Anna Verbuk (2007 UMass Amherst PhD) has accepted a position as Research Specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It's a one-year postdoc in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science. Anna will, among other things, teach an introductory undergraduate class Children, Communication and Language Ability.
Congratulations, Anna!
Bart Hollebrandse and Tom Roeper presented a paper at GLOW 32. The title was 'Indirect recursion as a restriction on the syntax-semantics interface'.
UMass Amherst Linguistics is well-represented at CLS 45, which begins today (April 16) and runs through Saturday:
UMass Amherst Linguistics BA Kyle Rawlins has accepted a tenure-track job in the Cognitive Science Department at Johns Hopkins, where he is currently a visiting professor. Kyle earned his BA from UMass Amherst in 2003 (along with an BS in computer science), then headed to UC Santa Cruz for his doctoral work, graduating in 2008. Congratulations, Kyle!
[Thanks WHASC!]
Lauren Terzenbach got her undergrad degree in linguistics and Russian in 2003. When we last had news of her, in a May, 2007 WHISC, she was an Army captain in Iraq. Lauren has now completed her service and is a first-year graduate at UT Austin, planning to specialize in phonology.
[Thanks John!]
A huge congratulations to August Siena Cohn Thomas (Linguistics BA). She has been awarded a U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship for participation in a Turkish intensive summer language institute, sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. August writes, "Two months of intensive Turkish in Turkey this summer – fully funded by the State Dept. I'm incredibly excited!"
August is no stranger to WHISC; readers might remember our item on her being named a Davidson Fellow in Literature last year.
[Thanks Rajesh!]
Magdalena Schwager and our own Ilaria Frana (now on a post-doc in Göttingen) are organizing a workshop titled FACQs: Frequently Asked Concealed Questions. The invited speakers are Maria Aloni, Irene Heim, Caroline Heycock, Lance Nathan, Orin Percus, Maribel Romero, and Ede Zimmermann. The deadline for abstract submission is April 5.
[Thanks Ilaria!]
Alum Suzanne Urbanczyk (PhD 1996) is interviewed in a recently released documentary called A Future Past Voice:
"Ideas, thoughts, memories and realities of the Coast Salish community are presented in an attempt to better understand the issues of language, language loss, and the importance of traditional culture. Community leaders, educators and concerned activists share their personal experiences in this powerful and heat touching film."
Thanks to the producer, Brian Rice, we have two copies of the DVD in the department. Seth Cable and Joe Pater are hoping to be able to organize a formal showing sometime in the future, but if you would like to watch it in the meantime, e-mail either of them to borrow a copy.
[Thanks Joe!]
Elliott Moreton*
UNC Chapel Hill
Syntagmatic simplicity bias in human and artificial learners
In collaboration with Joe Pater and Michael Becker** (Reed College)
Friday, February 20, 3:30 pm, Machmer W-23
Refreshments to follow in the department lounge
*2002 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD
**2009 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD
Elliott Moreton (this week's colloq speaker) will be in the department today and tomorrow (Feb 19 and 20). Today, he is speaking in Joe's Seminar on Models of Phonological Learning (Thursday, Feb 19, 1:00-2:15 pm, Hasbrouck Lab 106). He will also be available for meetings and lunches. Contact Emily for more details.
[Thanks Emily!]
An article by Karen Jesney and alumna Anne-Michelle Tessier (PhD 2007; Assistant Prof at Alberta) has been accepted for publication in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. This article, 'Biases in Harmonic Grammar: the road to restrictive learning', argues that Harmonic Grammar can explain many of the stipulated ranking biases that have been posited in the literature on language learning in OT.
[Thanks John!]
A bunch of UMass Amherst linguists are on the program at SALT 19 (and one of the organizers is Craige Roberts, 1986 UMass Amherst PhD):
Congratulations to all!
Angela Carpenter (2006 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD) has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the program in Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences at Wellesley College. She is taking up this academic position after spending the last few years as Class Dean and Director of Harambee House at Wellesley.
[Thanks Joe!]
There were many UMass Amherst linguists at the 4th Meeting on Prosody and Informational Structure, hosted by Haruo Kubozono in Shiga. Masako Hirotani, Taka Shinya, and Satoshi Tomioka all presented their work. Shin Ishihara (currently at Potsdam) presented his joint project with Yoshi Kitagawa. Shigeto Kawahara was an invited discussant. And Yurie Hara also attended the meeting.
This Saturday (December 6), Angelika Kratzer's PhD students (past and present) are holding a workshop in her honor, in MIT's Stata Center, 8:00-4:00. All are welcome for both the talks and the refreshments!
[Thanks Kai!]
Scott Myers (1987 UMass Amherst PhD, now Professor of Linguistics at UT Austin) will be returning to South College for a visit next week. On December 8, he will give a brief talk on his current research, 4:00 pm, in the Partee Room:
Final devoicing: An experimental investigation
Word-final devoicing is a recurring phonological pattern in the world's languages. In this talk I present the results of an on- going study investigating the relation between this phonological pattern and the breakdown of vocal fold vibration frequently found in utterance-final position. Experimental evidence is provided in support of the claim that listeners have a bias toward identifying utterance-final obstruents as voiceless.
Scott will also be available for meetings on Monday and Tuesday (Dec 8-9). He'll be camped out in Kyle Johnson's office. Drop Lisa Selkirk a note if you'd like to chat with him.
[Thanks Lisa!]
Joe Pater has had an extremely productive year. In addition to starting his joint NSF project with John McCarthy, he has published a number of papers.
Joe's 'Harmonic Grammar and linguistic typology" has been accepted for publication in Cognitive Science, a premier interdisciplinary journal (here is an earlier version).
Joe has also recently been involved in a number of collaborative projects on Harmonic Grammar. A paper with Andries Coetzee, 'Weighted constraints and gradient restrictions on place co-occurrence in Muna and Arabic', has just been published in NLLT (pre-publication draft), and papers with Chris Potts, Rajesh Bhatt and Michael Becker (Harmonic Grammar and linear programming: From linear systems to linguistic typology) and Paul Boersma (Convergence Properties of a Gradual Learning Algorithm for Harmonic Grammar) are in submission.
The Boston University Child Language Development (October 31-November 2) will be bustling with UMass Amherst linguists. Anna Verbuk, Helen Stickney, Joe Pater, Jill deVilliers, Barbara Pearson, Ana Perez and D'jaris Coles White will all present papers or posters. In addition, Tom Roeper is giving a plenary lecture on Saturday evening, title 'From Input to Mind: How acquisition work captures the heart of linguistic theory and the soul of practical application'.
A bunch of UMass Amherst linguists are off to NELS 39 to present their work. The full program.
And watch for our alums:
In addition, Roger Schwarzschild (1994 PhD, now Professor at Rutgers) is an invited speaker.
GALANA 3 (Generative Approaches to Langauge Acquisition North America 3) was held at UConn, September 4-6. Miren Hodgson and Anna Perez, who are from UMass Amherst Spanish and did lingusitics dissertations, gave papers. In addition, faculty, former visitors, and students gave a series of posters: Angeliek van Hout and Jill deVilliers; Emily Sowalsky, Valentine Hacquard and Tom Roeper; Anna Verbuk; and Liane Jeschull and Tom Roeper.
Paula Menéndez-Benito, 2007-8 Visiting Assistant Professor here in UMass Amherst Linguistics, has accepted, and begun, a post-doc at Georg-August University in Göttingen, working with Regine Eckardt. Congratulations, Paula!
UMass Amherst Linguistics was well-represented at the International Association for the Study of Child Language, held in Edinburgh this year, July 28 to August 1. There was a session on presuppositions organized by UMass Amherst grad Ana Perez and UMass Amherst visitor Petra Schulz. Both also gave talks, as did Tanja Heizmann and Tom Roeper. In addition, Jill de Villiers spoke in a session on Bantu, Peter de Villiers in a session on theory of mind, and Barbara Pearson in a session on bilingualism.
Maribel Romero (1998 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD) has made available to us an online album of shots of her new baby Lucia hanging out with friends and loved ones.
[Thanks Maribel and Lucia!]
Elisabet Engdahl (1980 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD) has been elected to the Swedish Academy of Letters. Via Barbara Partee, we've learned that the Academy was founded in 1743 by the Swedish queen Lovisa Ulrika, sister of Friedrich the First of Prussia and that it is older than the Swedish Academy (which hands out Nobels).
[Thanks Barbara!]
David Fiske (UMass Amherst Linguistics BA) has received an Evert Willem Beth Scholarship to attend the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. The Beth Scholarship is "supports research students in their work in the areas of logic, philosophy of the exact sciences, history of logic, and history of philosophy of science and hopes to encourage research in the footsteps of the important Dutch logician E. W. Beth."
Congratulations, David!
Paula Menendez-Benito was in Amsterdam at the end of May. She presented 'Modal indefinites', joint work with Luis Alonso-Ovalle (2006 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD; now Assistant Professor at UMass Boston). She also met with Maria Aloni's research group. And she bravely attended a reading group about her own dissertation (Oh my! Go Paula!).
Carolyn Quintero (1997 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD) passed away on June 4. The memorial service was held in Tulsa on June 14.
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!]
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'.
Gillian Gallagher (UMass Amherst Linguistics BA; now a PhD candidate at MIT) presented in PhG yesterday (April 23). Her talk was called 'The role of contrast in laryngeal cooccurrence restrictions'.
[Thanks Michael!]
Jonah Katz (2003 UMass Amherst BA; now in the Linguistics graduate program at MIT) had a letter published in the Boston Globe on the advantages of choosing UMass Amherst. Thanks for this, Jonah!
[Thanks Lisa S!]
From his recent Century of Scholarship lecture:
[Thanks Amy Rose!]
Kathryn Flack (2007 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD), currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hampshire, will continue on at Hampshire next year. She will teach and advise in Cognitive Science half time, and she will work in Institutional Research half time. Congratulations, Kathryn!
Shigeto Kawahara (2007 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD, presently tenure-track at the University of Georgia) has accepted a tenure-track offer from Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Congratulations, Shigeto!
PhG meets next on Wednesday, April 16. Gillian Gallagher (UMass Amherst Linguistics BA; now a PhD candidate at MIT) will return to present.
Amalia Gnanadesikan (1997 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD) has accepted a permanent faculty position at Holy Family University in northeast Philadelphia. She'll be teaching writing. Amalia has been a regular contributor to The Vocabula Review. Her popular book The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet is in press at Blackwell.
[Thanks John!]
Angela Carpenter's dissertation Learning Artificial Languages: The Role of Universal Grammar is now available on Amazon.
[Thanks Kathy!]
A reminder from UG advisor Rajesh Bhatt:
On March 28, Deanna Moore (2005 UMass Amherst Linguistics MA) will talk about her work at National Evaluation Systems and how she uses linguistics in her job. The talk starts at 3:30 pm on South College 304.
Deanna, whose official job title is Content Developer, works with The National Evaluation Systems Group of Pearson. She develops teacher certification exams for foreign language teachers, including languages like Hmong. Deanna wrote to us saying: "I can't believe they pay me to do what I do. It's a job where I can incorporate all of my background in linguistics."
The talk will be followed by an informal discussion and will be accompanied by refreshments.
[Thanks Rajesh!]
Gennaro Chierchia
Harvard University
Logic and grammar: How language and reasoning shape each other
Wednesday, April 9, 1:30-3:00 pm, Campus Center Room 904
Continue reading "Chierchia Public Lecture on Logic and Grammar" »
Larry Solan will deliver the next Freeman Lecture, on Thursday, October 2, 2008, at 4:00 pm. The title is 'Law, language, and the modular mind'. Larry Solan is a 1978 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD. He is now Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School.
Uri Strauss sent in this update:
I'll soon be wrapping up year two of my law school program in Cleveland, OH, and I don't want to keep WHISC readers in suspense about what I'm up to. I'll be spending the summer in Miami, FL, working for the Service Employees International Union. I'll probably drop by the department on my way there (being bad with directions). I miss South College.
I've recently started a blog called A linguist goes to law school, which may be of occasional interest to WHISC readers. Comments and feedback are welcome. To fulfill my law school's writing requirement, I am planning to address a controversial provision in a United Nations resolution (Security Council Resolution 242), which has been the subject of a wide-ranging dispute over whether it is to be interpreted as existential or universal. My plan is to (1) clarify the nature of the ambiguity using linguistic concepts, and (2) use diagnostics to argue that the universal reading exists. Details cheerfully provided upon request, and will probably be posted sooner or later on the aforementioned blog.
[Thanks Uri!]
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is holding a conference on epistemic modals, the second in their Chambers Philosophy Conference Series. The list of invited speakers includes Angelika Kratzer and Kai von Fintel (1994 UMass Amherst PhD; now Professor of Linguistics and Associate Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT).
Update: We've been informed that this workshop is not until 2010! (This is right on the webpage; somehow, we missed it.) Apologies for getting your hopes up!
The UMass Amherst Graduate School is celebrating A Century of Scholarship (1908-2008) on Wednesday, April 9. One of the invited speakers is our own Gennaro Chierchia. Gennaro received his PhD from UMass Amherst Linguistics in 1984 with a now-classic dissertation Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Infinitives and Gerunds. He is currently the Haas Foundations Professor of Linguistics at Harvard.
Gennaro's talk is from 1:30-3:00 on Campus Center Room 904. The title is 'Logic and grammar: How language and reasoning shape each other'.
[Thanks Lisa S and Kathy!]
On March 8, John Kingston, Shigeto Kawahara, Della Chambless, Daniel Mash, and Eve Brenner-Alsop presented a talk called "Contextual effects on the perception of duration in speech and non-speech" at NEST (New England Sequence and Timing). NEST was held at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven. Michael Key and Sarah Watsky attended the meeting and helped quell the unruly hordes.
Shigeto Kawahara (2007 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD; now Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia) will give a talk on the universality of the prosodic hierarchy this Friday, March 7, at 12:15 pm, in the Partee Room (South College 301).
[Thanks Lisa!]
Thony Gillies is hosting a series of mini-workshops this semester, at the University of Michigan. Kai von Fintel (1994 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD) is the invited speaker this Wednesday, March 5, and the two commentators are Craige Roberts (1987 UMass Amherst PhD) and Chris Potts. Kai will be talking about the work he and Thony have been doing on epistemic modals and evidentiality.
An update from John McCarthy:
Julia Hanley, who got her linguistics BA in 2004, entered the Peace Corps in May 2005 and was assigned to Kenya. She worked with local people on public health education, including HIV prevention, maternal and child health, and contraception. She also raised funds to outfit an orphanage. As she began her third year of service, she was promoted to managing a regional office with responsibility for other volunteers and their programs. Her final duty was to oversee the evacuation of 38 volunteers from regions of civil unrest in Kenya. The deteriorating situation there cut short her last year of service, and she returned to the US in January.
MIT Linguistics now has an online newsletter, WHAMIT! (What's Happening at MIT!). Check it out in your browser, subscribe to the RSS feed, or get it by email. Kai von Fintel, Adam Albright, and Jonah Katz (2003 UMass Amherst BA) are at the helm.
[Thanks Kai!]
From Ola Horn, via Emmon Bach:
I am writing to tell you that George passed away suddenly (and totally unexpectedly) this past July at the age of 65, while getting ready to go out for his morning walk/jog that he had enjoyed for years. He moved us all to Baltimore in 2004, having retired from the University of Newcastle the year before. He certainly did not enjoy his retirement for a long time, but got to spend some time back home, where he always wanted to return.
George Horn received his PhD in Linguistics from UMass Amherst in 1975.
The GLSA has two new titles on offer:
Paula Menendez-Benito. 2007. The Grammar of Choice.
Kathryn Flack. 2007. The Sources of Phonological Markedness.
Tom Roeper just returned from giving the keynote lecture at the EU commission COST meeting in Cyprus, which was organized by Uli Sauerland and ZAS in Berlin.
Tom writes:
The program was inspired by our AAE dialect work connected to the DELV test, and it is aimed to bring eastern and Western European scholars together to develop assessment of children speaking dialects in countries where no assessments exist. Former UMass folks (Ken Drozd, Bart Hollebrandse, Angeliek van HOut, Kazulo Yatsushiro, Petra Schulz) played a major role in jointly designed experiments on Tense and aspect, quantification and implicatures, wh-, binding, and passive.
Crucial DELV sentences like "who bought what" and quantifier spreading will now be explored in 17 languages with work in, for instance, Bulgarian, Polish, Romani, Hebrew and Arabic underway and Estonian to follow.
With a little luck (well, maybe a lot of luck) real comparisons will be possible, but no matter what it is a major step in taking eastern European dialects and their human consequences seriously. The program is seeking as many dialects as possible, and I think our students who know relevant languages and dialects might get involved in the future if they would like to.
A huge number of UMass Amherst linguists are presenting at NELS 38, October 26-28, at the University of Ottawa. Many thanks to Joe for putting this list together:
Current department members:
Alums:
Mike Walsh Dickey (2000 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD) has accepted a tenure-track job in the Department of Communication Science & Disorders at the University of Pittsburgh. Congratulations, Mike!
A number of UMass Amherst linguists are presenting work at Sinn und Bedeutung 12, in Oslo, September 20-22:
| Amy Rose Deal | Property-type objects and modal embedding |
| Luis Alonso-Ovalle (UMass Boston; 2005 UMass Amherst PhD) | Innocent Exclusion in an Alternative Semantics |
| Ana Arregui (Ottawa; 2003 UMass Amherst PhD) | On past facts and the semantics of counterfactuals |
| Francesca Foppolo (Milano-Bicocca; former SC visitor) | Between 'cost' and 'default' of scalar implicature |
| Irene Heim (1982 UMass Amherst PhD) | Invited talk |
| Valentine Hacquard (Maryland; 2006-7 Partee Visiting Professor) | Restructuring and implicative properties of volere |
| Uli Sauerland (ZAS; former SC visitor) | Hardt’s surprising sloppy readings: A flat binding account |
| Lynsey Wolter (Rochester; former SC visitor) | That is Rosa: Identificational sentences as intensional predication |
Anna Verbuk has filed her dissertation, Acquisition of Scalar Implicatures, and begun a McGill post-doc with Thomas Shultz, of the McGill Department of Psychology. She will be part of the Center for Research on Language, Mind and Brain at McGill. Her project is on the acquisition of relevance implicatures.
Congratulations, Anna!
The most prominent three-day biannual European conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition (GALA, Sept 6-8, Barcelona) features no less than 13 UMass Amherst people presenting 10 papers and posters: faculty member Tom Roeper, students Helen Stickney and Keir Moulton, UMass Amherst-Smith collaborators Jill de Villiers, Kate Hobbs, Catherine Léger, alums Bart Hollebrandse, Anna Perez (UMass Amherst Spanish), and Miren Hodgson (UMass Amherst Spanish), former visitors Angeliek van Hout, Petra Schulz, Magda Oiry, Eric-Jan Smits, and Kazuko Yatsushiro. In addition, a special session on Theory of Mind was jointly organized by Bart Hollebrandse and former visitor Uli Sauerland.
No other institution in the world comes even close to having this level of representation.
[Thanks Tom!]
Shigeto Kawahara filed his dissertation and moved to Georgia, where he is now Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Georgia.
In addition, a joint paper by Shigeto and Takahito Shinya has been accepted for publication in Phonetica. The paper is called 'The intonation of gapping and coordination in Japanese: Evidence for Intonational Phrase'.
Tom Roeper was in Japan this month. He gave the keynote lecture, 'Recursion and exclusivity', based on joint work with Bart Hollebrandse, at the Kansei Linguistics Society meeting. There were many UMass Amherst folks in attendance, including Armin Mester, Junko Ito, Mariko Sugahara, Mari Takahasi, and Masanobu Ueda.
Tom also spoke in Sendai, at Tohuku University, on acquisition and implicatures, based in part on Anna Verbuk's work, at a workshop in Kyoto on morphology on joint work with Angeliek van Hout and Masaaki Kamiya, and at an acquisition workshop at Nanzan University on the acquisition of quantification.
(Wow, that's a lot of talks.)
Lauren Terzenbach, who got a BA in Linguistics and Russian in 2003, was on an ROTC scholarship and entered the Army as a 2nd lieutenant immediately after graduation. She is now a captain and adjutant of the 163d Military Intelligence Battalion. She's in Iraq now, and her unit just got extended for another three months, but she's looking ahead to completing her service commitment and going to grad school in 2008.
[Thanks John McCarthy!]
Karen Jesney and Joe Pater are presenting at the LSA Institute Workshop on Variation, Gradience and Frequency in Phonology. Karen's talk is called 'The locus of variation in weighted constraint grammars', and Joe's talk is called 'Phonological Variation in Harmonic Grammar'.
The MIT Greek Syntax–Semantics Workshop takes place May 20-22. The UMass Amherst presenters are Rajesh Bhatt and Kyle Johnson, Paula Menéndez-Benito (2005 UMass Amherst Linguistics Phd; returning as a visiting professor next year) is also on the program, as are this year's Syntax Guru Roumi Pancheva and a host of prestigious UMass Amherst alums: Gennaro Chierchia, Kai von Fintel, Irene Heim, Winnie Lechner.
Jason Fossella, a recent UMass Amherst Linguistics BA, wrote to say that he is studying to become a civil engineer — and that his linguistics training is a big asset. He wrote, "the habits of thought I picked up studying linguistics have really helped me in my new field. Being able to analyze and describe complex systems is a valuable skill for an engineer, and syntax and semantics certainly taught me that."
Very cool! Thank you, Jason!
Mark Stein (1981 UMass Amherst PhD) recently sent in some updates. He's been working as a chaplain at Albany Medical Center, his daugher is finishing up school at MIT (Civil Engineering, as it happens &mdash Jason might advise that she take a few linguistics courses), and his wife Cheryl Geisler is Chair of the Department of Language, Literature and Communication at RPI.
Mark was wondering when we would again have a reunion-style picnic. Barbara?
From Angelika:
Maribel Romero (1998 UMass Amherst PhD; now Associate Professor at Penn) will talk in my seminar on May 8, 2:30-5:15, Machmer W-21. Everyone is welcome to attend. You don't have to be a regular participant. Maribel will talk about biased questions. The recommended readings are:
Maribel will be here from Tuesday (May 8) to Thursday (May 10). Let me know whether you want to schedule an appointment with her and what your time constraints are.
Veena Dwivedi (1994 UMass Amherst PhD) has accepted a position in the Department of Applied Linguistics at Brock University, Ontario. Veena continues to work on the syntax--semantics interface, but her research has taken a more psycholinguistic turn of late. She reports that she is now using "super cool EEG techniques" to investigate semantic processing. Along with Natalie Philips and Shari Baum, she's just received a three-year SSHRC grant to continue these projects.
Samuel Jay Keyser, former UMass Amherst Linguistics Head and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, is leading a trip to Bhutan this May.
[Thanks Barbara!]
UMass Amherst Linguistics BA Heather Walts is living and working in Pakistan. She filed this report. Check out her weblog for more on her adventures.
My MA TESOL students at Lahore College for Women have embarked on their first ever Syntax and Semantics projects and I am eagerly awaiting their papers. Their task was to compare Pakistani English usage with standard varieties. For a sample, I gave them an idea for an experiment about the interpretation of "dress" in Pakistani English. It's my hypothesis that "dress" can be used to mean any matching set of clothes, whether for men or women, and that what American or British speakers think of as a dress will be referred to as "frock." I was quite taken aback one day when a male friend told me, 'I have to pick up my dresses at the dry cleaner." I was thinking, wow, maybe he has some hobby that I didn't know about, but it turned out that he meant his clothes for work (dress pants and button-down shirts).
If the students were to choose the topic of the word "dress," they would need to design an experiment to see what articles or sets of clothing can be considered as "dress" here in Pakistan, and by what background of speakers.
As the previously mentioned friend is about to head to Canada as a permanent resident, I've now drilled into his head that in North America "dress" can only refer to a specific type of women's clothes, not his clothes!
The other sample idea I gave them was to look into the pluralization of verbs in the case of respect. In Urdu, singular subjects can take plural pronouns, case markings and verbal morphology if respect is due to that person. When this transfers into English, you get sentences like: "My father are coming."
Some of the topics that the students are looking into include:
and my personal favorite:
Stay tuned, I'll be creating a web blog to post their projects online.
In other news I'm in the middle of coming up with a proposal for a Linguistics Library at the Ali Institute of Education. We'll be starting a post graduate diploma in English Language Teaching next year and I've been encouraging our department to include linguistics courses in the program. There is currently only one linguistics program in Lahore at the University of Punjab. It's a one year post graduate diploma. The Ali Institute has offered to hire me to design a one year program in Linguistics which would culminate with each student writing a thesis. For that to happen, we need resources! My director has given me the task to make up a list of books and articles that I can acquire during my time in the US and we will apply for funding for the resources as well as the shipping.
If you have any recommendations as "must haves" for the library, please contact me at . Thanks!
The International Conference on East Asian Linguistics (ICEAL) was held at the University of Toronto November 10012. Jen Smith was an invited speaker, and presented her work on loanword phonology. Shigeto Kawahara was a student invited speaker, and gave a talk on the phonetic naturalness and unnaturalness in phonology. Min-Joo Kim presented her work on internally-headed relative clause constructions in Korean. Lan Kim (Simon Frazier University) presented her collaboration work with John Alderete on [h] and aspirated consonants in Korean. Also in the audience were some UMass Amherst alums: Toni Borowsky(temporarily teaching at York University) and Satoshi Tomioka.
Heather Walts, UMass Amherst Linguistics BA, has been living and working in Pakistan for nearly a year now. The following continues her report on greetings.
"Ya Ali madad," say the children as they pass by me in the village streets. May Ali help you always. "Muala Ali madad." May Ali always help you too.
We are in Ismaili territory now, and the Sunni/Shia greeting of Salaam Alaikum (May the peace of Allah be upon you) along with it's response Wa alaikum asalaam (May the peace of Allah also be upon you) is no longer the standard.
Now I'm in real trouble with my greetings, because while I don't mind using the standard greeting Salaam Alaikum, I have a bit of trouble saying Ya Ali madad. Why is that? Well as a Christian myself I believe that God (Arabic = Allah, Urdu = Xuda) can bestow peace upon someone, but I personally don't believe that Ali is physically helping anyone. It would as if in America the greeting was not "Hello, how are you?" (or "Hey, what's up?") but it was something like "May Buddha be helping you", "May Jesus be helping you," or "May Krishna be helping you." It would certainly be odd to stick in the name of someone that you personally did not believe to have that power.
The Shia/Sunni split is based on a difference in opinion over how the leadership of the Muslim community should be decided. Basically, Shia believe that leadership should be hereditary and that Ali, Mohammad's son in law, should have been the first rightful Caliph (leader of the Muslim community). Prior to Ali, there were three other caliphs who the Shia regard as usurpers. Ali ended up being killed by some who didn't agree with his claim to leadership, as was his son Hussein. With the death of Hussein came the split of Sunni and Shia, Shia holding that the leadership should be chosen from Mohammad's family. Shia also consider their religious leader, the imam, to be infallible (unable to do wrong) and to have a direct connection with Allah, unlike other devout followers. Within Shi'ism there is a further breakdown of sects depending on how long they believe the true imamate lasted. Some Shia believe the 7 th imam was the last one and some Shia believe the 12th imam was the last one, these are referred to as the Seveners and the Twelvers respectively.
The Ismailis are those who believe the imamate has continued to the present day. Most Ismailis live in the Hunza region of Pakistan. Their current imam is Aga Khan, who I'm told is the third richest man living in France….or at least that's the rumor in Hunza. Third richest or tenth richest man in France, this man's picture is in every living room in Ismaili villages. His picture watches over you as you ride in a Suzuki down steep mountain roads. His smiling face is looking down on you as you enjoy a modest meal in the smallest hole-in-the-wall restaurant. No shop would be complete without Aga Khan's photo hanging above the merchandise.
Not only is his picture everywhere, but his investment is as well. The Aga Khan Development Foundation is the largest NGO active in the Northern Areas of Pakistan. Each village has an Aga Khan Diamond Jubilee School for primary education. Irrigation projects have been sponsored by Aga Khan. Clean drinking water, sanitation, transport roads, literacy programs, girls' hostels, girls' colleges, health centers, micro-loans, small business development, women's vocational training, you name it! It's all provided by Aga Khan's various organizations.
Technically, I would say that the Ismailis worship not only Ali, but also the Aga Khan. They have special worship songs written only for him. They celebrate his birthday, anniversary, and even his sons' marriages. One day when I was in the village everything was put on hold because the Aga Khan's son was getting married in India. People had to run off to worship at the jamaa khana.
So back to my problem of the greetings: What do I say when I greet Ismailis? Well the good thing is that most of the Ismailis I know are Burushaski speakers and they do not use the ya Ali madad greeting. They generally stick with the traditional "Behal bila"and the response "Thik bila." I haven't learned so much about Burushaski (language isolate, heavy borrowing from Urdu) but there's not any reference to Ali or the Aga Khan in there so I'm safe. Bila = form of "be", thik = ok/good, borrowed from Urdu.
My friends from the Hunza region tend to only use ya Ali madad as an exclamative and not as a greeting. When 75 year-old grandpa is trying to stand up, he says, "Ya Ali madad." When they find out someone in the village has become pregnant, "Ya Ali madad." It can be used in either a positive or negative exclamation.
It would be interesting to do a survey on the Ismaili villages in the Northern Areas and to see under what circumstances they use the expression ya Ali madad and how its use differs from place to place, but as for now my greeting crisis is temporarily solved. I'm back in Lahore where most people I meet are Sunni or Shia Muslims, so it's safe for me to use Salaam alaikum once more.
Craige Roberts is hosting an all-star workshop on presuppositions accommodation at The OSU, October 13-15, as part of The Pragmatics Initiative. Lyn Frazier is giving an invited lecture on novel definites, and Florian Schwarz has a poster on the morphosemantics of definites. There are in addition a number of distinguished UMass Amherst Linguistics alums involved: Kai von Fintel is giving an invited paper, and Dorit Abusch, Mats Rooth, Greg Carlson, and Nirit Kadmon are commentators.
Joe Pater is taking his sabbatical in Utrecht. He has a bunch of collaborations going there, and a bunch more with people on this continent. Here's his brief report from abroad:
I've got a couple of talks coming up. They are at my webpage. And I'm busy continuing work on collaborative projects with UMass Amherst people: all of you at HaLP, Karen Jesney, Anne-Michelle Tessier (now Assistant Professor at Alberta), and Andries Coetzee (now Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan), and I'm starting new projects with Utrecht people (Rene Kager, Shakuntala Mahala). I'm happy now that my MacBook has been fixed, but sad that my bike was stolen after having it for only two weeks.
Tom Roeper was recently in Montreal, where he gave a talk at UQAM on Friday, September 28, on configurational iterativity. He writes, "The work brought together collaborations with Uri Strauss, Markus Bader, Barbara Schmiedtova and arguments from syntax, parsing, semantics, and acquisition. It was great to see a number of former UMass Amherst folk, including Rose-Marie Déchaine, Meredith Landman, Rejan Carnac-Marquis, Juan Uriagereka, and Andreas Gualmini there."
UMass Amherst Linguistics BA Heather Walts is living in Pakistan. Below is her latest report for WHISC. Visit her weblog Updates from Heather for much more on life in Pakistan and environs.
Christian Greetings --- at a loss for words
I've found during my time here that I never know what to say when greeting Pakistani Christians. Muslims use the Arabic greeting, assalaam alaikum (may the peace of Allah be upon on) and it's response is wa alaikum assalaam (and may the peace of Allah also be upon you). In the Arab world it's fine to use this greeting pattern with both Christians and Muslims, and the word in Arabic for the one God is Allah. Christians will use the same word when referring to God as they will also use Isa (Jesus). In Pakistan it's a different story.
The greeting used by Hindu Hindi-Urdu speakers is namaste, but in Pakistan this greeting is looked down upon. To say namaste means that you are an idol worshiper and an infidel, so this greeting is generally avoided. Also, most Urdu speakers insist that Hindi is a completely different language than Urdu because they use different writing systems and there is some variation in lexicon. They claim they can understand Hindi easily because they watch so many Hindi movies.
So namaste is out for the Christians as well, and as opposed to Arabic speaking Christians, Allah is not an acceptable word for God. Why? Well because xuda is the word for God used by Pakistani Christians and Allah refers only to the god of the Muslims whom they believe to be a false god. Christians also do not believe that worship and prayer must be done through the Arabic tongue, as Muslims believe, so the rejection of assalaam alaikum as a greeting is prevalent among the Christian community.
What do Christians say to greet each other? Sometimes salaam (Arabic- peace) is used all by itself, or with a person's title. Salaam khala (peace; maternal aunt). This is interesting because they are still using an Arabic word for greeting others. Some Christians use English greetings like hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and how are you? I thought this may be done by those within the church who are educated, but I've observed some Christians who are illiterate Punjabi speakers using English greetings as well.
When it comes to partings there is a similar problem. For Hindi speakers namaste doubles as a parting as well, but again since Muslims and Christians don't want to be thought of as idol worshipers or infidels, this parting is out. Urdu textbooks will teach xuda hafiz (may God protect you), but some Muslims have gone to change this greeting to allah hafiz. I once heard a Christian woman's son use allah hafiz and he was promptly reprimanded and told never to say that again. The Arabic parting m9-salama (with peace) doesn't seem to be used at all in Pakistan, although due to the meaning it seems this would create less controversy. Most Muslims don't mind if you say xuda hafiz and they seem to alternate between using xuda and allah when they refer to God. A zealot of fanatic will almost always insist of using allah exclusively but these kind of people I have only seen on TV and not encountered in person.
So what do I say? Well for greetings I use salaam alaikum unless I am with people who I know are Christians. Then I switch to salaam and English greetings. For partings, I exclusively use xuda hafiz because if I use allah hafiz everyone will assume I am a Muslim. Now with Ismailis (a sect of Shiia Islam) greetings are a different story altogether ...
UMass Amherst Linguistics will be well represented at Sinn und Bedeutung 11, September 24-25, in the Departament de Traducció i Filologia, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
The UMass Amherst Acquisition Group will be well represented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 31), November 2-5. Indeed, one of the (unfortunately few) theoretical sessions will consist entirely of South College denizens (Tanja, Magda, Catherine):
Students and former students
Current and recent visitors
In addition, Jill de Villiers (Smith Psychology and one of our allied faculty members) is presenting.
[Thanks Tom!]
Ellen Woolford and John McCarthy recently returned from giving lectures in Japan. John gave two talks at the Phonology Forum 2006 at the University of Tokyo, and Ellen gave a talk at that workshop as well.
Mako Hirotani (2005 UMass Amherst PhD, now Assistant Professor at Carleton University) gave at talk at the Phonology Forum 2006 as well.
In addition, on August 22, Ellen gave a special invited lecture at a week-long summer school in Tokyo: 'Recent developments in case theory'.
Jeff Runner (1995 UMass Amherst PhD, now Associate Professor at the University of Rochester) was recently awards his second NSF grant for his referential pronoun work, and he just got a (highly coveted) Goergen Undergraduate teaching award at the University of Rochester. The ceremony and reception are this Friday.
[Thanks Joyce McDonough!]
Junko Ito, 1986 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD, now Professor of Linguistics at UC Santa Cruz, accepted the Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize on behalf of her father, Kiyoshi Ito, at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Madrid, August 22, 2006.
[Thanks J.J. McCarthy!]
We're delighted to report that Ilea Percus, daughter of Orin and Isabelle, was born on August 24. Orin wrote (from Ilea's email address, actually!):
Ilea saw the outside world for the first time yesterday, 24 August 2006. What she saw was a little room just past the hospital emergency entrance in Nantes, France. Some notable facts about her are: that her birth occurred at lightning speed; that she weighed exactly 3 kilos at birth; that she has beautiful dark silken hair. Like many people in this country, she actually has three names: Ilea, Sylvie, Alina. Each has a reason behind it. (Her family name is her father’s.)
Mother and daughter are both fine, though a bit sleepless. Ilea’s parents will now probably be worse correspondents than ever, but all three of us send our best.
[Thanks Orin!]
GALANA 2 (McGill University, August 17-19, 2006) was dominated by UMass Amherst linguists.
Helen Stickney and Liane Jeschull compiled a photo album.
[Thanks Liane and Helen!]
The 4th Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics Conference was held in Osaka, August 17-19. Many UMass Amherst linguists presented their work:
Thanks Shigeto
Volodja and I are just back from LoLa 9, August 23-26, where we gave one of the invited talks, saw old friends and met new ones, enjoyed stimulating talks and discussions, and had lots of birdwatching, thanks to one of the organizers, Beáta Gyuris, an old friend who visited UMass Amherst twice, the second time for a whole year. The birdwatching photo, taken by Volodja, shows me, Beata, and our ornithologist guide Peter on the 23rd, before the conference started. On the last birdwatching excursion (no photo), Peter took me, Manfred Krifka, Marcus Kracht, and Gerhard Jäger out early Saturday morning, and added a fitting new bird to my life list -- a Montagu's harrier! (For good photos of it, see these two sites.) There will be conference photos on the LoLa 9 site soon, but in the meantime here are a couple.
UMass Amherst Linguistics BA Heather Walts is now living and working in Pakistan. She's been sending reports to WHISC. Here is here latest; we're pround to be able to feature these items:
I've had a crazy three months of my passport being taken, leaving a job, overstaying my visa, waiting five weeks for an official type paper to be sent from one city to another to remedy the visa, spending time in the northern areas where the internet was so slow it was not worth using, and am finally back and settling in Lahore after collecting my things from the six various houses I had left them at! Whew, life in Pakistan. Now I'm running self-designed teacher training workshops including, "Strategies for Building Fluency," "Linguistics for Communicative Learning," "Introduction to English Phonology," and "Integrative Language and Culture in the Classroom." I'm also teaching "LIP," - the Language Improvement Program for in-service teachers. Our slogan is "not just lip service, we get results.".
Language learning here is almost entirely based on literature, as in any higher education in language. Punjab University has just started a Linguistics program, but a far as I know there are not many others in the country. The teachers are enjoying the workshops, and they LOVE drawing syntax trees and using IPA symbols. Hey, it's a start! These English teachers need to know why rote memorization is a thing of the past. Any graduates who don't know what to do next year? You're always welcome to come join me in Lahore. I'll make sure nobody takes your passport and you don't overstay your visa....besides now I know all the immigration officers and how things are supposed to work. Supposed to being the key words.
Here's a short article written in April with the intention of sending it to WHISC.
Chris Potts gave talks in Sendai and an LENLS 2006 earlier this month. He liked the SALT picture so much that he rallied the LENLS participants for another:
Find UMass Amherst grad Mana Kobuchi-Philip!
Angela Carpenter has accepted a permanent position as Class Dean and Director of Harambee House at Wellesley College. Congratulations, Angela!
[Thanks Joe!]
The End-of-Semester Luncheon wil take place on Friday, May 19, at 12:30, in the Math Lounge (floor 16 of the Grad Research Center).
Lisa Selkirk writes:
The End-of-Semester Lunch is a time for celebrating the end of a year of hard work and accomplishment, and is especially the time to honor the undergraduate Linguistics majors who are graduating this semester. We urge the graduating seniors to come, and hope that other Linguistics majors be there as well. The faculty will be there, as will the graduate students.
This year the End-of-Semester Lunch will also be the occasion to honor Lee Edwards, who is retiring this year from her position as Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. Lee Edwards has been a enthusiastic supporter of the Linguistics Department and we hope she will enjoy the assembled crowd of linguists at this end-of- semester festivity.
Hope to see you there!
Lisa Selkirk
Head of Department
Much of the UMass Amherst crowd at WCCFL 25 this past weekend: Jan, Ilaria, Marcin, Anne-Michelle, Ania, Alexandra Teodorescu (UT Austin), and Kylito.
[Thanks Ilaria!]
We missed our chance to announce that Meredith Landman was visiting Angelika Kratzer's seminar on pronouns this week. Meredith spoke on Tuesday, April 25. The talk was called 'Possible variables'. It was a thought-provoking, free-ranging discussion of the nature of pronouns, what it means to be an individual, the limits of quantification in natural language, and the nature of the relationship between syntax and semantics.
Our phoneticians, current and graduated, are everywhere these days. Shigeto Kawahara kindly pulled together the following summary of UMass Amherst people on LABPHON 10 program. LABPHON takes place in Paris, June 29-July 1.
Adamantios I. Gafos, Philip Hoole, Kevin Roon, Chakir Zeroual. Variation in timing and phonological grammar in Moroccan Arabic clusters. (Adamantios Gafos was a visiting professor here.)
Scott Myers, Benjamin Hansen (University of Texas, Austin). The origin of vowel length neutralization patterns. (Scott Myers, 1986 UMass Amherst PhD)
John Kingston, Della Chambless, Daniel Mash, Jonah Katz, Eve Brenner, Shigeto Kawahara (UMass Amherst). Sequential contrast and the perception of co-articulated segments'. (Daniel and Jonah are recent UMass Amherst Linguistics BAs; Eve is a current major; Della and Shigeto are current grad students.)
Shigeto Kawahara (UMass Amherst). 'Sonorant Geminate: Aperceptually-grounded phonological constraint'.
Jaye Padgett, Marzena Zygis (UCSC; ZAS). 'A perceptual study of Polish fricatives, and its relation to historical sound change'. (Jaye Padgett, 1991 UMass Amherst PhD).
Paula Menendez-Benito has accepted a visiting assistant professor position in Linguistics at MIT. Congatulations, Paula! This looks like a wonderful gig!
Andrew McKenzie, currently a Year 2 grad student here, has received an NSF Graduate Fellowship.
Jonah Katz, a 2005 UMass Amherst Linguistics BA now in the Linguistics grad program at MIT, has also received an NSF Graduate Fellowship.
Maria Gouskova has accepted the offer of a tenure-track position in Linguistics at NYU.
Marcin Morzycki has accepted the offer of a tenure-track position in Linguistics at Michigan State University.
Anne-Michelle Tessier has accepted the offer of a tenure-track position in Linguistics at University of Alberta, in Edmonton.
There will be an impressive UMass Amherst Linguistics presence at WCCFL 25, University of Washington, April 28-30, 2006. The program is now posted. It includes:
And a number of our PhDs will be presenting:
| Ana Arregui (2003 PhD; now Assistant Professor at U Ottawa) | On the consequences of event quantification in counterfactual conditionals |
| Jill Beckman (1998 PhD; now Associate Professor, Iowa) | Phonetic variation in German fricative voicing: Implications for phonological theory |
| Ania Lubowicz (2003 PhD; now Assistant Professor, USC) | Opaque Allomorphy in OT |
Update (2006-03-12):
Ana Arregui wrote to note that we forgot to mention two UMass Amherst alums who are on the WCCFL program: Marcin Morzycki and Bernhard Schwarz. She also noted that recent undergrad graduate Kyle Rawlins (presently in the Linguistics PhD program at UCSC) is an alternate.
[Thanks Ana!]
Gennaro Chierchia (1984 UMass Amherst PhD) has accepted a position in the Linguistics Department at Harvard. It will be wonderful for us to have him so close by.
