The LARC/Acquisition Lab will meet Monday, Feb 13, at 5:20 in the Partee Room (South College 301) for the following two presentations.
"Experimental Ideas on Event and Indirect Causatives"
Gustavo Freire
"Codeswitching as a possible diagnostic in SLI"
Joel Walters
Professor at Bar-Ilan University
Everyone Welcome!
David Smith, from the Computer Science department, will give a talk at the Friday lunch series at Yale University on February 17. A title and abstract follow.
Efficient Inference for Declarative Approaches to Language
Much recent work in natural language processing treats linguistic
analysis as an inference problem over graphs. This development opens
up useful connections between machine learning, graph theory, and
linguistics. In particular, we will see how linguists can
declaratively specify linguistic inference problems, in terms of hard
and soft constraints on grammatical structures. The first part of the
talk formulates syntactic parsing as a graphical model with the novel
ingredient of global constraints. Global constraints are propagated
by combinatorial optimization algorithms, which greatly improve on
collections of local constraints. The second part extends these
models for efficient learning of transformations between
non-isomorphic structures. These noisy (quasi-synchronous) mappings
have applications to adapting parsers across domains, projecting
parsers to new languages, learning features of the syntax-semantics
interface, and reranking passages for information retrieval.
The Language Acquisition Research Center at UMass will host a conference on Formal Approaches to Heritage Language on April 21-22.
They are soliciting abstracts for presentations or posters on both theoretical and acquisition issues that connect Heritage to L1 or L2 research. Priority will be given to work that addresses specific theoretical domains, such as, but not limited to: aspect, binding, quantification, movement, agreement, case, tense, and mood.
Abstract deadline: February 29, 2012
For more information, contact: Luiz Amaral, Barbara Pearson or Tom Roeper
A profile and interview with Seth Cable appears in the Humanities and Fine Arts "Faculty Profile" series. Take a look:
http://www.umass.edu/hfa/faculty/profiles/sethcable.html
Congratulations Seth!
Joe Pater writes:
Katya Pertsova, a visitor this semester from UNC Linguistics, will be presenting a Brown Bag practice talk this Thursday February 9th at noon in Dickinson 214. Feel free to bring lunch if you'd like.
The talk is entitled "Logical complexity in morphological learning".
The Department of Linguistics at the University of Rochester invites applications for a one year non-tenure track appointment as a visiting assistant professor to begin July 1, 2012; possibility of renewal. We seek candidates with a proven record of research in formal pragmatics and semantics, a record of excellence in teaching, and strong evidence of interest in interdisciplinary work. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in hand before the appointment starts. Duties include teaching established courses in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum and working with graduate students in allied fields such as experimental psychology and computer science.
Excellence in teaching is required, and breadth of teaching interest is highly desirable. The Department of Linguistics is part of a larger, active interdisciplinary community consisting of faculty and students doing research in cognitive science, philosophy, computer science, neuroscience, and we seek candidates who are likely to further those connections. Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience.
Applicants should send a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, teaching evaluations if possible, and arrange to have three letters of recommendation sent to: Professor Joyce McDonough, c/o Carla Gottschalk (carla.gottschalk@.rochester.edu). Review of applications will begin on 1 March, 2012 and continue until the position is filled.
The University of Rochester, an Equal Opportunity Employer, has a commitment to diversity and encourages applications from candidates from groups underrepresented in higher education.
Application Deadline: 1-March-2012 (Open until filled)
Email Address for Applications: carla.gottschalk@.rochester.eduContact Information:Joyce McDonoughEmail: joyce.mcdonough@rochester.edu
The Colloq Monsters (Claire Moore-Cantwell and Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten) write:
We are pleased to announce the schedule of colloqs for the Spring semester:
March 2: Colin Phillips (University of Maryland)
March 9: Kai von Fintel (MIT)
March 30: Judith Tonhauser (Ohio State U.) --Semantics Guru
April 13: Hamida Demirdache (University of Nantes) --Syntax Guru
April 20 *4:00pm*: John Drury (Stony Brook) --ICESL colloq
April 27: Gaja Jarosz (Yale)
From their notice:
A new round of Newton International Fellowships - an initiative to fund research collaborations and improve links between UK and overseas researchers - has now opened. The Newton International Fellowships are funded by the British Academy and the Royal Society and aim to attract the most promising early-career post-doctoral researchers from overseas in the fields of the humanities, the natural, physical and social sciences. The Fellowships enable researchers to work for two years at a UK research institution with the aim of fostering long-term international collaborations.Newton Fellows will receive an allowance of £24,000 to cover subsistence and up to £8,000 to cover research expenses in each year of the Fellowship. A one-off relocation allowance of up to £2,000 is also available. In addition, Newton Fellows may be eligible for follow-up funding of up to £6,000 per annum for up to 10 years following completion of the Fellowship to support activities which will help build long term links with the UK. The scheme is open to post-doctoral (and equivalent) early-career researchers working outside the UK who do not hold UK citizenship.
Applications are to be made via the Royal Society’s online application system which is available at https://e-gap.royalsociety.org/
The closing date for applications is Monday 16 April 2012.
Further details are available from the Newton International Fellowships website: www.newtonfellowships.org
The February 3rd issue of the local newspaper -- the Hampshire Gazette -- devoted a full page spread to first year graduate student Mike Clauss. The short, but informative interview, can be found by typing his name into the search box at http://www.gazettenet.com/
Unfortunately, the full page color photograph is not reproduced online.
University of Cambridge, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages
Applications are invited for three PhD studentships covering the period 1 October 2012 to 30 September 2015, working under the general supervision of Professor Ian Roberts in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages (although each student will in fact be assigned to a four-member PhD committee). This award has become available as a result of an ERC Advanced Grant “Rethinking Comparative Syntax” (see http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/dtal/research/recos/). Successful applicants for these awards are expected to begin PhD study on 1 October 2012 and will receive a student stipend sufficient to meet the fees and maintenance requirements.
Qualification requirements
Candidates should hold or be in the process of obtaining a Master's degree (or equivalent) in Linguistics, with a specialisation in Syntax, and have attained or expect to obtain a mark of distinction. Excellent writing skills in English and knowledge of some language(s) other than English are desirable. Eligible candidates must submit an advanced proposal of research relevant to the “Rethinking Comparative Syntax” project, specifying how their research would contribute to the typological and theoretical goals of the project. Applicants are encouraged to look at the project website (http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/dtal/research/recos/) to identify one or more areas of research to which they feel they would be able to contribute via their doctoral work. Applicants can be from the UK, EU or overseas.
Closing date 14 March 2012.
Application Procedure
Candidates will fall into two brackets:
1. You may already be applying/have applied for a PhD in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, and have timed your application to meet funding deadlines such as that set for the AHRC (13 January 2012).
2. You may only be interested in applying for this studentship.
1. If you have already made an application for the PhD through the Board of Graduate Studies, please email Siobhán Carew (sw334@cam.ac.uk) and give her your Application Number. Please note that applicants who have already submitted a PhD application will need to write a 500-1000 word research proposal specifically for this application, along the lines outlined above and below. ALL supporting documents must be uploaded by 14 March 2012 at the very latest.
2. Applications from candidates who intend to apply only for this studentship should be made directly to the Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages. Successful candidates will be asked to make a formal application through the Board of Graduate Studies. Applications should be made on the University graduate application form (GRADSAF), available at: http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/gradstud/prospec/pdf/gradsaf1213.pdf, and include the following supporting documents: two academic references transcripts or degree certificates English Language Score Report (if English is not your first language) 500-1000 word research proposal Completed applications should be emailed or posted to Ms Siobhán Carew, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA, tel: (01223) 335010, email: sw334@cam.ac.uk, by the closing date of 14 March 2012. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
In the Research Statement, candidates are required to outline their original research proposal and explain how it will fit the Project, “Rethinking Comparative Syntax”. Applicants should specify Professor Ian Roberts as supervisor on their application forms and are encouraged to contact Professor Roberts (igr20@cam.ac.uk) to discuss the ERC project, Cambridge College selection, and their applications.
The ERC project
The ERC Advanced Grant “Rethinking Comparative Syntax” endeavours to reconceptualise principles-and-parameters theory along new lines. The central idea is to organise parameters into hierarchies, which define the ways in which properties of individually variant categories may act in concert; this creates macroparametric effects from the combined action of many microparameters. The highest position in a hierarchy defines a macroparameter, a major typological property, lower positions define successively more local properties. Parameter- setting in language acquisition starts at the highest position as this is the simplest choice; acquirers will "move down the hierarchy" when confronted with primary linguistic data incompatible with a high setting. Hence the hierarchies simultaneously define learning paths and typological properties. The project aims to investigate five hierarchies: those determining word-order, null arguments, word structure, discourse-configurationality and case/agreement alignment. These five hierarchies, although not exhaustive, combine to give a typological footprint of many languages, as well as providing the basis for the study of the interaction of micro- and macroparametric interactions. In this way, the claim that formal comparative syntax has little to offer typological studies can be met. Also, a clear diagnostic is provided for showing that these hierarchies represent genuine syntactic variation, and not merely morphophonological variation as suggested by Berwick & Chomsky (2011). Last, a more purely theoretical component of the project aims to show that the nature of the hierarchies is determined, not directly UG, but by UG interacting with "third-factor" principles of simplicity and efficiency.
Kyle Johnson will present "Squashing Tangled Trees," at Yale's colloquium Monday, February 6.
Kristine Yu will present "Morphosyntax-prosody mapping in Samoan," at the University of Maryland on February 3. An abstract follows.
Samoan is a Polynesian language with an ergative case marking system. While ergative and oblique case are marked segmentally, the absolutive case has been thought to be unmarked. I will present fieldwork data in Samoan supporting the hypothesis that absolutive case is marked by a lexical high tone, although this is not necessarily a one-to-one mapping, since high tones also mark other grammatical structures, as well as prosodic boundaries. I will discuss implications of this finding for prosodic typology and for the syntax-phonology interface.
Stefan Keine's paper "Deconstructing Switch-Reference," has just been accepted for publication in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.
Congratulations Stefan!
Alexandra Jesse from Psychology writes:
We are currently looking for undergraduate research assistants to work in the Language, Intersensory Perception, and Speech (short: LIPS) lab in the Psychology Department. Positions are open starting this Spring semester. Ideal applicants are those who can commit to a longer time period.
The work within the LIPS lab falls within the area of Psycholinguistics. We examine how listeners recognize speech from hearing and seeing a speaker talk. In particular, we are interested in the time-course of recognizing words - both from listening and from lip-reading, how listeners adjust to a speaker's idiosyncratic pronunciations, and what happens to these processes when people get older. We use eye-tracking and other behavioral methods to address these questions, as well as EEG.
You can visit our website for more information:
http://lips.psych.umass.edu
Typical tasks of our research assistants are:
- help with finding stimuli for an experiments (e.g., selecting words, making nonwords)
- help with recording, annotating, and editing of speech materials for the experiments
- assist with recruitment, scheduling, and testing of participants
- attend & prepare for weekly lab meetings
- do administrative research-related tasks
The typical commitment of our research assistants during the school year is 9hrs/week, for 3 credits. You would be enrolled in Psych 398B, but this course can count as an elective towards your linguistics degree. Please contact me if you have any questions about how these credits can be applied to your degree in Linguistics.
So if you are interested in the position for the Spring, please contact me as soon as possible for more information and for an application form. Once you return the completed application form, we will then contact you to schedule for an interview. We will then also require a letter of recommendation. Enrollment has to be completed by Thursday, February 2nd.
The first meeting of LARC and the Acquisition Lab this semester will be tomorrow, Monday January 30th, in the Partee Room (South College 301) at 5:15PM. Barbara Pearson will present her paper co-authored with UMass alumna Miren Hodgson "A Test of Chidren's Knowledge of A-Chains: Preschoolers learning Spanish verbs with 'se' ."
The Deadline for submissions to the Great Lakes Expo for Experimental and Formal Undergraduate Linguistics (GLEEFUL) has been extended to February 5th (next Sunday). GLEEFUL will happen on April 21 at Michigan State University, and the keynote speaker is former UMass faculty, David Pesetsky.
More information is available at: https://sites.google.com/site/gleeful2012/
The University of Toronto is proud to host TULCon (Toronto Undergraduate Linguistics Conference) 2012! It will be held March 2-4, 2012.
Abstracts can still be submitted for consideration until February 10, 2012. If you are an undergraduate or a graduate student who has yet to begin a graduate program, please consider applying! We consider every abstract, as long as it's linguistics-related.
For more information, please see http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~slugs/?s=tulcon2012 or email tulcon2012@gmail.com.
Christopher Garry, an undergraduate majoring in Computer Systems and Engineering, has been awarded a $1000 grant by the Commonwealth College to study "Larynx Displacement during Speech Utterances." John Kingston's description of Mr Garry's grant follows.
Chris Garry received a $1000 research grant from the Commonwealth College for building a system to record vertical movement of the larynx during speech. Movement is recording using a Casio EX-F1 camera that can capture up to 1200 frames per second, although just 300 fps is more than enough for recording the relatively slow movement of the larynx. The system Chris is building processes these images in Matlab to measure changes in the height of the larynx as the person speaks and synchronizes these measurements with an audio recording of their speech. The height of the larynx in the neck varies directly with the pitch of the speaker's voice -- larynx lowering appears to be the principal mechanism for lowering pitch -- and with their regulation of the volume of the oral cavity to control air pressure inside it -- larynx lowering is at least the second most important means of expanding the oral cavity and reducing pressure. Chris is a computer engineering major who came to the Phonetics Lab last spring with an interest in getting practical research experience. He will present the results of this project at the Undergraduate Research Conference later this spring.
Congratulations!
Michael Becker will present "Universal Grammar protects Initial Syllables" at McGill University on Monday, Jan. 30. An abstract of his talk follows.
In English, voicing alternations (e.g. knife ~ knives) impact mostly monosyllables, while polysyllables are rarely impacted. The opposite is true of French: most monosyllables that end in [al] keep their base faithful under affixation (e.g. bal ~ bal ‘ball(s)’), while most polysyllables tolerate a stem change (bokal ~ boko‘jar(s)’). In this talk, I examine the two types of languages, and show that the symmetry is only superficial. The French trend is accessible to the grammar and extends readily to novel words, whereas English speakers treat novel words the same regardless of size. In other words, English speakers fail to find the generalization (the surfeit of the stimulus, Becker et al. 2011).
Positional faithfulness, and in particular, initial syllable faithfulness explains this asymmetry: The [al] in bal is protected by initial syllable faithfulness and by general faithfulness, while the [al] in bokal is protected by general faithfulness only. English goes against the Universal bias, requiring monosyllables to be less faithful than polysyllables. But with general faithfulness highly ranked, the ranking of initial syllable faithfulness is irrelevant, and the speakers are blocked from forming the required generalization.
Having established the asymmetry in the novel word tasks, we press English speakers further and ask them to learn unfamiliar morphophonological alternations (e.g. miːp ~ miːb-ni). Unencumbered by the counter-typological nature of actual English, speakers revert to Universal Grammar, and exhibit the French pattern.
This line of investigation, which goes from real words to novel words and from novel words to novel alternations, allows us to trace the biases that humans use in the phonological organization of their lexicon, and allows us to expose behavior that roundly contradicts the ambient language, yet conforms to the trends we see in the world’s languages.
Anne Pycha was the colloquium speaker at McGill on Friday, January 20th. She delivered "Phonological signatures in words: Evidence from production and perception of diphthongs." The abstract of her talk follows.
Abstract
This talk wrestles with two big problems that face phonology. First, non‐local dependencies in phonology are not widely attested, despite the fact that they are common at other levels of linguistic analysis, such as syntax. Second, many phonological processes bear close resemblance to phonetic processes, suggesting that no real difference exists between abstract phonological structures and the physical events of articulation. In this talk, I pursue the hypothesis that phonologically contrastive processes exhibit acoustic “signatures” that are a) non‐local and b) absent from otherwise similar phonetic processes. Experiment 1 demonstrates that English speakers produce non‐local dependencies in order to maintain contrast between words such as bite vs. bide, but not in order to accomplish other tasks, such as changing speech rates or signaling phrasal positions. Experiments 2 & 3 demonstrate that English listeners can use these dependencies to perceptually distinguish between words like bite vs. bide, even in the absence of other cues. The upshot of these findings, which build on previous work that I have done in Hungarian, is that phonology does use non‐local dependencies, and these dependencies crucially distinguish it from phonetics. I analyze non‐locality in both languages as motivated by a need to target maximal segments, and I examine the implications of this analysis for cross‐linguistic typology.