Category Archives: faculty

Alan Yu around the World

Professor Alan Yu gave a research seminar recently (Feb 1) at the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The talk was titled “Individual variation in socio-cognitive processing and the actuation of sound change”.

He will also be giving a colloquium at Carleton University, Ottawa on March 11 on a similar topic.

Jason Merchant at MIT and Stanford this Spring

Professor Jason Merchant will be giving an invited colloquium at MIT on March 11, and is also an invited speaker at a workshop on ellipsis at Stanford, this April 29-30. He doesn’t know yet what he’ll talking on at either place, but says it will probably be about gender features under ellipsis.

Victor Friedman: Keynotes, plenaries, and more

Professor Victor A. Friedman recently gave the keynote address for the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages at the annual meeting in January. The title was “Families, Leagues, and Hybridity: The Past and Future of Slavic and East European Languages”. The talk will be published in the Spring 2011 issue of the Slavic and East European Journal.

Victor also gave two plenary papers in January:

  • Thailand-Malaysia-Indonesia/Greece-Macedonia-Bulgaria – Parallels and Prospects. Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia: Islam, Merges, and Margins, National University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 4-5 January 2011
  • A Thousand Years of Evidentials: From Al-Kashghari to Watergate and Beyond, Conference on Evidentials, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 14-16 January

Finally, a review of Victor’s edited translation of Bai Ganyo has been published on BULstack, a blog of Bulgarian culture.

UChicago at the LSA

The Chicago linguistic community made quite a showing at this year’s recent annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, including talks and posters by:

  • Jason Merchant: Agreement into and out of ellipsis sites
  • Jonathan Keane, Erin Dahlgren, Jason Riggle: Variation in segment duration in ASL fingerspelling
  • Max Bane, Peter Graff (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Morgan Sonderegger: Phonetic convergence among reality television contestants
  • Thomas Grano: Aspect under (and out of) control in Mandarin Chinese
  • Max Bane: How many language types are there?
  • Alan C. L. Yu: Abilities to empathize and systemize influence perceptual compensation:
    Implications for sound change
  • Martina Martinovic: A regression model for tone placement in Neostokavian
  • Christina Weaver: Influences on the production of non-native sequences in Mandarin
  • Itamar Francez (University of Chicago/University of Michigan), Andrew Koontz-Garboden (University of Manchester): Property possession and comparison in Ulwa
  • Jacqueline Bunting: ‘More’ and the Sranantongo gradable predicate
  • Eduardo Rivail Ribeiro: Mapping Tupí loans in Macro-Jê languages
  • Eduardo Rivail Ribeiro: On the inclusion of the Karirí family in the Macro-Jê stock: additional evidence
  • Yaron McNabb: The effect of context on the meaning of intensifiers and gradable adjectives
  • Timothy Grinsell: Russian aspect and the semantics of degree
  • Salikoko S. Mufwene: Creoles and the phylogenetic emergence of language: Myths and facts
  • Amy Dahlstrom: Argument structure of Algonquian AI+O verbs: Thematic roles and morphosyntax
  • Alan C. L. Yu, Ryan Bochnak, Tim Grinsell, Christina Weaver: Some puzzles in pronominal agreement in the Washo copular construction
  • Thomas Wier: Tonkawa prosodic morphology and prosodic rule blocks