Gennaro Chierchia Reads Aloud from his Dissertation
From his recent Century of Scholarship lecture:
[Thanks Amy Rose!]
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Current issue
- Gennaro Chierchia Reads Aloud from his Dissertation
- Mini-report on Two Moscow Conferences, from Barbara
- Barbara and Volodja's Trip to China
- Summer Dialect Research Project Report
- Shots from the LSA Institute
- UUSLAW Pictures
- Sizzling Hot Roumi Pics!!!
- Report from the Navajo Language Academy
- Junko Ito Accepts Math Prize on Behalf of her Father
- Ilea Percus on the Scene
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April 24, 2008
April 10, 2008
Mini-report on Two Moscow Conferences, from Barbara
We just had a busy week with two conferences for young researchers back-to-back (making it easier for people to come for both), one on formal syntax and the other on formal semantics and pragmatics. Both international, both organized by students and young researchers, both very successful! I did no work — I just continued as "honorary mentor for the program committee" of the semantics conference.
The syntax conference, April 3-4, was the second in its series, Syntactic Structures 2: it was started on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Syntactic Structures, whence its name. All but one of the talks were in English; about half were by linguists from Moscow or St Petersburg, with other participants from the US, Norway, Germany, and Spain. Invited speakers were David Pesetsky, Maria Polinsky, Peter Svenonius (Tromsø) Anton Zimmerling (Moscow), and Ekaterina Lyutikova (Moscow). There's a very nice website for the conference (and also about last year's), in English. I'm flattered that they used 5 of my photos from last year's conference on the frame page. Nice portrait photos from day 2 of the conference by Peter Arkadiev are here.
The semantics/pragmatics conference was Formal Semantics in Moscow 4 (FSIM 4), on April 5. The invited speaker was Manfred Krifka. There was one paper by a Moscow student, and others by young linguists from France, Germany, Utrecht/Beijing, and the US. The website is here . A few photos are in my Live Journal, and more on my Flickr site. More by Peter Arkadiev are on his Picasa site.
The week was made even more lively by invited talks at various venues by Peter Svenonius, David Pesetsky (on language and music), and Manfred Krifka. Manfred and I went to a concert by the military orchestra of the Russian Ministry of Defense after his talk, in the Moscow Conservatory – that was fun.
November 8, 2007
Barbara and Volodja's Trip to China
Barbara Partee and Volodja Borschev are back from two exciting weeks in China --- 9 lectures (Barbara 6, Volodja 3) (Zhejiang Univ., Yanshan Univ., Beijing Language and Culture Univ., Capital Normal Univ.), two bird-watching weekends (Chongming Island and Beidaihe), and neat touristy things (including West Lake, Peking Opera, Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Great Wall).
Barbara received an Honorary Visiting Professorship at Beijing Lang. and Cult. University, one of several universities that have formal semantics -- our audiences were all lively, and all understood English quite ok (with handouts).
Barbara writes:
Two discoveries: (1) it’s possible to get a chopstick blister --- I already knew how to use chopsticks but had never used them three meals a day seven days a week before; (2) stone lions come in two sexes: as you face them, the male is on the right, with his right front paw on a globe (power), and the female is on the left, with her left front paw on a baby lion (fertility). One confirmation of what we’d already heard: the universities are many and growing, and students are becoming more and more interested in and up-to-date on --- and contributing to --- international theoretical linguistics.
Check out Barbara's extensive picture archive of the trip. Volodja is in the process of typing up his diary.
And continue reading this entry for a selection of shots.
August 30, 2007
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.
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
Shots from the LSA Institute
Karen Jesney sent in these two photos from the Linguistic Institute at Stanford this past July.
[Thanks Karen!]
December 14, 2006
UUSLAW Pictures
Helen Stickney grabbed a bunch of good shots at UUSLAW. Here's a sample:
[Thanks Helen!]
October 5, 2006
Sizzling Hot Roumi Pics!!!
The paparazzi converge on Roumi Pancheva, hot young USC Associate Professor of Linguistics.
[Thanks Rajesh!]
August 31, 2006
Report from the Navajo Language Academy
Peggy Speas recently returned from three weeks of teaching at the Navajo Language Academy in Flagstaff. She and a group of about twenty students develped an analysis of Navajo spatial deictic terms. Peggy reports that it is a significant improvement over the existing description, which simply says there are six terms that mean "here", six that mean "there", and four that mean "over there".
Above: Peggy engaging in a lesson prepared by Cecilia Silentman Carr (in green) on how to make a peanut butter sandwich. Peggy writes: "Neither here nor there, but we got to eat the sandwiches in the end".
Junko Ito Accepts Math Prize on Behalf of her Father
Junko Ito, 1986 UMass Amherst Linguistics PhD, now Professor of Linguistics at UC Santa Cruz, accepted the Carl Friedrich Gauss Prize on behalf of her father, Kiyoshi Ito, at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Madrid, August 22, 2006.
[Thanks J.J. McCarthy!]
Ilea Percus on the Scene
We're delighted to report that Ilea Percus, daughter of Orin and Isabelle, was born on August 24. Orin wrote (from Ilea's email address, actually!):
Ilea saw the outside world for the first time yesterday, 24 August 2006. What she saw was a little room just past the hospital emergency entrance in Nantes, France. Some notable facts about her are: that her birth occurred at lightning speed; that she weighed exactly 3 kilos at birth; that she has beautiful dark silken hair. Like many people in this country, she actually has three names: Ilea, Sylvie, Alina. Each has a reason behind it. (Her family name is her father’s.)
Mother and daughter are both fine, though a bit sleepless. Ilea’s parents will now probably be worse correspondents than ever, but all three of us send our best.
[Thanks Orin!]
Report from GALANA 2
GALANA 2 (McGill University, August 17-19, 2006) was dominated by UMass Amherst linguists.
Helen Stickney and Liane Jeschull compiled a photo album.
[Thanks Liane and Helen!]
Report from Osaka
The 4th Formal Approaches to Japanese Linguistics Conference was held in Osaka, August 17-19. Many UMass Amherst linguists presented their work:
- Lisa Shiozaki (UMass Amherst Linguistics undergraduate)
- Shigeto Kawahara and Ben Gelbart (UMass Amherst graduate student, alumnus)
- Junko Ito and Armin Mester (UMass alumni)
- Mana Kobuchi-Philip (UMass Amherst Linguistics BA)
- Yurie Hara (UMass Amherst Linguistics visiting scholar, JSPS Research Fellow at Kyoto University)
Thanks Shigeto
Report from Hungary
Volodja and I are just back from LoLa 9, August 23-26, where we gave one of the invited talks, saw old friends and met new ones, enjoyed stimulating talks and discussions, and had lots of birdwatching, thanks to one of the organizers, Beáta Gyuris, an old friend who visited UMass Amherst twice, the second time for a whole year. The birdwatching photo, taken by Volodja, shows me, Beata, and our ornithologist guide Peter on the 23rd, before the conference started. On the last birdwatching excursion (no photo), Peter took me, Manfred Krifka, Marcus Kracht, and Gerhard Jäger out early Saturday morning, and added a fitting new bird to my life list -- a Montagu's harrier! (For good photos of it, see these two sites.) There will be conference photos on the LoLa 9 site soon, but in the meantime here are a couple.
From somewhere in Slovenia ...
[Thanks Rajesh!]
May 4, 2006
HUMDRUM Photo: Another PARTEE
There was yet another PARTEE license plate sighting. Like the last one, this one happened on the way back from HUMDRUM. Karen Jesney sent in the new one:
And long-time WHISC readers might remember this one, which was spotted by Kathryn Flack, Michael Becker, Shigeto Kawahara, Tim Beechey, just before a toll at the GW Bridge:
[Thanks Karen!]
WCCFL Photo
Much of the UMass Amherst crowd at WCCFL 25 this past weekend: Jan, Ilaria, Marcin, Anne-Michelle, Ania, Alexandra Teodorescu (UT Austin), and Kylito.
[Thanks Ilaria!]
South College in Olden Days When there were Horses
Kathy found some wonderful old photos of South College, inside and out, at the DuBois Library's website:
March 30, 2006
Report from SALT 16
We have some pictures from SALT 16 in Japan, which featured many UMass Amherst linguists.
Florian put together some photo albums.
Report from New Zealand
Barbara Partee is currently in New Zealand, at the University of Canterbury on an Erskine Fellowship. (She'll be back in South College in the fall.) She recently wrote:
A picture of no squirrels
It took me a minute to realize how strange it looked to see acorns lying all around. And even to hear them plopping down in great numbers with every breeze -- I don't think our squirrels even let many of them get to the ground. The immigrants brought lots of oaks, but no squirrels. Just one more complication to the mixed native/exotic ecology here. (Flightless birds evolved here because there were no predators. The Maoris brought rats and the Europeans brought possums and ferrets (to try to keep down the rabbits they had brought ...) and now the flightless birds are mostly extinct except on some islands and some isolated protected places.
[Thanks Barbara!]
March 2, 2006
Pictures from Barbara and Volodja from Down Under
Barbara Partee and Vladimir Borschev are in New Zealand this semester, on an Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch. Barbara is presently teaching an undergraduate introduction to semantics. Barbara reports that they are happily settled now on the South Island. "So far," she writes, "the most exotic things are the trees, even more than the birds."
Barbara under/on/by yellow cedar, Christchurch Botanical Gardens
Volodja as a measuring-stick for a giant eucalyptus, Christchurch Botanial Gardens