Main
05:20 (2007-08-30)
Summer Dialect Research Project Report
From Lisa Green and Barbara Pearson:
Twelve talented students from around the country participated in the Summer Dialect Research Project (SDRP) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (June 3-17). The SDRP was the first research workshop for undergraduates on current issues in the study of African American English (AAE) sponsored by the newly created Center for the Study of African American Language.
show/hide caption
Top Row L to R: Rob Reyes (University of Kentucky), Sharon Maynard (Long Island University); 2nd row: James Johnson (Tougaloo College), Jacqueline Brown (Howard University);
3rd row: Jessica Bruny (Long Island University), Lauren White (California State University, Fullerton), Hadiya Coppedge (North Carolina A&T), Tony Graddick (Georgia State), Laurel Phillips
(UMass Amherst); Bottom row: Adrienne Washington (Hampton University), Karen Feagin (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Tracy Conner (Stanford).
The SDRP students were selected on the basis of prior courses on AAE-related topics and interest in pursuing graduate research in some area of study of AAE.
During the two-week program, the students participated in seminars and work sessions with faculty and other presenters: Lisa Green, Tom Roeper, Lisa Selkirk,
Peggy Speas (all of UMass Amherst Linguistics), Theresa Austin (Education), Rob Cox (Library Special Collections), Peter Elbow (English), Denise Gaskin (Education),
Barbara Pearson (Research Liason and Development), Steven Tracy (Afro-American Studies), Shelley Velleman (Communication Disorders) (all of UMass Amherst),
Frances Burns (Communication Disorders at Texas State), Jill de Villiers (Psychology at Smith College), Peter de Villiers (Psychology at Smith College), and
J. Michael Terry (Linguistics at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and UMass Amherst Linguistics alum).
The seminars and work sessions were on topics such as syntactic and semantic variation in AAE in different regions and communities, intonation and perceptions
of "sounding black," and developmental patterns in child AAE. Special presentations were on topics such as writing and features of AAE, language use in the blues, and dialects, literacy and reading.
The SDRP culminated with a student symposium dedicated to Professor Emeritus Harry Seymour. The students reported on their projects, which were related to research topics in seminars and work with large computerized corpora and other databases.
SDRP students participate in seminar
SDRP participants study pitch tracks in Lisa Selkirk's course on intonation and perceptions of "sounding black"
J. Michael Terry and SDRP participants discuss linguistic variation
UMass Amherst Linguists at GALA
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!]
Department Picnic September 8
From Barbara Partee and Volodja Borschev (here's
a downloadable version of this invitation):
Linguists and Friends!
Please come to a beginning-of-the-year potluck picnic/party to greet the new school year and welcome
new faculty, new students, new visitors.
When: Saturday, September 8, starting at 3:30, continuing on into the evening
Where: 50 Hobart Lane, Amherst. (549-4501) --- Barbara and Volodja's.
Hobart Lane is a small street off North Pleasant just a short distance north of the university, opposite Puffton Village,
near the Crestview /Presidential Apartments bus stop. 50 Hobart Lane is a big white house on the left, near the end.
The party will be outdoor/indoor; dress casual.
We'll set up the volleyball net; bring other outdoor stuff.
Food and drink: Potluck
We'll have a barbecue grill set up, and some beer and wine and non-alcoholic beverages. Bring things to eat in any
category. International foods most welcome! (If you aren't up for cooking, you can bring additional beer or wine, or cheese, or
fruit, or ....) We'll likely start eating around 5:00.
*Parking problem : There is no parking permitted on most of Hobart Lane. Parking is possible in our driveway, and
it seems that parking is possible in the daylight hours on the opposite side of the street between our house and where Hobart Lane
turns into a dirt road, but for safety, put a note under your windshield wiper that tells the police your name and that you are now at
50 Hobart Lane and please to let us know if there is a problem. (The parking restrictions help us combat the problems of large beer
parties in the neighboring apartment complexes on Hobart Lane, so we want to stay friends with the police on this matter! We'll let
them know about the party, but they won't be able to grant a parking waiver for a September Saturday. Often they are willing to come
and let us know that cars needed to be moved off of Hobart Lane, before calling the tow truck.)
But don't be daunted by any of that -- somebody can always help you figure out where to park. Do come, rain or shine!
The free bus service has a bus stop very near Hobart Lane -- it's the "Crestview" stop, near Puffton Village
and North Village and Crestview apartments.
Freeman Lecture October 4
Geoff Nunberg will deliver the 6th Annual Freeman Lecture on October 4, at 4:00 pm.
SNEWS October 20
SNEWS is scheduled to take place at MIT on October 20. Contact Chris Potts if you would like to present.
SNEWS is very informal (and you're likely to get great feedback), so think about presenting even if you don't currently have all the details of your idea worked out.
In addition, the local organizers, Jillian Mills and Giorgio Magri, hope to have a diorama contest, in which "interested
students (not necessarily students presenting otherwise) make a diorama representing some semantic concept, problem, etc." They aim to have a prize for the best one!
Current Visiting Scholars
Check out the visiting scholars page of the department website for
information about the current crew of visitors.
[Thanks Sarah!]
Liane Jeschull to Harvard
Liane Jeschull has accepted a permanent teaching position at Harvard University as a preceptor in the Institute for English Language. Congratulations, Liane!
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'.
The Prism of Grammar in the Vocabula Review
A chapter from Tom Roeper's new book
The Prism of Grammar was
featured in The Vocabula Review this month.
Usability Course
Mark Corner (Computer Science) is currently
teaching a new course on usability (MW, 3:35-4:50, CmpSci 140). The focus will be on
computer interfaces, but interfaces of many kinds will make their way onto the syllabus.
Linguists are great at this stuff! Programming experience is not required.
CMPSCI 291U: Seminar - Usability
Professor: Mark Corner
MW 3:35-4:50 pm, CmpSci 140
In this course we examine the important problems in Usability, Human Computer Interaction,
User Interfaces, and Human Centered Computing. We will examine elements of HCI history,
understanding human capabilities, HCI design, several methods for prototyping user interfaces,
and new applications and paradigms in human computer interaction. This is not a course in how
to make dialog boxes, but rather a much more general approach to interacting with human beings
and evaluating designs. Some elementary programming in Flash (or another user interface prototyping
tool) may be required, but people without prior programming experience should feel right at home
in this class. This is offered simultaneously at a 200-level and a 400-level. The 200-level
course is available to any undergraduate student, not just computer scientists. IT-minor s
tudents are especially encouraged to participate. The 400-level version, available only to
junior and senior computer science majors, will require extra work and will be graded on a
separate scale. Several group projects and exams will be required. No prerequisites. 3 credits.
Computational Linguistics Course
Andrew McCallum is teaching his Computational Linguistics course this fall, Tuesdays and
Thursdays, 2:30-3:45, in CMPSCI 140.
Here's Andrew's blurb about the course:
This Fall I will be teaching undergraduate Natural Language Processing
again. This course is designed to introduce both Computer Science and
Linguistics students to the exciting and intertwined topics of (1)
using computational and statistical methods to give insight into
observed human language phenomena, and (2) making computers perform
various useful tasks with human languages, web pages, email, etc.
It typically attracts a fun, interdisciplinary group of engaged undergraduates.
The prerequisites are light: students should merely have some facility
with programming, and familiarity with basic math (exponents, logs,
elementary probability).
Even if you aren't sure you'd like to take the course, you are welcome
to simply show up at the first lecture, September 4, Tuesday, 2:30pm
in UMass Computer Science Building Room 140.
Shots from the LSA Institute
Karen Jesney sent in these two photos from the Linguistic Institute at Stanford this past July.
[Thanks Karen!]
