Tom Ernst talks at SRG on Thursday

On Thursday, March 8th, Tom Ernst will be talking to the SRG about modification of state predicates. His talk will take place at his apartment in Northampton and starts at 6:30.

Summer Research Education for Undergraduates at Univ. of South Carolina

The Psychology Department at the University of South Carolina is pleased to announce that NSF has recommended funding for our Summer Research Education for Undergraduates program, Summer Research Experience in Brain and Cognitive Sciences (SREBCS).  Each summer this program will provide ten undergraduate students the opportunity to engage in research seminars, laboratory exercises, and one-on-one laboratory projects in the exciting and fast growing field of brain and cognitive sciences.  The SREBCS builds on the resounding success that our previous summer program experienced across its 17 years of funding.  An innovative feature of the SREBCS is the inclusion of a weekly group laboratory that will provide students with a diverse set of hands-on experiences of the methods used in brain and cognitive sciences, such as EEG, MRI and fMRI. In addition, students will discuss implications of research presented by the faculty and engage in research projects within a faculty mentor’s laboratory.

The application deadline for this year’s program is March 28, 2012.  The program description and application materials are posted on our website:

http://www.psych.sc.edu/srebcs/

We very much appreciate your encouraging interested and qualified students to apply.  The SREBCS is committed to providing opportunities to under-represented groups within the Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Kai von Fintel speaks at department colloquium on Friday

Kai von Fintel will present work with Sabine Iatridou at the department colloquium on March 9, 3:30 in Machmer E-37. Reception to follow in 3rd floor lounge. Dinner to be hosted by Angelika Kratzer. A title and abstract follow.

"Imperative Puzzles"
Work by Kai von Fintel and Sabine Iatridou

Abstract:
Imperatives, which are prototypically used to issue commands, can also be used to give permissions:

(1) A: May I open the window? B: Sure, go ahead, open it!

Further, imperatives can serve as quasi-conditional antecedents in "left-subordinating conjunctions":

(2) Study hard and you will pass the class.
(3) Ignore your homework and you will fail the class.
(4) Open the paper and you will find 5 mistakes on every page.

We show that these phenomena present severe challenges for all existing theories of imperatives. We lay out desiderata for a successful analysis and speculate on ways of getting there. Along the way we present data from English, German, and pretty much every language spoken on the Mediterranean Rim.

Rajesh Bhatt speaks at Linguistics Club meeting

Rajesh Bhatt will present a talk entitled "South Asia as a linguistic Area," to the Linguistics Club meeting on Tuesday, March 6 at 5:15 in the Partee Room (South College 301). If you plan on attending, let Ling Club president Jeremy Cahill know at jccahill@student.umass.edu

ICESL Workshop planned for April 6

Joe Pater writes:

We've decided to make last year's launch workshop an annual event, as an opportunity for people working on language across campus to find out about each other's research. There will be three talks, by Luiz Amaral (Languages, Literatures and Cultures), Jacquie Kurland (Communication Disorders) and David Smith (Computer Science). We encourage everyone else to present a poster - if you'd like to do so, please send us a title at this e-mail address asap, and by April 1st at the latest. The event will take place in the afternoon - exact time and place TBA. We apologize to those of you who will be observing Passover or Good Friday and cannot make it - this is the only date we could find. This event is sponsored by the Mellon Mutual Mentoring Initiative.

Help Build a Global Word Association Network

Chuck Clifton writes:

Over the past few weeks, we have been trying to set up a scientific study that is important for many researchers interested in words, word meaning, semantics, and cognitive science in general.  It is a huge word association project, in which people are asked to participate in a small task that doesn't last longer than 5 minutes. Our goal is to build a global word association network that contains connections between about 40.000 words, the size of the lexicon of an average adult. Setting up such a network might learn us a lot about semantic memory, how it develops, and maybe also about how it can deteriorate (like in Alzheimer's disease). Most people enjoy doing the task, but we need thousands of participants to succeed. Up till today, we found about 40,000 participants willing to do the little task, but we need more subjects. That is why we address you.  Would it be possible to forward this call for participation to graduate and undergraduate students who are fluent in English?

The task can be found on

http://www.smallworldofwords.com

If people would REALLY like to help us, they can forward the call to students, friends, family, etc. or distribute the call through facebook, twitter, etc.   (In this way, we succeeded in building a word association network in Dutch over the past years.  The network comprises about 13.000 words and was built using more than 4 million word associations, gathered from 100.000 native Dutch speakers.  The problem is only: who cares about Dutch data.  That is why we want to do the same in English.)  Any suggestion about how to reach more participants is welcome (societies that we can e-mail, local communities who want to put this on their website, ...)

Of course the network will be freely available to all interested language researchers when it becomes substantial enough.

We thank you in advance.

The Third Language and Linguistics Mini-course series at Brown University

THE THIRD LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS MINICOURSE SERIES
Cognitive Linguistic & Psychological Sciences at Brown University

A TWO MINICOURSE SERIES
MAY 21 - MAY 25, 2012
Macmillan 115

Monday-Friday; 10AM - 12AM
Dying Languages: What World Linguistic Diversity Means for Us
Anthony Woodbury, University of Texas at Austin

Monday-Friday; 2PM - 4PM
Language Structure, Learning, and Change: Research on Signed and Spoken Languages
Elissa Newport & Ted Suppala, University of Rochester

This event is free and open to the public

Travel to and visiting Brown: http://www.brown.edu/web/about/visit

A list of accommodations: http://www.brown.edu/web/about/accommodations

More information will be posted on a website in the near future.

UMass at the 26th Arabic Linguistics Symposium at Alephi University

John McCarthy gave a Keynote Address at the 26th Arabic Linguistics Symposium in New York last week. The title of his address was "Is Phonological Opacity Real? Evidence from Arabic."

At the same conference, Martin Walkow presented "Restrictions on Pronoun Combinations and Parallels between Subject Agreement and Cliticization in Classical Arabic."

UMass at Penn Linguistics Colloquium

The 36th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, which will take place March 23rd-25th at the University of Pennsylvania, will host a number of papers from  recent UMass graduates, including:

Martin Walkow will present "Choosing between Persons: Articulated Probes and the Ultra-Strong PCC"

Aynat Rubinstein will present "Figuring out what we 'ought' do do"

Cherlon Ussery will present "A Taxonomy of Agreement in Icelandic: Agree vs Multiple Agree, Syntactic vs Post-Syntactic"

Maria Biezma will present "Only one at least: refining the role of context in building alternatives."

Florian Schwarz, with co-authors Dimka Atanassov and John Trueswell will present "On the processing of 'might' "

The keynote address, entitled "Morpheme Order, Constituency, and Scope" will be delivered by Paul Kiparsky.  There will also be an interdisciplinary panel session on Game Theory and Language.  For a full schedule of events, see: <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/Events/PLC/plc36/program.html>.

The preregistration deadline for the conference is Wednesday, February
29th.  To preregister, please visit the conference website at
<http://www.ling.upenn.edu/Events/PLC/plc36/> and follow the link to
the registration form.  There is an additional $10 surcharge for
registrations made after the pre-registration deadline, so be sure to
register before then.  All registration fees will be collected onsite.

For further information, please email plc36@ling.upenn.edu<mailto:plc36@ling.upenn.edu>

Colin Phillips talks on Friday

Colin Phillips from the University of Maryland will speak at the department colloquium on Friday, March 2, in Machmer E-37 at 3:30. A title and abstract follow.

Electrophysiology and Language Architecture

In this talk I will discuss two recent lines of research in the cognitive neuroscience of language processing that started from independent puzzles, but that appear to be converging on a common solution. The first puzzle involves apparent discrepancies in the localization results obtained using fMRI and MEG measures of 'semantic' processing. The same tasks and materials yield conflicting localizations when measured using different tools. The second puzzle involves a recent series of studies that undermine received wisdom about the functional status of ERP components and, more interestingly, challenge the widespread view in linguistics and psycholinguistics that semantic composition is tightly coupled to the syntax of a sentence. The solution to both puzzles involves recognizing that the N400, a neural response component traditionally associated with compositional semantic interpretation, is more closely linked to lexical processes and to word-level expectations. This also provides an account of the split personality of the N400 - it is sometimes very 'smart', responding to fine details of the compositional semantic interpretation and pragmatic congruity of linguistic input, but at times it is surprisingly 'dumb', sensitive only to the lexical properties of a word and to associative relations among words. I show how it is possible to turn the dumb N400 into the smart N400. I show that rather than undermining widespread assumptions about language architecture, the electrophysiological evidence instead provides finer-grained evidence on how interpretations are computed on-line. The evidence is drawn from studies in English, Spanish, and Chinese.

 

Andrew Weir's paper to appear in "English Language and Linguistics"

The next issue of "English Language and Linguistics" will contain Andrew Weir's paper "Left-edge deletion in English and subject omission in diaries."

Congratulations Andrew!

Kamil Ud Deen gives talks on Monday and Tuesday

Kamil Ud Deen (Univeristy of Hawaii) will give two talks this week.

The first is on Monday, February 27, at 4:30 in Dickinson 209. The title is: "The acquisition of raising and passives: implications for linguistic theory."

The second is on Tuesday, February 28, at 4:30 in Herter 217. The title is "Binding in adult and child Thai."

You can learn more about Kamil Ud Deen at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kamil/

Jeremy Hartman gives talks on Wednesday and Thursday

Jeremy Hartman (MIT) will give two talks this week.

The first is Wednesday, February 29, at 4:30 in Dickinson 209. The title is "Principle B and Phonologically Reduced Pronouns in Child English."

The second is Thursday, March 1, at 4:30 in Bartlett 206. The title is "Clausal Arguments, Experiencer Predicates, and Intervention."

You can learn more about Jeremy Hartman at http://web.mit.edu/hartmanj/www/

Call for Papers: Sinn and Bedeutung 17

Sinn und Bedeutung 17, held at the École normale supérieure in Paris, invites submissions devoted to natural language semantics, pragmatics, the syntax-semantics interface, psycholinguistic aspects of meaning, or philosophy of language.

Invited speakers:

• Daniel Büring (Universität Wien)
• Rick Nouwen (Universiteit Utrecht)
• Barbara Partee (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
• Liina Pylkkänen (New York University)

Papers will be selected for 45 (35+10) minute oral presentations.
Abstracts should contain original research that, at the time of submission, has neither been published nor accepted for publication. One person can submit at most one abstract as sole author and one abstract as co-author. Abstracts should be anonymous, in the form of a PDF file; they must not exceed 2 pages including all data and references and have to be written in 12 pt with 2.5 cm (1 in) margins on all sides.

Please submit your abstracts via EasyChair: easychair.

Deadline for 2-page abstract submission: April 16
Notification of acceptance: June 4
Conference dates: September 8, 9, 10
Organizers: École normale supérieure, Paris
Contact us at: sub.paris2012@gmail.com
Conference webpage: here.

Linguistics Summer Program in St. Petersburg

Annie Gagliardi talks on Tuesday and Wednesday

Annie Gagliardi, from the University of Maryland, will give two talks on language acquisition. Tuesday's talk will be at 4:30, in Bartlett 219, and is entitled "Bayesian Inference as an Evaluation Metric: Putting Computational Models to Work in Language Acquisition."

Wednesday's talk will also be at 4:30 and is entitled "Unpacking the Black Box: The Inner Workings of the Language Acquisition Device." The talk will be in Herter 217.

For more information about Ms. Gagliardi, go to: http://ling.umd.edu/~acg/

Robyn Orfitelli gives talks on Thursday and Friday

Robyn Orfitelli, from UCLA, will give two talks on language acquisition. Each talk will take place at 4:30.

Her talk on Thursday is entitled "Competence and Performance in Children's Grammar of Null Subjects," and will take place in Dickinson 209.

The talk on Friday is entitled "Argument Intervention in the Acquisition of A-Movement," and will be in Machmer E-37.

The rooms have not yet been nailed down. When they are, the locations will appear here.

For more information about Ms. Orfitelli, go to: http://rorfitelli.bol.ucla.edu/

Paper by Barbara Pearson, Tracy Conner and Janice Jackson to appear in "Developmental Psychology"

"Removing Obstacles for African-American-English-Speaking Children through Greater Understanding of Language Difference" by Barbara Pearson, Tracy Conner and Janice Jackson will appear in a special section of "Developmental Psychology":  Deficit of Difference? Interpreting Diverse Developmental Paths. The abstract of their paper follows:

Language difference among speakers of African-American English (AAE) has often been considered language deficit, based on a lack of understanding about the AAE variety. Following Labov (1972), Wolfram (1969), Rickford (1999), Green (2002, 2011) and others, we define AAE as a complex rule-governed linguistic system, and briefly discuss language structures that it shares with general American English (GAE) and others that are unique to AAE. We suggest ways in which mistaken ideas about the language variety add to children’s difficulties in learning the mainstream dialect and, in effect, deny them the benefits of their educational programs. We propose that a linguistically-informed approach that highlights correspondences between AAE and the mainstream dialect and trains students and teachers to understand language varieties at a metalinguistic level creates environments that support the academic achievement of AAE- speaking students. Finally, we present three program types that are recommended for helping students achieve the skills they need to be successful in multiple linguistic environments.

Angelika Kratzer's Modals and Conditionals now available

Angelika Kratzer's new book on modals and conditionals, which collects many of her classic papers on the subject along with a  guide to how this work bears on recent developments, is now available from Oxford University Press.  The blurb on the Oxford University Press's website describes her book as follows:

This book contains updated and substantially revised versions of Angelika Kratzer's classic papers on modals and conditionals, including 'What "must" and "can" must and can mean', 'Partition and Revision', 'The Notional Category of Modality', 'Conditionals', 'An Investigation of the Lumps of Thought', and 'Facts: Particulars or Information Units?'. The book's contents add up to some of the most important work on modals and conditionals in particular and on the semantics-syntax interface more generally. It will be of central interest to linguists and philosophers of language of all theoretical persuasions.

See: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199234691.do

Congratulations Angelika!

ECO5!

Anisa Schardl writes:

This year, UMass is hosting ECO5, a graduate student workshop on
syntax, on April 7th.  I am emailing to solicit presenters for ECO5.
This could be you!

ECO5 is a place for grad students to present work in progress in a
relaxed atmosphere.  It is especially good for first- and second-year
students.  Good stuff to present might be: your current GP project,
your project for a term paper that may or may not turn into a GP
later, something you were working on as an undergrad/master's student
that you haven't let go of, something cool that you recently
discovered.  No project is too small!

There are five schools involved in ECO5 and each school can send up to
three presenters.  If you're interested in being one of these
presenters, email me and tell me a title for your presentation.  Email
me!