Congratulations to Anastasia Giannakidou and Chris Kennedy on their promotion to Professor. Their promotions are formal recognition of their excellence in scholarship, teaching and service.
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This will be the last posting brought to you by BLING news for this academic year. BLING will resume in late September. Have a wonderful and exciting summer!
Congratulations to James Kirby, who has been awarded a three-year Hanna Holborn Gray Advanced Fellowship! This fellowship is given annually to one third-year student in the Humanities division and one in the humanistic Social Sciences. We are very proud of James for receiving this honor.
Jung-Hyuck Lee (Ph.D. 2006) has been appointed senior lecturer at the University of Notre Dame teaching Korean languages and civilization courses. Congratulations, Jung-Hyuck!
The Semantics and philosophy of Language Workshop presents
Ivano Caponigro, UCSD
(joint work with Maria Polinsky, Harvard)
Time: June 13, Friday, 11am
Location: Landahl Center Seminar Room
Most languages (including English) distinguish between relative clauses, embedded declarative clauses, and embedded interrogative clauses in various syntactic ways (e.g. complementizers, gaps, wh-words, extraction). The syntactic behavior matches the semantic one, since all these embedded clauses differ in their meaning as well. In this talk, we present a language that exhibits a very different pattern. In Adyghe, a North-West Caucasian language spoken in southern Russia and some parts of Turkey, the very same “mystery clause” is used to convey the various meanings that relative clauses, embedded declaratives, and embedded interrogatives convey in other languages. We show that (i) Adyghe’s “mystery clause” is a headless relative clause, and that (ii) the syntax-semantics mapping in Adyghe can be accounted for by means of tools that have already been independently argued for in the grammar (set formation, concealed questions, polarity operators, etc.). More generally, Adyghe and its extensive use relative clauses to convey various meanings show that the syntax-semantics interface across languages is more varied that it is usually assumed, but it can still be handled without enriching the conceptual apparatus of the grammar.
As the Spring quarter comes to a close, we celebrate the many successfully defended QPs. Here’s the honor roll:
First QP
- Max Bane: Modeling the Typology of Quantity-Insensitive Stress Systems.
- Tommy Grano: At the intersection of form, meaning and use: Being assertive in Mandarin Chinese.
- Arum Kang: On the plurality of the Extrinsic Plural Marker -TUL in Korean.
- Yaron McNabb: Hebrew Coordinated Relative Clauses as a Window into the Nature of Resumption and Movement.
- Nassira Nicola: Dire N’IMPORTE-Q”: Identifying a free choice item in Quebec Sign Language.
Second QP
- Catherine Chatzopoulos: Negative Concord in Attic Greek.
- James Kirby: Comparative-induced event measure relations in English and Vietnamese.
- Osamu Sawada: The Historical Syntax of Japanese Comparatives.
- Eleni Staraki: Turkish Loanwords in Modern Greek: A Psycholinguistic Approach.
- Chris Straughn: The Development and Use of the Uzbek Complementizer.
Congratulations also to Jackie Bunting for successfully defending her dissertation proposal titled From English to Sranan: An Assessment of Structural Similarities and Differences. Good job, Jackie.
Congratulations to Angelina Bultaovic, who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation entitled ” MODALITY, FUTURITY AND TEMPORAL DEPENDENCY: THE SEMANTICS OF THE SERBIAN PERFECTIVE NONPAST AND FUTURE 2 “! in both The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures the Department of Linguistics for a dual Ph.D. Chestitamo na uspehu! Well done, Gina!
Phonological Models in Automatic Speech Recognition
Karen Livescu
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago
Location: Cobb 201
Time: 3:30pm
Abstract:
The performance of automatic speech recognizers varies widely across contexts. Very good performance can be achieved on single-speaker, large-vocabulary dictation in a clean acoustic environment, as well as on small-vocabulary tasks with fewer constraints on the speakers and acoustics. One domain that is still elusive is that of spontaneous conversational speech. This type of speech poses a number of challenges, among them extreme variation in pronunciation. I will describe efforts in the speech recognition community to characterize and model pronunciation variation.
The most thoroughly studied approach is augmentation of a phonetic pronunciation lexicon with phonological rules. Despite successes in a few domains, it has been surprisingly difficult to obtain significant recognition improvements by including those phonetic pronunciations that appear to exist in the data. I will advocate an alternative view: that the phone unit may not be the most appropriate for modeling the lexicon. I will describe approaches using both larger (e.g. syllable-sized) and “smaller” (e.g. articulatory) units. In the class of “smaller” unit models, ideas from articulatory and autosegmental phonology motivate multi-tier models in which tiers have semi-independent behavior. I will present a particular model in which articulatory features are represented as variables in a dynamic Bayesian network.
Non-phonetic pronunciation models can involve significantly different model structures than those typically used in speech recognition, and as a result they may also entail modifications to other components such as the observation model and training algorithms. At this point it is not clear what the “winning” approach will be. The success of a given approach may depend on the domain or on the amount and type of training data available. I will describe some of the current challenges and ongoing work, with a particular focus on the role of phonological theories in statistical models of pronunciation (and vice versa?).
Congratulations to Nikki Adams, who has been awarded a Provost’s Dissertation-Year Fellowship for next year, and to Erin Debenport, who has been awarded an AAUW Dissertation Fellowship!
Congratulations also to the following students who have received Provost’s Summer Fellowships: Jackie Bunting, James Kirby, Yaron McNabb, Chris Straughn, and Suwon Yoon.
Almerindo Ojeda (PhD, 1982) has recently launched the Center for Human Rights in the Americas, an interdisciplinary center dedicated to scholarship and education about human rights in the Americas. The history and rationale behind this endeavor was featured on the UC Davis website.
The speakers’ slides and handouts from the Beginning Linguistic Research Talks this May are now available here:
http://home.uchicago.edu/~lemieux/LingResearch101.html
If you have any questions, feel free to contact Alice Lemieux.
Getting ‘Better’: On Comparative Suppletion and Related Topics
Jonathan Bobaljik
University of Connecticut
Location: Cobb 201
Time: 3:30pm
I present and discuss four or five universals drawn from across-linguistic study of comparative and superlative morphology. Special attention is given to three generalizations regarding root suppletion in the comparative degree of adjectives (good-better, bad-worse). These generalizations, I contend, have a variety consequences for morphology, semantics and perhaps syntax, particularly in the areas of lexical decomposition (at whatever level this obtains) and the formal treatment of suppletion vs. irregularity. Although comparative suppletion is rare (though attested) outside of Indo-European, and although the data sample is small within any one language, the generalizations over the total data set are surprisingly robust. Two generalizations are given here:
The Comparative-Superlative Generalization:
If the comparative degree of an adjective is built on a suppletive root/stem, then the superlative is also suppletive. The superlative may use the same root as the comparative, or may be further suppletive, but will not use the basic adjectival root. Thus the schema in (1), where A, B, C refer to phonologically unrelated roots.
(1) A - A - A completely regular: short, short-er, short-est
A - B - B suppletive: bad, worse, worst
A - B - C doubly suppletive: Latin ‘good’: bonus - melior -optimus
A - B - A *unattested* * bad - worse - baddest
I argue that this generalization favours analyses in which the superlative is not merely related to the comparative (e.g., both involve degree operators), but is rather _derived_from_ the comparative: [[[SHORT]-ER]-(ES)T]. Put somewhat more contentiously, I argue (with a qualification) that UG excludes a morpheme “-EST” (Superlative) that attaches directly to adjectival roots.
The Comparative-Change-of-State Generalization:
If the comparative degree of an adjective is built on a suppletive root, then a derived change-of-state verb (inchoative or causative) will also be suppletive. The verb may use the same root as the comparative (bad - worse - worsen; bonus -melior - meliorare), or may be further suppletive, but will not use the basic adjectival root.
By parity of reasoning to the first section, I must conclude (contra Dowty and others) that change-of-state verbs always include the comparative at some level of representation (cf. Kennnedy & Levin). I will defend this view against a variety of possible objections and examine apparent counter-examples.
Congratulations go to the following eight graduating majors in linguistics, who have all finished their BA theses (the most ever), and to their advisors (in parentheses):
- Eric Bjerstedt, “The dominance of the unmarked in prosodic reduplication.” (Jason Riggle)
- Christine Boylan, “Causal inference processing in narratives: A fMRI study and review of methodology.” (Amy Dahlstrom)
- Elise Johnston, “Manually mapping the cognition of a culture: Revealing cognitive models in American Sign Language.” (Steven Clancy)
- Nicholas Kontovas, “An analysis of recent loans into the Standard Uyghur lexicon: What semantic distribution and phonological interpretation reveal about transmission environment.” (Alan C. L. Yu)
- Eric Prendergast, “Notice! The pragmatic basis for Balkan object reduplication in Albanian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian.” (Victor Friedman)
- Patrick Rich, “Hitting (at) the problem: An analysis of the conative construction/alternation.” (Steven Clancy)
- John Sylak, “Lak verbal morphology.” (Victor Friedman)
- Noah Yavitz, “Evaluating semantic accounts of the equative”. (Chris Kennedy)
Many of our graduating seniors will embark on new and exciting adventures soon:
- Christine Boylan will be working as lab manager of Alec Marantz & Liina Pylkkänen’s lab at NYU.
- John Sylak is going to Berkeley for his PhD in Linguistics.
- Eric Prendergast received a Fulbright to study in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.
If you’re a graduating senior and want to report your future whereabout, please e-mail blingnews@gmail.com.
Congratulations to Shu-yu Guo, who is the recipient of this year’s annual Leonard Bloomfield prize (for the graduating linguistics major with the highest grade point average in courses towards the major: his grade point average in linguistics was 3.98)!
Andy Rogers has generously made available pictures he took at the Pragmatics, Grammatical Interfaces, and Jerry Sadock conference in honor of Jerry’s retirement. You can click here to view them.
Getting ‘Better’: On Comparative Suppletion and Related Topics
Jonathan Bobaljik
University of Connecticut
I present and discuss four or five universals drawn from across-linguistic study of comparative and superlative morphology. Special attention is given to three generalizations regarding root suppletion in the comparative degree of adjectives (good-better, bad-worse). These generalizations, I contend, have a variety consequences for morphology, semantics and perhaps syntax, particularly in the areas of lexical decomposition (at whatever level this obtains) and the formal treatment of suppletion vs. irregularity. Although comparative suppletion is rare (though attested) outside of Indo-European, and although the data sample is small within any one language, the generalizations over the total data set are surprisingly robust. Two generalizations are given here:
The Comparative-Superlative Generalization:
If the comparative degree of an adjective is built on a suppletive root/stem, then the superlative is also suppletive. The superlative may use the same root as the comparative, or may be further suppletive, but will not use the basic adjectival root. Thus the schema in (1), where A, B, C refer to phonologically unrelated roots.
(1) A - A - A completely regular: short, short-er, short-est
A - B - B suppletive: bad, worse, worst
A - B - C doubly suppletive: Latin ‘good’: bonus - melior -optimus
A - B - A *unattested* * bad - worse - baddest
I argue that this generalization favours analyses in which the superlative is not merely related to the comparative (e.g., both involve degree operators), but is rather _derived_from_ the comparative: [[[SHORT]-ER]-(ES)T]. Put somewhat more contentiously, I argue (with a qualification) that UG excludes a morpheme “-EST” (Superlative) that attaches directly to adjectival roots.
The Comparative-Change-of-State Generalization:
If the comparative degree of an adjective is built on a suppletive root, then a derived change-of-state verb (inchoative or causative) will also be suppletive. The verb may use the same root as the comparative (bad - worse - worsen; bonus -melior - meliorare), or may be further suppletive, but will not use the basic adjectival root.
By parity of reasoning to the first section, I must conclude (contra Dowty and others) that change-of-state verbs always include the comparative at some level of representation (cf. Kennnedy & Levin). I will defend this view against a variety of possible objections and examine apparent counter-examples.
Victor Friedman has received a 2008 Guggenheim fellowship to research a monograph on the similarities of one of the world’s most linguistically diverse and complex areas. For more detail of his project, see the writeup in the latest issue of the Chronicle. Congratulations, Victor!
From Consumer to Producer: Getting Started in Linguistic Research
SECOND TALK IN NEW SERIES TOMORROW Tuesday May 20th
The University of Chicago Department of Linguistics would like to extend an open invitation to anyone starting work in linguistics, or interested in the process, to the second Beginning Research talk happening tomorrow. Join the speakers and audience after the talks at a reception in the Linguistics Lounge on the third floor of Classics.
“Turning an Idea into A Research Project”
Tuesday May 20th, 3:30 - 5:00 pm, Cobb 201 A/B
Reception from 5:00 pm, Ling Lounge, 3rd Floor Classics
“What is a Linguistics Experiment?”
– Alan Yu, Department of Linguistics
“Institutional Support and Review”
– Chris Kennedy, Department of Linguistics
Please direct all questions or comments to Alice Lemieux at lemieux@uchicago.edu.
From Consumer to Producer: Getting Started in Linguistic Research
Ever wondered what the protocol is for working with informants, or how to obtain IRB approval? Ever looked at faculty and advanced graduate students and wondered how they learned all the ins and outs of working within an academic institution to produce original research? The University of Chicago Department of Linguistics would like to extend an open invitation to anyone starting work in linguistics, or interested in the process, to a new series of talks this May. Each talk will consist of presentations by a panel of speakers followed by a thirty minute Q & A period. Come hear experienced researchers share their wisdom (and how they acquired it) and bring your burning questions. Join the speakers and audience after the talks at a reception in the Linguistics Lounge on the third floor of Classics.
“Crafting a Research Topic”
Tuesday May 13th, 3:30 - 5:00 pm, Cobb 201 A/B
Reception from 5:00 pm, Ling Lounge, 3rd Floor Classics
“10 Do’s and Don’t’s of Research in Linguistics”
Jason Merchant, Department of Linguistics
“Getting Started with Research Projects: Phonology, Computational Linguistics, and Beyond”
John Goldsmith, Departments of Linguistics and Computer Science
“Working in Speaker Communities”
Lenore Grenoble, Departments of Linguistics and Slavic Languages & Literature
“Turning an Idea into A Research Project”
Tuesday May 20th, 3:30 - 5:00 pm, Cobb 201 A/B
Reception from 5:00 pm, Ling Lounge, 3rd Floor Classics
“What is a Linguistics Experiment?”
Alan Yu, Department of Linguistics
“Institutional Support and Review”
Chris Kennedy, Department of Linguistics
Different alternatives for topics and foci: Evidence from indefinites and multiple wh
Stefan Hinterwimmer (joint work with Sophie Repp)
Zentrum fur Allgemeine Sprachwisenschaft, Berlin
Thursday May 15, 2008
Cobb 201, 3.30- 5 pm
In gapping, topical indefinites as well as wh-phrases can contrast with surface-identical antecedents if the contrast involved is the first of the two (or more) contrast pairs in the gapping coordination. This is not possible for most other types of expressions. We argue that both topical indefinites and wh-phrases introduce a discourse referent with a fixed address, on the basis of which referents introduced by surface-identical expressions can be contrasted. For the indefinites, we argue that the first contrast pair is a pair of contrastive topics which can, at the same time, be a pair of aboutness topics. These introduce individual addresses (Reinhart 1981). For wh-phrases we follow the assumption that they introduce discourse referents by presupposition. Multiple wh-interrogatives then introduce functions by presup po sition whose domain is provided by the first wh-phrase. The function is specified by giving its extension, i.e. the respective pair-list.
Jason Merchant presented “PF and LF locality: Evidence from Greek comparatives” at the Maryland Linguistics Mayfest (May 10-11). The theme this year was “Island Perspectives“.
A warm welcome to Karlos Arregi, who will join the Linguistics Department next year as an Assistant Professor. Karlos, who completed his Ph.D. at MIT in 2002, is currently teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His interests include syntax, the syntax-semantics, syntax-phonology interfaces, and morphology. He also specializes in Basque and Romance Linguistics.
Congratulations to Alan Yu on his promotion to Associate Professor with tenure!
Erin Debenport has been awarded an American fellowship from the AAUW Educational Foundation for 2008-09. Congratulations, Erin!
A cohort of six students will be joining our department next year:
- Carissa Abrego
- Rebekah Baglini
- Jon Keane
- Tim Grinsell
- Martina Martinovic
- Julia Thomas
Thanks to all who helped out with recruitment.
In honor of Jerry Sadock’s retirement, the Pragmatics, Grammatical Interfaces, and Jerry Sadock conference will take place on May 2 & 3 on the 2dn floor of Cobb. Please come and join us to celebrate this momentous occasion!
University of Chicago, Linguistics Colloquium
Syntactic phases and Codeswitching
Kay-Eduardo González-Vilbazo and Luis López
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
Thursday, May 1 2008
Cobb 201
Abstract
Since Chomsky (1995) there has been ample debate on what exactly the role of little v is (see for instance Kratzer 1996, Marantz 1997 for two early proposals). After Chomsky (2000) and the development of phases as a theoretical construct, the question of little v’s role has become even more complex. This presentation aims to show that the linguistic competence of bilingual code-switchers provides a rich data base to test the value of the little v hypothesis. That is because speakers can switch between a lexical expression of little v and its complement VP, allowing us to extricate their respective contributions to the make-up of the sentence.
The grammar of bilingual code-switchers allows for a structure consisting of a light verb in one language (L1) followed by the main predicate with its arguments in the other (L2). This is exemplified in (1), with L1 Spanish and L2 German. The striking fact is the following: although the constituents of a are fully German in structure, the constituent order, prosodic structure and expression of focus/background of a itself follow the rules and restrictions of Spanish.
(1) Juan ha hecho [a verkaufen die Bücher].
Juan has done sell the books
‘Juan has sold the books.’
Juan ha hecho –> L1, Spanish
Verkaufen die Bücher –> L2, German
We find that little v is directly involved in at least three linguistic properties: linearization of the lexical verb V and its complements, the prosodic structure of VP in neutral contexts and the expression of Focus/Background structure. Thus, features of little v determine (at least) the outcome of the mapping between syntax and PF and syntax and information structure.
A public screening of “The Linguists” will take place at the Franke Institute on Friday, May 9, at 2:30pm. The film will be followed by a discussion with David Harrison. All are welcome!
Tom Griffiths (Berkeley) will be speaking at the Language and Cognition Workshop on Friday, May 2, in Green Hall, Room 104 at 4:00pm.
The 1st Phonologization Symposium was a great success! Thanks to all of you who helped out at the conference. In case you missed the action, click here for some photos from the symposium.
CLS 44 was a great success this year. The CLS officers did an excellent job putting together a wonderful program and a smoothly run conference. Bravo!
The Phonologization symposium will take place on April 25-26 at the Franke Institute of the Humanities. Everyone is invited. For details, please visit http://humanities.uchicago.edu/phonlab/phonologization.html.
It’s that time of the year again! CLS will take place on April 24-26 (the same weekend as the Phonologization symposium). For more details, visit http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/cls/cls44prog.html.
John Goldsmith gave an invited presentation at a workshop entitled “Discovering and representing phonological patterns” at the University of Konstanz (10-12 April). The title of his talk was: “Optimization is the answer. Now, what is the question?”
Alan Yu is giving a series of lectures on phonological typology and sound change at the ACTL (Advanced Core Training in Linguistics) in London during the week of April 21-25.
Please mark your calendars for a syntax LingLunch talk by Luis Vicente (PhD Leiden, currently postdoc at UCSC) on Wed April 23 from 11am-12pm in the Lounge.
“Deriving word order variation in Basque through prosody”
Basque scholars agree that the word order of the language is constrained by discourse (topic/focus) factors. Traditionally, this intuition has been implemented in terms of movement to designated topic/focus projections (Ortiz de Urbina 1989 et seq.). However, such analyses are based on the assumption that the verbal complex is a syntactic head that can undergo head movement to the relevant projections. There exists evidence, though, that the subparts of verbal complexes do not actually form a constituent at all, which poses a rather serious problem for this kind of analyses.
The alternative I pursue here is based on the assumption that the verbal complex is immobile, and word order variation is a consequence of what moves or doesn’t move around it. This approach results in a unified analysis of all word order types while keeping intact the insights gained by previous treatments of the problem. However, it raises the problem of how to motivate the different types of movements that are necessary. I propose that the trigger is prosodic: modifying Richards’ (2006) theory, I hypothesize that the C node defines the domain of stress assignment. More specifically, I propose that Basque specifies that pitch accent must be separated from C by as few XP boundaries as possible. With this much in place, word order variation can be derived as the need for certain constituents to appear or not appear in the focus position, depending on their discourse status.
Osamu Sawada, who was an alternate at the Vagueness and Language Use conference (where Chris Kennedy was an invited speaker), was able to present his paper “Vagueness and Adverbial Polarity Items”. Based on reports from our spies in Paris, Osamu gave an excellent presentation, which stimulated a lot of questions that he handled thoughtfully and comprehensively. Way to go, Osamu!
Salikoko Mufwene has been busy this past winter! He gave keynote addresses at the following recent conferences:
- 2008a. “From genetic creolistics to genetic linguistics: Lessons we should not miss!” 34th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, February 7-10.
- 2008b. “Emergence or creation? Rethinking the formation of Afro-American vernaculars and musics.” Conference on Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago, February 14-17.
- 2008c. “The English(-speaking) Diaspora: Globalization and diversity.” at Purdue University’s 9th Annual Graduate Interdisciplinary Symposium on “Globalization: Questioning nations, borders, identities & communities,” March 28-29.
He also gave the following public lectures:
- 2008d. “The actuation question and the invisible hand in language evolution.” York University, Glendon College, Toronto, CA, 28 February.
- 2008e. “Colonization, globalization, and the linguistic consequences of the (Indo-)European expansion,” Kalamazoo College, March 10.
Max Bane recently went through the odyssey of typesetting a paper for WCCFL 26 in LaTeX. WCCFL, along with a number of other conferences, publishes its proceedings through the Cascadilla Proceedings Project, which unfortunately provides no LaTeX package for authors to implement its style sheet. Some of the requirements were sufficiently tricky to implement (particularly the copyright notice), so he decided to release his solution as a reusable LaTeX document class.
The package lives here: http://maxbane.com/?page_id=19
Want to be enlightened? Jason Merchant will be at UMass, Amherst for the next three weeks, serving as the visiting “syntax guru”.
Chris Kennedy will be a keynote speaker at the Vagueness and Language Use conference at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He will talk about “Vagueness and Comparison“.
“Adjectives and Adverbs: Syntax, Semantics and Discourse“, a volume that Louise McNally and Chris Kennedy edited for the Oxford University Press, has just came out. The website for everyone who wants to rush out and get a copy is: 
Amy Dahlstrom is an invited speaker at the Meskwaki symposium this Saturday. She will be talking about “The Importance of Language and the Importance of Meskwai”.
Jasmin Urban has been awarded a Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in Tunis, Tunisia this summer. Way to go, Jasmin!
Nikki Adams successfully defended her dissertation proposal on “The Internal Arguments of the Zulu Ditransitive” on March 31. Congratulations, Nikki!
There will be a special colloquium next Friday from Enoch Aboh of the University of Amsterdam and MIT. The title of the talk is “A Typology of Adpositions” and you can find the abstract here:
The talk will be held at the normal colloquium time in the normal colloquium location (3:30 in the CSL)
The Semiotics Workshop: Culture in Context & Workshop on US Locations are pleased to announce:
“Language Use at Sandia Pueblo: Ideologies, Revitalization and Institutionalization”
Erin Debenport
Ph.D. Candidate
Linguistics
Discussants: Elise Kramer & Gabe Tusinski (Anthropology)
Tuesday March 11th (Note, this workshop is on a Tuesday)
4:30-6:00 pm
Haskell Hall, Room Mezz 102
The paper for this workshop is available by request. For a copy, please email Gabe Tusinski (tusinski@uchicago.edu) or
Elina Hartikainen (elina@uchicago.edu).
The Department of Near Eastern languages and Civilizations
The Rise of Hittite Literacy:
H. Craig Melchert
Professor of Linguistics
University of California, Los Angeles
Thursday, March 13, 2008
12:00 noon
The LaSalle Banks Room – Oriental Institute
The Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics and the Committee on Social Though present:
“The Linguistics of World Poetry”
Paul Friedrich
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
4:30 p.m., Haskell Hall Room 101
2008 LSA Summer Meeting for Graduate and Undergraduate Students
Language as Interface
The Ohio State University, July 10-13, 2008
Abstracts for paper or poster presentations must be submitted by Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at http://www.lsadc.org/info/meet-summer08.cfm . Abstract review and notifications of acceptance will be done by April 30 at the latest.
Registration for the LSA 2008 Summer Meeting will be available on the website starting April 1, 2008. The deadline for advanced registration will be June 30, 2008. Meals and accommodation (double occupancy) are provided for all student presenters. Some travel support will also be available to student presenters. Upon acceptance, further information regarding meals, accommodation and travel support will be provided.
Visit http://linguistics.osu.edu/lsa08 for more details.
Suwon Yoon will present “Mood in Abstract Complementizers: Altaic vs. non-Altaic languages” at WAFL 5 (The fifth Workshop on Altaic and Formal Linguistics) at SOAS in London in May.
The program for this year’s SALT has now been posted. Chris Kenndey will be presenting “What an ‘average’ semantics needs” with Jason Stanley from Rutgers.
A bunch of Chicago linguists will be heading to New Zealand this summer for LabPhon 11, hosted by the Victoria University of Wellington. The presentations include…
- James Kirby and Alan Yu: Morphological paradigm effects on vowel articulation.
- Partha Niyogi and Morgan Sonderegger: What determines the stability of variation? A dynamical systems study of a stress shift in English.
- Alan Yu, Ed King, Stefan Behr, Barbara Fiedler, Juan Bueno Holle, and Christina Weaver: Sociophonotactics: The effect of perceived foreignness on phonotactic processing.
Indiana University will host the Sociolinguistics Fest during the week of June 9th. During the week there will be a set of minicourses on the topic of Language, Gender, Identity, Variation and Ideology given by Mary Bucholtz, Scott Kiesling, Dennis Preston, Sali Tagliaomonte and Susan Herring/John Paolillo followed by a one day conference. Details on registration and other logistical information are given on their website.
The schedule of the Symposium on Phonologization is now available at http://humanities.uchicago.edu/phonlab/phonologization.html. The symposium will take place on April 25-26 at the Franke Institute for the Humanities.
Modularity in Morphology: The Case of Basque Finite Auxiliaries
Karlos Arregi
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Thur, Feb 21 2008 3:30-5:00pm, Cobb 201
Many modern theories of morphology are highly modular: morphological phenomena with different properties are accounted for by separate modules of grammar. In this talk, I argue for a particular view of the modularity of morphology based on examination of Basque finite auxiliaries, which have a complex system of clitics that cross-reference ergative, absolutive and dative arguments in the sentence. I argue that a principled analysis of several generalizations regarding these clitics must involve a theory of word-formation with separate modules that have their own well-formedness principles and repair operations. Special attention will be given to verbal forms where these requirements of the separate modules conflict with each other. It will be shown that these conflicts are resolved in a manner that is best accounted for by a theory where the modules involved in word formation are derivationally ordered.
On the parametric variation of case and agreement: implications for (non)-configurationality
Vita Markman
Simon Fraser University
Henry Hinds [5734 S. Ellis Ave.] Room 101.
Tues Feb 19, 2008 3:30-5:00pm
In this talk I will argue that case and agreement features are subject to parametric variation and explore the consequences of this claim with a particular attention to word order. Departing from the view that case and agreement are present in the syntax of every language, but may not be overtly realized (Rouveret and Vergnaud 1980; Chomsky 1981, 1995, 2000, 2001; Harley 1995; Bittner and Hale 1996; Sigurdsson 2003), I will argue that languages can choose to have case features, agreement features, some combination of the two or none at all. The main focus of the talk will be on languages that have agreement features but no case. Specifically, I will demonstrate that languages without case features, but with agreement features will be non-configurational. These include Mohawk, Kinande, and Chichewa. In contrast, languages with case features may allow but not require NP dislocation in the presence of agreement. These are all of the Indo-European languages, Japanese, and Nahuatl.
In addition to addressing the effects of the parametric variation in case and agreement on word order, I will also address a number of other syntactic phenomena that pose a problem for the ‘universal’ approach to case and agreement and are better understood if these features are taken to vary parametrically.
Sometimes Syntax is Syntax. Sometimes Syntax is Phonology
Jason Kandybowicz
Swarthmore College
Thursday, February 14, 2008, 3:30-5:00pm
Cobb 201
In recent years, the field of syntax has seen a shift toward explorations and explanations of syntactic phenomena cast in terms of the interfacing sub-systems of grammar; namely, the phonological and semantic components. This modus operandi necessitates a broader knowledge base than was previously thought necessary. It also entails that the more rigorous analyses in this vein will likely come from those who study languages holistically. Yet curiously enough, holism is far from being the battle cry in today’s interface-driven syntactic frameworks. In this talk, I advance an argument for linguistic holism on the basis of two case studies drawn from the Nupe language, a Benue Congo language spoken in south central Nigeria.
The first case study deals with the language’s restriction on extraction from perfect clauses. The second case study is similar in that it too deals with an extraction restriction. In this case, the restriction involves the prohibition of embedded subject extraction across a complementizer – the so-called Comp-trace effect. Although the phenomena investigated in both case studies have been traditionally referred to as “syntactic” in both the Nupe literature and in the generative literature more broadly, I show that the former is truly syntactic in the narrow sense, while the latter is more phonological in nature. In this respect, then, it is difficult to know in advance of analysis whether a purported syntactic phenomenon is truly syntactic after all. Thus, in light of situations like these, holistic approaches to language take on an elevated level of importance. The talk also addresses a number of theoretical issues raised by the core empirical problems of each case study, including, but not limited to, the syntax-phonology interface.
Northwestern University Department of Linguistics Colloquium presents
On the Role of Syntax on the Interpretation of Elided Reflexives
Jeffrey Runner
University of Rochester
The main explanations for the exceptional behavior of reflexives in “representational NPs” (RNPs), e.g., ‘a picture of herself’, rely on syntactic or argument structure (Chomsky, 1986; Davies & Dubinsky, 2003; Pollard & Sag, 1992; Reinhart & Reuland, 1993). “Reference transfer” (RT) allows reference to a representation of a person by that person’s name, e.g., referring to a statue of Ringo Starr as ‘Ringo Starr’ (Jackendoff, 1992). Like RNP reflexives (Grodzinsky & Reinhart, 1993), RT reflexives may receive coreferential interpretations when elided (Lidz, 2001). Here I present evidence from collaborative work with Micah Goldwater (UT Austin) of two scene verification experiments and two “visual world” eye-tracking experiments suggesting that it may be the representational use of RNP reflexives- and not (just) the syntactic/argument structure- that allows for their exceptional behavior. Interesting differences are found between the two sets of experiments, which can also shed light on the approaches to ellipsis interpretation discussed by Kehler (2000) and Frazier & Clifton (2006).
Friday, February 15, 2008
3:30 p.m.
Chambers Hall (600 Foster Street), Lower Classroom Level
Alan Yu will talk about “Selective pressures in sound change and phonological typology” at the Language and Cognition Workshop on Friday at 4pm in Green 104.
The new Karen Landahl Center for Linguistic Research was featured in the latest issue of the Chronicle. Click here to check it out!
Greg Anderson (UofC PhD 2000) and David Harrison were interviewed on NPR’s On Point. They discuss the making of the film, The Linguists, as well as the significance of working on endangered languages. To hear the interview, visit http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/01/20080125_b_main.asp.
Language as a Complex Adaptive System
John H. Holland
University of Michigan
January 29
Tuesday, 11:00 am
RI 480
Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphases that we get at the real meaning of things. –Georgia O’Keefe
This approach to language acquisition and evolution concentrates on language as a social phenomenon. To this end, it uses agent-based models wherein the agents adapt to an environment consisting of scattered resources and other agents — such models are usually called situated. Interaction between agents already having some linguistic ability, teachers, and agents without linguistic ability, learners, must serve for the propagation of language. In these models, language only evolves if its acquisition by a group of agents enables them to better collect resources — there is no a priori value to language.
Language, for present purposes, is the ability to produce utterance sequences wherein different sequences have different predictable effects on other agents. That is, an agent can produce a wide variety of responses in other agents through combinatoric (grammar-like) use of a limited set of utterances. Agents start with only a few familiar pre-primate capacities
(i) an ability to imitate, (ii) mutual awareness of shared attention when two or more agents are focused on the same salient object, and (iii) an inherent ability to distinguish actions from objects. If these abilities are placed on a quantitative scale, ranging from total lack of the ability to full development of the ability, there may be a sharp inflection point as a vector combination of these abilities increases. This inflection point would offer an explanation of the “sudden” appearance of structured language as we move from closely related primates to humans.
On a larger scale, the models proposed are good candidates for examining several emergent phenomena associated with complex adaptive systems (cas) in general:
(i) Robustness: Despite the established fact that individuals in a language group vary considerably in the grammars and expressions they use, communication proceeds smoothly under a wide variety of conditions.
(ii) Networks of interaction: The language-mediated formation of social groups and the “hub/authority” patterns in the internet are just two examples of generation of networks of increasing complexity and diversity.
(iii) Meanings as equivalence classes over environmental patterns: As languages develop and change, we see an increasing ability to distinguish different repeating patterns in the environment, especially social patterns, ranging from small groups to corporations and nations.
John Holland is a MacArthur Fellow, a Fellow of the World Economic Forum, and co-chairman of the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute. He is known worldwide as the “father of genetic algorithms” and is the author of HIDDEN ORDER: HOW ADAPTATION BUILDS COMPLEXITY.
Prof. Holland is the guest of the Computation Institute this coming Tuesday, January 29 at 11am, in RI 480 (Research Institute, 5640 South Ellis Avenue), as part of its Deep Disciplinary Dive on language and computation.
Symbol Grounding: How the Acquisition of Symbols Affects Numerical Cognition
STANISLAS DEHAENE
Collège de France
3:30 pm
Cobb 201
5811 S. Ellis
Professor Dehaene’s visit to Chicago is made possible with the support from the Florence Gould Foundation.
The 2nd Biannual Summer Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America will take place at The Ohio State University, Thursday, 10 July – Sunday, 13 July 2008. The meeting is directed specifically at undergraduate and graduate students in Linguistics, and has the following goals:
- To provide a supportive setting for students to present their research and obtain feedback on their work;
- To encourage the development of a community of scholars and a spirit of collaboration; and
- To provide students with the opportunity to learn about various aspects of the profession through targeted professional development panels.
The program will include career-related workshops on how to apply for a job, how to apply for graduate school, how to apply for funding, and how to publish research. There will also be paper/poster presentations, social events for networking, as well as the following invited presentations:
Interrelationship between Language and Music:
Ilse Lehiste
From Undergraduate Major to Linguistics Professor:
Mary Paster (Pomona College)
The Road to Industry:
Elizabeth Strand (Tellme, A Microsoft Subsidiary)
Frederick Parkinson (Nuance Communications)
Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations:
John Rickford (Stanford)
Tom Wasow (Stanford)
Abstract Submissions: All abstracts will be reviewed by the LSA Program Committee and by a panel of local organizers.
The deadline for submitting abstracts is 5:00 p.m. EST on Monday, 18 March 2008. Abstracts for 20-minute papers and for posters must be submitted electronically and must be accompanied by a completed Abstract Submittal Form to be eligible for review; see the LSA website (http://www.lsadc.org) for details and submission requirements. The online abstract submission module will open 1 March 2008.
Following the Summer Meeting, The Ohio State University will host a weeklong series of workshops offered by faculty and researchers from the OSU Linguistics community. The topics and instructors are as followed:
Quantitative methods in linguistics
Mary Beckman
ToBI labeling
Julie McGory
Corpora and corpus studies
Chris Brew and Mike White
Eye-tracking methodology
Kiwato Ito and Shari Speer
For more information, visit: http://linguistics.osu.edu/ or http://www.lsadc.org
Zenzi Griffin (Georgia Institute of Technology) will speak at the Department of Psychology colloquium on January 17, Thursday, at 4pm in Rosenwald 011. Her talk is titled, “How speakers’ eye movements reflect spoken language generation“.
Jason Merchant’s theory on “a couple of” was discussed in William Safire’s recent musing on the different usages of “of”. To see why Safire wants to “fall off of” his chair, here’s the full article.
Phonologization symposium: January 15
WCCFL: January 15
- This year’s WCCFL will be held at UCLA on May 16-18. The two special session topics are as follows:
- Experimental Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics
- Explaining Phonological Typology: Channel or Analytic Bias?
The year 2008 has been proclaimed International Year of Languages by the United Nations General Assembly. UNESCO, which has been entrusted with the task of coordinating activities for the Year, is determined to fulfill its role as lead agency.
The full text of a message from Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, on the celebration of 2008, International Year of Languages can be found here.
BLING is finally back after a short winter hiatus. Not doubt many of you will have interesting new developments you would like to share. So please don’t forget to send us news you’d like to see appearing on the pages of BLING.
Just a reminder, BLING is updated weekly, so keep those news and other interesting bits of linguistics you’d like to share coming!
Gradient phonological generalizations in speech processing
Mirjam Ernestus
Radboud University Nijmegen &
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Thursday Jan. 10, 2008
Cobb 201, 3.30-5 pm
Abstract
Several studies have shown that speakers are sensitive to the absolute and statistically gradient phonological patterns in their mental lexicon. Participants prefer words conforming to these patterns, and they are slower in producing morphologically regular word forms violating the patterns. In this talk I will discuss two series of experiments that further investigate the role of gradient patterns in speech processing. The first series suggest that generalizations based on intraparadigmatic relations, between the forms of single word, have a stronger effect than those based on interparadigmatic relations, between the same types of forms of different words. The second series of experiments shows that phonologically gradient patterns affect also speech comprehension, even when listeners are focusing on content instead of form. This shows that gradient generalizations play a role in everyday language processing.
THE LINGUISTS, the first documentary supported by the National Science Foundation, was selected to world premiere in the newly minted “Spectrum: Documentary Spotlight” category at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. The trailer is at http://www.thelinguists.com. One of the linguists featured is our very own Gregory Anderson (UofC PhD 2000). Here’s a brief description provided by Ironbound Films:
“It is estimated that of 7,000 languages in the world, half will be gone by the end of this century.
THE LINGUISTS follows David Harrison and Gregory Anderson, scientists racing to document languages on the verge of extinction. In Siberia, India, and Bolivia, the linguists’ resolve is tested by the very forces silencing languages: institutionalized racism and violent economic unrest.
David and Greg’s journey takes them deep into the heart of the cultures, knowledge, and communities at risk when a language dies.”
The University of Chicago will host a conference and masterclass in CORPUS METHODS IN LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY (CMLLP-2008) Wednesday-Sunday, March 26-30, 2008. Application/Registration Deadline is January 21, 2008. For more information, please visit http://languages.uchicago.edu/corpuslinguistics.
Tom Wier, who’s visiting the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig this year, sent us the following updates:
“I have recently given two talks:
(1) “The Typology of Tav-constructions and the Person-Role Constraint in Georgian” at the Ditransitives Conference at the MPI-EVA in Leipzig, 23-25 Nov 2007.
(2) “Polysynthesis in Caucasian Languages; or, What is Polysynthesis?” at the Caucasological Conference at the MPI-EVA in Leipzig, 7-9 Dec 2007.
I have also been asked by Martin Haspelmath to teach a course at the Leipzig Spring School on Linguistic Diversity, which I’ve entitled “Feature Hierarchies in Natural Languages”:
http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/conference/08_springschool/files/courses.html“
Breaking Grounds: Connecting the Americas
Series on History, Culture & Language
Forum/Panel on Language (In)Tolerance
Tuesday, November 20, 6-8pm
Library Lounge of Ida Noyes
John Goldsmith and Jerry Sadock were elected Fellows of the Linguistics Society of America. The Fellows program was established in 2005 to recognize extraordinary contributions and service to the discipline and the Society. There will be a recognition ceremony for the 2008 Fellows immediately before the Presidential Address at the LSA meeting on Saturday, January 5 at the Palmer House in Chicago. Congratulations, Jerry and John! This is a well-deserved recognition!
Are you interested in - What are intelligence and thought, and how can they be emulated? Where is current AI research heading? Will computers ever be able to truly model the mind? Will robots become our new overlords?
The UofC ACM presents:
An Interdisciplinary Panel on Artificial Intelligence and Related Fields
Wednesday, Nov. 14, 5:00pm
Eckhart 133
Featuring Panelists:
- David McAllester, Professor, Toyota Technological Institute, University of Chicago
- John G