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04:13 (2006-04-27)
April 27, 2006
Gaja Jarosz: 2006-7 Visiting Professor in Phonology
Gaja Jarosz will be the 2006-7 Visiting Professor in Phonology. Gaja is finishing now at Johns Hopkins. He research interests include not only phonology, but also computational linguistics, learning models, and language acquistion. It will be a delight to have her perspective on things next year. Welcome!
Ora Matushansky Seminar
2006 Syntax Guru Ora Matushansky gave a special lecture on superlatives yesterday (April 26, 3:30 pm). We're sorry to have missed the chance for a preannouncement of this event, but we're happy to report that it was a well-attended and lively discussion.
The talk was called 'Superlatives at the interface'. (That link is to the handout.)
Meredith Landman Guest Lecture
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.
Paula Aden at the Undergraduate Research Conference
Paula Aden, erstwhile DARLing and fellow newsletter writer, is presenting at the 12th Umass Undergraduate Research Conference in Boston today (April 27). Her talk is called 'Positionally licensed extended lapses'. Her advisor for the project is John McCarthy.
Second-Year Miniconference
The Second-Year Miniconference will take place in the morning on May 19, before the End-of-Semester Luncheon.
End-of-Semester Luncheon
The End-of-Semester Luncheon will take place on May 19. We'll honor our graduating seniors, and also Dean Edwards, who is retiring at the end of this year.
HUMDRUM Program
Many UMass Amherst phonologists will make their way down to Johns Hopkins this weekend for HUMDRUM 2006, a two-day workshop involving UMass Amherst, Johns Hopkins, and Rutgers. The program includes six UMass Amherst phonologists --- seven if we include Gaja, and eight if we count Michael Becker twice (once as the scribe of CCamelOT, once as a tone licenser). Check it out.
UUSLAW Program
There is now a tentative schedule for UUSLAW 2006, the UMass Amherst -- UConn -- Smith Language Acquisition Workshop, which takes places this Saturday, April 29, at UConn.
MUMM 1 on May 6
MUMM 1, the second joint meeting of the UMass Amherst and MIT phonology groups, takes place on Saturday, May 6. This one's at MIT; UMMM 1 was at UMass Amherst earlier in the semester.
[Thanks John!]
Experimental Sign-up Database Nears its 1000th Sign-Up
The Experimental Sign-up Database is getting close to its 1000th sign-up. The database was established in February 2004 (according to WHISC). Youri Zabbal wrote the code, based on John Kingston's vision.
Rachel Keen Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Rachel Keen, of UMass Amherst Psychology, is a member of the 2006 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Evidentials Grant Meetings
The Evidentials Grant held a meeting on Monday, April 24, at 12:15 pm, in the Partee Room. Jay Garfield talked about his preliminary work at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies.
On May 1, Edward Garrett will visit. He will speak at 12:15 pm in the Partee Room. Ed's recent UCLA dissertation is about evidentials in Tibetan, and he has been working recently on an online data base of Tibetan.
BDIC Newsletter
Our own Paula Aden heads up her own departmental newsletter, for the Bachelor's Degree with Individual Concentration program here at UMass Amherst. The seasonal newsletter is spiffy and easy to navigate around in. Excellent web design, Paula!
UMass Amherst Linguists at LABPHON 10
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).
Gibberish Accepted into Science Competition
Computer generated gibberish deemed interesting (perhaps by another computer)
Starlings Learn Natural Language, Have Nothing to Say
Report in the journal Nature: starlings can handle center embeddings and will peck at your eyes if you try to garden-path them.
Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds,
Timothy Q. Gentner, Kimberly M. Fenn, Daniel Margoliash and Howard C. Nusbaum
Nature 440.27. 1204-1207 (27 April 2006)
[Thanks John!]