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!]
UUSLAW (UConn-UMass Amherst-Smith Language Acquisition Workshop) takes place this Saturday (December 6), at Smith College, in Campus Center 204.
[Thanks Tom!]
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!]
The S Reading Group (joint semantics and syntax reading groups) meets next on December 11, at 4:30 pm, in the South College Lounge. Seth Cable will present some of his current and ongoing work on sequence of tense. This is the final S group (disjuncively understood) meeting of the semester.
[Thanks Annahita!]
Here are some reading group events that we missed as a result of our strict adherence to Thursday publishing and our Thanksgiving Holiday:
Tom Roeper, Barbara Pearson, and Ondene van Dulm (University of Stellenbosch) presented a seminar on "Building on the DELV" about efforts to translate the DELV into foreign languages and dialects at the American Speech and Hearing Convention in Chicago, November 8.
Chris Potts has been elected to the LSA Executive Committee. His term starts at the close of the LSA Annual Meeting and runs for three years.
Brandeis University has just started a Master of Arts program in Computational Linguistics:
The new Brandeis University Master of Arts program in Computational Linguistics focuses on the scientific study of language, dealing with the modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. This interdisciplinary program draws on linguistic theory (phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) and computer science (artificial intelligence, theory of computation, and programming methods). Previous experience in computer programming or linguistics, although helpful, is not necessary. The MA provides a solid foundation for professional work in the field of computational linguistics or pursuit of a PhD in computational linguistics and theoretical linguistics. For more information, please visit the Computational Linguistics website.
