Ivy Hauser writes:
The first meeting of PRG will take place at Amanda's apartment in Northampton on Monday (today) at 7pm. We will spend the first half of the meeting working on planning for the semester and the second half Ivy will talk about recent work and some new ideas. Dinner will be provided!
Magda Oiry writes:
Jill de Villiers will present work with Hristo Kyuchukov this coming Thursday in the LARC meeting - 9:30 in South College 301. The talk will be on addressing the rights of Roma children for a language assessment in their native language of Romani
Angelika Kratzer gives a talk entitled “Focus and Given:Two Technologies for Discourse Coherence,” at a Workshop on focus sensitive expressions at Bar Ilan University on February 4. UMass alumnus Mats Rooth also gives a talk. For the full schedule, go here.
Brian Dillon’s paper 'Syntactic memory in the comprehension of reflexive dependencies: an overview" has been accepted for publication in Language and Linguistics Compass.
Congratulations Brian!
Peter Skoloski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster, will be giving a talk called "The Dictionary as Data" on campus at UMass on Tuesday, February 18, at 5:30. It's open to the public, and: "Food will be provided.” The talk is in Commonwealth Honors College Hall east. For more information, go here.
Alexandra Jesse writes:
This is a reminder that Jeff Moher (Brown) is giving a talk this week in the Cognitive Psychology Brown Bag (Wednesday, Tobin 521B, 12-1:15). The title of the talk is "Distractor suppression in attention and action".
Jason Overfelt writes:
Please join us this Thursday at 6:30pm for our first meeting of the Syntax/Semantics Reading Group. In addition to planning for this semester, Jason Overfelt will lead a discussion about the implications of some novel data on Extraposition from NP structures. We will be meeting at Sakshi and Jyoti's place at 5 Fruit Street in Northampton. Please bring $5 for pizza or your own dinner.
Exploring the Interfaces 3: Prosody and Constituent Structure
Abstract submission deadline: February 28, 2014
Notification of Acceptance: March 10, 2014
Conference: May 8-10, 2014
Exploring the Interfaces (ETI) 3 will take place at McGill University from May 8-10, 2014. This workshop will be the last of three workshops organized by the McGill Syntactic Interfaces Research Group (McSIRG) as part of a multi-year grant to study linguistic interfaces. Following ETI 1 (Word structure) and ETI 2 (Implicatures, alternatives and the semantics/pragmatics interface), the topic of ETI 3 will be 'Prosody and Constituent Structure'.
In particular, ETI 3 will deal with issues surrounding prosodic and phonological evidence for syntactic constituent structure, with a focus on verb-initial languages.
Goals of the Workshop:
- To bring together researchers working on issues at the syntax-phonology interface (e.g. syntactic constituency, prosodic effects on word order) from the perspectives of syntax, prosody, and phonology/phonetics
- To bring together researchers working on a variety of different languages, with an emphasis on languages with default verb-initial word order
- To encourage communication and discussion about methodologies that can be used for the empirical study of prosody and thesyntax-phonology interface
Invited Speakers:
Judith Aissen (UC Santa Cruz)
Sasha Calhoun (Victoria University of Wellington)
Lauren Eby Clemens (Harvard)
Emily Elfner (McGill)
Jim McCloskey (UC Santa Cruz)
Norvin Richards (MIT)
Joey Sabbagh (UT Arlington)
Kristine Yu (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Methods Tutorials:
In addition to the regular session, we will have two tutorials on local technological tools for fieldwork, with special reference to fieldwork on prosody:
- Tutorial 1: Automatic Acoustic Alignment in Underdocumented Languages
- Tutorial 2: LingSync: An Online Tool for Field Work
Call for Papers:
In addition to eight invited speakers, we are accepting abstracts for a limited number of additional talks (30 minutes + 10 minutes discussion) and posters. We particularly welcome papers which address the following questions:
- What can prosodic and phonological evidence tell us about syntactic constituent structure?
- To what extent do syntactic, phonological and prosodic evidence agree with one another regarding constituent structure?
- What is the role of prosody in determining word order?
- Can prosodic and phonological evidence be used to help distinguish between competing syntactic accounts of how word order is derived?
We welcome abstracts dealing with these topics in any language, but would particularly welcome abstracts on verb-initial languages in keeping with the theme of the conference.
Abstracts should be anonymous and no longer than 500 words (including examples, but not counting title or references), and should be submitted in PDF format on the following easychair site by February 28, 2014:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eti3
Please indicate on the form whether you would prefer an oral presentation, a poster presentation, or whether either would be acceptable. By default, we will first consider you for an oral presentation. Additionally, we hope to have some funding available to supplement travel costs for student presenters.
Questions may be directed to eti3.mcgill@gmail.com.
Kristine Yu writes:
Here is the current sound workshop schedule for Spring semester, whichwill be kept up to date as the semester progresses. Future internalannouncements about the workshop will be sent to the ling-sound list here.
Workshop on Aspect and Argument Structure of Adverbs and Prepositions
TROMSØ, 12-13 JUNE 2014
Call Deadline: 15-Feb-2014
We invite submissions for 30 minute presentations (+10 of discussion) on any of these topics. If we get a high number of submissions, those that obtain a high score but cannot make it into the general session will be considered for a poster session. Abstracts should not be longer than two pages, including examples, tables, figures and references, and should be submitted to: waasaptwo@gmail.com
Deadline for submission: 15 February 2014
Deadline for notification of acceptance: 11 April 2014
Workshop: 12-13 June 2014, University of Tromsø
In this workshop we would like to contribute to a better understanding of the nature of prepositions and adverbs and the limits between arguments and adjuncts by gathering researchers working on different aspects of argument structure and aspect of adverbs and prepositions. The questions we are interested in include, but are not restricted to, the following:
- Can inner and outer aspect primitives be reduced to the same prepositional-like elements?
- The argument structure of PPs: What are the theta-roles associated to Ps, and how is it different or similar to those of verbs?
- How rich is the internal structure of PPs and what correlations can be established between levels of complexity, argument structure and aspect?
- Is the internal structure of PPs similar, in terms of argument structure, to a split VP? - Can Ps define events by themselves?
- How do prepositions contribute to the definition of internal aspect in verbs and adjectives?
- What is the role of prepositions inside verbal periphrases?
- Choice of P and the semantic interpretation of the argument introduced by P
- Adverbs and adverbial phrases as diagnostics for aspectual properties
- The internal structure of adverbs and the definition of their internal aspectual properties
- The position of adverbs and the interpretation of arguments
- NPs behaving as adverbs (Larson 1985) and adjuncts. What are the limits between arguments and adjuncts, and between nouns and adverbs, in terms or referentiality, modificability, etc.?
- What defines an adverb? What are the relevant subclasses of adverbs for grammar?
- Adverbs as arguments of verbs: Under which circumstances can an adverb be an argument of a verb?
- Adverbs as derived categories: Do adverbs inherit nominal or adjectival properties of their morphological bases?
- Vocatives in the limit between arguments and adjuncts, nouns and adverbs
Keynote Speakers:
Peter Svenonius (CASTL, Universitetet i Tromsø) M. Teresa Espinal (CLT, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS
Twenty-Second Manchester Phonology Meeting
29-31 MAY 2014
Deadline for abstracts: 10th February 2014
Special session: 'Epenthesis', featuring:* Iris Berent (Northeastern University)* Louis Goldstein (University of Southern California)* Nancy Hall (California State University, Long Beach)* Christian Uffmann (University of Duesseldorf)
Held at Hulme Hall, Manchester, England. Organised through a collaboration of phonologists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester, and elsewhere.
Conference website: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/mfm/22mfm.html
From the description of the conference:
We are pleased to announce the Twenty-Second Manchester Phonology Meeting (22mfm). The mfm is the UK's annual phonology conference, with an international set of organisers. It is held in late May every year in Manchester (central in the UK, and with excellent international transport connections). The meeting has become a key conference for phonologists from all over the world, where anyone who declares themselves to be interested in phonology can submit an abstract on anything phonological in any phonological framework. In an informal atmosphere, we discuss a broad range of topics, including the phonological description of languages, issues in phonological theory, aspects of phonological acquisition and implications of phonological change.
About Submissions:
* There is no obligatory conference theme for the 22mfm - abstracts can be submitted on anything phonological.
* We are using the Linguist List's EasyAbstracts system for abstract submission. Abstracts should be uploaded to the 22mfm's page on the EasyAbstracts site by 10th February 2014:- http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/22mfm
* Full papers will last around 25 minutes with around 5 minutes for questions, and there will be a high-profile poster session lasting one and a half hours. When you submit your abstract, you will be asked to indicate whether you would be prepared to present your work (i) either as a talk or a poster paper or (ii) only as a poster.
*See conference website for important additional details.
The 'McGill/MIT Workshop on Gradability and Quantity in Language and the Brain' is a two day workshop that brings together a group of neuroscientists with an interest in language and a group of experimental and formal linguists interested in the brain, in an attempt to enhance the dialogue between the linguistic and the neurophysiological cultures, and help to close the gap between these two growing groups of researchers. The theme of the workshop is centered on aspects of gradability and quantity as it pertains to the cognitive domains of Number, Space, and Time.
The Workshop meets this Friday and Saturday (Jan. 31- Feb. 1) at MIT 32-141. The workshop is open and all are welcome to attend. For more information about the schedule and talks, go here.
Magda Oiry writes:
Starting this semester, the Language Acquisition Research Center will be meeting every other Thursdays at 9:30.
Our first meeting was last Thursday, where Maria Turrero-Garcia from LLC Spanish linguistics presented her current experimental ideas to test wh-islands acquisition by L2 speakers of Spanish / L1 English.
Tom Roeper writes:
I just returned from Michigan where I spoke to the Roeper High School Linguistics club on "the Recursion controversy in Brazil and its social consequences" on Jan 15th. The Piraha indian community would like the government to build them a schoolhouse, but the local officials (not federal) refused saying "Why should we build the Piraha a school, they can't learn". The Roeper Amnesty International Club is collecting letters from children in support of the PIraha children. At the same time, a number of indian leaders of many tribes in the area have been killed, most recently on December 3rd. Three outsiders disappeared, and the indians were blamed. The local FUNAI (indian affairs office) was burned down. Every kind of support for the indian groups is particularlyimportant now. Anyone interested could speak to me.
Mike Clauss writes:
One addendum to the colloq schedule: Jason Merchant won't be coming on 3/14, but rather on 4/18. This will work better for those who will be going to the CUNY conference and are also interested in Merchant's talk.
At the 88th annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Lyn Frazier was inducted into the class of LSA fellows, along with UMass alumnus Gennaro Chierchia. Lyn joins fellow faculty members Emmon Bach, Barbara Partee, Alice Harris, Angelika Kratzer, John McCarthy, Lisa Selkirk and Tom Roeper.
David Erschler will give a practice talk "Relative clauses in Ossetic and the typology of correlatives” in the syntax workshop on Friday, January 24 at 2:30 in the Partee room.
Workshop on the semantics of referring expressions
Olomouc
June 5, 2014
Deadline: February 10, 2014
This workshop forms part of the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium 2014. For further information please consult this webpage.
Coordinators and discussants: Mojmír Dočekal (Masaryk University, Brno), Berit Gehrke (Université Paris Diderot)
The workshop aims to bring together linguists interested in the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, focusing on interpretative issues related to nominal complexes. The theme should not exclude papers on other subjects, but submissions traditionally related to this theme (indefinite/definite NPs, plurality/kind/mass denoting NPs and referential pronouns) are especially welcome.
Workshop on "Quantifier Scope: Syntactic, Semantic, and Experimental Approaches"
June 12-13, 2014
We invite 6 papers for 30 minutes (plus 10 minutes discussion) that address the topic of Quantifier Scope, either from a syntactic, a semantic, or an experimental approach, or any combination of the previous.
This workshop aims to foster discussion and collaboration among researchers working on quantifier scope, by trying to bring together work from a variety of languages, experimental paradigms, and theoretical perspectives.
Submission guidelines:
Abstracts (2 pages, 12pt font, including references and data) should be emailed to: u.etxeberria at iker.cnrs.fr
Please include title of the proposal, name of the author(s) and affiliation in the body of the email.
Abstract Submission Information:
Abstracts can be submitted from 01-Jan-2014 until 19-Jan-2014.
Deadline for submission: January 19, 2014
Notification of acceptance: March 14, 2014
Invited Speakers (in alphabetical order):
Benjamin Bruening (University of Delaware)
Anastasia Giannakidou (University of Chicago)
Jeffrey Lidz (University of Maryland)
Janina Rado (Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt am Main)
Gregory Scontras (Harvard University)
Benjamin Spector (CNRS, Institut Jean Nicod)
Georges Tsoulas (University of York)
Susi Wurmbrand (University of Connecticut)
Alexandra Jesse writes:
Below is a preliminary schedule for our Cognitive Colloquium for this semester. As always, we meet on Wednesdays in Tobin 521B at 12:00 noon. We won't meet every week, since due to our job searches, I have been asked to limit the number of talks. This may also mean that we have to meet occasionally in a different location - look out for room changes in my reminder emails. My apologies to all of you who had suggested someone (or volunteered) who couldn't be scheduled. I will try to consider these suggestions for the Fall.
Feb 5 - Jeff Moher
Feb 19 - Eswen Fawa
Feb 26 - Nathaniel Smith
March 5 - Sean Kang
March 19 - Spring break
March 26 - Katja Poellmann
April 2 - Evan Heit
April 9 - Ben Zobel
April 16 - Lisa Fiorenzo
April 30 - Monica Bennett
If you have suggestions for Fall speakers, please send them to me.