Luiz Amaral and Andie Faber at Acquisition Lab/LARC today

Acquisition Lab / LARC meeting is today, Monday November 14 at 5:15 in the Partee Room

Luiz Amaral and Andie Faber will give the talk:

"A Unification-based Approach to Nominal Agreement in Adult Second
Language Grammars"

Everyone is Welcome!

Lisa Green elected to LSA Executive Committee

Lisa Green has been elected to the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America. Her three-year term will begin this January.

Congratulations Lisa!

The UMass invasion of NLLT continues

UMass is taking "Natural Language and Linguistic Theory" by storm. Last week, WHISC reported two articles that have been accepted by that august journal authored by members of the linguistics department (faculty and students alike), and this week WHISC learns that two other UMass papers have been accepted. They are:

"Synchronic explanation," by Paul de Lacy and John Kingston (A critique of Blevins's Evolutionary Phonology and an argument for a synchronic phonological grammar).

and,

"Passivization, Reconstruction and Edge Phenomena: Connecting English and Japanese nominalizations," by Angeliek van Hout, Masaaki Kamiya and Thomas Roeper.

Congratulations!

Cable talks in the undergrad linguistics club meeting

Jeremy Cahill writes:

Seth Cable will be giving an informal presentation on the Tlingit language for the Ling Club on Tuesday, November 15th at 5:15 in the Partee Room (South College 301).

All interested undergrads are invited.

Ling Club contact email: jccahill@student.umass.edu.

UMass at the BU Language Acquisition Conference

Tom Roeper writes:

From BU, Bart Hollebrandse Angeliek van HOut,  and Kazuko Yatsushiro
were co-authors with 17 and 25 others, respectively, of two reports
from the COST project, run by Uli Sauerland, which was a European outgrowth
of the DELV project.  The papers dealt with co-ordinated experiments
on Tense and Quantification across all of those languages.  The DELV
figured prominently in a new COST project on Bililngualism and SLI presented
by Cornelia Hamann in the plenary lecture at BU as well.

Ana Perez presented a paper on Recursion developing a Canadian wing to
the UMass work on the project,  And Jill deVilliers and Tom Roeper
presented their recent work on Tense and Truth in the (fortunately) endless
saga of wh-movement in acquisition.

A video on East Sutherland Gaelic

Barbara Partee writes:

There is a wonderful video -- not new, but I just learned about it last
week, about Nancy Dorian's work on the dying language East Sutherland
Gaelic. The video itself is in Gaelic (including Nancy's), with English
subtitles. It's really interesting on many levels, can be fascinating for
students as well as for linguists. (It may make you cry, though.)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7647046783946085652

If you lose this message, you can easily find the video just by googling on
Nancy Dorian. (She was already famous for her first-of-its-kind book
Language Death.)

Emily Elfner defends Dissertation on Tuesday

Emily Elfner will defend her dissertation: "Syntax-Prosody Interactions in Irish" on Tuesday, November 8th at 4PM in Bartlett 206.

All are welcome!

Peter Klecha speaks in SRG on Thursday.

Anisa Schardl writes:

This Thursday, Peter will be talking at SRG about imprecision and
modality.  It'll be at Barbara's, 50 Hobart Lane in Amherst, starting
at 6pm.  I'll bring dinner, you bring money or your own dinner.  If
you need me to pick up something special (e.g. vegan, lactose-free)
for you, email me and let me know.  This will be one of your last
chances to talk to Peter about his work before he leaves, so be there!

Paper by Peggy Speas and Jill deVilliers accepted to NLLT

WHISC has learned that Natural Language and Linguistic Theory has accepted "Direct Evidentials, Case, Tense and Aspect in Tibetan: Evidence for a General Theory of the Semantics of Evidentials," a paper co-authored by  Kalsang, Jay Garfield, Margaret Speas and Jill deVilliers.

Congratulations!

The Guru: before and after

Angelika Kratzer writes:

Here are two pictures of our Fall Semantics Guru, taken a few years apart in the same environment.

 

 

UMOP 38 is out

UMOP 38: Processing Linguistic Structure, edited by Jesse A. Harris and Margaret Grant is now available!

Here is how its advert blurb describes the volume:

This volume consists of a collection of working papers on sentence processing covering a wide range of topics, including pied-piping, ellipsis in adult sentence processing and acquisition, and processing effects associated with anticipating upcoming linguistic structure. Addressing numerous theoretical and experimental issues, papers in the volume may appeal to a wide audience interested in sentence processing.

Table of contents: http://www.people.umass.edu/harris/umop/UMOP38_toc.pdf

It can be purchased from the Graduate Linguistic Students' Association
http://glsa.hypermart.net/

Bhatt and Walkow in NLLT

"Locating Agreement in Grammar: An Argument from Agreement in Conjunctions" by Rajesh Bhatt and Martin Walkow has been accepted for publication by Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.

Congratulations!

Henry Davis speaks in Semantics Seminar on Tuesday

Angelika writes:

You are cordially invited to a special lecture:

Quantification in Salish (and maybe Tsimshianic)
by
Henry Davis, University of British Columbia.

Time: Tuesday, November 1st at 2:30 PM.
Place: Bartlett 206.

EEG/ERP in the Phonetics Lab

John Kingston writes:

It's with great pleasure that I announce that we now have the capacity  
in the Phonetics Lab to collect EEG/ERP data. We have a 64-channel  
system from Electrical Geodesics Inc. (EGI), the same company that  
manufactured the 128-channel system in Lisa Sanders's lab. The  
engineer from EGI is here this week and is training a number of us in  
the basics of how the system works.

So that any interested member of the department can get trained and  
become at least self-sufficient in running experiments using this  
system, if not yet expert, Brian Dillon and I are organizing a  
training regime that will consist of two experiments, one looking at a  
P-side question, the other at an S-side question. Our idea is to  
design maximally simple experiments in each of these two areas, which  
nonetheless either replicate a well-established effect or look to see  
whether a novel manipulation has an effect. The experiments will be  
very simple, so that we can focus on training people in the use of the  
equipment and software.

If you are interested in taking part in the training, let me or Brian  
know soon. Once we have heard from all interested people, we'll  
schedule a brief meeting to set up a training schedule.

While experiments using this technology are not easy to do, you should  
not be deterred from getting trained by that fact, if you think that  
ms-resolution, real-time data on brain activity might provide answers  
to the questions you're working on. With 64 channels, we can also do  
rough localization of the activity.

Here's what the fun you can have with EEG/ERP looks like!

Call for papers: Conference on Areal Linguistics

Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts

Tartu, Estonia

4-6 May 2012

Call for papers: Deadline: 10.01.2012

We invite MA and PhD students, postdocs and young researchers in linguistics to submit abstracts related to the following themes:

- Contact-induced phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical change

- Lexical and grammatical replication, shared grammaticalization

- Typological investigations and wider perspectives on linguistic areas

- Circum-Baltic languages in general

- Language contact and sociolinguistics

- Language contact and dialectal variation

- Globalization and its effect on minor(ity) languages

- Synchronic, diachronic and panchronic approaches to language contact and linguistic areas

Invited plenary speakers:

- Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Stockholm University

- Axel Holvoet, University of Warsaw, Vilnius University

- Florian Siegl, University of Tartu

The working language of the conference is English. For further information, abstract submission and more, see http://arealling.ut.ee

Acquisition Lab/LARC Meeting Tomorrow!

There will be an Acquisition Lab/LARC meeting on Monday October 24 at 5:15
in the Partee Room. There will be two presentations:

Rama Novogrodsky
"Acquisition of each one/one each"

Barbara Pearson
"Distributive and Collective Readings in the Elementary School
Mathematics Classroom"


Everyone welcome!

Maziar Toosarvandani speaks in syntax seminar on Wednesday

Maziar Toosarvandani (http://toosarva.scripts.mit.edu/) from MIT will give a presentation in Rajesh Bhatt's syntax seminar on Wednesday, October 26, in Herter 208 at 2:30. The talk will be on the role of nominalization in relative clause formation, with a focus on his work on Paiute. (see:[http://toosarva.scripts.mit.edu/manuscripts.html and http://toosarva.scripts.mit.edu/papers/wscla16-paper.pdf)

For more information about the course: https://sites.google.com/site/umasslx750f11/

Maria Polinsky gives department colloquium this Friday

Maria Polinsky from Harvard University will this week's colloquium on Friday October 28 at 3:30 PM in Machmer E-37.

Title: Explaining syntactic ergativity

Abstract:
This paper shows that ergative languages fall into two separate classes, PP-ergative and DP-ergative languages. In PP-ergative languages, the ergative is contained inside a PP which prevents it from undergoing A-bar movement. This accounts for the widespread phenomenon of syntactic ergativity. DP-ergative languages allow the extraction of the ergative. The paper  then presents and analyzes a cluster of properties associated with the two types. Under the principled division of ergative languages into the proposed two classes, the syntactic ramifications of ergativity are predictable and lead to a more uniform syntax.

Everyone is welcome to a post-colloquium dinner to be held at Alice Harris's house.

Call for Papers: Harvard East Asia Society Grad Student Conference

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

15th Annual Harvard East Asia Society Graduate Student Conference
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
February 24 - February 26, 2012

The Harvard East Asia Society (HEAS) Graduate Student Conference invites graduate students from around the world, conducting research in all disciplines, to submit abstracts for our 2012 conference.

Over the past decade, East Asia has experienced unprecedented change, which has had an immense impact on every aspect of the region. As a result, scholars worldwide are exploring and engaging in meaningful discussion on every subject to do with East Asia, past and present.

The HEAS Graduate Student Conference is an annual event which provides an interdisciplinary forum for graduate students to exchange ideas and discuss current research on East Asia. The conference allows young scholars to present their research to both their peers and to eminent scholars in East Asian Studies. All panels will be moderated by Harvard University faculty. The conference will also allow participants to meet others in their field conducting similar research and to forge new professional relationships.

We welcome submissions from graduate students in all disciplines. Papers should be related to East or Inner Asia, including East Asian interactions with the wider world.

Eligibility and Application Guidelines:
1.  Applicants must be currently enrolled in a program of graduate study ("postgraduate" in British degree classification systems).
2.  Papers must be related to East or Inner Asia.
3.  Abstracts must be no longer than 250 words, submitted exactly as directed on the HEAS Individual Paper Application Form.
4.  Deadline for abstract submission:  NOVEMBER 18, 2011

Inquiries:
For general conference inquiries, please contact: heasconference@gmail.com<mailto:heasconference@gmail.com>
For abstract submission inquiries, please contact: heas.abstracts@gmail.com<mailto:heas.abstracts@gmail.com>
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Undergraduate Linguistics Club forms! Meeting this Wednesday

Benjamin Herman writes:

The next Linguistics club meeting will be at 5pm, Wednesday November 2nd.

There is also an officers' meeting at 5pm, Wednesday October 26th, but  all club members are welcome to join.

PIZZA AS ALWAYS!!!

If you need any assistance regarding club matters, or are looking for a hook-up to any kind of Linguistics study group for your next exam, feel free to contact us:

President:          Jeremy Cahill            jccahill@student.umass.edu
Vice President:     Pratiksha Yalakkishettar pyalakki@student.umass.edu
Secretary:          Benjamin Herman          bsherman@student.umass.edu
Treasurer:          Nathan Banker            nbanker@student.umass.edu
Librarian:          Emily Westland           enicat@verizon.net
Webmaster:          Samuel Baldwin           sbaldwin@student.umass.edu