Michael Becker: Successful Dissertation Defense
Michael Becker successfully defended his dissertation on June 23. The title of the thesis is Phonological Trends in the Lexicon: The Role of Constraints. Congratulations, Michael!
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Other Ling Newsletters
06:18 (2008-06-26)
June 26, 2008
Matthew Wolf: Successful Dissertation Defense
Matthew Wolf successfully defended his dissertation on June 23. The title of the thesis is Optimal Interleaving: Serial Phonology-Morphology Interaction in a Constraint-based Model. Congratulations, Matt!
Picture from the Day of Defenses
Proud Chair John McCarthy with his two doctors-to-be, from the party following the day of defenses:
[Thanks Karen!]
Leadership in Action Award to Kingston, McCarthy, Pater, and Selkirk
From John Kingston:
John McCarthy, Joe Pater, Lisa Selkirk, and I obtained a Research Leadership in Action grant from the Office of Research Affairs in the amount of $17,500 to partially fund the 12th Laboratory Phonology Conference, which we hope to hold here in the summer of 2010 (more on this soon). We will enter our bid at the meeting in New Zealand at the end of this month. Now, all we have to do is raise at least $10,000 in matching money.
Call for Papers: UMOP 39
Maria Biezma, Christopher Davis, and Jesse Aron Harris are editing a new UMOP, number 39: Papers in Pragmatics. This PDF provides additional details about the volume and explains the submission process.
[Thanks Jesse!]
Summer Java Group
A summer group for people interested in learning Java has been meeting on Thursday at 2pm. Pat Pratt (Linguistics undergrad) has ably taken the lead. If you're interested in joining, let Karen Jesney know.
Anisa Schardl Teaching High School Linguistics
Anisa Schardl will be teaching an introduction to to linguistics class for high school students this July, in Cambridge. The program is called Junction and is part of ESP,
MIT's student teaching club.
John McCarthy in the Boston Globe
John McCarthy is quoted about the Boston dialect in the May 25 Sunday Boston Globe: Wicked good Bostonisms come and go.
Paula Menendez-Benito in Amsterdam
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!).
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!]
Chris Potts Running for the LSA Executive Committee
Chris Potts is on the ballot for the LSA Executive Committee. Check out his position statement, and be sure to vote in the upcoming elections! (Voting begins September 1; follow this link (requires member login) for more information.)
Phonology Group
PhG met on June 11. Michael Becker led a discussion of Ernestus and Baayen's 2003 Language article 'Predicting the unpredictable: Interpreting neutralized segments in Dutch.
[Thanks Kathryn!]
McSweeney's Linguistics
[Thanks Kathryn!]
Carolyn Quintero Has Passed Away
Carolyn Quintero (1997 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD) passed away on June 4. The memorial service was held in Tulsa on June 14.