Rella I. Cohn research awards

The first round of awards have been made from the Chicago Linguistics Graduate Student Research Fund in Honor of Rella I. Cohn. The following projects received individual awards in amounts up to $450:

Ryan Bochnak, ‘Syntax and semantics of Luganda “exceed” comparatives’
Jon Keane, (ASL fingerspelling database for automatic recognition)
Susan Rizzo, ‘Performance errors in the manual modality: the case of ASL fingerspelling’
Christina Weaver, (emphasis in Neo-Aramaic phonology)

Congratulations to Ryan, Jon, Susan, and Christina!

There will be another round of applications for the Rella Cohn fund in Spring 2011; in subsequent years awards will be made once a year in the spring. Look for an announcement next spring about the application deadline.

Alumni news: Ilya Yakubovich

In Spring 2010, Ilya Yakubovich moved from Chicago to Moscow, where he accepted the position of a Privatdozent (Assistant Professor) at his alma mater, Russian State University for the Humanities, and research appointments at the Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences. In January 2011 Ilya relocated to Oxford, where he was offered Jill Hart Postdoctoral Fellowship in Indo-Iranian Philology. He took a temporary leave from his teaching job, but continues to combine his work in Oxford with research appointments in Moscow.

Eric Morley’s grammar of Ajagbe

Congratulations to our BA alumnus Eric Morley, for the recent publication by LINCOM Europa of his Grammar of Ajagbe, which he wrote on the basis of fieldwork that he conducted from 2007-2009 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Klouekanme, Benin. More details about the book are available on LinguistList, and you can find out more about Ajagbe on Ethnologue.

Congratulations to Juan Bueno Holle!

Juan Bueno Holle has just received an NSF DEL grant (from the Documenting Endangered Languages program) for dissertation research for his project “Documenting information structure in Isthmus Zapotec.” Great work, Juan!

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