Brendan O'Connor on text analysis today

Brendan O'Connor, CMU, will give a talk today, February 10, at
4 PM in Computer Science Building 150 entitled “Statistical Text Analysis for Social Science.” An abstract follows.

What can text analysis tell us about society? Corpora of news, books, and social media encode human beliefs and culture. But it is impossible for a researcher to read all of today's rapidly growing text archives. My research develops statistical text analysis methods that measure social phenomena from textual content, especially in news and social media data. For example: How do changes to public opinion appear in microblogs? What topics get censored in the Chinese Internet? What character archetypes recur in movie plots? How do geography and ethnicity affect the diffusion of new language? In order to answer these questions effectively, we must apply and develop scientific methods in statistics, computation, and linguistics.

In this talk I will illustrate these methods in a project that
analyzes events in international politics. Political scientists are
interested in studying international relations through *event data*:
time series records of who did what to whom, as described in news
articles. To address this event extraction problem, we develop an
unsupervised Bayesian model of semantic event classes, which learns the verbs and textual descriptions that correspond to types of
diplomatic and military interactions between countries. The model
uses dynamic logistic normal priors to drive the learning of semantic
classes; but unlike a topic model, it leverages deeper linguistic
analysis of syntactic argument structure. Using a corpus of several
million news articles over 15 years, we quantitatively evaluate how
well its event types match ones defined by experts in previous work,
and how well its inferences about countries correspond to real-world
conflict. The method also supports exploratory analysis; for example,
of the recent history of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Second Call: ESSLLI

Models in formal Semantics and Pragmatics Workshop held at ESSLLI 26, August 18-22, Tuebingen, Germany

Organizers: 
* Magdalena Kaufmann, University of Connecticut* Stefan Kaufmann, University of Connecticut

Invited Speakers:
* Michael Glanzberg, Northwestern University* Stanley Peters, Stanford University* Thomas Ede Zimmermann, Frankfurt University

Workshop Information:
Whatever happened to "model-theoretic" semantics?  Since Montague’s groundbreaking work and throughout much of its history, the field of formal semantics (and later pragmatics) was characterized by the use of models - abstract mathematical structures in which linguistic expressions are interpreted and which serve as the backdrop for stating generalizations about their semantic properties and relations.

Over the last couple of decades, however, the once-prominent status ofmodels has been eroding. In the research literature, explicitlydefined fragments and models were the norm in the early days (Partee1975, 1976; Dowty, 1979), but are now the exception rather than therule. In teaching, one of the most widely used textbooks, Heim andKratzer (1998), makes no mention of models, in stark contrast withearly standard works like Dowty, Wall and Peters (1981). Aside fromsuch signs of waning interest, there is a small but formidable body ofwork which actively questions the status of models and finds them tobe of limited use at best (Lepore 1983; Higginbotham 1988; Zimmermann 1999, 2011; Glanzberg, t.a.).
Such explicit reflections are rare, however. The overall decline ofmodels in the field is not driven by a general debate, let aloneconsensus. Nor is the turn away from models a turn towards somenon-model-theoretic alternative. What we do see instead is a tendencyto stay loosely within the model-theoretic framework, but to enrich itwith notions and tools whose formal properties remain largely implicit.

The goal of this workshop is to promote and generate discussion of thepast, present, and future of models in natural-language semantics andpragmatics, specifically the implications of their apparent demise forthe foundations and goals of the field. Topics for discussion include,but are in no way limited to the following:

* What are models, anyway?  Commitments about language, reality, and the nature of meaning that a model-theoretic approach to semantic analysis implies. The (special?) status of possible worlds and their relationship to extensional models.

* What are models good for? Linguistic phenomena or aspects of meaning in whose analysis a model-theoretic approach has been, or would be, crucial or at least beneficial. The (potential) use of models         in treating meaning as variable (e.g., in the analysis of uncertainty about language, or in cross-linguistic and diachronic comparative semantics).

* Where do models get in the way? Desiderata for semantic theory and limitations of the model-theoretic approach. Risks and side effects of specific methods associated with the model-theoretic approach (e.g., meaning postulates).

* Are we safe without models? Advantages and potential pitfalls of innovative uses of formal techniques or metalinguistic expressions, whose repercussions are underexplored (various kinds of states and events, partial functions, etc.)

* What are the alternatives? 

Workshop Format: 
The workshop is part of ESSLLI and open to all ESSLLI participants. It will consist of five 90-minute sessions held over five consecutive days in the second week of ESSLLI. The three invited talks are allotted one hour each, including discussion. On the first day, the workshop organizers will give a 30-minute introduction to thetopic. This leaves room for eight submitted papers of 30 minutes each,including discussion.

Submission Procedure:
Authors are invited to submit an abstract of up to three pages,including examples and/or references (single-spaced, at least 11 pt font, on US letter of A4 paper with margins at least 1in or 2.5cm on all sides, in .pdf, .txt, .doc or .odt format). Abstracts must be submitted by February 15, 2014, electronically at the following address: http://linguistlist.org/easyabs/Models_ESSLLI14

First PRG meeting today!

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!  

de Villiers at LARC on Thursday

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

Kratzer in Tel Aviv

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.

Dillon in Compass

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!

The Dictionary as Data

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.

Jeff Moher at Cog Sci Brown Bag

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".

SRG meets on Thursday

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.

Call for papers: Exploring the Interface

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.

Sound Workshop schedule

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.

Call for Papers: Workshop on Aspect and Argument Structure

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) 

Call for papers: Manchester Phonology Meeting

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.

Workshop on Gradability and Quantity

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.

LARC

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.

Roeper at the Roeper High School

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.

Colloquium schedule change

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.

Lyn Frazier: LSA Fellow

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.

Erschler presents in the Syntax Workshop on Friday

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.

Call for papers: Workshop on the Semantics of Referring Expressions

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.