Mark Johnson Colloquium
Mark Johnson
Brown
Bayesian models of language acquisition or Where do the rules come from?
Friday, April 18, 3:30 pm, Machmer W-26
[Thanks Joe!]
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- Mark Johnson Colloquium
- Barbara Pearson's Book is Out; Party April 27
- Janet Fodor Lecture at Harvard
- Kathryn Flack at Hampshire
- Shigeto Kawahara Accepts Rutgers Tenure-Track Offer
- Syntax Reading Group
- Intonation Lunch
- Acquisition Lab
- Kyle Johnson at USC
- Visioning Grant to Kingston, Potts, Bhatt, et al.
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Other Ling Newsletters
06:13 (2008-04-17)
April 17, 2008
Barbara Pearson's Book is Out; Party April 27
Barbara Zurer Pearson's new book Raising a Bilingual Child has been published by Random House. It's a step-by-step guide, aimed at parents, and it has a wealth of information about language learning in general. The people who did the blurbs for the book said they thought it would be of interest to "parents, educators, and policymakers" — as well as monolinguals. Check out the book's website for more information.
- Book Launch Party at the Jones Library, Sunday, April 27, from 2:00-4:00 pm.
- Reading at the Odyssey Bookstore in South Hadley, Tuesday, April 29, at 7:00 pm.
Congratulations, Barbara!
Janet Fodor Lecture at Harvard
Janet Fodor will deliver the Third Annual Joshua and Verona Whatmough Lecture at Harvard University, Thursday, April 24, at 4:00 pm. The talk takes place in the Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall. The title is 'New (old-fashioned) parameter setting'.
Kathryn Flack at Hampshire
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 Accepts Rutgers Tenure-Track Offer
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!
Syntax Reading Group
SynRG meets today (April 17), starting at 8:00 pm, at 60 Walnut Street. The plan is to discuss Dave Embick and Alec Marantz's paper Architecture and blocking.
[Thanks Annahita!]
Intonation Lunch
From Lisa Selkirk:
Noah Constant is going to give a presentation on some general properties of intonation in Chinese this Friday in the intonation lunch. This is of interest from a typological point of view, since Chinese has lexical tone and therefore makes no place for the 'intonational pitch accents' which are commonly taken to reflect information structure in English and other nontonal languages.
All are welcome. Bagels etc. will be provided as usual...
Time: 12:15.
Place: Partee Room.
Acquisition Lab
The Acquisition Lab met on Monday, April 14. Jill de Villiers discussed her trip to South Africa and the acquisition and disorders work there. She organized the first acquisition conference on Acquisition of African languages.
[Thanks Tom!]
Kyle Johnson at USC
Kyle Johnson gave a colloquium at USC this past Monday titled 'Fitting a multidominant model of movement to reconstruction'.
Visioning Grant to Kingston, Potts, Bhatt, et al.
The Linguistics-led Visioning Proposal Data-Rich Humanities Research has been funded. The project will work to help CHFA students and faculty become more adept at using large corpora to answer humanities-style research questions. John Kingston leads the team. The other members are Chris Potts, Rajesh Bhatt, Stephen Harris (English), Julie Hayes (Languages, Literature and Cultures), Michael Papio (Languages, Literature and Cultures), and Rex Wallace (Classics).
How Many Mini Snickers Bars Have You Eaten?
From Anisa Schardl the Candy Monster:
Candy appreciators,
You may have noticed that Easter blew by with no threatening emails about donations for candy. This did not stop us from making a kill at the post-Easter candy sales. Not only did we get tons of candy, but it's the good stuff: twix, snickers, rolos, york peppermint patties, and reese's that happen to be wrapped in pastel-colored wrappers.
Unfortunately, the amount of money that has come in does not quite match the cost of this candy. Therefore, we are currently operating with a you-get-what-you-pay-for policy on a rolling basis. That is, when money comes in, candy will be put out. Simple as that.
Think about this: every mini snickers bar costs about 10 cents. How many mini snickers bars have you eaten?
You give is the money, we'll give you the candy. Think of it as ransom.
The Candy Monsters
Signaling Games You Thought You Won
From a sign Tom Roeper saw:
"The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it succeeds."
[Thanks Tom!]