BLING

Matt Bauer (Illinois Institute of Technology) will be giving  a special presentation the use of ultrasound  in linguistic research at 10:30am on May 11, 2009 in the Landahl Center for Linguistic Research. A short description of this presentation is given below:

The use of ultrasound in linguistic research represents a non-invasive, easy to use, portable, and (relatively) inexpensive tool to study speech-related anatomical structures, such as the tongue, hard palate, and larynx. Ultrasound is particularly well suited for directly measuring ‘slow’ lingual gestures, such as those for vowels and liquids, as opposed to ‘fast’ gestures, such as the ones for flaps and trills. Laryngeal height can be measured indirectly through the movement of the hyoid bone. This talk will cover the basics of ultrasound technology, recording procedures, data analysis, and advantages and disadvantages of using ultrasound in linguistic research.

Workshop on Language, Cognition, and Computation
(Sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies)

Vowel variability within and between days

Shannon Heald (Psych, U. Chicago)

Friday, May 15 at 3:30pm, in the Karen Landahl Center (basement of Social Science)

Alan Yu will be giving a colloquium at SUNY Stony Brook this Friday, May 1. The title of his talk is “Toward a rational account of channel bias.”

University of Chicago Linguistics Colloquium

Keren Rice, University of Toronto

What determines morpheme order in the Athapaskan verb?

March 5, 3:30-5:00pm, Cobb 201

Abstract:

The surface order of morphemes in the verb word of Athapaskan languages has traditionally been considered to be idiosyncratic, stipulated by a template. In Rice 2000 I argued that what I called semantic scope plays an important role in the ordering of morphemes. Here I extend the account of morpheme ordering in the verb word, focusing on a series of problems that arise if scope alone is involved. I argue that if phonological factors are also taken into account, a systematicity to the complexities of morpheme ordering in the verb emerges, with morphemes being segregated by their phonological shapes, and, within these phonologically determined groups, scope plays a major role in the ordering of morphemes. I examine the principles that control the ordering in light of recent claims that functional principles such as parsability are key to morpheme ordering.

For future colloquia, please visit: http://linguistics.uchicago.edu/newsevents/colloquia.shtml

Ed King, one of our many talented undergraduates, will be presenting “Generation Effects on Vowel Production in Latvian-English Bilinguals in Chicago” at the Toronto Undergraduate Linguistics Conference (TULCon), March 27-29, 2009.