick off with a sit-down networking luncheon, which offers participants a valuable opportunity to connect with campus alt-ac professionals.

Space is limited and registration is required: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AltAcOct24

Additional details are provided below.  Biosketches of the alt-ac professionals participating in the luncheon can be viewed here:  http://bit.ly/AltAcOct24 

Future-Proofing Your PhD Workshop

Friday, October 24, 2014 - Campus Center Amherst Room (10th floor)

1:00 – 2:00pm:  Optional lunch

2:00 – 5:00pm:  Workshop

Workshop Description:  2:00 – 5:00pm

This highly interactive session provides concrete and immediate assistance for graduate students in any discipline wishing to leverage skills developed during doctoral training to land a job that is both fulfilling and full­-time without leaving the academy. Dr. Bethman will stress how participants can think about their Ph.D. training in ways that prepare them for a broad range of jobs within the larger university environment.  Participants should leave this workshop with:

·         a written list of their present (and/or future) academic job skills that can help land them employment in a variety of positions in higher education;

·         a set of concrete strategies for ensuring that the completion of their graduate training will provide them with multiple career options;

·        an applied understanding of the differences between administrative and research/teaching positions;

·        a greater awareness of the broad range of employment offerings available to graduate students and alumni/ae;

·        a greater awareness of the language used in applying for non-teaching academic positions.

Networking Luncheon:  1:00 – 2:00pm

To kick off the workshop, we are sponsoring a complimentary sit-down luncheon with a network of alt-ac professionals here on campus.  These professionals enjoy rewarding careers in higher education and are happy to share their experiences with graduate students who are contemplating their own career paths.  During this luncheon, at least one professional will be seated at each table to facilitate interactive and informal discussion with participants.

Call for papers: ICPhS 2015

Kristine Yu writes:

The first call for papers for International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, the phonetics olympics! Due February 1, 2015. It's only every 4 years.  This year it's in Glasgow.  It's always a really nice conference with a great set of people attending.  There is also a decent amount of phonology and people with phonological interests who attend.  Edinburgh folks are involved, so there's definitely going to be things on sound change/modeling of it.

There's some interesting discussant sessions:
http://icphs2015.info/Sessions.aspx

and a great plenary speaker lineup
http://icphs2015.info/Plenary.aspx

There's also satellite workshops, including, so far, one on developing an IPA like system for prosodic transcription.

http://icphs2015.info/Meetings.aspx

See the previous ICPhS (2011) for its program to get an idea:

http://www.icphs2011.hk/ICPHS_CongressProgramme.htm

Michelle McBride in The Man who Came to Dinner

Michelle McBride will be in the Wilbraham United Players production of The Man Who Came to Dinner in early November. For more information go here.

Position at Univ. of Wisconsin

POSITION:

The English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire seeks to hire a tenure-track faculty member in Linguistics at the rank of Assistant Professor to begin August 24, 2015 (pending budgetary approval). 

QUALIFICATIONS:

Earned doctorate in linguistics, English, or related field. Candidates who are ABD will be considered; however, all requirements for the doctoral degree must be completed by August 24, 2015. The dissertation must focus on a linguistic topic. In addition, the candidate must show evidence of strong scholarship or scholarly potential. Other strong assets include evidence of:

·      Solid foundation in multiple areas of linguistics.

·      Demonstrated excellence in teaching introductory linguistics.·      Demonstrated commitment to teaching first-year writing within an English Department;

·      Demonstrated commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusiveness. 

Additionally, we seek candidates who value liberal education and want to join us as we develop and implement an innovative outcomes-based Liberal Education Core program in fall 2016. 

RESPONSIBILITIES:

The successful candidate will teach courses in linguistics and writing as assigned in the English Department. All department members teach first-year writing (the Blugold Seminar in Critical Reading and Writing http://www.uwec.edu/blugoldseminar/index.htm) every semester. The successful candidate will regularly teach Introductory English Linguistics (Engl 221) and other linguistics courses as well. The typical semester load is 3 courses, equivalent to 11-12 credits. In addition, all department members participate in research and scholarly activities; provide academic advising to students; participate in department, college, and university committee work; and engage in other kinds of service to the university and community. 

DEPARTMENT:

The English Department is a thriving, diverse academic community dedicated to excellence in teaching and learning. The department offers rigorous emphases in creative writing; linguistics; education; critical studies in literatures, cultures, and film; and rhetorics of science, technology, and culture to English majors and minors. There is also a small yet vital Masters program in English. Please see our website for more information: http://www.uwec.edu/english/ 

UNIVERSITY & EAU CLAIRE COMMUNITY: 

The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire promotes diversity and inclusiveness, stewardship and sustainability, leadership and innovation.  With approximately 11,500 students and 1,400 faculty and administrative/professional staff, UW-Eau Claire is consistently rated as one of the top public regional universities in the Midwest and enjoys a national reputation for excellence in liberal education, faculty-undergraduate research, and study abroad. As the UW System's only Center of Excellence for faculty and undergraduate research, faculty and students regularly work side-by-side on original research. 

Often described as Wisconsin's most beautiful campus, UW-Eau Claire's campus spans the banks of the Chippewa River in the heart of Eau Claire, western Wisconsin's largest city. Eau Claire and the surrounding countryside have many scenic rivers, lakes, parks, bike trails and wooded areas where students and community members enjoy seasonal sports, camping, canoeing, and a variety of other recreational activities. 

Eau Claire is a safe, friendly, and affordable community of 65,000 with employment opportunities for family members, outstanding schools for children, and vibrant local food and arts cultures. Eau Claire is 90 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul, which additionally offers world class theater, symphony and chamber orchestras, opera, and major league sports.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: 

Applications are submitted electronically: http://www.uwec.edu/Employment/EnglishLinguisticsF-724.htm   

Please submit the following in PDF format:

·      letter of application,

·      curriculum vita,

·      statement of teaching philosophy,

·      graduate school transcripts (official or unofficial),

·      writing sample (15-25 pages),

·      three letters of recommendation that you arrange to have directly sent to Ms. Vickie Schafer, lazarvr@uwec.edu. 

Your application will not be considered complete until all required documents are received and all required fields are completed.  If you have application questions, please email Dr. Erica Benson, Interim Chair of English, at bensonej@uwec.edu.

To ensure priority consideration, completed applications must be received by Friday, October 24, 2014. However, screening may continue until position is filled. The university reserves the right to contact additional references with notice given to the candidates at an appropriate time in the process. Under Wisconsin law, applicants’ names are subject to public release unless confidentiality has been requested in writing, and names of all finalists must be released. A criminal background check is required prior to employment. 

UMass at IATL 30

The Thirtieth annual meeting of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics meets at Ben Gurion University of the Negev on October 20 and 21. Rajesh Bhatt is an invited speaker; he’ll be presenting a talk entitled “Polar Questions and Disjunction: clues from Hindi-Urdu `kyaa’. UMass alumna Aynat Rubinstein will also be giving a talk, with Edit Doron, entitled “Varieties of alternative unconditionals.” For more information, go here.

First Symposium on Intonation and Tone in the Spanish speaking World

Meghan Armstrong writes:

We hope you can join us for the 1st Symposium on Intonation and Tone in the Spanish-speaking World (InToSpan) on October 10 and 11. 

Plenary talks:

Friday @ 9:45am: José Ignacio Hualde "Perception of Prosodic Prominence in Spanish"

Saturday @ 1:00pm: John Kingston "Otomanguean tones: Typology, Phonology and Phonetics"

You can find more information, including the conference program, on our webpage: http://intospan2014.weebly.com

The Symposium will take place in N400 of the Integrative Learning Center. We hope you can join us!

Roeper talks at LARC on Friday

Jeremy Hartman writes:

Tom Roeper will speak in this week's LARC meeting at 11:30 on Friday in N451.  The title of his presentation is:

"Update Common Ground, Presupposition Failure, Question-under-discussion, and but-implicatures: How does the child get it all co-ordinated"

All are welcome! 

National Linguistics Outreach Committee Co-chaired by Barbara Pearson

Barbara Pearson writes:

Joan Maling, of NSF and LSA, and I have put together a "Linguistics for Everyone" group with members from around the country who have complementary expertise in linguistic outreach activities.  Our goal is to inspire and provide practical advice to colleagues to find venues and create their own outreach activities.

Group members are

Cecile McKee, University of Arizona,

Colin Phillips, University of Maryland, and

Laura Wagner of Ohio State University

--and their colleagues and students.

We have lined up two venues for this academic year where the members of the group will disseminate their successful models to other linguists.  At third meeting, as part of  a general science conference with an established outreach component, we will bring our activities directly to the general public.

--A poster symposium at BUCLD (sessions on November 7 and 8) in Boston

--A session at the LSA (January 9) in Portland, LFE: Tools and Tips for Do-It-Yourselfers (a panel, demos, and associated poster session and "office hours")

--A booth at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Family Science Days (Feb 14 and 15) in San Jose

--"Language for Everyone," hands-on activities to engage attendees from age 5 to 95.

Student participation will be supported by an NSF grant supplement administered by the University of Maryland. Over the course of the project, we will collect materials for the LSA Resource Hub.

Poole at MIT Ling-Lunch on Thursday

Ethan Poole is giving a talk at MIT's Ling-Lunch on Thursday, 9 October entitled "Deconstructing quirky subjects."

Oiry at RALFe

Magda Oiry will be giving a talk, “French embedded clefts,” at the Rencontres d’Automne de Linguistique formelle in Paris on Friday, October 1. (For more information about the conference, go here.) An abstract of her talk follows.

I am arguing for the copula analysis in the cleft construction presented below produced by speakers of Spoken French:

1.     Paul imagine que c’est quoi que Marie a acheté?                  
        P. imagine that it-is what that Marie has bought
        ‘What does Paul believe Marie bought?’

I show that the embedded cleft is not a case of partial movement because the wh-word is base generated and the relative clause restricts its denotation. We have a real cleft in (1) which has exhaustivity and uniqueness requirements, differing in that respect from embedded wh-in situ. I will present that the construction exhibits intervention effects parallel to the ones observed with wh-in situ, and also triggers subjunctive 'spreading', raising the question of the relation between the copula and the relative clause. Finally, data from French native speakers on a forced two-choice task I will present, demonstrate that the presupposition denoted by the cleft, because embedded under a verb, can be suspended.

Position at San Francisco State University

The Linguistics Program in the English Department at SFSU seeks a generalist in theoretical linguistics with a specialization in syntax and preferably, computational linguistics. The position is tenure-track at the assistant professor level. 

Qualifications 

Ph.D. in Linguistics, or assurance that degree work will be completed by August 1, 2015.

Areas of Specialization and Teaching Range 

Candidates should be able/willing to teach graduate seminars in syntax and ideally, corpus linguistics, as well as undergraduate courses in phonology/morphology, syntax, and introductory linguistics.  Ideal candidates could develop courses in computational linguistics/NLP.  Additionally, ideal candidates will demonstrate:

·         Teaching ability at the undergraduate level minimally.

·         Evidence of outstanding research (or research potential).

·         Experience (or appreciation for) working with a diverse student population, including international students, first generation college students, and students from disciplines other than linguistics, namely TESOL and English Education.

Aside from teaching and research, duties will include supervising MA theses, and general advising of graduate/undergraduate linguistics students.  The teaching load at SFSU is 3/3.  SFSU is an equal opportunity employer.

Rank and Salary

Assistant Professor; salary competitive, commensurate with qualifications.  SFSU, as part of the California State University system, provides generous health, retirement, and other benefits, including domestic partner benefits. 

The Department 

The Department of English offers four undergraduate degrees, four graduate degrees, and three certificates.  For further information, please see our website:  http://english.sfsu.edu. 

The University

San Francisco State University, a member of the California State University system, serves a diverse student body of 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The mission of the University is to promote scholarship, intellectual accomplishment, excellence in instruction, freedom, and human diversity. SFSU’s faculty must excel in teaching and demonstrate professional achievement and growth through continued research, publications, and/or creative activities.   The University is an Equal Opportunity employer with a strong commitment to diversity and encourages applications from women, members of all ethnic groups, veterans, and people with disabilities.   

To Apply 

Deadline:  November 12, 2014. 

Submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, 3 recent letters of recommendation, and 2 samples of scholarly work to: Dr. Sugie Goen-Salter, SFSU Chair, Department of English Language and Literature (Attn: Linguistics Search Committee), recruite@sfsu.edu. Pdf. files are preferred.

Initial interviews of top candidates will take place at the Linguistic Society Conference in Portland, Oregon, January 8-11, 2015.

SNEWS website is up

Jon Ander Media writes:

The website for SNEWS 2014 is up. You  can access it here.

As a short reminder, SNEWS is an annual workshop for graduate students  in Linguistics to present their work in an informal setting. Topics of  presentation generally fall within semantics/pragmatics and any related topics (experimental and psycholinguistic investigations,  syntax/semantic interface, etc.). It's a friendly venue for graduate  students (although faculty are welcome to attend!) and it's meant to  encourage the development and exchange of ideas as well as for to meet  people from the neighboring universities.

Call for Papers: Formal Semantics meets Cognitive Semantics

Workshop: Formal Semantics Meets Cognitive Semantics
January 22-23, 2015, Nijmegen

Semantics is a divided discipline. On one side we have Formal Semantics, which has its roots in logic and analytical philosophy (Frege, Montague). Meaning here is viewed as a relation between language and external reality, formalized in terms of reference, truth, possible worlds, etc. On the other side we have Cognitive Semantics, a central part of the Cognitive Linguistics movement, which grew out of dissatisfaction with formal linguistics (in particular, formal semantics and generative syntax) in the seventies (Fauconnier, Lakoff, Talmy). In this framework meaning is primarily a relation between language and the mind, described in terms of mental spaces, conceptual schemata, frames, etc.

Today, the split between the two is as wide as ever. Both are evidently thriving disciplines, but in almost complete isolation from each other. Given the apparent overlap in subject matter - natural language meaning - this lack of interaction is surprising.

In this workshop we want to bring together researchers from both sides who contribute to bridging the gap in some way.

More specifically, we solicit submissions dealing with, for instance,

* Formal semantic approaches to phenomena typically reserved for cognitive linguistics, such as metaphor, polysemy, perspective, narrativity -- especially when they explicitly engage with existing cognitive semantic approaches.

* Cognitive semantic approaches to phenomena typically associated with formal semantics, such as anaphora, quantification or intensional operators -- especially when they explicitly engage with existing formal semantic approaches.

* Hybrid frameworks that combine aspects of both, such as cognitive interpretations of Discourse Representation Theory, or Gärdenfors' Conceptual Semantics.

* Philosophical, foundational and/or historical investigations of the opposition between formal and cognitive semantics.

INVITED SPEAKERS

-Arie Verhagen (Leiden)

- Henk Zeevat (Amsterdam)

- Nicholas Asher (Toulouse) (to be confirmed)

SUBMISSION

We invite submissions of anonymous two-page abstracts (including references etc.) via Easychair. Go to https://sites.google.com/site/formcogsem/

LOCATION

Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

DATES

- Workshop: Thu, January 22, 2015 -- Fri, January 23, 2015

- Deadline for abstract submission: Friday, November 21, 2014- Notification: December 1, 2014

ORGANIZATION

- Lotte Hogeweg (Nijmegen): l.hogeweg@let.ru.nl

- Emar Maier (Groningen): emar.maier@gmail.com

Introduction to Quechua

The Spanish & Portuguese program will offer a new Quechua language class for Spring 2015:

Introduction to Quechua Language and Culture

Instructor: Carlos Molina-Vital

SPAN 396 QCH

MWF 10:10-11:00

Prerequisite: Span 240 or Instructor's permission

Contact cmolinavita@spanport.umass.edu for more information. 

Tom Roeper and Bart Hollanbrandse at Drongo

Tom Roeper writes:

Maaike Verripps (former UMass visitor) every year runs a large Multilingualismfestival in the Amsterdam Public library with a hundred booths and activities. The whole thing attracts 8,000 people. (You can see the description if you google Drongo).

Bart and I decided to do something on recursion — using materials on an iPad (with help from Jon Nelson in Spanish) —- moveable animals made act-out possible.  But we had a lot of trouble getting the program, the ipads, our protocols organized. We did much of it the hour before it started.

Much of what transpired was pretty foggy to me since it was in Dutch, but we slowly got 20 kids to participate.  At the end, with a band and stand-up bilingual comedian, a trio of people started talking and Bart said they asked the audience of 300 presenters if anyone understood the title "Can you put somethinginside itself,” and only 3 people raised their hands (one was Bart). A lot of laughter ensued. Then after a long speech I did not understand, they called us to the stage and said we had won the prize for the best hands-on activity and we are invited to do a two week experiment at the big Science Museumin Amsterdam!

Kind of Amazing — and a good thing for formal linguistics and reaching out to the public.

You can see more here.

Roeper in Berlin

On Sept 29-30, Tom Roeper attended a Workshop on Adversitives in Acquisition at ZAS inBerlin and gave a talk entitled:

"Update Common Ground, Presupposition Failure, Question-under-discussion, and but-implicatures: How does a child get it all co-ordinated?"

PRG on Monday

Ivy Hauser and Coral Hughto write:

PRG will be held tomorrow night at 7:30pm.  We will meet at Presley's place in Northampton.  Ivy will be discussing a couple papers she has read in pursuit of a GP topic and talking about potential ideas.  As always, dinner is provided!

Call for papers: Computational Phonology Workshop

The implications of computation and learnability for phonological theory

Crystallizing a feeling widespread in the field, Mark van Oostendorp (2013) writes: ''It is fair to say that we know much more about sound patterns in human language than people did at the beginning of the 20th Century. At the same time, many phonologists seem to feel that we have not yet reached the standards of some of the ‘hard’ sciences.'' An obstacle to progress seems to be the fact that competing phonological theories are underdetermined by sheer typological and linguistic data. Moving beyond descriptive adequacy, Alan Prince thus proposes that ''rational arguments about two theories’ comparative success […] depend on a broad assessment of their properties.'' Among the formal properties of a phonological theory which are crucial for its comparative assessment are its computability and learnability properties. 

This workshop thus aims at investigating the implications of computation and learnability for phonological theory. The issues addressed include (but are not limited to): the computability/intractability of phonological grammars and the debate among derivational, representational, and constraint-based frameworks; learnability guarantees and the debate between competing modes of constraint interaction; the characterization of phonological patterns within the sub-regular hierarchy and the expressive power of phonological formalisms; the learnability filter and its implications for the evaluation of the typologies predicted by competing phonological theories; methods for constraint induction and the phonetic grounding of the phonological constraints; statistical methods, probabilistic grammars and the divide between categorical and gradient models of phonological competence; the learnability of phonological processes conditioned by prosodic domains and its implications for the syntax/phonology interface. The workshop adopts an inclusive perspective, open to any computational approach and any phonological framework. 

Invited speakers:

Paul Boersma (University of Amsterdam)

Bruce Tesar (Rutgers University)

Important dates:

abstract submission deadline: December 1st, 2014

notification of acceptance: February 15th, 2015

workshop date: April 18th, 2015

Submission:

We invite abstracts for a 20 minute oral presentation followed by a 10 minute discussion. Abstracts should be anonymous and should not exceed 2 pages in length (A4 or letter-size, in 12 pt. font, with 1-inch/2.5-cm margins), including examples and references. The language of the workshop is English. Abstracts should be submitted through the GLOW 38 Easychair page (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=glow38), specifying that the submission should be considered for the workshop.

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/2015glow/home

Organizers:

Joaquim Brandao de Carvalho,

Mohamed Lahrouchi,

Giorgio Magri,

Michela Russo