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« Chris Potts Running for the LSA Executive Committee | Main | Paula Menendez-Benito in Amsterdam»

Vladimir Borschev and Barbara Partee at DIALOG 2008

From Barbara:

Volodja and I [[+distributive] presented] papers at DIALOG 2008, June 4-8, at a pleasant 'pansionat' outside Moscow, the Bekasovo Spa (which translates roughly as Woodcockville Spa; 'bekas' is woodcock (a little plumper than a snipe)). There were goldfinches, fieldfares, magpies, greenfinches, wagtails, and probably more, not counting chaffinches and hooded crows, which are everywhere (I'm composing this on the 5th). It's been a very cold May in and around Moscow, and there were still lily-of-the-valley in bloom here in early June, though the light late nights meant it must be summer.

Volodja's paper was ' "Ja ne byl ..., menja ne bylo..." or how many different "byt' " in Russian.' (' "I.NOM NEG was.MASC.SG, ... I.GEN NEG was.NEUT.SG..." or how many different "BE"s in Russian'). My paper was 'Symmetry and symmetrical predicates'.

The annual DIALOG conference brings together theoretical, descriptive, and computational linguists, and it's always stimulating and fun. There are many Russian linguist "families", and there were several 3-generation-families at the conference in its lovely family-friendly setting -- for instance our colleague Elena Paducheva and her wonderful linguist husband Andrej Zalizniak's daughter Anna Zalizniak is a linguist and is married to another linguist Mixail Mixeev, and their daughter Melania is 9 now -- they were all here except Zalizniak senior. Apresjan and his wife are both linguists, their daughter Valentina is a very fine linguist, her husband is not a linguist, but they're all here together with Valentina's 4-year-old son Iosef -- I love watching the grandparents and parents all taking turns with Iosef on his little rented bike while the others go to talks.

I am having trouble, as you see, writing a past tense report while living in the present tense. It's an interesting exercise. At this point I stopped and got back to work on my Power Point presentation for the talk I gave on June 7.

[Thanks Barbara!]

June 26, 2008 12:05 AM | 06:18 (2008-06-26) , faculty news , publications/presentations