What's Happening In South College tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2 2008-05-15T00:02:35Z Movable Type Open Source 4.1 WHISC Monthly Through the Summer tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.847 2008-05-15T04:12:00Z 2008-05-15T00:02:35Z This is the final WHISC of the academic year. Keep the news items coming, though. We'll publish on the final Thursday of June, July, and August, resuming our weekly schedule at the start of September.... whisc This is the final WHISC of the academic year. Keep the news items coming, though. We'll publish on the final Thursday of June, July, and August, resuming our weekly schedule at the start of September.

]]> Annual Mini-Conference today tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.846 2008-05-15T04:11:00Z 2008-05-15T00:03:26Z Today is the Mini-Conference, at which the second years present their research. Start time: 9:00 am. Location: the Math Lounge in Lederle Tower. Check out last week's entry for more details.... whisc Today is the Mini-Conference, at which the second years present their research. Start time: 9:00 am. Location: the Math Lounge in Lederle Tower. Check out last week's entry for more details.

]]> UUSLAW This Saturday tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.845 2008-05-15T04:10:00Z 2008-05-16T15:01:18Z UUSLAW (the UMass Amherst-UConn-Smith Language Acquisition Workshop) takes place this Saturday, May 17, at UConn, in (or very near) the Linguistics Department there. Below is a list of the presenters, along with their titles, though possibly not in the order... whisc UUSLAW (the UMass Amherst-UConn-Smith Language Acquisition Workshop) takes place this Saturday, May 17, at UConn, in (or very near) the Linguistics Department there. Below is a list of the presenters, along with their titles, though possibly not in the order of presentation. The start time is 10:00 am.

Update: We now have the full schedule here:

10:00-10:30 Breakfast
10:30-11:00 Jeff Bernath (UConn) Separating theories of ASL Phonology: Looking in acquisition
11:00-11:30 Helen Koulidobrova (UConn) DP or not DP: Testing the parameter through acquisition
11:30-11:45 Coffee
11:45-12:15 Magda Oiry (UMass Amherst) Acquisition of long-distance questions in French: Varying experimental contexts
12:15-12:45 Bill Philip (UMass Amherst) Dutch children's sensitivity to weak cross-over effects
12:45-1:45 Lunch
1:45-2:15 Masahiko Takahashi (UConn) The acquisition of passives and optional subject movement in Japanese
2:15-2:45 Jean Crawford (UConn) The acquisition of Sesotho passives: Evidence for maturation
2:45-3:00 Coffee
3:00-3:30 Jill de Villiers, Harper Gernet-Girard, Jay Garfield (Smith) Figuring out the properties of Tibetan evidentials for child speakers
3:30-4:00 Aynat Rubinstein (UMass Amherst) Assessing semantic conservatism
4:00-4:30 Eva Bar-Shalom (UConn) and Elena Zaretsky (UMass Amherst) Initial phases of attrition in Russian-English bilingual children and the role of L1 in L1 attrition

[Thanks Tanja and Tom!]

]]> Phillips Fund Grant to Amy Rose Deal tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.844 2008-05-15T04:09:00Z 2008-05-15T00:03:12Z Amy Rose Deal has been awarded a grant from the Phillips Fund of the American Philosophical Society to support her research on Nez Perce this summer. She'll be spending the month of June in Idaho and working to learn more... whisc Amy Rose Deal has been awarded a grant from the Phillips Fund of the American Philosophical Society to support her research on Nez Perce this summer. She'll be spending the month of June in Idaho and working to learn more about futures, modals, tense and verbal space inflection.

Congratulations, Amy Rose!

]]> Grants to John McCarthy tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.843 2008-05-15T04:08:00Z 2008-05-15T00:00:03Z John McCarthy has received grants from the Center for Teaching and the General Education Council to effect various improvements in Linguistics 101. Congratulations, John!... whisc John McCarthy has received grants from the Center for Teaching and the General Education Council to effect various improvements in Linguistics 101. Congratulations, John!

]]> Acquisition Lab tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.842 2008-05-15T04:07:00Z 2008-05-15T00:10:17Z The Acquisition Lab met on Monday, May 12. Tanja Heizmann, Amy Patno and Tom Roeper presented an informal, interactive talk titled 'Exhaustivity vs maximality: Preliminiary data brainstorming session'.... whisc The Acquisition Lab met on Monday, May 12. Tanja Heizmann, Amy Patno and Tom Roeper presented an informal, interactive talk titled 'Exhaustivity vs maximality: Preliminiary data brainstorming session'.

]]> Intonation Lab tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.841 2008-05-15T04:06:00Z 2008-05-14T23:58:49Z The Intonation Lab met on May 9. Lisa Selkirk delivered a talk titled 'The nature of contrastive focus Spell-Out in English and Japanese.'... whisc The Intonation Lab met on May 9. Lisa Selkirk delivered a talk titled 'The nature of contrastive focus Spell-Out in English and Japanese.'

]]> UMass Amherst Linguists at NAPhC 5 tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.840 2008-05-15T04:05:00Z 2008-05-14T23:58:19Z John Kingston gave an invited talk, 'Is auditory processing autonomous from linguistic knowledge', at the Fifth North American Phonology Conference (NAPhC 5) in Montreal. Andries Coetzee (2004 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD, now Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan) gave... whisc John Kingston gave an invited talk, 'Is auditory processing autonomous from linguistic knowledge', at the Fifth North American Phonology Conference (NAPhC 5) in Montreal. Andries Coetzee (2004 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD, now Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan) gave another of the invited talks, 'Integrating grammatical and extra-grammatical factors in phonological variation'.

]]> Chris Potts at Stanford tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.839 2008-05-15T04:04:00Z 2008-05-14T23:57:42Z Chris Potts is giving a colloquium at Stanford on May 23. He is also speaking in the Pragmatics Reading Group on the same day.... whisc Chris Potts is giving a colloquium at Stanford on May 23. He is also speaking in the Pragmatics Reading Group on the same day.

]]> Two-Person Car Pools Only tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.838 2008-05-15T04:03:00Z 2008-05-15T00:05:45Z whisc Shigeto Kawahara writes,

In GA, we often see this sign:

BUSES AND 2 PERSON CAR POOLS ONLY

We always wonder, "what if you have 3 (or more) people in the car?"

]]> Phonology in the News tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.837 2008-05-15T04:02:00Z 2008-05-14T23:56:01Z From the New York Times, May 12, 2008: Appearing on MSNBC this morning, John Edwards said he was "very likely" to endorse the candidate he voted for in the North Carolina primary on Tuesday. But, the anchors asked, which candidate... whisc From the New York Times, May 12, 2008:

Appearing on MSNBC this morning, John Edwards said he was "very likely" to endorse the candidate he voted for in the North Carolina primary on Tuesday. But, the anchors asked, which candidate was it?

In his demurral, Mr. Edwards may have slipped: "I just voted -- I just voted for him on Tuesday," he said. But given Mr. Edwards's Southern accent, that pesky pronoun may have been plural, albeit in a shortened form: "I just voted for 'em on Tuesday."

John McCarthy writes, "Here's the clip. What do you think?"

[Thanks John!]

]]> Powerset Launches tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.836 2008-05-15T04:01:00Z 2008-05-15T00:13:44Z whisc Powerset has launched a new search engine over Wikipedia. Powerset is doing Natural Language Search — the search algorithms and the index depend on parsed data, built with tools that originated in the natural language research groups at PARC and make use of innovative theoretical ideas from LFG.

The search engine they just launched seems to take fairly seriously the form of one's queries and to attempt a certain amount of reference tracking across the documents it returns.

]]> Annual Mini-Conference tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.835 2008-05-08T04:10:00Z 2008-05-07T19:23:37Z The Annual Department Mini-Conference will take place on Thursday, May 15, starting at 9:00 am, in the Math Lounge in Lederle Tower. Downloadable version of the schedule Jesse Aron Harris Events and extraction in pseudo-coordination 9:00-9:35 Wendell Kimper Syntactic reduplication... whisc The Annual Department Mini-Conference will take place on Thursday, May 15, starting at 9:00 am, in the Math Lounge in Lederle Tower.

Downloadable version of the schedule

Jesse Aron Harris Events and extraction in pseudo-coordination 9:00-9:35
Wendell Kimper Syntactic reduplication and the spellout of movement chains 9:35-10:10
Meg Grant The (non-)interaction of ellipsis and binding: Evidence from re-binding 10:10-10:45
Misato Hiraga Japanese Many quantifiers and their interaction with demonstratives 10:45-11:20
Break Lunch provided 11:20-12:00
Emily Elfner The interaction of linearization and prosody: Evidence from pronoun postposing 12:00-12:35
Pasha Siraj How to win the discourse game using particles 12:35-1:10
Martin Walkow When can you ask a inner negation polar question? 1:10-1:45

[Thanks Kyle!]

]]> End-of-Semester Lunch tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.834 2008-05-08T04:09:00Z 2008-05-07T19:21:46Z The department held is End-of-Semester Lunch yesterday. It featured sandwiches from Andiamo and a cake from the Henion Bakery. The cake was decorated with the names of our graduating majors: Amanda Bernhard Clara Donascimento Daniel Green Ekaterina Kravtchenko Elizabeth Oconnor... whisc The department held is End-of-Semester Lunch yesterday. It featured sandwiches from Andiamo and a cake from the Henion Bakery. The cake was decorated with the names of our graduating majors:

  • Amanda Bernhard
  • Clara Donascimento
  • Daniel Green
  • Ekaterina Kravtchenko
  • Elizabeth Oconnor
  • Natan Pakman
  • Yelena Paschenko
  • Amy Patno
  • Ho Ching Yuen

Thanks to everyone who helped arrange the lunch! And congratulations to our new Linguistics BAs!

]]> Semantics Reading Group tag:web.linguist.umass.edu,2008:/~whisc//2.833 2008-05-08T04:08:00Z 2008-05-07T19:22:47Z Semantics reading group meets today (May 8), at 8:00 pm, for the last time in Spring 2008, with a very special program featuring two WCCFL 27 practice talks! Alumni and professors Luis Alonso-Ovalle and Paula Menendez-Benito: 'Minimal domain widening' Jesse... whisc Semantics reading group meets today (May 8), at 8:00 pm, for the last time in Spring 2008, with a very special program featuring two WCCFL 27 practice talks!

[Thanks Aynat!]

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